Motherland

by G. D. Abson

  He gave her a malicious grin. ‘I guess we threatened to melt their little snow kingdom one time too many.’

  Rogov scratched his foot and she saw the bottom of an ankle holster. Most likely it held an OSA, a traumatic pistol that fired a steel–core rubber bullet and was completely legal for any citizen to own. She hoped it was anyway, and nothing deadlier.

  ‘Natalya?’ Rogov looked to the floor. ‘I was talking with Misha last night.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Her eyes flashed to the mirror then she stamped on the brakes. The car pitched Rogov forward.

  ‘What the fuck was that for?’ He rolled back in his seat.

  ‘We need rules.’ She glared at him, and she could tell he was trying very hard not to smirk. ‘You take the litter out of my house and I’ll return the favour. Don’t talk to me about my personal shit and we won’t discuss yours.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like Oksana married a racist, chauvinist arsehole who screws around.’

  He blustered, ‘I—’

  ‘Come on, Rogov, everybody knows. That brothel you go to…The Depot, isn’t it? You’ve got a Chinese girl there. Good luck to her if she’s not being coerced, but whatever you’re paying her isn’t enough.’

  The smirk had frozen on his face.

  ‘Oksana is my friend, but I won’t say anything because you’ve got your personal shit and I’ve got mine. Ready?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Another rule. I’ve earned the right to be called “Captain”. When the shift is over, I don’t care. In the car like this, I don’t care – unless you’re being an arsehole, which is most of the time. But in public, or at the station, it’s “Captain”. Got it?’

  He nodded. ‘She’s called Duckweed.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘The girl. That’s what her name means in Chinese.’

  She shook her head, then indicated to rejoin the traffic. ‘Rogov, did you hear anything I said?’

  ‘You know, you can be meaner than Oksana when she’s waving the red flag.’

  They took a right then a left and followed the grey Neva. Rogov lapsed into a silence that soon became awkward, but not as awkward as maintaining a conversation with him.

  At Gorkovskaya station she pulled over, leaving the keys in the ignition.

  ‘Now you can drive. Get to the ZAGS in Sestroretsk before you get caught in the lunchtime traffic.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ he replied.

  On the Metro she changed at Sadovaya for Krestovsky Ostrov then took the escalator to the glass-fronted exit. Outside, a group of four conscript catchers were questioning a boy in cut-off jeans clutching a skateboard. The youth was scared, and whatever documents he possessed hadn’t convinced them he was exempt from military service. One in an ill-fitting army uniform grabbed him by the neck of his T-shirt, wrapping it round his fist to stop him running. The boy tried to yank the hand away, letting out a cry as his arm was forced up his back to the point of dislocation. She glared at the one clutching the boy’s T-shirt until he noticed her, but she was powerless to intervene.

  At the only populated ticket booth she flashed her ID. ‘Where’s the security office?’

  The matronly woman picked up a phone and she waited. A man in an ill-fitting uniform appeared. He picked at rotten teeth and wiped the resulting issue on his trouser leg. ‘Nina, you stay here, I’ll take her.’

  The station guard escorted her past the row of empty ticket booths and pushed on a door to the left of them. Inside, a man in a grey camouflage uniform was slouching in a leather chair, he was puffing on a cigarette and eyeing a bank of screens. He looked at his watch, then at the guard.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said to the ill-fitting uniform. ‘Have you searched her?’

  Her phone started ringing. ‘Ivanova, Captain,’ she answered, not recognising the number. There was a wry smile on her lips as she saw the security guard in the chair straighten up.

  ‘It’s Pavel, Captain,’ she heard and had to think for a moment before recognising the voice of Popovich, the other expert criminalist.

  ‘What is it?’

  The line went quiet and she could hear Colonel Vasiliev talking in the background. While waiting, she waved her ID at the man in the grey uniform then pressed the mute button on the call. ‘I’d like the footage between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. yesterday.’

  ‘Is this about the girl in the fire?’

  She shrugged noncommittally, then pointed at the security cameras. ‘How do you store the images? A hard drive?’

