by Craig Thomas
He shrugged.
‘Go easy,’ he murmured, to the surprise of the militiamen.
‘Just lock him up — get him some of that heroin substitute from the hospital. OK?’ he added as they stared at him, astonished.
‘Yes, sir.’
He nodded, surprised himself. Then, as he got into the car, he saw Dmitri’s face as that of a driven, fanatical monk from Dostoyevsky, battling for the soul of Novyy Urengoy. He’d often employed the image of Dmitri as a religious fanatic; now, it seemed not as risible as before. There were worse delusions in which to believe … though one needed a daughter’s death, probably, to thrust one into a state of mind like that.
‘There’s a call for you,’ Dmitri said, and mouthed, Bakunin.
Vorontsyev took the mobile telephone from Dmitri. ‘Yes, Colonel. What can I do for you?’
‘I’ve decided to take over the Rawls investigation,’ Bakunin announced. ‘Send me everything you’ve got. I take it that doesn’t amount to very much?’
‘Not a great deal. Colonel. Is there a security angle?’
‘I’m upgrading the investigation to keep the Americans happy.
You don’r object?’
‘Suits me, Colonel. I wish you good luck.’
He switched off the phone and put it between them on the bench seat. Shrugged.
‘Bakunin wants Rawls to himself?’
Vorontsyev nodded. ‘Seems so. He’s welcome.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Let’s get our job right.’
‘He’s paid off the taxi. Going in, carrying both suitcases,’ the radio announced.
‘Fine with me,’ Dmitri sighed, his anticipation vivid.
The Maryland countryside blazed with late fall colours. Across the rush and boom of Great Falls, there was a fine day. Virginia and Maryland, peaceful; he in a trance-like state of shock and dammed grief. He stood on the terrace at the back of the mansion, looking over the gardens that sloped down to the Potomac.
His breath smoked no more than the cooling coffee in the mug he cradled in his hands. He felt cold and numb inside his topcoat.
Yes, that’s my sister … yes, my brother-in-law … the housekeeper, yes, the butler, Mr Stillman … and, beneath a tree near the main gates, yes, the security guard …
And that was all there was to do and say. Lieutenant Faulkner was polite, grave, attentive, businesslike. And sensitive enough to let him wander away soon after the identifications, into the kitchen where the crocks and crystal from the party were stacked and ordered, ready for collection by the catering company. There was a scent of abandoned food. He made himself coffee, nudging away the insistent, hundred reminders of her that every surface, utensil, cup and tile seemed intent upon thrusting at him. Beth had looked — just dead; not agonised, not even surprised. Just
— still.
Jewellery, yes … empty boxes and caskets in her bedroom … Yes, a Pissarro, I think yes, quite valuable … Other empty frames and lighter squares on the walls of the library and the main drawing room … I don’t know how much my brother-in-law kept here, in cash or securities … The safe in Billy’s study had been opened with explosives. Silver missing, he thought, some valuable jade pieces, other paintings, ornaments and statuettes …
There were shreds of packing, polystyrene bubbles, wrapping -
professionals. A gang. Maybe even stealing to order. So surmised Faulkner. Did they — usually kill? he had asked. Sometimes.
Not always. In this case, they weren’t prepared to wait until the house was empty …
End of story. End of Beth’s existence. Snuffed out. For things, for damned things! he had protested in his only moment of wildness.
Maybe (wo million dollars’ worth of things, Mr Lock, Faulkner had murmured in response, gripping his arm. Maybe more … I’m sorry. It happens.
The police had found Beth’s guest list, Faulkner had told him.
There’d be no need to trouble him on that … you left when, Mr Lock?
Then Faulkner had moved away, finally, at the door to the kitchen. The downlighters had hurt his eyes. He had fled them
— the house, really, and the memories of the previous evening and of Beth at some pinnacle of ease and beauty and happiness, ready only to fall.
Now, all he could see was the child four years older than himself, forcing herself not to cry when telling him that Mom and Dad had been killed in a road accident. Both dead. It had pressed and pressed on him while Faulkner had talked, however much he had tried to force it back. It was, now, the only real memory of her, and it was awful.
