Motherland

by G. D. Abson

  ‘I need to walk. There’s a café around the corner from Krestovsky Metro, I’ll see you there.’

  The noise of the amusement park had drowned out her phone and she noticed it by the buzzing in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw a warning message that the battery was at ten per cent. She checked the display: the number was unknown but she answered it anyway.

  ‘Is that Captain Ivanova?’

  She recognised Thorsten Dahl’s nervous voice and held up her hand to Primakov with the fingers splayed to indicate she would meet him in five minutes.

  ‘Mister Dahl, there has been a development.’

  The screams from the amusement park in the background were inappropriate in the extreme but there was little she could do about them.

  He exhaled heavily. ‘Tell me what it is, Captain.’

  ‘Mister Dahl—’

  The phone beeped to warn the battery was at five per cent.

  ‘Thorsten.’

  She had never broken the news to anyone on the phone before. ‘Thorsten, have you got someone with you?’

  ‘Yes, just tell me…please.’

  She cupped a hand over the receiver to shut out the shrieks of glee as the rocket ship passed overhead. ‘Mister Dahl, I’m in the Victory Maritime Park on Krestovsky Island. Some workmen discovered a body here this evening.’

  His voice had dropped to the level of a whisper. ‘Is it her? Is it Zena?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’ Don’t say think, that gives him hope. ‘We found a handbag near the body. It matches the description of the one we believe Zena had when she went missing.’

  ‘Do you need me there…to identify her?’

  ‘There’s something else, Thorsten.’

  She heard the heavy breath again as he steeled himself to take whatever she was about to say.

  ‘The body was burned, Thorsten. It wouldn’t be possible for you to identify her.’

  ‘Will you find whoever did this?’

  ‘I’ll do everything in my power to get them.’

  ‘What can I do to help?’

  She thought for a moment. Zena had been adopted, so a DNA match was no good. ‘Thorsten, you really don’t know Zena’s natural parents?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then can you send me her dental records?’

  The pause was so profound she thought her battery had died. ‘Thorsten?’

  ‘May I call you Natalya?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you believe in God, Natalya?’

  It was an odd question but appropriate given the circumstances. She remembered attending a ceremony in St. Isaac’s where her mother crossed herself as if she had been doing it all her life instead of practising it for the first time that morning.

  ‘No,’ she replied.

  ‘“The darker the night, the brighter the stars. The deeper the grief, the closer is God.”’

  ‘That’s beautiful.’

  ‘One of yours… Dostoyevsky,’ he said. There was another silence and she checked her phone to realise the battery had died.

  Chapter 17

  In the café near Krestovsky Metro, the plexi-glass counter was decorated in bank notes from half the countries of the world. Natalya stared at them half-heartedly. Had she agreed to meet Leo Primakov in order to delay going home? She didn’t want to confront Mikhail, not yet; not until the keylogger could get to work and invisibly steal his passwords. Then, she would know the extent of his corruption. What she did with the information was more of a problem.

  While the bookish girl with braces poured her wheat beer, she examined a cork wall covered in photographs of smiling teenagers. In one of them, a group of kids with puffy eyes were eating breakfast wearing thick pullovers and she guessed they’d gone there after pulling an all-nighter. One of them could have been Zena; she had the same shade of blonde hair and appeared to be tagging along with a group of five or six others. The automatic focus of the camera had been attracted to a candle flame, though, and the girl’s face was blurred as a result.

  The coffee shop appeared to be a place for rich kids to hang out. Her theory was confirmed when a five-hundred-rouble note bought her a half-litre of beer and no change.

  ‘You look good,’ she said as Leo Primakov entered. He was wearing a brown leather jacket over blue jeans and, apart from the silver case, looked as if he’d just stepped out of a menswear catalogue. She guessed he’d kept a change of clothes in his car.

  ‘Thanks, you too,’ he said automatically, though she knew it was a lie. One look in the mirror of the café’s unisex toilet had confirmed there were yellow armpit stains on her shirt and her hair was greasy with neglect.

