Motherland

by G. D. Abson

  Primakov pulled down his mask, ‘Captain. Thank you for coming.’

  ‘You said it was connected to Zena?’

  ‘I said it might be.’ He stepped back to let the two menti join the group. ‘The corpse has Scandinavian tastes.’

  She addressed the two men, ‘Put on some gloves and start piling the gravel to one side. Anything you find – a dog end or a piece of fingernail – call me. Do not lean over the body. Do not touch the victim or his clothing. Understand?’

  Turning away from them without waiting for a reply, she asked, ‘Leo, why?’

  ‘There’s a black sneaker…over there.’ She saw the shoe next to a small flag with a number one on it; no doubt something else he had ordered from the internet.

  ‘It’s a size forty-seven Axel Arigato.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Swedish designer—’

  The policeman smelling of alcohol was at her elbow. ‘So? I’ve got an IKEA kitchen but that doesn’t make me a Sven.’

  ‘Are you still here?’ She frowned to convey sarcasm. The smile on his face faded and he slunk away to join his colleague.

  For a minute she watched the two policemen scooping gravel with their gloved hands and depositing it in a pile between them.

  Primakov shrugged, ‘Well, it was only a thought.’

  ‘And I’m not dismissing it,’ she mused, ‘with feet that big it could be Dahl.’

  Primakov’s oversuit rustled in the wind, ‘I heard he’s built like a defenceman.’

  She recognised the term from Mikhail’s love of ice hockey and her high estimation of Primakov slipped a few notches. ‘Either way, he was murdered. Suicides don’t bury themselves in gravel.’

  ‘No, obviously not.’ Primakov sounded offended.

  ‘Sorry, Leo, that was patronising.’

  He shrugged it off, ‘I just thought those mafia days were behind us.’

  ‘Could be political.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’ he asked.

  It brought back Mikhail’s warning about FSB involvement. If this body proved to be Thorsten’s she had definitely strayed into their territory.

  The wind was whipping her hair and she tied it back.

  ‘So what do you think happened?’ he asked.

  ‘See that?’ She pointed to a concrete slipway. ‘There’s plenty of big rocks around. If the killer had brought rope and rolled him into the river, the eels would be the only ones to know.’

  Primakov nodded thoughtfully, ‘So the killer improvised; he didn’t intend to kill him, or to kill him here.’

  ‘I agree.’ She watched the two uniforms for a moment; the mound of gravel had become human-shaped. ‘OK, stop there,’ she called out, ‘I’ll take over. One of you take a statement from the dog owner.’ They passed her without a word.

  She pulled on her last pair of latex gloves before kneeling down, then scooped gravel from an area where, judging by the position of the hand, the head was likely to be. Every now and again she heard Primakov’s camera click. There was reddish-blond hair now and she picked away at the gravel, placing it in a new pile. A face emerged.

  Primakov peered at the body. ‘The father?’

  The hair wasn’t blood-tinged, it was red. The relief she felt was absurd when this man’s death would cause no less misery to his loved ones. At least there had been no wedding ring on the protruding hand. It was Felix Axelsson, Dahl’s security expert. She examined a handful of gravel then let it fall through her fingers to the new mound she had created.

  ‘No, it’s not him.’

  There was another click of Primakov’s camera and she picked off a few more stones. ‘Doctor?’ she called, ‘I can see a bullet entry wound between the jaw and the left cheekbone. Can you take a look? Also I could do with an approximate time of death.’

  The doctor’s bones cracked as he knelt beside her, ‘That’s definitely lead poisoning. If you want the time it’s best not to delay. I’ve got a thermometer if you can find me an arsehole?’

  ‘I can find one for you.’ She looked for the policemen; one was interviewing the night watchman while his partner, the joking ment, was staring at the bridge again. ‘Hey,’ she called. ‘Doctor’s got a job for you.’