  ‘DVDs. There might be a camera on the train too. If you come back with an exact time I can get the train number for you, but you’ll have to go through central admin to get the footage.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  There was distortion over the phone that sounded like a cheer.

  She passed her identification card for him to copy her details. It was rare for anyone to insist on a search warrant for camera footage since its specific purpose was to prevent crime. The guard flicked through a DVD holder mounted on the wall, then removed four disks. He slipped them into a plastic wallet and passed them to her. She tucked it in her handbag and nodded a thanks.

  The phone was still pressed to her ear as she left, nodding again at the young man with the unfortunate teeth. The noise of the station increased and she clicked the mute button again to enable the sound. When she returned the mobile to her ear, the applause in the station had gone and Popovich was asking if she was there.

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘You’d better get back. The Major was asking where you and Rogov had gone.’

  ‘Rogov’s on a job. What’s happening?’

  ‘Captain,’ Popovich said, barely able to contain his excitement. ‘Zena Dahl’s handbag. We got a hit on AFIS.’

  Chapter 20

  Her clothes were soaked. The walk from the Ploshchad Vosstaniya Metro to Suvorovsky Prospekt had taken fifteen minutes, and it had been fifteen minutes of unrelenting rain that stuck her cotton trousers to her legs and turned her white blouse indecent. Her arms were folded to cover her breasts as she stood at the back of a crowd of local and national press who were gathering outside the Ministry of the Interior building.

  She ducked under the umbrella of a photographer who was wiping a lens with a lint cloth. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’

  His hand poised over the camera. ‘Press conference. That Swedish girl.’ He assessed her, taking in the handcuffs and gun, and his manner became less gruff. ‘You’re a detective, are you working on it?’

  She shook her head, ‘They don’t let me do anything serious like that. I only saw what was on television.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind…?’ He lifted the lens to inspect it.

  She walked away and cut through the small crowd. Ahead, she saw Major Dostoynov in dress uniform at the top of the steps and Colonel Vasiliev standing beside him like a benevolent uncle – albeit one with an ageing Teddy Boy quiff. Mikhail was nowhere to be seen and she guessed it had been deliberate to send a signal that he wasn’t going to compete with Dostoynov for the top job. She felt a pang of guilt as a camera team clambered out of a Channel One News van parked on the pavement and cut to the front of the assembled press.

  When the microphones and cameras were in position, Dostoynov descended, the wide brim of his peaked cap keeping the rain off his stubble length pate. He stared into the middle-distance as he spoke: ‘Following the discovery of a deceased female at the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island yesterday at approximately 6 p.m., we have identified a suspect.’

  Dostoynov held up a picture and a blond, broad man with a Channel One camera on his shoulder edged forwards, blocking her view. ‘Dmitry Dmitrievich Bezzubtsev,’ continued the Major, ‘is twenty-one years old, slim, and has brown hair. He should not be approached. A reward has been offered of one million Roubles for information leading to his arrest.’

  She rushed away from the conference and took the Suvorovsky entrance. Inside, she saw Mikhail ins
tructing a group of young men with shaved heads and grey-blue uniforms who had gathered in a meeting room where desks were being hastily pushed together.

  ‘Get the numbers for this room and have the switchboard route them,’ he directed to a uniform.

  ‘Mikhail?’ she called.

  He waved at a sergeant. ‘Here take over.’ He stepped outside the room and closed the door behind him. ‘Tasha, are you entering a wet T-shirt competition?

  She folded her arms self-consciously. ‘Misha, what the hell is going on?’

  ‘Popovich got a match on AFIS: some missed abortion called Bezzubtsev who did eighteen months for a string of street robberies. He’s not at his registered address so Dostoynov suggested Dahl offer a reward.’

  ‘I thought Dostoynov wanted someone else to take the case?’

  ‘Not now there’s a target in his crosshairs.’

  ‘So instead of finding him ourselves, we’ve given out a hotline to every chancer in Piter.’ She shook her head in disbelief at the idiocy of the move.

  Mikhail sniffed. ‘An inferior mind might imagine Dostoynov was doing it to boost his profile.’

  She flicked her thumb at the room. ‘And who are they?’

