by John Connor
So Dima would take his cut of the forty million, plus the pleasure of cleaning Freddie out. But the rest was for Arisha and Max. Max thought he was getting Arisha as well, she realised – that was really why he was so committed – Arisha and a straight half of fifteen million. In fact, she planned to take ten of that. For her and Sasha alone. She wanted them all out of her life, Max and Freddie. She wanted rid of them. Max would have to live with five million as consolation. She would take her fifteen and make do. She would go back to Russia with Dima’s protection. She would take her child and start over. Fifteen million was chicken feed compared to the sums she’d been handling for the Eatons, compared to what it cost to fund the life she’d been leading with Freddie, but there was a lot you could do with fifteen million in modern Russia. Russia wasn’t what it had been when she’d left. She would thrive. She would be free of them all and thrive. Just herself and Sasha.
That was the plan.
And it was working. Max had called him, so Freddie now understood what was happening – Max held Sara. Freddie was doing exactly what was demanded, arranging the transfer of forty million sterling. She was sitting in the room with him watching every move, listening to every word, willing it on. The money was going to come to her, she was going to escape.
And then her mobile was buzzing, Dima’s number on the screen. She stepped out to speak to him and listened in stunned silence to what he told her. He spoke in very rapid Russian: ‘It’s off. I’m cancelling. Can you hear me? Do you get that? It’s all off.’
She managed to grunt something. She could feel her throat closing up on her.
‘We’ll release her,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way there now to do it. No option. I want you to call Max at once, give him the instruction. You understand?’
She couldn’t reply.
‘Do you understand, Arisha?’
‘I … I don’t … what …’
‘No discussion. Call him and warn him. Then I want you there, in case he takes it badly. He will listen to you. I want you there urgently. You understand?’
‘Yes. But …’
‘After all, it was your idea. I always knew it wouldn’t work.’
Then he was gone. She leaned against the wall and felt like she would collapse. Behind her she could hear Freddie shouting at someone, still trying to rake together the needed amount. She gasped and clutched at her throat. What had happened? What had gone wrong?
She thought she would suffocate. The implications came at her all at once, an avalanche of consequences. She would have to remain with this disgusting man, watch his perverse ideas about childhood and humanity corrupt her son. She would have to pretend, lie, act her way through this sickening charade for the rest of her life. She would go insane.
He must have heard her, because the next thing he was at the door, staring down at her. She had sunk to the floor by now and was sitting in a little heap.
‘That won’t fucking help,’ he said harshly. ‘We can’t give in to this. Stand up, for Christ’s sake. I need your assistance in here.’ He didn’t even help her up. Gone was the weepy dependency. There was money involved now, and everything came down to that, in the end. Everything he was. Take away the wealth and he was an utter failure. He was the most despicable man she had ever met. The father of her son. How could it be? How could Sasha be so perfect and still have this man’s miserable genetic material inside him?
She pushed herself up the wall. ‘I had a phone call,’ she muttered, trying desperately to think what she should say. But then it just came out: ‘I know where she is. I know where he’s holding her.’
‘What?’ He took a sudden step backwards, like she’d hit him. ‘You know? How do you know? Are you serious?’
She nodded. ‘I made calls. I told you.’ She had lied to him that she was trying to do just that – to find out where Max was. ‘Now I know.’
For a moment they were staring at each other. She could see him working through it, his brain racing. He started to turn crimson. She thought he might have a heart attack, or explode with anger. His fists clenched and unclenched. He had to lean against the door frame. But her mind was blank. What was she doing? She was crossing Dima. For the first time ever, she was going against him, disobeying his instructions.
Because Dima was offering her nothing. But this way she was still in with a chance. Or because she hadn’t even thought it through, more likely. Because she couldn’t. Because the alternative was so desperate. So the words had just come out. And there was no getting them back in now. She had said it, told him, started it. Now she would have to follow through.
She slotted the responses into her brain, adjusted her breathing, let the role slip over her. She could tell as many lies as were necessary, she could look Freddie in the eye and tell the lies and know, for certain, that he would never guess. Because he was stupid. She would take this chance on him. Try it. Find another way to get what she needed from him. There would be a way. As long as there was money, there would be a way. There was nothing else she could do.
‘Tell me where,’ he hissed. ‘Tell me where that fucking bastard Sidurov has her.’
‘It’s a storage facility. Out past Barking, on the Thames. I’ll drive you. We can go now.’
‘You’re fucking damn right we can.’ He stepped out of the room. His face was quivering. He was trying to keep it under control, trying not to let it out. She had never seen him so enraged. ‘I’ll see you down in the garage,’ he said. ‘Tell no one.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To get my shotgun. I’ll fucking kill him.’
49
Tom sat rigidly in the front seat of the Volvo, his eyes on the packed London streets crawling past through the tinted glass, but registering only basic details. The city, the glass and steel and concrete, the hordes of commuters flowing out of the tube stations, lost in their ordinary, normal lives, the clear blue sky, the roads gridlocked with traffic, the dirty short-cut streets east of Docklands before they were on the road out to Barking and Essex, following the line of the river, travelling east. His brain was racing, thoughts and fears flashing across it as in some broken cinema reel, everything confused and disorganised.
