A Morbid Habit

by Annie Hauxwell

  ‘Calm down,’ said Berlin. ‘I have no intention of betraying you.’

  Charlie lit up and took a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘But?’ she said.

  ‘But we need to get real here, don’t we?’ said Berlin.

  It was clear that Nikki was Charlie’s Achilles heel. Whatever she feared, it had to do with him.

  Charlie capitulated quietly.

  ‘He was born that way,’ she said. ‘He was a perfectly normal baby, but then he started to miss certain stages. He didn’t speak. He became fixated on things, had tantrums.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ said Berlin.

  Charlie shook her head. ‘Who knows,’ she said. ‘I had him very late. He was quite a surprise. Perhaps that had something to do with it. The delivery was very difficult. There might have been some neurological damage.’

  The phrase ‘on the spectrum’ came to Berlin unbidden.

  ‘It became more of a problem as he got older,’ she said, sighing. ‘So I educated him at home.’

  ‘Couldn’t he have gone to a special school?’ asked Berlin.

  ‘Don’t you think I explored everything?’ said Charlie, exasperated. ‘People with congenital problems weren’t very popular in the socialist utopia. Veterans with physical injuries were heroes, but even up to the eighties there was still some official reluctance to acknowledge that people with disabilities even existed in the USSR.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Berlin.

  ‘People believe what they want to believe. Deformity was a capitalist deviation, or a product of evil or some nonsense,’ said Charlie. ‘It hasn’t changed that much. Children born like Nikki are regarded as uneducable and dumped in institutions. I wouldn’t put Yorkie in those places.’

  ‘What did Nikki’s father think?’ said Berlin.

  Charlie snorted. ‘We met soon after I arrived in Moscow. Whirlwind romance and all that,’ she said. ‘We were married and had Nikki quickly. It became more difficult as he grew older, but we soldiered on until . . .’

  Charlie seemed to drift away.

  ‘Until what?’ pressed Berlin.

  ‘His father wanted to put him in an institution,’ she said. ‘I didn’t agree, so I left.’

  She got up and made a great show of cleaning up after Nikki’s meal, banging pots, putting a kettle on to boil, eating the leftover dumplings. It was apparent that this was the end of the matter as far as Charlie was concerned.

  Berlin had recognised the subtext in Charlie’s story: she had abandoned family life and her privileges to protect her son. It would be useful, even essential, for someone in that position to have a ‘roof’: protection. From her husband. From the state.

  ‘What would happen to Nikki if the authorities knew he was here?’ said Berlin.

  ‘Well, they don’t,’ barked Charlie. ‘And they’re not going to find out.’

  ‘If your husband was so intent on institutionalising him, why hasn’t he told them?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him that,’ said Charlie. ‘Perhaps deep down he knows I’m right.’

  ‘But if something happens to you, what will happen to Nikki?’ said Berlin.

  The words were out of her mouth before she realised she’d given expression to Charlie’s greatest fear.

  Charlie practically disintegrated before her eyes.

  ‘I would do anything,’ whispered Charlie. ‘Anything. To take him home.’

  Home.

  44

  Berlin quietly closed the front door behind her. Unable to assuage her aching limbs with vodka, she would try to quieten the insistent, gnawing beast that dwelt within her in time-honoured fashion: pacing up and down.

  Apart from the lack of drugs, her most pressing problem was getting out of the country, but she also had to find a way of letting Del know what was going on without dragging Burghley into it.

  Del had done her a big favour. It was difficult enough for someone with his background to break into an elite dominated by old-school ties, without mistakes tarnishing his reputation.

  Burghley had instructed her in good faith.

  Del would never knowingly put her in harm’s way. She didn’t need him for that; she was quite adept at finding her own way into trouble.

  But the identity of the mysterious client was starting to worry her; it wasn’t unusual for commercial interests to use a firm like Burghley to conduct these sorts of enquiries. Most firms just didn’t have the expertise in-house. A third party was also supposed to be impartial, to report without fear or favour.

  But there was another angle: it provided deniability. If the actions of the third party proved to be an embarrassment, or worse, the firm would simply claim they had never authorised such activities.

