Филип Керр - Dead Meat

‘It’s all right,’ said Dzhumber, wiping his hairy neck with a towel. ‘I think these dogs are here to bark, not bite.’

Nikolai pushed the man obstructing his path to one side.

‘Who’s he? Your secretary?’

Dzhumber Gankrelidze grinned, showing off a status-enhancing gold tooth.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I get him to take some dictation now and again.’

Oocho laughed and continued to work on his grapefruit-sized biceps.

‘I bet you do,’ said Nikolai. ‘What’s his shorthand? Twenty rounds a minute?’

‘You’re good,’ said Gankrelidze smiling. ‘You should be in the cabaret upstairs.’

‘I’m fussy about who I entertain,’ said Nikolai.

Gankrelidze kept on smiling. He was used to police harassment. Sasha dipped his head to read the label on one of the Georgians’ track-suits.

‘Sergio Tacchini,’ he said. ‘Very nice. Quite the lifestyle you boys have here.’

‘You know what they say,’ said Oocho. ‘He who sits near the pot eats the most kasha.’

‘I guess you’re sitting close enough at that,’ Nikolai observed. ‘All those cash-cows in the lobby. Business looks pretty good.’

‘Pick a girl and tell her I sent you,’ Gankrelidze said nonchalantly. ‘It’ll be my little treat. Your friend too. I like to see the militia enjoying themselves.’

‘That’s the thing I like about you Georgians,’ said Nikolai. ‘You’re very generous with your mothers and your sisters.’

Gankrelidze stopped smiling and picked up a dumbbell. He began to pull it towards his big shoulder.

‘What do you want?’ he said evenly.

‘I’ve got Georgia on my mind,’ said Nikolai. ‘Specifically the late Vaja Ordzhonikidze. Let’s start with where you all were the night before last. And don’t blow me any smoke rings either. Not five copecks’-worth. You don’t have to work for Russian intelligence to decode the way Vaja took his wooden pea-jacket. Someone thought he was a pincher.’

Gankrelidze dropped the weight on to the mat and stood up. He was strong, but shorter than Nikolai by about a head.

‘You know, normally I don’t talk to strangers. But you — you’ve got a kind face. Me and the boys here spent the whole evening in the restaurant upstairs. Isn’t that so, boys?’

There was a murmur of general agreement.

‘You don’t believe me, you ask your dogs on the front door. They saw us when we arrived at about eight; and when we left again around three.’

‘No doubt they’ve had their paws well stroked,’ sniffed Nikolai.

Oocho laughed and shook his head. ‘Yeah, well, you hear all sorts of terrible rumours about this city’s militia.’

The rest of the gang thought that this was very funny.

‘So how about this rumour that Vaja was a pincher?’ said Nikolai. ‘That it was his own side that killed him: because he was an informant for Mikhail Milyukin.’

‘There are people who drink their own urine,’ said Gankrelidze, ‘and people who put hot jars on their backs, because they think that it’s good for them. But that doesn’t make it true. You’re looking at the wrong cat, my friend.’

Gankrelidze picked up his towel and wiped his face.

‘I tell you what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you an invitation to Vaja’s funeral. We’re giving him a real Georgian send-off. Now does that sound like we thought he was a pincher?’

Nikolai lit a cigarette as he considered Gankrelidze’s argument for a moment.

‘Did Vaja like watches?’

‘He appreciated the value of punctuality, if that’s what you mean. What are you aiming at?’

‘Only this: someone baited a trap for him with an expensive watch.’ Nikolai picked up a medicine ball and began to roll it in his dinner-plate-sized hands.

Gankrelidze tut-tutted.

‘Good taste. It can be a curse.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve any idea who that might have been?’

‘You’re the local melody, you tell me. I’m just a citizen.’

‘Sure, you’re a citizen,’ said Nikolai. ‘And I’m the Grand Duchess Anastasia.’

‘And then we left,’ he said and unlocked the safe by his desk. He placed his holstered gun inside, took out his diary and locked the safe again.

‘What do you think?’ I asked. ‘Would they really execute one of their own and then give him a Mafia funeral with all the trimmings?’

‘If it was good for business they’d give the Patriarch a Mafioso’s send-off,’ declared Sasha. These bastards like to think that they’re men of honour, but that’s only because they’ve seen Al Pacino in The Godfather . In reality they’ve got no more respect or honour than a hungry pig.’

‘It’s true,’ said Nikolai. They watch that video over and over again. It’s like a training film for them. I wish I had ten roubles for every churki who thinks he’s Michael Corleone.’

The big man’s phone rang. He took the call and then asked me if I remembered the man who owned the restaurant that had been firebombed.

‘Chazov, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘You were hoping to jog his memory?’

‘Care to sit in?’

We spent a fruitless afternoon with Chazov, who was still too scared of the Mafia to add anything to his original statement. When Nikolai explained that there would be an official investigation into the origin of his meat supplies, Chazov assured him that he had bought it in good faith from a legitimate supplier, although he was unable, or unwilling, to name him. To Nikolai’s final tactic, that he intended to find out whether or not the meat had been stolen from the state meat markets, contrary to Article 92 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, an offence punishable by up to four years’ deprivation of freedom or corrective labour, Chazov answered with a shrug only. And after he had gone Nikolai banged the table in the interview room with the flat of his hand.

‘He knows I’ve got nothing,’ he growled. ‘If I had the first shred of evidence that the meat was stolen I’d have had it impounded and him charged. But how can I ask for a protocol purely on the basis that the very quantity of it makes the supply suspicious? He knows that.’

He hit the table again and I didn’t fancy the idea of him ever hitting me.

‘But I’m not finished with him. I’ll keep having him back here until he’s so sick of the sight of me, he’ll be begging to tell me who’s putting the squeeze on him.’

I had no doubt that he meant every word of it.

Peter the Great built St Petersburg as Russia’s window on the West. That was before television. Television is today’s window on the West. Not that there’s much worth watching, unless you like Brazilian soap operas. Which is why so many people beg, steal and borrow to own a video-cassette recorder.

St Petersburg Television, broadcasting to over 70 million people, from the Baltic to as far away as Siberia, remained the exception to the state’s continuing broadcasting monopoly. A mouthpiece for opinions quite different from those expressed on national television, it had long been a hotbed of the new democracy. The studios of St Petersburg Television were located on Petrogradsky Island, near the top of Kirov Prospekt and easy enough for Grushko to find since they were distinguished by an enormous transmitter-mast that soared over the Neva like a smaller version of the Eiffel Tower.

A middle-aged balding man, wearing his tie askew and his sleeves rolled up, greeted Grushko in his office.

‘Yuri Petrakov,’ he said, introducing himself. ‘I was Mikhail’s producer on Sixty Minutes .’

‘We’re speaking to everyone who worked with him,’ explained Grushko, sitting down, ‘in the hope that we might find out if he was working on anything that might have got him killed.’