A Morbid Habit

by Annie Hauxwell

  Charlie finished her call, handed back the phone and retreated to a corner of the café where she could keep her back to the wall while watching the door.

  Berlin dropped back just behind the point where Charlie’s gaze was fixed. She was waiting for someone.

  She stamped her feet and remembered why she hated surveillance, and why she was no good at it. There was a good chance that she would suffer frostbite if she had to stand here too long.

  Twenty minutes later, by which time she had lost all sensation in her feet, Berlin saw Charlie half-rise from her seat.

  A short, thin, middle-aged man was approaching the café. He walked quickly, with diminutive, almost mincing steps. His face was grey and his eyes downcast. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his long leather coat.

  He walked into the café and saw Charlie waving. At that moment he paused and took a long look around the café and through the window to the street outside.

  Berlin shrank back. She felt as if the man’s eyes were on her, but knew that she was safely hidden.

  She was surprised. She had been expecting some muscle, a caricature of a Russian villain – not this insignificant little shit. This was the man who had arranged the deaths of Gerasimov and Matvienko, then sent two thugs to kill her?

  He was a picture of nondescript evil.

  Charlie’s krysha.

  Charlie was long past being cowed by Yuri’s anger.

  ‘Why did you insist we meet?’ he said. ‘This is unacceptable.’

  ‘I’ve lost my phone,’ said Charlie. ‘And I’m sick of being fobbed off. You made promises. It’s time to keep them.’

  ‘Or what?’ sneered Yuri. ‘You’ll go to the police?’

  ‘We have an expression in English,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’

  ‘I thought you were a good Russian citizen,’ said Yuri. ‘We have an expression too: beware of a silent dog and still water.’

  Yuri may have been only one man but he had power, and power behind him.

  Charlie bent forwards, gripping the edge of the table with both hands.

  ‘You think you can send your brutes to slaughter a woman in my own home and expect me to just go on living there as if nothing’s happened?’

  Yuri frowned.

  Charlie figured it could go one of two ways: his next victims would be her and Nikki, although there were real risks for Yuri if he took that route; or he would try to placate her.

  She couldn’t afford to seem too desperate, in case he became suspicious. She adopted a more conciliatory approach.

  ‘Please, Yuri,’ she said. ‘We’ve known each other a long time. You understand my circumstances.’

  ‘Only too well,’ said Yuri. He sighed. ‘These are difficult times for all of us, Charlie.’

  Charlie relaxed a little. Things were going in the right direction.

  Yuri lowered his voice. ‘But you have to do one more task for me.’

  Charlie opened her mouth to remonstrate.

  Yuri raised a finger in warning. ‘Do this, then I swear on my mother’s grave there will be passports. For both of you.’ Yuri crossed himself in the Orthodox fashion.

  Berlin watched the man stand and walk away. Charlie remained at the table with her head in her hands. Whatever had transpired, it hadn’t been good news for Charlie.

  The man left the café and hurried across the road.

  Berlin followed.

  63

  There was no sign on the building that betrayed its purpose. Even if there had been, it would have meant nothing to Berlin.

  But the CCTV cameras, the blank windows, the iron bars and the silent individuals protesting outside with placards, cowed by officers with batons, indicated that this was a government building, and perhaps an important one.

  The man in the leather coat had slipped in through a side entrance. There was no point in trying to follow him – the door had a keypad entry.

  Instead, Berlin circled the block, looking for a public entrance. It didn’t look as if there was one. There was a pair of spiked gates that opened onto a concrete yard, which a woman in overalls was hosing down.

  More officers appeared from another door. A police station. Must be. The Scotland Yard of Moscow. It didn’t look like the sort of place where you could walk in and report a burglary.

  But she had to get inside; she could identify the krysha, who was obviously a cop, but she didn’t have a name and she wasn’t going to drag Charlie down here. If she could raise Utkin – and no better place to start than police headquarters – she could describe the man behind the murders. Utkin would find him somewhere in this building, sooner or later.