He sipped at his coffee, but it was already cold. Angering him.
He flung the mug away from him, over the stone balustrade down towards the lawn. A squirrel hopped into bushes, alarmed.
The grey coffee streamed through the air like a comet’s dull tail.
His hands were shaking now they had nothing to hold. He stared at them as they ached for something on which to do violence, have revenge …
Oh, Jesus … The vivid, red-gold-green countryside mocked, the bright morning indifferently serene. He heard crows calling, other birds. Oh, Jesus …
THREE
Raised Incorruptible
Dmitri was staring through the grimy windscreen, which the car’s heater managed to prevent fogging up, at the blowing snow and the trodden distance of white between them and the dilapidated block of flats.
The car’s interior was hot with their tension. Vorontsyev could make out the humped, whitened shapes of the other unmarked cars. The two vans that had contained the TacTeam were parked well out of sight, the members of the unit crouched in doorways, leaning against pillars, masked, waiting.
He lifted the R/T to his cheek, then bellowed into it and the car radio. ‘Go — goV Icy air as Dmitri opened the door. ‘Go!’
The wind, the taste of snow, the uncertainty of the surface under his feet, all caused him to stagger as he followed Dmitri.
He watched the first members of the TacTeam approach the entrance to the flats. Snowbound steps, a grimy glass door shattered like the image of a star. He could visualise the grubby, graffitied foyer with its thermoplastic tiles in grim grey.
The lifts might not be working, but then that was what the TacTeam trained for. The flat they were interested in was on
— running now, thudding and lumbering across the snowy street — the fourth floor. There were a handful of windows lit, fewer curtained. A block of flats so rundown only the families and hangers-on of the least-rewarded gas workers inhabited it.
Dark shadows flitting up the steps, through the doors. There were lights in the windows of the flat they wanted, burning steadily. No one up there was alarmed.
Dmitri steadied him as he slipped on a patch of ice. Other men in overcoats and parkas. Handguns bristled in fists. There was a heady, collective excitement, something dangerous, communal. Wanting to do damage.
They clumped breathlessly up the steps and burst through the doors. One black-overalled figure was waiting at the lift, others he could hear thudding up the stairs. The porter was not in evidence — unless the ancient, bemused woman huddled against one scratched and filthy wall was the superintendent of the block. He didn’t think so. She was just a terrified old woman ‘Lift?’ he bellowed. The TacTeam officer shook his head.
‘Stairs!’ to Dmitri.
They crowded after the overalled specialists and two younger detectives in wet-stained overcoats. The omnipresence of pistols.
He1 would not be able to prevent shots, fatalities -
they needed, at least, Hussain alive. He’d stressed that, time and again, but all the sober nods and grimaces of agreement in the squad room had been replaced by a mad delight in anticipated, violent success.
First floor. Dmitri was panting like a huge dog, gripping the loose handrail as he lumbered after Vorontsyev. The R/T’s cacophony was uninterrupted, irresistible. Two team members were already on the fourth floor, turn of the stairs, nothing moving up here, their breathing like that
of large, fierce hounds. He heard the clicking-off of safety catches. Second floor. A startled child, wearing only a vest that did not cover his tiny penis, was peeing in the corridor, presumably not against his own front door. His eyes were black holes in his dark features.
Third floor. The detective ahead of him had trodden in something that had spilt from an abandoned rubbish bag, and was swearing.
‘Shut that noise!’ he snapped at him. Their boots, still wet with melted snow, slithered like reptiles in panic on the stairs. Still nothing moving, sir. The noise of a radio, a child crying, a deep male voice quarrelling. The noise of a slap. A door slammed.
‘What?’
‘Sir, someone in the corridor. Old man’
‘Get him out of there — quietly!’