  She pushed the gravel off the torso then checked the pockets. There was no phone, keys, or wallet which meant the killer wasn’t a complete amateur or Axelsson had deliberately hidden his identity. She smelled alcohol as the uniformed ment and Primakov joined her. Together they heaved him onto his side, then she checked his back pockets. They looked empty and she rubbed a latexed finger along the inside seam to make sure. There was nothing.

  ‘You see that corona bruise?’ the doctor beckoned her over.

  She crouched by him and watched him rotate a finger over Axelsson’s face. Whoever killed him had made it personal. They had jammed a gun into his face then pulled the trigger – using enough force to leave a ring-shaped mark behind. With his bodyguard dead Dahl must be in fear of his life. She needed to find him before anyone else did, assuming they hadn’t already.

  ‘Do you recognise him, Captain?’ Primakov asked. Had he picked up on the fact that she had stared at the body for too long? If the FSB were involved she didn’t want to put him in danger.

  ‘No,’ she lied.

  There was a quizzical expression on the criminalist’s face. ‘Thanks, Captain. I’m sorry to waste your time.’

  ‘If anyone asks, tell them I was passing on my way home. Come visit when you’re done.’

  She climbed into her Volvo and saw fat raindrops fall on the path. The amphibious vehicle with the broken tracks resumed its fight against entropy, and as she navigated around them, the dogs, Kolya and Kazan, finished spraying Primakov’s Samara to waddle back to their position by the concrete post.

  Three cars, all with flashing lights, passed her at the boatyard entrance. She was about to pull out when Mikhail’s blue Mercedes joined them. He had a grim expression and was alone. Someone else was dead now. She didn’t have a clue what was going on and somehow the FSB were involved as well. She felt a surge of anger and opened her glove compartment to select the album For Millions by the rock group Leningrad. She pushed the CD into the slot below her radio and drove towards Tsentralny District as the ska-punk track “My name is Shnur” started playing. She twisted the volume control all the way and the first eight words of the song started as she accelerated along the highway. She screamed along to them: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Chapter 28

  Anton was sitting on the living room floor when she returned to her apartment. His back was resting against the sofa and his skinny legs were folded underneath him. He looked shifty and she noticed the balcony door was open where a faint smell of cigarette smoke was wafting inside.

  ‘Hey Natalya.’ He glanced casually at the Makarov that she had meant to check in on Monday. ‘You ever kill anyone with that?’

  ‘No,’ she lied for the second time in the morning, before offering a hand to pull him to standing, ‘usually my cooking is fatal.’

  The smile he returned was thin and he looked stressed.

  ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘Ten minutes. Papa told me you were on holiday today.’

  ‘I thought I was too.’

  She watched his eyes flick from the mounds of clothes on the sofa. ‘I like what you’ve done to the place.’

  ‘Your father said the same thing. I’m thinking of spraying graffiti on the walls next.’ She noticed the red light flashing on her answer machine.

  ‘Natasha, how long are things going to be like this?’

  ‘I’ve got no plans.’

  He stretched then bent to touch his toes. ‘Will Papa come home soon…do you think?’

  ‘It’s his decision. I just threw him out temporarily.’

  Anton picked at a hole in the knee of his jeans. ‘He told me.’

  She scowled. ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘About the money.’
>
  She shook her head. ‘Fuck it, let’s go outside. Bring your jacket, it’s wet.’

  The balcony floor of the apartment above offered some shelter and she peered down into the swirling rain over the Griboyedov Canal.

  ‘Got one of those cigarettes you’ve been smoking?’

  Anton smiled sheepishly and took out a crumpled pack of Sobranie Classics from his rain coat.

  ‘Interesting brand.’

  ‘Yeah, I went to see Papa at Uncle Stepan’s last night. They were both wasted; they didn’t see me take them.’ He lit his Sobranie and coughed on the first drag.

  ‘Haven’t had one in years.’ She took the lighter from him. ‘As your stepmother I am obliged to tell you that you will regret smoking more than anything else in your life.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ he said with the ennui of a hardened addict.

  ‘So you know they can prevent your penis from working when you get older?’

