The Vodka Trail

by AA Abbott

  The doorbell played the opening notes of The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. Marty congratulated himself on remembering it from his schooldays. Great things had been expected from him at grammar school, until he’d chosen to leave at sixteen to set up in business. Despite his recent tribulations, he was happy he’d made the right choice.

  Through the swirly glass of the door, Marty saw a blonde figure. He readied his foot to push the door ajar as soon as it opened the tiniest sliver.

  A chain rattled, momentarily causing him to shudder at memories of his cell. A bolt was drawn back. The lady of the house stood before him, long flaxen hair limp around her fine-boned face. Her jade-green dress matched the eyes that stared at him, alarmed.

  “Hello, Maria,” he said.

  She was silent, her mouth dropping in shock.

  Marty no longer had any doubts, and nor, it seemed, did she. “I’m not a ghost,” he said, “although you’d rather I were, wouldn’t you? May I come in?”

  He used his knee to widen the door’s aperture, walking inside. “Actually, that wasn’t a question,” he said.

  She recovered her composure and looked at him with distaste. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Just a cup of tea and a chat.” Seeing her recoil from him, he added, “That really is all. I have things to tell you, and others I want to ask. Indulge my curiosity, Maria.”

  “Come in, then,” she said, acceding to the inevitable. He was already standing in the lobby, after all. “Just don’t call me Maria. I don’t want to remember.” Her eyes were fierce, like a panicked animal’s.

  “Very well. Marina.” She’d moved on from Sasha quickly enough, then, but Marty resisted a jibe. He needed answers, not a fight.

  “You’d better sit in the drawing room,” Marina said. “You know where it is.” Her lips, painted a soft pink shade, twitched at the corners.

  She looked nothing like her age. How much was artifice, pots and potions of the sort his wife enjoyed using, he had no idea. A casual observer would think she’d had an easy life, but it was clear Marina felt the old times had been much easier than today.

  “I’ll come with you into the kitchen if you don’t mind,” Marty said. “I like to make my own tea. I’m quite particular about it.” He would prefer to forgo a seasoning of crushed paracetamol tablets, for instance.

  Marina gave no indication she’d considered any such thing. She led him into the kitchen, a large room overlooking the blind concrete walls of the factory. Once, he recalled, she’d been proud of its fitted pine furniture. Sasha had made it for her. That was gone, replaced with glossy black units, granite worktops and steel appliances. Angela occasionally showed him photographs of such fixtures in magazines; he assumed the look was trendy the world over. What was plain, and presumably essential to Marina and Harry, was its costliness. The huge range cooker and American-style fridge were exclusive European brands.

  Instead of a kettle or samovar, there was a chrome tap that produced boiling water at the press of a button. Marina filled two red china mugs and dunked teabags in them. This was unlike the serious ceremony with leaves that she had favoured in the past, and which was still observed by Erik to this day.

  She tipped milk and sugar into his mug without asking him if he wanted any. Marty watched carefully to make sure that was all she used.

  The drawing room had changed too. Once white and utilitarian, decorated with her children’s scribbled artwork, it was now painted red. There were gold and turquoise velvet sofas, a huge patterned Bazaki carpet. The only pictures were framed still lives and portraits, mostly done in oils. A couple of photographs showed attractive young people. Who were they?

  Marina noticed his gaze shifting to them. “Arystan’s children,” she murmured.

  Marty laughed harshly. “That’s not all of them, is it? Anyway, where are yours?”

  She dropped her eyes. “Arystan doesn’t want them mentioned.” Her mouth twitched again. “Tell me, Marty, do you have news of them? How are they?”

  Marty was tempted to say they were both heroin addicts in prison. He decided to tell the truth. “They’re both fine young people. Erik is a scientist and Kat is engaged to a rich man. She resembles you in many ways.”

  “I’m so glad,” Marina said. Her frown lifted. “I worried about them so much. I looked online, on Facebook and Google, but there wasn’t a trace of them.”

