The repeated assertions left the meaning obvious. Joe smiled at the very underlying guile of the admission. He was beginning to feel quite happily drunk and confident.
‘But if Old Believers, as they’re called, attacked me and you support them, your club is a dangerous place. No wonder Boris wanted to disappear.’
This prompted a sarcastic laugh. ‘Sure, he wanted to disappear! But my club, no, no, it is not dangerous!’
‘Potseluev, The Kiss?’
A nod of acknowledgement. ‘Again, my friend, it is true. I am sorry for it.’ Ollie tapped the lid of the laptop: ‘But this will tell us why.’
‘And you want to know what’s in it?’
‘If it is bargain, yes.’
Joe pulled the laptop towards him along the foldaway tabletop.
‘If I open it, is there any guarantee I won’t be considered an enemy?’
The question elicited no more than a grunt. ‘None.’
‘In that case, here goes.’ Joe knew he was probably in danger of being considered a class enemy or worse if he refused or deliberately messed up. He leaned as close to the screen as possible, pressed the right keys and waited. After an interval the text appeared. He pushed the laptop back towards Ollie Goncharov.
Silence followed. They were already in the stream of traffic going northwards with the trees of Hyde Park to their left and the multi-storey hotels and apartment blocks of Park Lane to their right. The scrutiny of the text took long enough for the Mercedes to glide past Marble Arch and then make its way beside the northern perimeter of Hyde Park. The whole length of Bayswater Road had the rimless spectacles poring over the brightly lit screen with the intentness of a child gazing into a toyshop window. Joe lay back against the leather headrest, his head beginning to hum slightly. It was a relief to be free of questions and explanations.
From time to time came sighs, headshakes and fingertips running through the white beard as the text was frequently scrolled backwards and forwards. Towards the end of the process there were tongue clicks and a certain amount of grunting. Finally the viewing was over and Ollie settled back against the upholstery.
‘It is perhaps one of yellows.’
‘Yellows?’
Joe frowned in a show of complete ignorance. The statement made no sense.
‘Ah, yes, yellows. You don’t know what yellows are?’
‘No.’
Ollie Goncharov adopted a strangely distant manner, as if something almost personally indecent had to be admitted. He lowered his voice. Joe caught what he thought was a name being uttered, but again a siren sound, this time of a police vehicle, interrupted his words and all Joe heard was:
‘Very cheap paper. It is yellow.’
‘John Lennon, you mean?’
‘No, not John! Vladimir!’
What the hell was he talking about! Vladimir Lennon!
‘Yellow Submarine, you mean?’ Joe offered helpfully.
‘They are called “yellows” – what is submarine?’
‘You say yellows? What?’
‘Zhioltie! Zhioltie!’ Ollie shrieked, more, it seemed, in an effort to be heard above the oncoming surf of noise from the passing police cars than in order to explain exactly what he meant. In the wake of the sirens he seized Joe’s left wrist. ‘Like what you have!’
‘What?’
The tight grip loosened. Joe instantly sought to protect his wrist and wristwatch against any further attempts to seize hold. He began to understand what the brand of the seventh letter meant: he was yellow! Zhioltii! But what the hell did that mean? The two of them looked at each other sideways for several moments across the little no-man’s-land of leather seating between them. Then Ollie raised a finger to his large red lips, indicating the text on the screen.
‘It is rubbish!’ He slammed down the laptop lid. ‘It is false!’ He spoke firmly and confidently. ‘It is trick! You have it back, my friend Mr Falcon.’ He thrust the laptop back into the bag, shaking his head several times in what seemed like schoolmasterly disappointment at a star pupil’s abject exam failure. There was a noticeable sneer of contempt in his voice as he pronounced a little sadly: ‘You are cheat – zhulik! Understand? I see it now, Mr Falcon. It is what you have.’ The mark on Joe’s wrist was clearly being pointed to.
‘Why? What the hell’s the mark mean?’