  ‘Conscripts on loan from an army engineering unit.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Did anyone speak to Dahl?’

  Mikhail shrugged. ‘No, the request went through his lawyer, Lagunov. You got a change of clothes in your locker?’

  ‘Just gym gear.’

  ‘Well, you’d better find something before you give Rogov a hard-on. Let’s go to my office first, while Dostoynov’s out.’ He grimaced. ‘I hate sharing it with the uptight prick.’

  She followed him into a plain, grey room with a wall-mounted safe and a filing cabinet. At the far side was a dirt-streaked window with an air conditioning unit fixed to the outside. There were two swivel-chairs at opposite ends of a table. ‘This half is mine,’ he said, unlocking a desk drawer. He took out a torn page from a notepad and handed it to her.

  She tried to decipher Mikhail’s scrawls, and made out the name of the Astoria hotel in Admiralty District. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It means Rogov was right.’ He sat behind the desk and pulled out a packet of Sobranies then lit one. ‘Dostoynov doesn’t like me lighting up in his office.’ Mikhail gave her his finest wolfish grin. ‘The man’s turning me into quite a chain smoker.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not so bad then. Dostoynov, I mean, not Rogov – he’s a complete arsehole. So what is it?’ She dangled the torn page from the notepad for emphasis.

  He took a deep lungful of smoke and blew smoke into the weave of Dostoynov’s chair. ‘It’s from my friend Viktor in FSB Immigration. Turn it over.’

  She saw a name on the back: “Felix Axelsson”. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I had to look him up on Yandex. Apparently, Axelsson is a freelance security advisor based in Stockholm. Advertises himself as ex-Säpo, which means he probably isn’t.’ He picked up a mug with the departmental crest and flicked cigarette ash into it; she guessed it belonged to Dostoynov.

  ‘Wait.’ He went to the printer and took a sheet from the out-tray. ‘I got this off his company site.’

  It was a picture of Axelsson; he had a lean soldier’s face: broad and healthy. His short-cropped red hair added to the impression, along with the combat trousers and a black polo shirt with a military logo on the breast pocket. Maybe, as Mikhail said, he was trying to look the part; in that case it was a convincing act.

  ‘He looks like he’d be useful in a fight.’ She folded Axelsson’s picture and put it in her pocket then turned over the slip of paper.

  Mikhail picked up Dostoynov’s cup and went over to the window; he opened it and peered out. ‘Press conference still going on. Christ knows what they can still find to talk about.’ He puffed on the Sobranie. ‘Viktor matched the flight manifest against FSB records to see who cleared immigration.’

  She paused and turned the paper to study the address on the cover. The excitement was obvious in her tone. ‘Are you saying this Felix Axelsson got off Dahl’s jet before we arrived?’

  ‘I am.’ He stubbed the cigarette out in the mug. ‘According to Viktor, the Gulfstream continued to Arlanda with two pilots and a flight attendant.’ Mikhail held the mug out of the window then upended it.

  She stared at him. ‘The plane returned to Sweden without Dahl or Axelsson?’

  He nodded.

  ‘So he lied to us; Thorsten had a visa?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘So where are they?’

  Mikhail shrugged as he placed the mug on Dostoynov’s side of the desk. ‘I don’t know. The Astoria is the registered address but the reservation was cancelled. Dahl and Axelsson are hiding out in Piter like a pair of squirrels at a fur farm.’

  She watched Mikhail spit into Dostoynov’s mug then take a tissue from a box on the desk and wipe it clean. She left as he was returning it to the exact position he had found it.

  After towel-drying her hair and putting on an opaque sports bra from her gym bag, she returned to the meeting room where Mikhail had routed the press conference response calls. Of the six conscripts who had been assigned to help, four had gone to lunch at midday. It was nearly two o’clock now and she suspected they were gone for good. One was somewhere in the building and the remaining conscript was writing details down on a pad while he spoke with a caller.

  She watched the boy for a moment as he spoke with the phone wedged between his shoulder and cheek – the shaved hair; the jug ears; the olive green summer uniform. He hung up and looked at her.