  “You were looking for Belovs, weren’t you? Small wonder you couldn’t find them. They took English names,” Marty said.

  “What are they?”

  Marty ignored the question. He added brutally, “Their success is no thanks to you. You abandoned both of them. They were heartbroken, believing you dead.”

  “What choice did I have?” she asked. “My husband, the love of my life, died at the hands of a firing squad. I was left destitute. When Arystan offered marriage, it was the only way out.”

  “You could have turned to me,” Marty said. “I’d been paying your lawyers for two years, remember?” The fees, and ‘commissions’, had cost him a small fortune.

  “Really?” she asked, her voice icy with cynicism. “You’re hardly showing me mercy now. You wouldn’t have done then, either. Nothing you did was for Sasha, or for me. You got exactly what you wanted. You’re still distributing Snow Mountain for Arystan. I tell you, it won’t be for long. Distributors are two a penny. I’ll persuade him to find another.” She practically spat out her threat.

  “He won’t,” Marty said. He doubted she held sway over Harry these days. His business partner was clearly bored with her and playing away. He came to the point. “I own the Snow Mountain brand. I had my solicitor register the trademark in practically every country in the world outside of Bazakistan.” He owed Katherine Evans a crate of champagne, or maybe vodka. “Ask your lawyer to confirm it, if you want. Harry needs me more than I need him.”

  He paused to make sure she’d digested the implications. “I’ve got news for you, Marina. I think you wanted me dead. I’m not sure why. Perhaps you thought I’d recognise you and tell your children their mother had risen from the grave. They might have asked awkward questions.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  He continued, “I’ve written a letter, and sent two copies by courier this morning, one to my wife and one to my lawyer in Birmingham. You can’t intercept it, because the freight plane’s left Kireniat already. I’ve emailed it to my secretary too, protected with a password that I texted to her. All of those individuals are under strict instructions only to open that letter on my death. In addition, if the circumstances of my demise are in the least bit suspicious, they’re to issue the contents of the letter as a press release. The Daily Mail could make a very juicy headline of it. So,” he smiled, “I expect you’d like to know what the letter says.”

  Marina shrugged. “Not really.”

  “You should be more inquisitive,” Marty said. “I’ve written everything I know about you.”

  Marina remained cool. “Some fanciful conjecture, I’m sure.”

  “I may have made guesses to fill in a few gaps. There’s enough to make you very supportive of my well-being. For instance. You say Sasha was the love of your life, but you got over him quickly enough. You didn’t just leap into Harry’s bed. You’ve been having an affair with Ken Khan, the terrorist.”

  “You’ve no proof,” she said, her face impassive.

  “I bet I could find it if I tried. You forget he was holding me at that orchard outside Kireniat.”

  Her face registered shock. The information must be new to her, then. “There’s more to that story than you know,” he said. “I’ll tell you later. Anyway, if we’re talking about proof, it won’t be up to me to get it. More critically from your point of view, at the first suggestion that you were involved with Ken Khan, the police and secret service will be looking for evidence. When they ask questions, it isn’t over a nice cup of tea. They won’t be impressed. Nor will Harry. Being the control freak he is, he’ll kick you ou
t, if he doesn’t kill you first.” Harry would probably welcome an excuse to be free from the confines of his marriage. He’d wanted her when she was unattainable. Having won his prize, he’d lost interest.

  “You don’t understand,” Marina wailed, tears welling. “Can you imagine what it’s been like for me, submitting to Arystan’s touch when he makes my skin crawl? It’s obvious he has blood on his hands from Sasha’s death.”

  “You chose to marry him,” Marty pointed out. He felt awkward, uncomfortable in the presence of a grown woman crying. Nevertheless, his sympathy was wafer-thin.

  “In any case,” Marina begged, “please say nothing to Erik and Katya. I can’t bear them to know.”

  “Make it worth my while,” Marty said. “I want to carry on my business unhindered.”