The stare of the other’s narrowed eyes, enlarged somehow by a succession of flashes through the darkened windows as approaching vehicles glided past, drilled into Joe’s face. He found a panic sweat breaking out on the back of his head under this scrutiny. Then the lips came very close.
‘Who are you, Mr Falcon?’
The quiet, almost whispered, question was more menacing than curious.
‘I’m Richter, Joe Richter!’ was the blurted answer. Panic made his voice sound so uncertain Joe felt disgusted at his lack of control. He licked his lips. ‘At your club you get given pseudonyms, you know that…’
‘Joseph Richter! So you are Joseph Richter!’
The emphatic acknowledgement of the name seemed to prove very satisfactory. Ollie Goncharov dry-washed his hands in meditative pleasure.
‘Good, good. Of course all Russia is carnival, you know, upside-down, as you English say. My club is also upside-down. Otherwise it is not Russian!’ Another bellow of laughter, this time quite drunken. ‘And you say you are Mr Joseph Richter! Rubbish! So I think you are rubbish, too, Mr Falcon. We Russians, no matter who we are – rich, poor, Old Believers, patriots, priests, workers, all honest Russian people, every Russian man, woman and child will know what you are, Mr Falcon!’ A pause came before the invective reached an impassioned climax. The speaker turned slowly, pressed his lips together, surveyed Joe with chillingly bright eyes and said in a low voice:
‘You are filth, Mr Falcon! Bourgeois filth! To be thrown away!’
The Mercedes had reached Notting Hill. He tapped the glass panel.
‘Home! Domoi!’ Then another instruction.
The car turned down Church Street. Practically at once it pulled over. Sergey Bakhteen jumped out of the front seat and had the rear door open for him before Joe fully realized he was being unceremoniously dismissed. He scrambled out on to the pavement, the bag containing the laptop being thrown out at his feet. Sergey slammed the rear door shut, shut himself back in the front passenger seat and the Mercedes did its customary high-speed take-off with a shriek of tyres and several bursts of car-horn rage from nearby traffic.
Two girls glanced at him as he steadied himself against a lamppost. In the light it shed directly downwards he knew he must seem as drunk as he actually felt. His mouth hung open in temporary shock and shortness of breath perhaps gave the impression he was about to vomit. A bus was approaching. He thought of taking it just in order to escape from where he was, but the moment he left the security of the lamppost he felt his knees begin to buckle and he grabbed the metal post again for safety’s sake.
‘So I’m filth, am I!’ he said loudly, swinging one arm outwards.
A young couple, girl and boy, stared at him.
‘Sorry! Sorry!’
He stooped to pick up the bag and swung himself upright. Luckily at that moment a black cab swooped into view, its availability signalled by the bright rectangle of light above the windscreen, and he waved it to the curb.
5
Inchbald Terrace was a row of Edwardian houses on four floors, all converted into flats. They faced a busy road and open parkland. Beyond the park were a school and cranes on building sites that loomed over old suburbs like dead trees. At the back of Inchbald Terrace each property had a slope of walled garden leading down to a fairly steep railway embankment and some of the end walls had gates giving access to a narrow, rarely used footpath.
Humiliated and angry, Joe felt more than ever like a pariah once he had paid off the taxi. He decided he would keep in the dark, out of sight, so he chose the narrow footpath rather than the front entrance in the certainty that the security lighting over t
he back gardens only extended as far as the end walls and he would be unobserved. In any case, the path, overgrown and damp in the rain, was black as a tunnel. All he could rely on to see his way were successive splashes of light from passing trains.
Most of the back windows in the terrace of houses were dark. Even the back of the end house where Jenny lived in the first-floor flat directly above her mother’s seemed to show no light. He still had spare keys to her flat as well as her garden gate and was less bothered by the possibility of her absence than by his unannounced arrival. What bothered him more than anything was the steady rainfall. It began to penetrate his raincoat at the neck and shoulders while his trousers were soon soaked and the bag carrying his laptop was becoming sodden.