  On her fourth time around, she turned the corner as the last of the demonstrators were being thrown into a police van. They were no longer silent, but screaming in agony as cops beat their arms and legs with long batons.

  Berlin could hear bones breaking from fifty yards away.

  The officers were all dressed in black camo gear. There were as many of them as there were demonstrators. They were having a high old time, laughing as they tossed the protesters into the vehicle.

  Berlin ran over, snatched up one of the fallen placards and raised it high above her head. She had no idea what it said. The officers looked bemused. One shouted at her.

  ‘Free Nelson Mandela!’ cried Berlin.

  There was a brief silence.

  The officers looked at each other, then two advanced and grabbed her arms. Berlin didn’t say a word as they berated her and demanded responses in Russian. Her silence was enough provocation.

  They invited her to step inside the van.

  It was a short trip in utter darkness, punctuated only by moans. Berlin heard the grinding sound of heavy metal gates. The van lurched to a halt, the doors were flung open and the demonstrators were dragged out one by one.

  Berlin was separated from the others. The officers shouted at her. Her failure to speak or gesture appeared to be read as insolence. She was shoved and slapped for her trouble. The woman in overalls thought it amusing to play the hose over her, splashing her colleagues. They jumped back, cursing.

  It occurred to Berlin that her standards of personal hygiene and dress had slipped to such an extent that they might think she was a mad bag lady, or the Russian equivalent. Although she didn’t have any bags.

  Her hair was matted and unwashed. Beneath her long black coat, which was smeared with mud, she was wearing a dishevelled business suit, both her shirts and both sets of thermal underwear. All of which had been slept in. Her black eyes had faded to jaundiced rings.

  She was frog-marched to a desk, behind which stood a severe, matronly woman in a neatly pressed uniform. The matron spoke to her, in Russian. Berlin remained mute, dripping.

  One of the officers slapped the back of her head, hard. At this point she decided to deploy her meagre Russian.

  ‘Utkin,’ she said. Then slowly and very loudly she said, ‘Utkin.’

  She prayed that she had pronounced it correctly.

  The matron looked at the officer who had slapped her. He shrugged and muttered something.

  The matron shouted at him and the two officers grabbed Berlin’s arms again and dragged her away.

  Berlin thought a rough translation might be ‘Get her out of my sight.’

  64

  Fagan sat in his car beside Fairlop Waters, staring at the forest of masts swaying and gently clanking against each other in the breeze. The pipe was still warm in his hand. His phone lay on the seat beside him.

  People were dropping off the radar. Everyone was acting as if he didn’t exist. He didn’t: there was no paper trail, no email, and all phone calls had been routed through servers that would scrub the records. There was nothing to connect him and them. Which usually suited him. But something felt wrong. He gazed up at the stars.

  His boss was maintaining radio silence. He picked up the phone and rang again.

  This time someone picked up, but di
dn’t say anything.

  ‘Hello,’ said Fagan.

  There was a crackle. Old equipment.

  ‘This is no longer a direct line to the party you are calling. That party is on extended leave. Please don’t call again.’ Then they hung up.

  Fagan wound down the car window and threw the phone into the lake. He flipped open the glovebox and prepared another pipe. He needed to draw a line under the job; he was personally exposed. He just wouldn’t be comfortable until he knew they had a result. Certainty.

  But who could he turn to for information?

  In the dream-haze that soon enveloped him, something took shape behind his eyes. A name that drifted through soft clouds and whispered to him. And when he woke up, he was amazed to find he hadn’t forgotten it.

  Fagan drove to the airport and parked in a blind spot, just beyond the reach of the CCTV. Popping open the boot, he lifted the floor and retrieved the bag he always kept there, just in case. He slipped the Makarov out of his shoulder holster and put it in the now empty space, dropped the floor back into position and shut the boot.