Barsukov was driving. No staff for this job, no involvement of anyone who might pose a risk later. That was how he had explained it. He had insisted Tom ride with him, or no deal. He had already had ample opportunity to kill Tom, of course, and hadn’t done it. Nevertheless, Tom didn’t like the arrangement – but since refusing would mean the end of the entire gamble, that was that. There were no witnesses, no weak links. Just Tom and Barsukov. And Tom’s father, close behind. But Barsukov didn’t know that. Barsukov thought he had cleared the boards, got himself and Tom into an armour-plated car and was now taking him to some unknown destination across the other side of London. What they had agreed would happen once they got there was that Barsukov would release Sara to Tom, then they would simply go their separate ways. That was the agreement.
‘You have to understand the position I’m in,’ Barsukov was saying. ‘It’s crucial that you understand it, understand who I am. This is a practical arrangement we have come to. The least said about it the better. You played your cards and you played them well. Maybe you were a bit lucky – who knows? It doesn’t matter. The point is you outflanked me …’ He turned to Tom and gave him a nasty smile. ‘Not many people manage that. But you did it. I congratulate you on that. What I was trying to do here was set something straight. You don’t know the players involved, you don’t know how filthy they are, how completely without honour. Maybe you’re different. I know about you, about you and your father and family. I made it my business to know. You had a little trouble in the police, you had to leave that route. But that was down to the actions of people who had no honour. You probably understand that now. We Russians are not like that. We believe in honour. We believe when you give your word then that is something final and binding. You understand? And you gave me your word, you recall that?’
>
‘Of course.’
‘And I gave you mine. But I have to know that you understand the same thing by that. So I’ll tell you how it works in Russia. I’ll give you an example, in fact. Once I had the misfortune to have a business deal with a man who was in a very prominent position in the old Russia. This was back in the bad old days. You are too young to remember, no doubt, but in the early nineties, when it all started to fall apart, there was only honour. You had to do business on that basis because the law didn’t exist. The law wasn’t an option. No law, no police to enforce things. Just honour. Anyway, this man, because he was at the heart of power, he had lost his sense of honour and personal dignity and he decided to cross me. He thought he was safe. In fact, I shall tell you, his actual job was that he was a police investigator. He was entrusted with a position investigating crimes, very close to the chief prosecutor’s office. A powerful man, in other words. He imagined he was untouchable, because all power corrupts. We know that. We see it every day, in every country. So he crossed me and I lost the equivalent of several million euros. Not a large sum, but that’s not the point. It was an issue of principle. Now, I am – I assure you – as respectful and wary of authority as the next person. I know what these people can do to you. They have the power to fuck up lives, destroy businesses. It’s still the same in Russia. That hasn’t changed. But how are we to react in the face of this kind of abuse of power? What are we to do? My approach has always been to stick to principles. So I took this man. I took him myself, in a car, just like this, like I am doing with you now. With no witnesses, no one who might later turn on me. I took him and I myself saw to it that he was made an example of. I did this because I believe that honour is paramount. Without it nothing can function properly. The deal I had with this man was for the sale of several million fridges – crappy communist bloc junk, but there existed an opportunity, so I took it. To make sure that the connection was made I arranged that this man was put inside one of these fridges, with the door secured. Then they left him there. It was cold, and there was no air supply. They told me it took fifteen hours before he was dead. I wasn’t there for that, obviously. I don’t mind confessing that. I am not good at that sort of thing. I feel sick when I see death, when I watch it, but if it has to be done, it has to be done. You understand?’
‘Perfectly. You have my word, believe me.’ His eyes went to the wing mirror, but his father wasn’t stupid. Tom couldn’t see him there, tagging along behind, obvious. But Barsukov had taken no evasives, hadn’t done anything sneaky, so surely he was there, somewhere.
‘Good,’ Barsukov said, giving that smile again. ‘Because I know about your boy, your little kid. I’ve seen him, in fact. He looked like a good kid. A little weak, perhaps …’
‘I told you, you have my word.’
‘Good. I’m glad about that. But I should add just one more thing – I have witnesses, as many witnesses as I could need. They will say, to the police, to a court, to whoever it is necessary to say it to, they will say exactly the same thing as me about what happened here: you came to me saying you were police and I believed you. I didn’t have a clue you were ex-police, that you were corrupt, kicked out of the police for corruption, a man with no credibility at all as a witness. You told me you had reason to believe a woman was being held on premises owned by one of my interests. You asked for my help to go there and gain entry and check. I gave that help as a matter of urgency, because I’m a good citizen, with a spotless record, because I love this country and its police. Indeed, I have many, many friends in the police and the judicial system, friends higher and more powerful than you could imagine. Even the man who is there, with her, will say that I was completely ignorant of his reckless actions. I know this for certain …’
‘I get the picture …’
‘I’m glad. I’m glad we understand each other. This business was a mistake. We can rectify it, turn our backs on it and walk away. That’s what we’ll do.’