He crept along the wet path as best he could, pausing now and then to await the next train, but certain he would find the garden gate locked. With the bunch of keys held ready to open it, he slotted in what he thought was the right key. It astonished him to find that his fumbling in the darkness made the gate open of its own accord with a slight creaking. Simultaneously raindrops from overhanging foliage doused the back of his head and ran down his neck.
He peered into the dark garden. A brick path led up to the rear of the house, the side way and the fire escape. It was covered with builders’ materials, most prominently a white enamel bath shining star-like against the dark shadow of the house. He did not dare to negotiate all the stuff on the path. He veered into the deeper darkness of the lawn, though he recognised at once that if he appeared out of the darkness looking like a shabby refugee or burglar, he’d probably be in worse trouble, a feeling compounded by a sudden, intense screeching at his feet. He had stepped on a cat that dashed away through the open gate behind him.
The sound was obliterated by another passing train. Its lighted windows caught him like a series of photo flashes as he crouched in the shade of a laurel bush and clutched his ankle. Bright strips of light cartwheeled the length of the sloping garden, then vanished. He had twisted his ankle in jumping away from the screeching cat and he felt he’d never be able to stand upright again.
He swore violently under his breath. It had been stupid of him to come this back way. A twisted ankle was natural justice, he felt, for not being bold enough. Then he quickly changed his mind. Being stuck where he was didn’t seem a bad idea after all.
In the wake of the train the security lights suddenly flashed on. Footsteps could clearly be heard descending the metal steps of the fire escape. They were slow and cautious, made by someone unfamiliar with them, it seemed, and when a figure emerged from the side way it was obviously a man. His face may have been hidden by an upturned collar and a peaked cap pulled almost down to his eyebrows, but a suddenly lit silhouette of the features was unmistakably masculine. He stepped equally cautiously round the builders’ materials before crossing the lawn within a couple of metres of the shape crouching by the laurel bush without apparently noticing. He disappeared through the open gate. Then the lights went off. In the momentarily blinding darkness rain began to fall more regularly. All the leaves in Joe’s close proximity started rattling like so much tinfoil.
His first thought was denial. No, it couldn’t be! He had to fight down the suspicion. The rattling leaves, though, were insistent. Something about the figure made him sure he knew who it was and the leaves under the impact of the softly falling rain beat out a slow, tinny Morse code offering its own kind of distress signal. At that moment his mind became quite crazed with suspicions. He fancied wildly that Jenny was the answer to it all, that she knew about the material, about the letter, had alerted Leo Kamen, let the Old Believers know and got Ollie Goncharov involved because if the man he had just seen was who he thought he was, then Jenny must know all about it….
He shook his head vigorously. No! Nonsense! He thrust the crazy nonsense out of his mind and comforted himself with the much more reasonable thought that maybe he’d seen a burglar. Okay, so he didn’t know for sure it was a burglar, maybe it was just a visitor, but whoever it was he knew he had a duty, right now, to check on Jenny’s flat as he had checked on it during her absence. In any case, he wanted to get out of the rain.
He staggered to his feet. The security lights came on again. He saw the way clearly to the fire escape and hobbled in that direction. The back door to Jenny’s first-floor flat was on the fire escape’s first half-landing and he heaved himself quickly up to it. The key turned in the lock as he knew it would. In a moment he was in the kitchen, the door closed quietly behind him. Light filtered from the adjoining passage. He supposed she must be home and hoped he had not been heard. Then a shadow fell across the floor almost immediately. There was Jenny. He saw her as she came in and switched on the ceiling light.
Ignominiously he sat down in the nearest kitchen chair, a hand round his ankle, his laptop in its sodden bag propped against a chair leg. ‘I twisted it,’ he said.
‘What’ve you done to yourself? You’ve got mud on your trousers! Oh, your foot! And you’re wet through! Your hair’s dripping! How did you…?’
He showed her the bunch of keys. ‘I should’ve given them back.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, heavens, that doesn’t matter! But why did you come by the back way?’
‘No, I…’ The suspicion blazed in his mind that she must have known whoever it was he had seen in the back garden. ‘The gate was open, you see. I came along that back path.’
‘I know, but I wonder why didn’t you come by the front door?’