  Del had told her the client was a firm she had worked with before. He should have added ‘recently’.

  Hirst. It had to be.

  When she refused the bribe, then the offer of further shifts, they had put this scenario into play. How many of the seemingly unconnected events since then had been down to them? Fucking Hirst. She had seen something that could embarrass them: a breach in security, dodgy employees running a scam; something they didn’t want her to see, anyway.

  They could clean up while she was otherwise occupied.

  She felt foolish. Humiliated. The client didn’t want her expertise, they wanted her out of the way. Del had said something about them specifically wanting her on this job. She had been flattered by instructions coming from Burghley: a step back into clean, lucrative work involving a better class of lowlife.

  Who was she kidding?

  Berlin walked beside the dark, silent reaches of the canal until the cold became unbearable. At that moment she felt that the oblivion of hypothermia might at least release her from the relentless need that was making her skin crawl.

  Sensing warm air she looked for its source.

  It was seeping from a grille beneath her feet.

  The press of bodies in the underpass was comforting: one wall was lined with tiny, brightly lit kiosks crammed with everything from tights and bras to religious icons and snacks.

  The vendors were a disparate lot: stout, middle-aged women in woollen hats; thin young women in high vinyl boots and faux fur jackets; toothless babushkas exposing only their eyes and rosy cheeks to the elements.

  On the other side of the underpass, men in ill-fitting suits and fur caps were pressed against the tiles selling items from battered suitcases: sets of cutlery, apparently fashioned from steel offcuts; felt-lined slippers; pen-and-ink drawings of domed churches.

  The atmosphere beneath the ground was benign.

  Berlin noticed a woman selling bags of lustrous persimmons. A delicate rose perfume drifted from one that had been cut in half. Berlin smiled and the woman offered her a bag of them, speaking in Russian, keen to make a sale.

  Berlin was about to pantomime her apology for being unable to communicate, when the woman recognised the source of her diffidence. She plucked a fruit from one of the bags and pressed it into Berlin’s hand.

  The crowd surged, forcing Berlin on. She glanced back, over her shoulder. The woman waved. Berlin waved back, a taut sensation in her chest, a sharp reminder of what generous, benevolent contact with another human being meant. She thought of Bella, who understood the effort it took to behave normally in circumstances of deprivation.

  When she emerged at the top of the steps that led from the underpass, Berlin melted into the reassuring crowds of cheerful Muscovites shopping and dining. Sharp, spicy smells drifted from cafés as their doors swung to and fro.

  The Golden Arches presented themselves. Warmth, wi-fi, and a menu you could point at – this was probably as good as it was going to get.

  The almost tasteful McDonald’s, a contemporary cube done up in olive green with a timber fascia, loomed clean and bright, defiant among mounds of grubby snow. This was not the McDonald’s in Pushkin Square, Utkin’s pride and joy, but it was bustling nevertheless.

  When she re
ached the counter, Berlin made a dumb show of pointing at a picture of a burger. The girl raised an eyebrow and briskly pressed a key on the console.

  ‘Do you want fries with that?’ she asked.

  Berlin nodded, sheepish. ‘And tea,’ she said. She wasn’t prepared to brave McDonald’s coffee, Russian or otherwise.

  Berlin had eaten most of her fries before she found an empty seat beside a window. Outside, strings of coloured lights hung from the eaves of shops and bars, casting blue-and-red shadows across the faces of the crowd.

  A sudden sweat caught her by surprise. She blew her nose on a napkin and wiped her brow with her scarf. Her flu-like symptoms had nothing to do with a virus.

  Beyond the plate glass a girl in a knitted Peruvian hat with earflaps, a dirty grey puffer jacket and scuffed Nikes was begging.

  Berlin watched her thrust her paper cup at diners as they left the restaurant. Her pinched face and fingers were blue with cold. The stringy hair, expressionless eyes and quick movements as she avoided sharp elbows completed the picture.

  After a couple of people tossed their change into the cup, the girl tipped the contents into her hand, assessed the haul, then dropped the cup into the slush.