  ‘Natasha, stop now.’

  ‘I’m only saying.’ She lit hers and puffed on the cigarette. The nicotine made her light-headed and a little nauseous. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘At work?’

  ‘He’s by the Malaya Neva. Someone was murdered there this morning.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, his voice rising in pride.

  ‘Really.’

  She puffed on the cigarette then pinched it out and dropped it on the floor.

  ‘Hey, that’s a waste.’

  ‘Depends on your perspective. Now tell me what you want to say.’

  Anton looked away from her. ‘I heard about the money back when Baboulya died.’ Anton sucked on his cigarette then looked away.

  ‘Does he know you’re here?’

  He flicked ash on the balcony floor then smeared it with a twist of his foot. ‘Don’t think so. Does it matter?’

  She could understand that Anton might feel excluded. When her own parents had separated, there had been no affairs to her knowledge, or cruelty, yet they hadn’t sought out marriage guidance counselling or even tried to be kinder to each other. It was as if she and Claudia had simply not been worth the effort.

  ‘So did he tell you or did you find out?’

  He shrugged. ‘I told you it doesn’t matter? I’m just letting you know.’

  She waited for him to stub out the Sobranie. ‘OK, thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘So things will be like they were before?’

  She sighed. ‘I don’t want to make you feel bad but your father shouldn’t have made you come here.’ She opened the glass door for him.

  Inside, Anton picked up a framed photograph resting on the television. In it, he had a beaming smile as he sat on his father’s red Ducati Monster. Mikhail had been so fond of the damned motorbike he’d cut down on his drinking so he could ride it more often. He’d even let Anton sit on it and click through the gears with the engine running and the clutch lever pulled in. A few months later, a car went through a red light and hit the Ducati side-on. The bike was wrecked, but Mikhail was thrown clear with a few minor scratches. The car driver had been unharmed; at least until Mikhail found him.

  Anton put the photograph down. ‘I like this picture.’

  ‘So do I.’

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Papa didn’t tell me to come here. I thought you should know the truth.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘The Metro.’

  ‘Then you must be a magician.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said warily.

  ‘You manage to walk a hundred metres in the rain without getting your coat wet.’

  Anton adopted his default sulk. ‘OK, Papa gave me a lift but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that. He didn’t tell me what to say.’

  ‘Let’s leave it there, I’m touched you came.’

  ‘So does the toilet still work or do I need to use a bucket?’

  She smiled, glad at the change of conversation. ‘I’m in the middle of cleaning,’ she lied, ‘that’s why everything’s a mess.’

  He closed the door and she pressed the button on the answering machine. “You have one message” it began, then she heard her sister’s voice with the same Russian accent despite all the years in Hannover. “Natasha, it’s Claudia. Do you remember I was going to ask my friend’s husband, the police sergeant, about working here? He told me all the states have their own rules and you have to apply for citizenship first. Basically, it’s complicated. Anyway, speak soon, kisses.”

  The bathroom door opened. ‘You lied to me.’ Anton grabbed his jacket. ‘You told me you had no plans. You’re leaving the country.’

  ‘No, it was about all of us. I—’

  He pulled on the door then slammed it.

  She pushed aside a pile of clothes to slump in front of the TV, flicking through one channel after another. Too upset to focus on anything. She left it on a fake documentary about the rise of fascism in Ukraine and it made her feel even more dispirited. She retrieved her discarded cigarette from the balcony, then lit it off the stove. It was the last day of her compassionate leave and things were no clearer. Mikhail couldn’t stay at Rogov’s indefinitely and nor could her marriage carry on as before, not until she felt he was being honest with her. This last trick hadn’t helped. Mikhail had coached Anton to talk about the inheritance but it was a cynical move, a poor attempt to shift the debate from what it was really about – dirty money.