The air literally cooled throughout the kitchen as she posed the question. It wasn’t so much hostile as rather scolding. The brand new black granite worktops of the units, the gleam of taps, of glass-fronted cupboards, of the glossy enamelled white of fridge and dishwasher doors, all stood to icy attention at the tone of her voice. He took in a deep breath.
‘I’ll explain. It’s just that standing on this ankle is like… like trying to stand in boiling water.’
‘I’ll find some ice.’ She spoke a little too promptly. A slightly creased skirt, suitable, he recognised, for diplomatic functions, and a smart jacquard jacket indicated, he supposed, she had not had a chance to change since reaching home. Both items emphasized the neatness of her figure as she stooped to open the fridge.
‘Jenny, please, tell me who it was.’
‘Let me put something really cold round it. Can you get your shoe off?’
‘Jenny, just tell me, please. Who was it? The gate wasn’t locked, you know.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she admitted, ‘the workmen needed it open. Here,’ she said, ‘this’ll help. An old-fashioned remedy.’ She held up a bag of frozen peas. ‘Let’s put it on your ankle. How did you do this?’
‘I think I stepped on a cat.’ It sounded ridiculous.
‘Oh, there’s a stray one. It’s always out there at night.’
‘Is that your mother’s bath outside?’
‘Yes, that’s the old one. The new one’ll be put in tomorrow. Mummy’s not made up her mind yet. She was thinking of delaying till next week when everything’ll be finished. But she changes her mind like the weather. Come on. Let me put this bag on your ankle. Hadn’t I better help you get your shoe off?’ She knelt down.
‘It’s getting better. Just resting it, you know… What was he doing here?’
The barrier in the air between them instantly solidified. They had avoided kissing or looking directly into each other’s eyes. She looked up at him from her kneeling position, having removed his shoe, and he thought again how overwhelmingly pretty she was, her eyes shining and her mouth slightly open in a bright red firework of lipstick. He knew she had already guessed his suspicions. He wanted to kiss her for being so true to whatever fidelity made her evade the question. Instead he drew back his sleeve and unfastened the metal strap of his watch.
‘See,’ he said, ‘I’ve been branded.’
She squinted at the small red mark on the inside of his wrist. ‘What is it?’
‘I am branded a cheat. I am
bourgeois filth.’
She placed the bag of frozen peas over his ankle. ‘Is that better?’
He flinched. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
He patted the laptop.
‘What?’ She found the gesture unremarkable. ‘What’s it about?’
‘If I knew, I’d not be in this bloody mess! It’s all because of the stuff I got on my smartphone. I told you about it yesterday. I downloaded it because it’s easier to read that way. Jenny, look, I came here because I thought, you know…’ He snapped his wristwatch back into place.
‘What?’
‘It’s valuable. Leo wanted it done and he bought it, but when the owner of Scythian Gold gives you a ride in his posh new Mercedes, opens your stolen laptop, reads it and says it’s rubbish, well, that means the exact opposite. I think it’s valuable. Now you’ve got safes in the office, haven’t you? Can you keep it safe?’
She rose from her kneeling position with eyebrows raised and shakes of the head. ‘You said it was all about birds, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, it’s about birds.’
‘Why should that be valuable?’
She spoke quite indignantly as she looked down at him. They faced each other for a moment and then her lips drew apart in a smile. She suddenly leant forwards and held him by both cheeks.
‘Oh, you look so serious! I love you, you cheat, you bourgeois filth! And your laptop full of rubbish!’ She kissed him. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’
‘Keep it safe.’ He laughed in embarrassment. ‘Put it in one of your safes. Know what I mean? Because I’m pretty sure I know where the stuff came from.’
She clapped her hands. ‘So that’s it! That’s who it was!’
‘Who?’
‘The person who came here! Just now! Your friend who’d been in Moscow, that’s who it was! I couldn’t think…’
‘Boris?’
‘No, he wasn’t Boris. That wasn’t his name.’
‘What was it then?’
Mr Frankenstein Page 6