  She took off with the single-minded intent of a hunter in pursuit of quarry.

  Berlin left her burger on the tray and followed.

  The girl crossed a busy road, darting between the cars, and made for a shopping mall that bore the logos of Marks & Spencer, Zara and Topshop, but she didn’t go inside. Too many security guards.

  Berlin hurried to keep her in sight as she skirted the mall and sped towards a car park. Beyond it was a large red M, signifying the Metro, and beyond that a stately building with twin domes, porticos inset with neoclassical figures and a high clock tower. It was a railway station.

  The girl weaved her way through the cars and travellers, then turned sharply to the right and disappeared behind the station.

  Berlin turned the corner. A door slammed. She was looking at a dismal expanse of broken concrete and a clutch of what looked to be abandoned workmen’s huts.

  The noise of the traffic was muted. In the silence, she could hear something scratching at a pile of ripped plastic sacks that lay beneath a blanket of ice.

  Berlin walked very slowly, picking her way through the detritus of the construction site, hidden in the snow. A glow emanated from one of the huts. As she approached it, she could smell an acrid odour seeping from one of the hut’s cracked windows.

  She opened the door.

  The needle was already embedded in the girl’s groin. She gazed at Berlin with utter detachment.

  In a small pool of light from a hurricane lamp, her two male companions were cooking a grey substance on a flattened Coke can, over a candle. One of them spoke to Berlin, but she didn’t understand a word.

  She closed the door behind her and squatted down. She was unafraid. Desperation trumped vulnerability. They recognised her for what she was; no-one with any sense would venture into this place unless compelled by a need they understood.

  The girl’s head lolled back. Spittle dribbled down her chin in a long string and hung there, suspended, until one of the boys wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  Berlin put her hand in her pocket.

  One of the boys started, alarmed, but when she withdrew it she was clutching roubles, not a weapon. He rocked back on his heels as Berlin gestured with the money.

  The boy levered open the lid of a paint tin.

  Berlin could see a bunch of old syringes nestled among rags and a bundle of small balloons. He reached inside.

  Suddenly there was a loud crack and Berlin was knocked flat by the force of the door crashing into her back. She sprawled on the greasy concrete.

  There was a torrent of Russian, then someone grabbed her coat collar and dragged her upright.

  Utkin thrust his face into hers.

  ‘What do you think you are doing, Miss Berlinskaya?’ he hissed.

  The girl was oblivious, but the two boys had scuttled into the furthest corner of the hut.

  Utkin dragged her over to one of the boys, who shrank back against the wall, shrouded in an old army greatcoat.

  ‘What do you think?’ Utkin demanded of her. ‘You think this is heroin?’ He kicked out at the guttering candle and the hot tin.

  Berlin tried to break Utkin’s grip, but he cuffed her hard with his gloved fist. Her ears rang. She stopped struggling.

  ‘Krokodil,’ he announced, pointing at the sticky grey mess spilling across the floor with the toe of his boot. ‘It eats you.’ He reached down and yanked open the boy’s greatcoat. ‘From the inside.’

  The swollen black stump at the end of the boy’s leg had once been a foot. Corroded flesh hung in wizened hanks, the muscle beneath it glistening with the ooze of putrefaction.

  The smell was of something long dead.

  45

  Major Utkin handed Berlin the flask. She gulped at the burning liquid as if it would scour her soul. The car rattled along, bouncing her against the window. Her reflection stared back at her.

  She had insisted she hadn’t been there to buy; she was just going to give some money to the girl. The major had dismissed this. She protested, but wasn’t sure she believed it herself.

  ‘Krokodil,’ Utkin spat out the word. ‘Cheaper than heroin. Mixing codeine, lighter fluid, iodine, industrial solvents. Result: scaly skin. Death soon. With luck.’

  The buildings on either side of the road were old and low-rise, haphazardly fashioned from cast-concrete blocks. The doors and ground-floor windows were sealed with sheets of rusty iron.