  She listened to Primakov order a decaffeinated Ethiopian Chelba, then waited for him to join her.

  ‘Did you get that email I sent?’ he asked.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, not wanting to elaborate.

  ‘Good. Whatever happens, that stuff is illegal. I don’t want it to ever come back to me.’

  ‘It won’t, I promise. Do you still take pictures?’

  He ladled sugar into his cup of coffee. ‘Yeah, you know how it is.’

  ‘I do,’ she touched his arm.

  Under the Medvedev reforms, the menti were better paid than they used to be but it still wasn’t enough to survive in the city. The honest ones lived on the outskirts in high rises or had second jobs; the dishonest, well, that depended on where you were in the hierarchy. Primakov had a photography business on the side but things weren’t working out for him. Earlier in May, she’d tried to help out by ordering some family portraits. The results had been excellent.

  She drank a quarter of her beer in one go. ‘Did you find anything?’

  A bell above the door rang and they both looked up to see a young woman wearing the student uniform of jeans, T shirt, and an expression of casual indifference. Primakov opened his case and removed his camera.

  He passed it to Natalya. ‘Have a look.’

  She leaned over, cupping her hand to shield the camera’s display from an overhead light.

  ‘The last ones are from the pit.’ She flicked through them, not seeing anything new, then saw a close-up of Zena’s head.

  ‘I’ve taken some of her teeth. One of the upper incisors is chipped but the heat from the fire could have done it.’ He sipped his coffee.

  The door buzzer rang and Natalya glanced up to see the young woman leaving the café; she had been looking for a friend.

  ‘Go back a few more, there’s something interesting.’

  She scrolled to pictures of Zena Dahl’s handbag, its baby blue colour would soon have a brushed aluminium finish from the fingerprint powder. ‘Mikhail said Popovich found some prints.’

  Primakov sipped his coffee. ‘He’s discounted the ones belonging to Rogov and the immigrant who took the bag. Zena Dahl’s are due tomorrow morning.’

  ‘From the Swedes?’

  He shook his head. ‘Federal Migration Service. They recorded her biometric data when she applied for a visa. I have some from her apartment too but we may as well do it right. Popovich is putting what’s left through the AFIS computer.’

  She nodded. ‘You said you found something interesting?’

  Primakov took the camera from her and flicked through the images then passed it back. She stared at an enlarged picture of a broken heel on the forest floor.

  ‘One of the Petrogradsky District boys found it behind the woodshed. There was a metal pin in the pit and burnt fabric so my guess is the rest of her shoes burned with her.’

  She thought of Yulia’s description. ‘What about her clothes? Zena was wearing a silk dress.’

  ‘Didn’t see anything like that. They used an accelerant, maybe petrol or kerosene.’

  ‘So nothing left?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I doubt her father will survive it. No one gets over their child being murdered, but when it’s just the two of them…’

  ‘What about Dahl’s wife?’

  ‘Never
married; Zena was adopted. Her biological parents died when she was a baby. Sad, but it’s a relief…telling a mother they have a dead kid is the worst part of the job.’

  Primakov took the camera from her and flicked through the pictures before passing it to her. ‘OK, you need to look carefully at this. We know the contractors trampled on everything, but I found these coming from the opposite direction.’

  The image was an expanse of green. ‘I don’t see anything.’

  ‘Wait.’ Primakov handed the camera to her. ‘Try this one’.

  She stared at a semi-circular heel print. ‘Zena’s?’

  ‘It looked fresh so it’s likely, though it doesn’t match the heel the Petrogradsky boys found.’

  ‘So where do you think she was going?’

  ‘The Southern lake is on the other side, maybe she was cutting through.’

  ‘To…?’

  ‘There’s the Karl & Friedrich, a German restaurant that sells sausages and beer. They have a huge windmill. I’m surprised you haven’t been there.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, I only lived in Germany for four years. Besides’ – she sniffed – ‘Windmills are Dutch. I’ll ask Rogov to find out if anyone had a reservation today but didn’t show.’