‘That’s what I want to do. That’s all I want to do. All I want is Sara Eaton. The rest doesn’t interest me. I have no friends at all in high places.’
‘You have your father, though. I know about him. I know who he is. You keep looking in the mirror. You are worried about us being followed, perhaps? Don’t be. I’ve taken precautions.’
Tom stared at him. The nasty smile slipped on to Barsukov’s face. ‘Just in case,’ he added. ‘It’s what I always do. So don’t worry. We will be perfectly alone. Your life is in my hands. But …’ He paused while he manouevred round a parked truck. Tom squirmed in his seat, took a deeper lungful of air. ‘But you have my word,’ Barsukov continued. ‘So please don’t worry. Now – isn’t it time for you to make your call?’
John felt relatively relaxed, he thought, considering all that was going on. He wasn’t relaxed, of course – far from it – he was existing on a kind of adrenalin overdose, all his senses tuned up, all his muscles tight and ready. Maybe relaxed was the wrong term, then. He was in control. Or felt relatively in control. He was eight cars behind his son and Barsukov, confident enough to let them get well ahead every now and then, and then still be sure of catching up. Barsukov had made some quick turns, taken some odd routes, but only to avoid traffic, John thought. He had satnav, presumably, and was doing what it told him to do. John had easily been able to keep up. And he knew the final destination. At least, Tom had told him what Barsukov had told him was the final destination. Not a precise address, but a business description, and the area. A container storage facility near Creekmouth was what he had said. John wasn’t relying on that. That could be a trick. But they were headed in that direction, towards an industrial area he vaguely knew, just south of Barking. So there was no need to panic. He kept telling himself that.
Barsukov had basically followed the A13 out of the city, a living history tour of modern destruction and development. John could remember clearly back to the early eighties when the entire East End had been a dirty slum with nasty immigration issues. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t preferred it then. It had been run-down, crime-ridden, shabby England in all its cheap brown colours, with its drab shops and tatty products – but there had been the last remains within that, in the communities that hung on there, of something older, some surer, pre-war identity that was now utterly vanished. New Docklands looked like a science-fiction fortress slung together overnight from glass and steel cladding. From a distance, it was shiny and impressive, but up close there was something alien about it, like it had skipped history, just suddenly appeared there overnight. If it was a monument to something then it wasn’t to renewal, he thought. More like the power of raw cash – new cash. Which was always coming and going these days. These days nothing was certain. In thirty, fifty years those offices could easily be empty, unneeded, the cash gone elsewhere – then they would pull it all down again.
They had passed the turn for the Olympic Park – the roof of the new stadium clearly visible off to the right, construction still feverish with only a couple of months to go – then London City airport, over the North Circular and down towards Creekmouth and areas east of the city where the job was only half done – the old slums were nearly all levelled, but so far only replaced by temporary structures. Here they were caught between the old London and the new; progress hadn’t quite arrived, but the past was already flattened.
The route was exactly the one John thought they would take. The muddy little river – the Roding – that came around Barking was off to the right somewhere. John caught glimpses of the tall Roding flood defence gates, then a sewage works in among the mess of scrappy light-industrial developments, the prefabs and sheds and warehouse blocks, the auto parts businesses and VW and Volvo dealerships. It was the usual sprawl of ugly functional land, the same now all the way up to Dagenham and Tilbury, all along the borders of the river, where only a century ago the sky would have bristled with the masts of shipping. There was not a single building that might claim to be beautiful. Everything looked thrown up and neglected, te
mporary. There were half-finished building sites all over, functional mesh fences ringing low-rise industrial blocks slung together from corrugated iron, guard dog signs – the whole area looked like a wasteland, though hardly a foot of space was in fact wasted. Even the river itself, when he caught a glimpse of it, looked forgotten and forlorn – a big, black, polluted mudflat. He could smell the low-tide stench.
Ahead of him he saw Barsukov slow to manoeuvre past a truck, then he had to slow himself to answer his mobile. It was Tom, sticking to their plan. John spoke quietly to him, tried to sound reassuring. ‘I have you in sight,’ he said. ‘No problems.’
‘No problems here,’ Tom said. He sounded worried, though. ‘Next call in twenty-five minutes. We’re almost there.’
Then he was gone. John placed the phone on the passenger seat and eased round the truck. It was almost blocking the narrow road, so he had to mount the kerb. As he came off he no longer had Barsukov’s car in sight, but that didn’t worry him too much. He could see there was a choice of two turnoffs within range. They must be very close to the destination now. He drove slowly past the first turn-off, peering past a flat-roofed Indian restaurant that must have been a choice location for a relaxing meal, then turned back to the road ahead just as a big dark blue Mercedes came steaming past him. It slowed as if turning off, into the yard of a building supplies firm, and John felt his heart skip a beat.
