A Morbid Habit

by Annie Hauxwell

  When Berlin had asked Del why they hadn’t instructed a Russian investigator to do the job he’d laughed and said that they would have had to do due diligence on them first. It made sense.

  Del had pulled an analyst’s briefing off the Burghley database and included it for Berlin’s edification. It covered the current political, diplomatic and economic relationship between Russia and the United Kingdom. She was interested in how they would characterise the murders, attempted murders and unresolved deaths of various Russian businessmen that had occurred on British soil.

  The language was typically neutral.

  Concern has been expressed in relation to the transparency of commercial operations and standards of governance in the Commonwealth of Independent States, and, in particular, Russia’s reach beyond its borders.

  The Chancellor of the Exchequer welcomes investment from non-EU citizens at a minimum of one million pounds, committed for no less than three years. Such investment brings certain entitlements.

  Russian citizens represent about a quarter of all those obtaining UK residency visas by this route. There is usually no enquiry into the source of the capital funds. Russians, and citizens of other members of the CIS, have also been granted political asylum in the UK.

  The apparent tension between these positions is symptomatic of tension in the bilateral relationship.

  Russia is the UK’s fastest-growing export market.

  The upshot was that the relationship between Whitehall and the Kremlin was fraught. Something that Berlin understood. There was a lot of money to be made, and money was the lifeblood of the City of London.

  The Executive Summary went on to refer to the current session of the Intergovernmental Steering Committee on Trade and Investment in the UK and Russia. Talks were being held in London involving various levels of both governments. They were complex, and deals potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds were at stake. Discussions were expected to last into the new year.

  Bars and clubs all over the capital would be celebrating a truly festive season.

  Berlin had a strong track record in financial investigations and good cognitive interviewing skills. She knew how to deal with snotty bankers and captains of industry. Unlike most lawyers, she understood the difference between taking a statement and conducting an interview. Unlike most coppers, and former coppers, she didn’t approach everyone as if they were a suspect.

  Although the interpreter might stand between her and the subject, the techniques of forensic linguistics would still offer an insight. She was well qualified for the job, but the Russian angle made her nervous. She went to the wardrobe and dragged out her business suit to see if it needed cleaning.

  On the top shelf was an old shoebox she hadn’t touched for years.

  The grainy black-and-white photos still bore scorch marks where her mum had tried to burn them. Berlin, a teenager at the time, had an adolescent’s skill at detecting parental lies. When she had asked what her mother was doing, Peggy had told her it was none of her concern. A red rag to a bull.

  The minute her mother turned away, Berlin had rescued the shoebox, which also contained Zayde’s old watch. It didn’t work, but that had never seemed to bother him, so it didn’t bother her. It was sheer juvenile defiance: if her mother wanted to destroy it, suddenly it was worth saving.

  There were only a few pictures in the box, including a couple of Zayde: one with her father and one with them both when she was maybe eight or nine. Zayde was a very old man then, but he could still make his biceps jump, wiggle his eyebrows and twirl his moustache – all at the same time. He was never frail. He seemed to come and go from their lives, but she remembered that when she and her mother had moved to Leyton, he moved into the flat above the shop with her father, Lenny.

  Peggy blamed Zayde for everything in general and, in particular, Berlin’s failings, which were many and which had all apparently come from her ‘father’s side’.

  Berlin gazed at the photo of Zayde. Her father had told her he had been beaten first by the Cossacks, then by the Reds. What had this persecuted old man done to attract her mother’s opprobrium?

  The phone was answered with a friendly ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, Peggy,’ said Berlin.

  It was astonishing the way a copper cable could convey a sudden chill in the atmosphere.

  ‘Catherine,’ said Peggy. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Berlin. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine. Thank you for asking.’

  Berlin was inured to this type of expansive hyperbole. Almost. She knew it was her mother’s pre-emptive strike: Berlin wouldn’t be calling unless there was a problem.