  She stared into space. Her career of fifteen years in the Criminal Investigations Directorate was over if Mikhail took Vasiliev’s job. She puffed on the cigarette feeling the nicotine work on her brain. If Zena Dahl’s murder was going to be her last case, the least she could do was get some justice for the poor girl even if that meant ignoring Mikhail’s warning about FSB involvement. It was hard to believe the gopniks, as everyone else called them, weren’t involved in Zena’s murder but the official explanation left too many questions unanswered.

  In the study she switched on the computer. While it powered up, she flicked through her notepad for Thorsten’s company, then typed “GDH Dahl Engineering” into Yandex. There were pages of links even after she used the advanced options to exclude everything except news items. She applied a filter to restrict the results to the last week. First on the list was a Swedish business site and she clicked to read the rest of the item, then clicked again to translate it into Russian. The corporate language had been rendered almost unintelligible by the online translator but she managed to understand the gist of the article.

  At first, the journalist expressed sympathy for the loss of Zena Dahl (“a tragic defeat”), then having established that his motives were pure, he proceeded to drag Thorsten’s reputation through the dirt. Dahl, he claimed, owned a portfolio of Russian companies that he was having difficulty selling to an unnamed buyer (“a mysterious shopper”) for eight hundred million euros. Yesterday, the price had been lowered to six hundred and fifty million to stop them walking away. A lawyer representing the company, one Anatoly Lagunov, denied the figures were correct then accused the journalist, according to the translation software, of making “obvious, prodigious falsifications.”

  She sat back and puffed on the remainder of the cigarette. So that was the mystery of Lagunov and his generous bribe. Fifty thousand dollars was nothing compared to the money Dahl was losing each day to a jittery buyer. The last thing they needed was a detective calling at the office unannounced asking awkward questions.

  Her mobile rang and she saw another picture of Mikhail’s Ducati; this time from a road trip to Finland. She muted the television and accepted the call.

  ‘Angel?’

  It felt trivial to correct him. ‘Misha?’

  ‘As we speak I’m watching them wheel the Sven away. You know who I’m talking about.’

  ‘Yeah, Felix Axelsson.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence and she got the feeling Mikhail wasn’t entirely happy about hearing the man’s name being spoken on an open network. ‘We
ll, I never said anything so he’s an Ivan Ivanovich now. Did you tell Primakov?’

  ‘No, I didn’t want to get him in trouble.’

  On her laptop she typed the name of Felix Axelsson into Yandex. It brought up his company website: ‘Axelsson Logistics.’

  ‘You there, Angel?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  There were tabs at the top of the page, and she clicked on the one displaying Axelsson’s qualifications. A list appeared, headed by recent experience as a contractor in Afghanistan; all in muted language to suggest his real role had been far more dangerous.

  ‘Anton called, he’s upset. He said you’re moving to Germany.’

  She clicked on another tab that listed testimonials from Axelsson’s happy clients with blanked out names.

  ‘That’s just Claudia. You know she’s always wanted us to emigrate. Anton heard a message she left and overreacted.’

  ‘I’ll tell him it’s nothing to worry about. We can still sort this out, Angel, whatever it is.’

  ‘You know what it’s about, and don’t involve Anton next time. It’s not fair.’

  There was a pause and she thought he was going to deny it. ‘OK, Angel, I won’t. Just tell me how I can make everything better.’

  Another tab on Axelsson’s site was headed “Contact Details”. She clicked on it and saw an address in Stockholm along with a phone number.

  ‘Women hate the lie more than what it conceals – did you know that, Misha? We can handle the odd obstacle on the road but we don’t like driving in rough country. Men are different. You just keep on blindly and pretend everything’s fine until your head smashes through the windscreen.’

  ‘So what do you propose?’

  ‘Just tell me the truth. I can’t do anything until I know that.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he began, then stopped himself. ‘We’ll do that another time. I’m calling to warn you Dahl’s lawyer has complained to Colonel Vasiliev about you. Lagunov said you went to see him this morning. He’s accusing you of harassment.’

  ‘He offered me fifty thousand dollars to go away.’

  Mikhail chuckled. ‘The sly bastard. Then I guess that means you turned him down.’