  He had seriously underestimated Berlin, but at least he knew where to start. It had come to him in a dream.

  Fagan almost chuckled.

  He turned up his collar against the chill evening. It took Odysseus ten years to make it home after the Trojan war. At least he had had a home to go to.

  It was goodbye to his difficult wife and his surly boys in Chigwell. He would miss his family.

  But he had another one.

  Fagan strode towards the terminal and disappeared.

  65

  Utkin peered into the gloomy basement cell through the spyhole. A prone figure huddled beneath a thin blanket. It would be below freezing in there.

  ‘What do you want me to do with her?’ asked the desk officer in a clipped tone that conveyed her disapproval.

  She was old school. Utkin knew that messy situations involving foreigners were anathema to her.

  ‘What did she say?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. Just your name,’ she said. ‘Over and over. Very loudly.’

  Utkin considered his options.

  ‘I’m busy,’ he said.

  ‘So what should I do?’ said the desk officer.

  ‘Just leave her there,’ said Utkin.

  He snapped the spyhole shut.

  ‘Until when?’ said the desk officer.

  ‘Until I say so,’ said Utkin.

  Berlin was aware that someone had been watching her. The four-inch-thick steel-plated door admitted no sound, but there had been a very subtle shift in the shadow on the rough wall.

  They had taken her cash and Charlie’s mobile. Her neck was bruised and her shoulder painful from the manhandling. But her gamble had paid off: the krysha had revealed himself.

  Charlie’s anxiety whenever the police were mentioned was entirely rational; she was in thrall to a senior police officer who presumably could easily have her detained and Nikki put away.

  The only question was how long she herself would be locked up before Utkin appeared and she could trade her information for her passport and buprenorphine.

  After all, holding a placard didn’t make her an enemy of the state or justify her detention. She was just a confused, perhaps disturbed, tourist. Make that a definitely disturbed tourist.

  She reached out from beneath the blanket and pressed her fingertips against the coarse stone. Perhaps Zayde had once done the same.

  The walls that contained her also provided a strange kind of respite; there were no drugs to be found here. It wasn’t even an option.

  She felt as if every cell in her body was interrogating her at every moment, demanding that she answer the question: why are you doing this? It had been difficult to remember why, but in this frigid, claustrophobic bunker it was purely rhetorical.

  Now she had no choice.

  Utkin went home. He just wanted to cook himself a meal and have a few drinks. He had been forced into moves he would never have taken but for her rash actions. English women were crazy.

  He took the wooden box down from the shelf. He poured himself another shot, drank it and brought the box close to his cheek. He could still discern a faint scent, the fragrance of sandalwood, after all these years.

  He opened the box. Three cellophane sweet wrappers twinkled up at him. He had no doubt that another would soon join them. He embraced the guilt like an old friend. There was no-one else to comfort him.

  66

  The building was very quiet. It was New Year’s Eve. Utkin had returned to the station in the early hours of the morning, after the shift change. Desk staff were prohibited from overtime, due to budget cuts.

  The long holiday would begin tomorrow – a week of celebrations and family get-togethers that would continue until Orthodox Christmas Day on 7 January. The country was being run by priests and thugs now. Of course, the country had also been run by priests and thugs in the old days, except the priests were called cadres and the thugs worked for the Committee of State Security.

  Now they worked for the deepest pocket.

  The holidays were shorter in those days, but there was more certainty: the source of inequity was privilege, acquired through position in the Party. Now corruption was at street level – everything revolved around money, and the influence it could buy.

  Utkin knew which he preferred.

  He shot the bolt on the cell door and opened it.

  Berlin slowly manoeuvred herself into an upright position.

  ‘I have been detained without charge,’ she said.

  ‘Very likely,’ said Utkin. ‘But this is country where innocent men can be beaten to death and then tried and convicted before judge. You are lucky.’