  ‘Look, Peggy, there’s a problem,’ said Berlin. She faltered.

  Peggy’s response was a long-suffering sigh, honed to perfection. They had only recently reached a rapprochement. The peace was tenuous, and would be tested by her failure to appear on Christmas Day.

  ‘I can’t make it, Peggy,’ said Berlin. ‘It’s work.’

  ‘I’ve got everything in,’ said Peggy. ‘The fridge is full.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum. It can’t be helped. I need this job,’ said Berlin.

  ‘What could you possibly be doing on Christmas Day?’ snapped Peggy. ‘It’s not as if you’re a nurse or an ambulance driver . . .’ She sighed. ‘. . . or something useful.’

  ‘I have to go to Moscow,’ said Berlin. ‘It’s not Christmas there until the seventh of January.’

  ‘Heathens,’ said Peggy.

  ‘Orthodox Christians, actually,’ said Berlin. ‘And I’m only going for a couple of days. It’s a chance to get in touch with my roots. My paternal roots, that is.’

  There was a long silence on the other end. This was provocation of the highest order.

  ‘Do you mean like in that television program, Who Do You Think You Are?’ said Peggy. Icy sarcasm was her forte. The conversation had taken its usual turn.

  Berlin came back in kind. ‘It would be more like Who the Hell Do You Think You Are? if it involved our family,’ she said.

  Peggy hung up.

  11

  Berlin’s nocturnal promenade took her further than usual that night. She set off to walk in a straight line from Bethnal Green to the river. She knew it wasn’t possible, but it meant she paid more attention than usual to her choice of route.

  It was as if she were saying goodbye to London. It had always been enough for her: cantankerous, difficult, unpredictable – a place of buried treasure and opaque charms. But it was more than that. It was who she was; the collective memory, however false, was a conduit into her own history.

  It wasn’t the past; it was an invocation, more real to her than God. She had never known her grandmother, but in her fingertips she felt the shape of the calluses on her knees, the mark of a lifetime in service as a scullery maid.

  She hadn’t been born, but she had heard the whistle of a doodlebug, the V1 rockets that had terrorised London.

  She had skipped around a barrel of herring long after they came in jars, and recalled their sharp perfume, melded with the cloud of black dust as the coalman emptied his sack into the bunker.

  Berlin mourned the loss of a world in which she hadn’t existed. A moment of panic seized her at the prospect of leaving it.

  She veered left when she reached the river and turned her back on the City, taking the Thames Path east, but skirting Limehouse Basin, which held disturbing memories of the sharks that had lurked there. They had had legs, not fins, but apart from that there wasn’t much to tell them apart.

  She still had the scars to prove it.

  12

  Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Lukov sat in his cramped office at Moscow Police Headquarters with his feet up on the desk. The door was closed, so his subordinates wouldn’t be able to observe this lack of decorum. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, in a bid to relieve the dull ache behind his eyes. He wasn’t used to this pressure; his career had flourished by avoiding
trouble, not courting it.

  The mobile phone on the desk vibrated and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He glanced at the ID, then answered. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Yuri,’ said Maryna.

  He swung his feet off his desk. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Something’s happened.’

  Yuri strode down the corridor with his cap under his arm. Just ahead, he saw a familiar figure leaning in a doorway, talking to someone. Yuri swore, but he couldn’t very well turn around now. He hurried past, hoping to go unnoticed.

  ‘Yuri Leonidovich,’ came a shout from behind him.

  Yuri had no choice but to stop. He spun to face the voice. ‘Alexander Sergeevich,’ he said. ‘How are you? I’m just on my way out.’

  Utkin pursed his lips. ‘No time for your old friend?’ he said. ‘I have a new case.’ He flourished the file he clutched in one hand.

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Yuri. He made a show of putting on his cap: a man in a hurry.

  ‘Let’s have a drink sometime.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Yuri.

  ‘I’ve got an unusual cause of death here, for a healthy male,’ said Utkin. He made a show of putting a hand to his throat and squeezing.