  ‘And I’ll get the tip checked for DNA but there’s a six week backlog. The lab is swamped with requests from the Israeli consulate. The mafia have been forging birth certificates for Russian citizens so they can emigrate there.’

  ‘And let me guess, they aren’t Jewish.’

  ‘About as much as Easter cheese.’

  ‘Did you find any other footprints besides hers?’

  Primakov switched off the camera and laid it on the table. ‘None.’

  She frowned. ‘She was on her own?’

  He nodded.

  ‘So Zena was going somewhere, maybe to the restaurant or the lake,’ Natalya finished the wheat beer. ‘But it’s Sunday now and she’s been missing since Thursday night.’

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t going anywhere. What if she was escaping?’

  ‘On Krestovsky Island?’ Natalya shook her head dismissively, ‘Too many people; someone would have saved her or called us.’

  The woman behind the counter was reading a novel and Natalya made eye contact to order another beer, then decided against it and shook her head.

  ‘What if she was dead already?’ asked Primakov.

  ‘Then the footprints aren’t hers.’ She switched the camera back on and examined the photograph. ‘How fresh were they?’

  ‘Impossible to say without recreating the conditions…maybe a few hours.’

  ‘The lieutenant at the scene – Gorokhov – he said people noticed the smoke around 5 p.m. Let’s say it took the killer an hour to kill Zena and build the funeral pyre. If someone else had made those footprints then they must have seen Zena being killed and we’d be dealing with a distressed witness or another body.’

  Primakov drained his coffee. ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘So let’s say they were hers. Where was she coming from?’

  ‘The South-East. I’d guess she came through the main gates.’

  ‘That was the same direction as me. If Zena took the Metro she would have been in Krestovsky Ostrov station.’

  Chapter 18

  At home Mikhail was watching a couple of pundits on television who were discussing in ridiculous detail how an upcoming football match might unfold. One time, she’d made the mistake of sneering at a game he was engrossed in, and during the break he’d explained the psychology of team sports to her. How the players were the warriors of ancient times and the fans the tribe who cheered or suffered through each conquest or capitulation. After his lecture, she thought that as far as sports were concerned she was an unaffiliated nomad, perhaps a Siberian witch, who looked on bemused while the locals hacked and stabbed each other for no obvious reason.

  Mikhail had an Ochakovo in his hand and drank from the bottle before putting it down on the table to join its two other friends. The room was full of cigarette smoke but she could tell by his lack of eye contact that he was in no mood to be lectured about smoking indoors. She had a sudden glimpse of Mikhail as a middle-aged man, the drinking day starting earlier with each passing year; she resolved to get him into a gym.

  She asked, ‘Good evening?’

  His eyes flicked to hers and he stabbed at the pause on the remote control to emphasise the fact that she was interrupting his viewing pleasure. ‘No, and you?’

  ‘Mixed. Tired and hungry.’

  ‘You get anywhere with the girl?’

  ‘Primakov found footprints and a broken heel. I’ll get the footage from the Metro station to see if she came through there. Got any beer left?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He raised the beer to indicate that it was the last one.

  ‘OK, I’ll get some wine.’

  ‘Is Anton in?’

  Mikhail grunted.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  He picked up the Ochakovo and swallowed a mouthful. ‘Tanya’s father called, he was worried about her. It’s been on TV about the dead girl in the park.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him to wait on the line while I checked.’

  Mikhail took another swig from the Ochakovo and stared at her. ‘When I went in they were drunk and she was pulling on her clothes. Anton told me it was OK because you said it was OK.’

  ‘Wait. I didn’t tell him to have sex. Besides, weren’t you doing the same things at that age? I know I was.’

  He ignored her so she continued, ‘What did Tanya’s father say?’

  ‘He accused us of being irresponsible and threatened to go to the police. When I told him we were both menti he backed down fast, but…Jesus, Natasha, he told me she’s only fifteen. Anton could go to prison for that.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him.’