Fourth floor. He lunged against the two detectives he had pursued up the stairs. There was staining, rubbish, dogshit on the cracked linoleum flooring. The two overalled Tac-men were bustling a shrivelled, nightgowned old man — Iranian or something like — along the corridor towards them. Terrified eyes stared at Vorontsyev above the gloved hand that was clamped over the old man’s mouth.
He nodded reassuringly, to no effect, and told one of the younger detectives: ‘Take him out of the way. Make sure he doesn’i wander back up here!’
Others crowded behind them now. Three in overalls, another plainclothes detective. He ignored the old man’s continuing terror as he was roughly bundled away.
‘He didn’t come out of the flat we want, sir. Further down the corridor.’
Vorontsyev nodded, listening. Arab music from behind one peeling, flimsy door. The sound of an argument, or perhaps merely an exchange of information. The wet smell of cabbage mingling with more spicy scents, the smell of ordure and decay and mould. The walls were icy with frozen leaks and condensation.
Their breaths whitened the air.
‘OK — positions. Wait till I give the word,’ he instructed in a hoarse whisper, breathing heavily; excitedly. Dmitri stared into the coming moments as into a huge gift-parcel. Try to keep alive, try to keep them alive!’
The TacTeam members moved along the corridor in short, jerky little shuntings, constantly overtaking each other as in the steps of a strange dance, then positioning themselves on either side of the door behind which Hussain, others, and the heroin, waited. Four overalled figures below bright, angelic faces turned to him. This was it. For a moment, none of them was corrupt, on the take, indifferent. This was He nodded and the largest of the overalled men raised his foot and jabbed stiff-legged and violently at the flimsy door. It cracked and folded inwards with little more noise than he would have made stepping on a twig. A small sound -
swallowed, at once, by a roar, a bellow of noise. A sheet of flame engulfed the TacTeam man at the moment he regained his balance. Two other figures fell back, screaming. Then the flame was gone. The man on the floor burned, then simply smouldered. He could still hear screaming — he thought. It was hard to tell in the deafened condition to which he returned from numb shock. Slowly, the screams became louder. Not from the member of the TacTeam. The concussion as much as the flames had killed him. The noises came from inside the flat.
He moved clumsily. The Shockwave had robbed his legs of strength. Someone beside him, as he moved, was muttering. No, no, no, no… it sounded like. It was Dmitri, robbed of his gift.
He imagined that there had been screams; Beth’s protestations against whoever had invaded her life and was about to rob her of her self. He did not wish to do so. His hand closed around a thick-cut crystal glass where whisky swilled with all his barely suppressed grief. He kept looking at the glass and the swilling, gold liquid rather than drinking from it.
He glanced at the answerphone as if it posed some threat. It was almost filled with messages of sympathy. He’d listened to every one, and answered none of them … and the woman from the music group was sorry to bother him again, but … she obviously hadn’t read the newspapers or connected Beth with himself — and Fred who, with a lot of deep breathing and genuine, awkward compassion, still had the tickets for the basketball and wondered what to do with them … the Library of Congress enquired through an austere female voice when he intended making use of the books he had listed before his last trip to Russia … and more expressions of sympathy, the disconnected, ugly, unreal gulping of people who saw him on the edge of an abyss and didn’t know how to save him. He’d unplugged the machine. That way, the voices couldn’t enter the apartment.
Billy had not had time to reach for one of the various firearms he kept around the house. He had been shot in the bathroom, and was found slumped over the basin. His head was arranged as if on the block of a guillotine, twisted sideways, blood from the wound on his cheek streaking over his chin like thin vomit into the white china basin. Beth had hardly moved in the bed
— he was grateful for that, at least — the bedclothes barely disturbed.
Only marked with two black holes that then passed through her and into the mattress. The sheets had looked slightly arranged, too stiff and smooth. That had been the blood sticking them in place like licked postage stamps.
He stared at the window of his apartment’s lounge, into the midday sun, the light splintering through his tears. The nausea becoming onmipresent.