  Yuri strode away. ‘Call me.’ He pushed through the security turnstile at the end of the corridor, but it got stuck halfway. He knew Utkin was still standing there. Yuri swore, backed up and shoved the turnstile again. Finally it gave way and let him pass. He practically ran out of the building, as his collar, soaked with sweat, chafed against the soft place beneath his Adam’s apple.

  Maryna was waiting for him in the lobby of her apartment building. It was a solid Soviet edifice originally built to house senior apparatchiks. It had been refurbished in the nineties and everything worked: the plumbing, the wiring, the lifts. It was not for the likes of Yuri.

  The lift doors opened and an elderly couple with a poodle emerged. When they saw Yuri’s uniform they averted their eyes and quickly passed by. He followed Maryna into the lift. The doors closed. He immediately wanted to touch her.

  Maryna wasn’t beautiful. She was too tall, her nose was too big and her mouth was too wide. It was her spirit that entranced him, and the way she moved: she had a poise that reflected the certainty at her very core. She was a woman without doubt. She was disgusted by the thoughtless plunder of their country by men who cared nothing for the national interest: everything was for sale, including, as it had turned out, her husband.

  Yuri needed the fire of her idealism to keep his cold disillusion at bay. He found himself lacking in national fervour and indifferent to callow greed. He wanted only Maryna, and only her unwavering convictions and her sharp intelligence could save him from this emptiness. These days she sometimes wore a little too much make-up. But her passion for justice was undiminished.

  They travelled up to Maryna’s floor in silence.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Yuri once they were safely ensconced in her apartment.

  ‘I was checking Misha’s email,’ she said. ‘He received a message from a British firm, confirming a meeting.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Yuri.

  ‘They’re sending someone here, from London, to meet with him.’

  Yuri stared at her. ‘What for?’

  ‘The company he’s been negotiating with has hired someone to do a face-to-face interview. An independent third party. Apparently it’s part of their process. They say it’s routine in a proposed joint venture,’ said Maryna.

  ‘Do you believe them?’ said Yuri.

  Maryna raised her hands. Who knows?

  ‘They’ve instructed an interpreter, too. A Vladimir Matvienko,’ she said.

  ‘Is it true, about the process?’ asked Yuri.

  ‘The explanation is plausible,’ said Maryna. ‘Their law requires they vet prospective business partners. Misha would have had a stake in the new concern and an executive position.’

  ‘And, he hoped, British residency,’ said Yuri.

  ‘His value as a security asset would have been much greater than his value to British commerce,’ she said. ‘Misha always resented my success.’

  Yuri had met her at a seminar on inter-agency cooperation. He’d been there as an assistant to his boss, but was able to hide this fact. For a while. She was a refreshing change from the bloated, self-serving men who ruled his life. He’d been at pains to give her the impression that he had excellent contacts and was more powerful than his rank implied. That had perhaps been a mistake. She expected a lot of him. It wasn’t always easy to deliver.

  ‘Why don’t you just say you’ve changed your mind?’ he said. ‘I mean, Misha should say he’s changed his mind. He’s no longer interested in the deal.’

  ‘And what if it is British intelligence?’ she said. ‘If he suddenly backs out, it would make them more suspicious. He gave this company information to pass on to the government. That’s what started this mess. But we don’t know exactly what he told them.’

  ‘You think they might be sending someone to get more out of him?’ said Yuri.

  ‘Misha was cunning,’ said Maryna. ‘He would keep something back until safely in London with a British passport.’

  ‘How do we play this?’ asked Yuri.

  ‘We play for time,’ said Maryna. ‘I have an idea.’

  13

  Berlin was surprised by the number of people waiting outside the Russian visa centre so early on Christmas Eve. She hadn’t been home. When the doors finally opened and they all shuffled inside, she took a number from the machine and squeezed down a row until she found a seat.