  ‘Don’t bother, I’ve done it already.’ He tapped the pause button and the sound returned to signal the conversation was over.

  She knocked on Anton’s door but there was no answer and she pushed it open. The light was off but she could see his shape in the bed, the sheets wrapped around him like a shroud. She touched his shoulder and he pulled away.

  ‘Anton, it’s me.’

  He was still when she rested her hand on his shoulder a second time. ‘I found a body today,’ she said softly. ‘A girl was murdered. When these things happen people worry about their own children.’

  ‘Natasha…’ he began, still huddled under the shroud. ‘Natasha, I didn’t know.’

  ‘That she was fifteen?’

  The sheets around his head moved as he nodded. ‘Tanya lied. She told me she left Secondary School 317 last year. I don’t know any of her friends, we met at a party.’

  She smoothed his head with her palm. ‘It’s OK, Anton. It hardly makes you a paedophile. I thought she looked older too.’

  ‘I love her, Natasha,’ Anton burst out. ‘He told me never to see her again. I told him to get lost, I’ll stay with Mama from now.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Things will be OK.’

  She was on her feet and moving through the apartment; Mikhail was slumped in the chair. ‘Do you want him to hate you?’ She snatched the remote and switched off the television.

  He glared at her. ‘Don’t get sanctimonious. Tanya is underage. Her parents heard about the body in the park and couldn’t find her anywhere.’ He raised his hands in surrender. ‘What’s going on with us? Are you seeing someone?’

  ‘Jesus, Misha – never! I just went out last night to check up on a lead and drank too much. It was stupid, I know, but there’s nothing more.’

  She could feel his eyes boring into hers. ‘Don’t do that, I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ He straightened up and looked at his watch. ‘Shit, I’m late. I was supposed to be meeting Stepan.’

  ‘What happened to our talk?’

  ‘Another time, Angel.’ He stood up and stretched, then went for the door.
>
  She opened it for him while he fumbled with his jacket.

  ‘Goodbye Misha. Stay sober tomorrow.’ She closed the door behind him.

  There was a case of wine in the pantry and she opened the seal with a craft knife. She’d had it since 2006 after a brief relationship with the owner of a local restaurant. Boris had been fun, a little too old for her perhaps, but he’d been repatriated when all the Georgians were sent home after the brief war with Russia. As a parting gift, he left her four cases of vintage Satrapezo that he couldn’t sell because their wine had been banned. Now only two were left. In the kitchen she opened a bottle and poured herself a large glass before taking it to the study.

  The computer took an age to boot up and she sipped the rich, smooth Satrapezo, feeling it calm her nerves. Hacking into a spouse’s private account was deceitful and if she consulted the Criminal Code, no doubt illegal too. As if to underscore the enormity of what she planned to do, the computer loaded the background image. It was a photograph Mikhail had selected from their wedding day: Anton had grown his hair two centimetres long for the occasion, and looked uncomfortable in a suit; Mikhail was handsome and proud, his black hair slick and shining; and she was between the two of them, her arms barely visible around their waists, and their arms engulfing her shoulders – they were invincible.

  The computer finished its boot up and she took another sip of the Satrapezo. Apart from the image there was nothing obvious on the screen until she typed “Heidelberg”, then a window appeared. She clicked an option to “view” and a list detailed every keystroke Mikhail had made since she had installed the software. She scanned it while sipping the wine:

  Lenta.ru

  UEFA Euro

  Limassol Trading Bank

  ‘Shit,’ she hissed, seeing the bank’s name. Until then, there could have been an innocent explanation – the account could have belonged to someone who owed Mikhail money – but now she knew the truth: it was his.

  She opened the Yandex search engine to check what sites he’d visited. All the football ones were there but the bank was missing – he’d deleted it from the internet history. The keylogger was still open and she copied the bank name and pasted it in Yandex then clicked on the link it returned. When the ‘Limassol Trading Bank’ page was loaded, she selected the flag icon to change the language from Greek to Russian.