He was preoccupied with anger, hatred; searching for a means and opportunity for revenge. Wanted to know who. He could not have anticipated this sense of being cheated, as if Beth had been some porcelain creation of his own smashed by a stranger’s intrusion. He swallowed the hypnotic drink at a gulp, and choked on it, and fled to the bathroom to vomit.
When he came back into [he lounge, the phone was ringing, seeming to have achieved a pitch of impatience at being ignored.
He picked up the telephone before realising it was what he least wanted to do.
‘Yes?’ His voice sounded strange, as if it didn’t belong to him.
‘John?’ An accent. Not American.
‘Yes — this is John Lock. Is this important? I mean, I’m sorry, but’
‘John, it’s Pete. Pyotr Turgenev … I understand why you didn’t recognize it was me. I rang to say how sorry — how angry I am Lock’s throat was stretched and dry. His mouth was vile with the taste of bile and the hours of drinking. He began to realise he had not eaten, but had not simply stared at the glass, either.
‘I don’t want to talk — V he wailed, shocking himself.
‘John, 1 understand,’ Turgenev soothed. ‘I can’t help feeling it — without intruding on your special grief, John, I feel it, too.’
‘Thanks, Pete.’ He grabbed at the intuitive empathy as if to drag it down into the deep place where he felt himself to be.
There was someone else down there after all, who knew what it meant.
Unlike the Washington Post, lying open on the small table beside the telephone. In its habitually reined-in style, it announced in a subordinate headline the Grainger Slaying, and trickled towards its report with subsidiary heads that acknowledged Arts Patron Among Victims and Dow Slump Expected for Stock in Grainger Technologies. It was all so neat, so encapsulated, meas uring the worth of Billy and Beth on the markets of industry and the arts. What other headlines could any good American wish, having been violently done to death?
‘You still there?’ Turgenev asked, his sympathy insistent now, almost proprietary.
‘Yes, sorry-‘ Beth’s brilliance of mind and her qualities as a Washington hostess achieved parity in the Post’s report. Billy’s dash in intelligence and the market followed as almost equally admirable — now that he was dead. ‘Look, Pete, I really can’t talk right now’
‘I understand. I just wanted to tell you I understand.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Was it robbery?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he answered. ‘Maybe as many as a dozen paintings, all her jewellery, things like that.’ He realised he was repeating Faulkner’s words exactly, as if he had been programmed like some PR guy to give out only so much and no
more.
He felt his stomach churn again and squinted against the light burning through the net curtains. Beth had bought them, put them up ‘How terrible.’
‘Yes.’
‘I know … no, I don’t need to say it, John. I just want you to get in touch if there’s anything, simply anything, you might need or want. Even someone to talk to … Should I talk to Vaughn just now?’
‘No, I’ll do that. He’s on his way up from Phoenix.’
‘He must be broken up.’
‘He is — is there something else?’
‘No. Just sympathy, John. Understanding. You take care now.’
‘Yes, Pete.’
‘We all loved her, John ‘
‘Yes.’
Lock put down the receiver with the care he might have expressed in stroking a small, hurt animal. Pete Turgenev, Jesus … who’d have thought the KGB had such depth of feeling …? At once, the small, self-rescuing joke foundered.
The phone call had stranded him farther than before on the reef of his sorrow. Vaughn Grainger’s arrival that afternoon loomed, a species of interrogation and pressure he felt he would not be able to undergo without himself coming apart.
He wandered to the window and stared through the glaze of the net curtains. The apartment was half of the first floor of an old Georgetown house, student lodgings become the necessary domicile of a civil servant. Except for those currently in power who bartered the mansions of the suburb at every election or Presidential whim. It possessed the atmosphere that much of Georgetown exuded, with the bright young men and women who did not have to stray too far from Harvard and Yale and the other colleges when they came home from powerbroking and nudging and lobbying each evening. The couple downstairs were lobbyists for the soft drinks cartels, the guy who shared the first floor a poet who had not written a line since his last National Book Award.
Only rarely had women stayed — slept over, as kids called it, and it was almost as small an occasion as that — and only once had one moved in, taken up wardrobe as well as bed space.