  Her secrets weren’t burdensome to him. Sharing them with her children wasn’t necessarily in their best interests. While they’d loved their mother, did they really need to know what she’d done? They’d grieved for her already. “Incidentally,” he said, “I wasn’t Ken’s only prisoner.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, showing no concern. “There was a British girl too, wasn’t there?”

  “Katya has a British passport now,” he replied.

  The blood drained from her face.

  Chapter 32

  Kat

  Arman Khan gave Kat a lift to the airport. Reassuringly, he drove a Jeep rather than a Mercedes. He liked to drive through deserts, he told her, and go cross-country skiing in the snowy mountains.

  Arman had been most solicitous all morning, taking her to the consulate and pulling strings to find her a seat on the next Bazakair flight. She shouldn’t worry about the commercial court hearing last Friday, Arman had said; he’d turned up and arranged a postponement. Kat suspected Ted Edwards had had strong words with him. This was borne out when Arman told her she must not imagine he was related to Ken Khan. Their surname was common because many ethnic Bazakis claimed descent from Genghis.

  They drove past Kireniat University, seeing perhaps a thousand students outside it with pro-democracy placards. One of them threw a missile at the Jeep. Arman swerved, managing to avoid it. Flames flared into the air where it had landed.

  Kat’s heart stopped. She wanted to scream, but all that emerged was a fearful whimper.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll step on the gas,” Arman said, doing just that. The Jeep jolted forward, causing demonstrators to jump out of its path. “You know, that Molotov cocktail came our way by mistake. The students think we’re with the authorities. They’re angry at Ken Khan’s death.”

  “What do you think?” Kat asked, a tremor creeping into her voice. Thankfully, Arman had driven past the students, and was speeding down the broad highway to the airport. Her feelings about the revolution were mixed: delight that it might still happen, tempered with relief that no other hostages would suffer at Ken Khan’s hands. Captivity had hardly been a holiday camp. It was difficult not to take it personally.

  If Arman shared her support for the rebels, he wasn’t going to admit it. “This government provides stability,” he replied. “When you see what’s happened to other nations in the region, you learn to appreciate it.”

  The business community evidently didn’t share his confidence. Bazakair flights, she had learned, were fully booked today. Tourists, businessmen and expatriates alike were rushing to fly home. Luckily, Arman’s aunt was married to one of the airline’s directors. At his insistence, a seat became available.

  The last time she’d departed from Kireniat airport, it had been a collection of huts clustered around a dusty runway. Now, there was an airy new terminal designed by a celebrated British architect. Arman made sure a Bazakair employee escorted Kat to the club lounge, a spacious room overlooking the flight strip. The lounge was mercifully free of the armed police guarding the departures area. It was busy, however, full of suited men speaking too loudly on their phones and drinking too much free whisky. To her relief, Marty wasn’t one of them. Kat ordered complimentary champagne and watched the CNN news channel on a large, wall-mounted screen.

  “An Army raid on the kidnappers’ hideout resulted in six deaths,” the announcer intoned. “Bazaki authorities say they’ve foiled a Muslim extremist plot led by Ken Khan, a terror suspect believed by the government to have trained under the Taliban. Now, we ask British businessman Martyn Bridges how he feels.”

  Marty was standing outside the British consulate in Kireniat. “I’m just glad to be free, and I want to go home to Birmingham,” he said. “My wife’s planning a party.”

  The screen cut away to a scene in Birmingham, a gracious, white-painted detached mansion decorated with balloons and banners. “Welcome home, Marty,” the largest said.

  Ross hadn’t suggested any kind of celebration. They’d said little to each other since her release, and in fact, he’d been extremely defensive when she’d challenged him about his intention to pay her ransom. Kat walked away from the TV and over to the window, downing her drink quickly and helping herself to another on the way. The floor to ceiling plate glass was so clean, she barely noticed it was there. Beyond the airfield, downtown Kireniat shimmered in the sun. There was still snow on the distant mountains behind it. She sipped her champagne, wishing the bubbles would lift her spirits, as she gazed at the country of her birth. She’d never come back, no matter what awaited her in London.