  The vistas of Moscow displayed on the wall confirmed her own iconic images of the city: St Basil’s Cathedral; Red Square and the Kremlin at night; snow. But no revolutionaries or spies. Just Chekhov, Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky.

  While she was waiting she called Del on his personal mobile, not at the office. When he answered, she could hear the clank of the Underground barriers, which told her he was just entering a station.

  ‘Hi, Del,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to say thanks for this gig.’

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ said Del. ‘They were after you.’

  It seemed a funny way to put it. ‘Well, they had me at expenses,’ she said.

  The signal was breaking up.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said.

  ‘Berlin,’ said Del. There was a pause, a rush of wind. ‘Take care.’

  ‘Del?’ she said. But the signal died. She hung up.

  Berlin’s number came up. She made her way to the counter and handed her ID to the smiling young woman behind it. She shuffled through a pile of plastic envelopes until she found the one with Berlin’s name on it and checked the bundle of documents inside to ensure that each one bore a blood-red circle of Cyrillic script. The rubber stamp lived on in Russia.

  One document named the hotel where Berlin would stay and the name of the company that had ‘invited’ her. This was the visa support letter.

  Berlin leant over the counter to get a closer look at the letter, which might provide some idea of Burghley’s client. But the name ‘The All-Russia Travel Agency’ gave nothing away.

  ‘Please remove your glasses,’ said the young woman.

  Berlin dutifully removed her dark glasses. The young woman didn’t react to her black eyes, just checked the photo against the one in her passport, which she then handed over.

  ‘Enjoy your trip,’ she said. She swept all the other documents back into the plastic envelope and dropped it into a slot in her desk.

  On the way home Berlin bought a tough nylon overnight bag that she could carry slung across her body. The salesperson guaranteed the strap couldn’t be slashed.

  Berlin resisted the temptation to tell him that it didn’t protect your throat, which the desperate might slash instead if they were frustrated by the strap.

  The fairy lights and plastic streamers put up by the council in Bethnal Green Road also did service for Diwali and Eid al-Fitr. Berlin felt their warm glow touch he
r secular heart, as she threaded her way through clutches of girls wearing Father Christmas hats over their hijabs.

  At home, she donned the business suit and put two shirts, two pairs of socks and two sets of thermal underwear in the overnight bag. It was minus five in Moscow, but her long black coat and woolly hat would suffice; she wouldn’t be sightseeing. She didn’t need much for two and a bit days, particularly in a four-and-a-half-star hotel. She had checked it out online. The toiletries provided were of a much better class than those in her own bathroom.

  She counted the tablets of buprenorphine in the two blister packs and read the instructions again, although she had been taking them for nearly five months.

  Under the heading ‘For opioid-dependent drug addicts who have not undergone withdrawal’ the manufacturer stated:

  When treatment starts the first dose of buprenorphine should be taken when signs of withdrawal appear, but not less than 6 hours after the patient last used opioids (e.g. heroin; short-acting opioids).

  Berlin was well past that stage, stabilised on a daily dose of 8mg. Suppressing a frisson of concern at venturing beyond the reach of the National Health Service, she put one pack into the overnight bag and the other in her coat pocket. She was ready to go.

  On the way out, she knocked on Bella’s door. She had stuck a red rosette from the newsagent on a bottle of Talisker. When the door opened, she thrust it at Bella.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Bella,’ she said.

  ‘It will be a bleedin’ sight merrier now,’ said Bella. She hugged the bottle. ‘Thanks ever so.’

  She eyed Berlin’s overnight bag.

  ‘I’m going away,’ said Berlin.

  ‘Somewhere nice?’ said Bella.

  ‘For work,’ said Berlin.

  She set off down the stairs.

  ‘Don’t forget Twelfth Night,’ called Bella. ‘Your decorations have to come down before then or it’s bad luck.’

  ‘How would I know the difference?’ Berlin called back.

  The sound of Bella’s laughter followed her down the stairs.