  The liquid slipped down Berlin’s throat. She couldn’t taste it and she didn’t try. She wouldn’t have cared if it were actually an industrial solvent. She gulped it down and held out her tin mug for more.

  ‘He was thin, hunched and grey-faced, with a big nose,’ she said. ‘He met with Charlotte Inkpin, then came straight back here.’

  Utkin poured her another drink from the battered flask then slipped it back in his pocket.

  ‘Where am I?’ she said.

  ‘Petrovka 38,’ replied Utkin. ‘The Main Department of Internal Affairs of Moscow.’

  ‘Police HQ,’ said Berlin.

  ‘That,’ said Utkin, ‘and more.’

  Berlin got his drift.

  Sensation began to return to her limbs. Utkin had led her from the cell through a labyrinth of corridors to a room that appeared to be set up for interrogation. She doubted that the dark stains on the floor were spilt tea.

  ‘You believe this police officer arranged the murders of Gerasimov and Matvienko,’ said Utkin. ‘Very serious charge.’

  ‘He’s Inkpin’s krysha,’ she insisted.

  ‘Krysha? What do you know of such things?’ said Utkin.

  ‘Charlie explained it to me. She just did what she was told: she picked me up at the airport, drove me around, interpreted at the interviews. He forced her to let me stay with her after you intervened at the hotel.’

  ‘Why would this woman conspire with a murderer?’ said Utkin.

  Berlin hesitated. There was nothing to gain from exposing Charlie’s secret.

  ‘He has something over her,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it is.’

  Utkin clasped his hands together, apparently deep in thought.

  Berlin began to shake. She couldn’t remember when she had last eaten.

  ‘What is this officer’s motive?’ said Utkin.

  ‘His roof has something over him, I imagine,’ she said. ‘That’s how it works here, isn’t it? Leverage, obligation, fear.’

  ‘All these roofs,’ said Utkin. ‘Now we have village. So who do you think stands over this officer?’

  ‘I think it might be Gerasimova,’ said Berlin.

  Utkin folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I jumped to conclusions when I c
hecked the Companies House records,’ said Berlin. ‘The owner of the warehouse is identified as M. Gerasimov. I assumed it was Mikhail. But I think it’s Maryna.’

  Petrovka 38 was creaking back to life. The skeleton night crew had gone home. The next shift of officers, sadly required to work over the holidays, were yawning resentfully and making their way slowly to their desks.

  Utkin carried the two cups of Starbucks coffee very carefully. He had queued for thirty minutes and paid a small fortune for them. He nudged open the door with his foot and walked into Yuri’s office. ‘Breakfast,’ he announced.

  Yuri stared at him. ‘Don’t you ever go home?’ he said.

  ‘What for?’ said Utkin. ‘I am not a lucky man. By the way, how are Daria and the girls?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Yuri. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ He pointed at the coffee, which Utkin had placed on his desk.

  ‘The gesture of an old friend,’ said Utkin. ‘We have grown apart Yuri Leonidovich.’

  Yuri’s confusion was evident.

  ‘Forgive the intrusion,’ said Utkin. He retreated to the door.

  Yuri stood up. ‘Wait,’ he commanded.

  Utkin froze.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Yuri. ‘I meant, thank you.’

  Utkin nodded and continued his retreat. He paused in the doorway. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I nearly forgot. The suspect in the Gerasimov case. She hasn’t gone back to England.’

  ‘What?’ said Yuri. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She was arrested yesterday,’ said Utkin.

  Utkin watched Yuri’s grey pallor drain to white. He gripped the edge of his desk.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Utkin. ‘I saw her. Drunk and disorderly.’

  ‘Where is she?’ said Yuri.

  Utkin glanced at his watch. ‘Is that the time?’ he said, and strode off down the corridor. He could hear Yuri crashing into his desk as he followed. He imagined the coffee spilling. What a waste.

  ‘Major Utkin!’ shouted Yuri. This time it was a command.