  Chapter 33

  Marty

  Marty’s flight was the last of the day, with a Middle Eastern airline that stopped in Dubai. On another occasion, he might have left the plane there to do business. This time, he was keen to return to Angela. He asked an air hostess for advice on choosing gifts for his wife. Buying for a woman was a minefield, requiring specialist help. Between them, they selected Angela’s favourite perfume and a pricy cosmetic set.

  There was no question of infidelity from Angela. He’d known her long enough to trust her completely. She had been his secretary for decades, carrying a torch for him and hooking him swiftly once his first wife died. Marty had just gone with the flow. After all, he needed a warm bed, a tidy house and tea on the table when he returned from work. While he wasn’t in love, she was good company and made the most of herself. Marriage hadn’t dimmed her eagerness to please.

  Marina, on the other hand, was beautiful, heart-stoppingly so even now. She was accustomed to using men for her own ends. He’d believed Kat was heading the same way. Now, he wasn’t so sure. She really seemed devoted to Snow Mountain vodka. Perhaps she could work for him after all. Should he use his leverage over Marina to encourage Harry to hand over the factory to Kat? Marty shook his head. It was fraught with difficulty. Harry would never do it, and anyway, the engineer was an efficient factory manager. Far better to keep the threat of exposure hanging over Marina. She’d wanted him dead – let her sweat.

  The airline did not serve alcohol, but they turned a blind eye to passengers who brought their own. This had been explained at the check-in desk. Marty drank the perfectly acceptable red wine he’d bought in the duty-free shop at Kireniat, and took a sleeping tablet as the plane left Dubai. He slipped easily into deep sleep.

  Chapter 34

  Davey

  Davey unlocked the black door, determined that this was the last time he’d stay at the pied-à-terre in Mayfair. The smell of paint was even more pervasive than before, assailing him before he ascended the stairs to the first floor flat. He threw open the French doors, about to step onto the balcony. Just in time, he realised that, while its railings were intact, the balcony floor was missing. He remembered Dee saying the wooden planks were rotten.

  Alana arrived a few minutes later. She was wearing her running kit, carrying working clothes, killer heels and bag in a backpack. Davey buzzed her into the flat without a greeting. He hadn’t really wanted to see her that evening. In fact, he didn’t want to see her at all, except in a professional capacity, and he was going to tell her.

  “Hey, I love jogging beside the Thames on the
se sunny evenings,” Alana said. “I can’t get over all the losers sitting in traffic jams on the Victoria Embankment.” She smirked, clearly in a good mood. “Let’s have a bourbon – a snifter, I believe you Brits call it.” She raided the dining room for the whiskey and glasses, apparently oblivious to Davey’s subdued demeanour.

  Davey glowered at her. He grabbed his glass and knocked back the drink.

  “This is a building site,” Alana complained. “There are paint pots everywhere, and the smell makes me sick. Let’s go to my place.” She took a sip. “You know I’ve got a great sound system. We’ll play Metallica. Not my preference, maybe, but I’ll live with it to see your mojo rising.”

  It was like the buzz of a particularly annoying insect. She no longer held any glamour for him. He gulped down a second glass. “No, Alana,” he said. “It’s over. You’ve got what you wanted from Saxton Brown. You’re not keeping me dangling on a string any longer.” He rose to his feet. “Finish your drink, then leave.”

  Alana had the temerity to laugh. “I call the shots, baby. What’s Laura going to say when I…”

  Davey interrupted her. “I’ll sort that out. Lie if I have to.”

  “It won’t work,” she said triumphantly. “I’ve recorded every word of this conversation on my phone.”

  Davey’s eyes hardened. “You bitch,” he spat. “Give it to me.” Was she bluffing? Although he hadn’t seen her use the phone, he wasn’t prepared to take a chance. He reached for her backpack. It had to be in there.

  Inside the backpack, he found her handbag, the phone neatly strapped into a pocket. Alana grappled with him as his fingers curled around it.