  Utkin had dogged her since their first encounter at the hotel. He wasn’t psychic, and she hadn’t seen any evidence of a team watching her. She recognised him for what he was, a lone wolf. Or in his case, a lonely bear.

  There was only one explanation. She wound down the window, took her phone from her pocket and tossed it out.

  Utkin tut-tutted.

  It was a petulant act, but fuck it. It would put paid to Utkin’s tracking. In any event, her phone was always backed up. And she still had the tablet in her coat pocket.

  This thought gave her pause.

  Tracking a phone was easy, even without the cooperation of the carrier. But a tablet would only be visible when connected to the internet, unless you installed a bit of kit, an actual device secreted inside.

  It would require expertise and more than just your telephone number or the phone’s electronic identification number. The sort of expertise that was commonly found in intelligence agencies.

  ‘Do you work for the SVR?’ she asked.

  Utkin snorted. ‘I am policeman,’ he said. ‘Not SVR or FSB or GRU. Not siloviki. Policeman. Not more, not less.’

  Not more, not less. A policeman with an unusual level of commitment to the job. Not very likely. Utkin was protecting his investment. Or someone else’s.

  He could be working for Hirst.

  Utkin took a packet of cigarettes from the dashboard and lit one.

  Ahead, a single lamp arched over a ramp that led underground. Utkin drove onto the ramp and pulled up beside a keypad on a crooked steel stanchion. He punched in a number.

  A metal grille shuddered and rose slowly to reveal a basement bathed in yellow sodium light.

  Berlin took another long pull on the flask to cover the fact that she really wanted to cry.

  Utkin drove into the basement and turned off the car. He got out, took a bottle of vodka from a carton in the Ford’s boot and stuffed it in his coat pocket.

  Berlin got out too and stood nearby, listening to the motor tick as it contracted in the cold.

  Utkin shut the boot, but it bounced open. He tried again, slamming it without success, so gave up.

  Taking Berlin’s arm, he led her to a heavy steel door set in a rough brick wall. It squealed as Utkin opened it. They stepped inside and the door swung shut behind them.

  Dim bulkhead lights encased in wire ca
ges flickered as they tramped down a corridor, then up a set of stairs. Berlin couldn’t read the sign on the door at the top, but when Utkin knocked and it opened, she recognised the smell.

  Utkin handed the vodka to a bow-legged woman in a headscarf. She was a clone of the babushka selling mandarins outside the railway station, but not as imploring. She muttered and glared at Berlin as Utkin strode past her. When Berlin hesitated to follow, the woman grabbed her with astonishing strength and dragged her inside.

  Row after row of bodies lay on mortuary slabs. The pathology lab itself was antiseptically clean, but reminiscent of a museum display: ‘Autopsy, 1965’.

  Berlin anticipated an object lesson in the grave dangers of krokodil. As if she needed further persuasion.

  Utkin motioned her forwards to where he stood beside a corpse beneath a grey sheet. He lifted one corner. The man beneath it had not suffered the depredations of the drug. He was solidly built and well preserved.

  ‘Do you recognise him?’ asked Utkin.

  Berlin concentrated on the face and tried to ignore the fish-belly-pale, vein-marbled flesh.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Allow me to introduce you,’ said Utkin. ‘Katarina Berlinskaya, please greet Vladimir Matvienko. Your interpreter. He was found in rubbish bin at airport with cardboard bearing your name.’

  Berlin was aware that Utkin had paused in order to scrutinise her reaction. When she remained expressionless, he took her elbow, steered her across the lab and stood beside another body. Once again he lifted the sheet.

  Berlin flinched.

  ‘What about him?’ said Utkin.

  Berlin stared at Utkin, not at the deceased.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she said.

  ‘Please, look close,’ said Utkin.

  He drew the sheet back to expose the torso. The man was short and bald, with the narrow waist and broad shoulders of a body-builder. But the angle at which his head lolled, and the bruising, indicated his neck had suffered trauma.

  ‘He reminds me of . . .’ She faltered.

  ‘Yes?’ said Utkin.

  Berlin’s mouth was suddenly parched. She swallowed hard and struggled to continue, but with no discernible effect.