  ‘Any good?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes’ – out of habit he glanced at her shoulder looking for rank insignia – ‘A man reporting his neighbour’s son, says he’s been putting graffiti tags on their building.’

  ‘Was the boy called Bezzubtsev?’

  ‘No,’ he checked what he’d written, ‘Ilya Ryazantsev. But the neighbour swore it was his picture on Channel One.’

  ‘If he calls again, threaten him with wasting police time.’

  The five deserted desks were littered with Post-It notes and she started gathering them up. ‘The crazies go here.’ She wrote “Niet” on a Post-It and stuck it to the desk. ‘If they look promising, put them here.’ She scribbled, “Da”. ‘And if you can’t tell, add them to this pile.’ She drew a question mark. She flicked through the notes and sorted them. One of the young soldiers had such poor handwriting, all his notes went under the question mark – she hoped there wasn’t a genuine tip-off among them.

  The phone on another desk started ringing and the conscript leant over to pick it up. ‘Hello, um…police investigation,’ he said, making her smile. She’d find out his name and put in a good word if he was interested in joining the force.

  Her mobile vibrated and she saw Rogov’s pale, smiling face on the screen. She took the call. ‘Sergeant?’

  There was a siren in the background which was cut off abruptly and she guessed he was breaking regulations by using it to cut through traffic. ‘I’m on my way back from Sestroretsk.’

  ‘Wait a moment.’ It was noisy outside, and she closed the door to the meeting room. She asked, ‘What did you find?’

  ‘I got the office manager’s number from the directory then made her open up the ZAGS and go through the system. She was a sixty-year-old virgin: all glasses and girly habits. If she’d been younger I might have offered to put her out of her misery.’

  She felt herself bristle. ‘And?’

  ‘And Zena called a month or so ago. The old maid was the one who dealt with her, but she didn’t understand what she wanted.’

  ‘A waste of time then.’

  ‘No, Zena came back with a friend who was better at explaining things.’

  ‘Yulia Federova?’

  ‘Could be. The duty sergeant in Vasilyevsky said she had a good pair on her.’

  She ignored the comment. ‘So Zena brought her to negotiate?’

>   ‘Yeah, I reckon the Sven needed someone more worldly. Yulia was there to give the queen a gift.’

  ‘Surely not for a wedding, Zena was only nineteen?’

  She watched the young conscript hang up the phone and add a note to her “Niet” pile.

  ‘No,’ began Rogov, ‘Zena wasn’t looking to get married.’

  ‘What was it then?’

  ‘She was looking for a death certificate.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘The queen didn’t remember, but she was sure it wasn’t for a Sven or that would have stuck in her mind. Told me she went into the storage room with them where they keep the microfiche. The Sestroretsk ZAGS went digital around fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Then she’s looking for her natural parents. I spoke to Yulia on Saturday.’

  ‘Yeah, you said she was stealing Zena’s clothes.’

  ‘We don’t know that for certain. What if Zena had given them to Yulia as a present for helping out, or they had an arrangement?’

  ‘We should bring her in.’

  ‘I asked her to come in today.’

  ‘You asked her?’

  ‘She’s not a suspect. If you’ve got a problem with that?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Actually Rogov, I’ve got a better idea.’ She flicked through her notepad. ‘Find me at headquarters. Federova works on Nevsky Prospekt; a place called “Noughts and Kisses”, pick me up and we’ll bring her in.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ he said, exhaling heavily.

  ‘Rogov, are you smoking in the car?’

  ‘No, boss,’ he said, too quickly.

  Chapter 21

  Nevsky Prospekt was as quiet as it got. Rogov turned off the four lane highway, then parked the Nissan in the courtyard of an army surplus shop. She leant over to lock her Makarov in the glove compartment then they crossed over to the shade of the massive wheat-coloured monolith of the Gostiny Dvor shopping centre. This time she had brought a jacket, a light raincoat she kept in her locker, which had the effect of scaring off the rainclouds and drawing out a hot sun from nowhere.

  Rogov stopped to roll up the long sleeves of his tent-like shirt and peered at a window display of amber jewellery in one of the Gostiny Dvor arcades.