Филип Керр - Dead Meat

Grushko replaced the receiver and, as he took a superhuman drag of his cigarette, closed one eye while fixing me with the other.

‘I think this will interest you,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

I followed him into the corridor that was busy with other detectives and investigators. He barked at two of them to come with us. On the way down to the car he introduced them as Major Nikolai Vladimirovich Vladimirov and Captain Alexander Skorobogatych and added that they were the best men he had.

Nikolai Vladimirov was a big, heavy man, with a pugnacious little boy’s face, his green eyes set rather too closely together and his mouth almost permanently puckered, as if he was about to kiss someone. He wore a black sweatshirt with a Bugs Bunny motif. Alexander ‘Sasha’ Skorobogatych was a fair-haired, Nordic-looking man, his features long and lugubrious and his voice a whispering, sandy sort of rasp, as if he had spent the previous afternoon shouting at a football match. They made an odd trio, I thought. Nikolai and Sasha were each taller than Grushko by a head, and yet they were as careful of him as if he had been their own father; and although Grushko wasn’t quite old enough — I guessed him to be in his mid-forties — it wasn’t so very far from the truth either: Grushko was an old-fashioned sort of policeman and very paternal with all his men.

The car headed south along the banks of the Fontanka Canal. It seemed very beautiful and, but for the speed of Grushko’s erratic driving, I might have been able to enjoy it. Almost to take my mind off the journey, I found myself quizzing Grushko about the Mob and how it got started in Russia.

‘You know, I’ve often thought that we simply swapped the Party for the Mob,’ I said.

Grushko shook his head firmly.

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ he said.

I was just starting to explain when he cut me short.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘The Mob is the product of our own Soviet greenhouse effect.’ The car swerved one way and then the other along the road as he lifted one hand from the steering wheel to light another cigarette.

‘It came out of a black market which was allowed to flourish under Brezhnev. A black market was only ever a back-hander away from active encouragement, as the main operators were allowed to buy themselves legal immunity. So then, in order that they could offer larger bribes to more important Party officials... Well, you’re an intelligent sort of fellow, for a Muscovite: work it out.’

‘They got themselves organised,’ I said.

‘Then, after Brezhnev, organised crime received a bonus in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev...’

‘I don’t see how we can hold him to account for the Mob as well as everything else.’

Grushko chuckled. ‘Oh, I’m not saying that Gorbachev was some kind of Godfather. But it was his endorsement of the cooperative movement that gave the green light to people to start their own businesses. What he failed to realise was that operating a private business obliged all these would-be capitalists to break the law in a number of small ways. Well, that left them vulnerable to the Mob and its demands for protection. So you see, it was the Party which created the atmosphere that helped the Mob to grow.’

‘The Soviet greenhouse effect you were talking about.’

‘Precisely. But like everything built in the Soviet Union, the Party was poorly constructed and, as it became weaker, the Mob spread its roots and grew strong. Soon it was so tall that it pushed through those gaps in the roof that Gorbachev had made and, rather than perishing in the cold light of glasnost , the Mob thrived. By the time the Party collapsed, the Mob no longer needed it to survive.’

‘And now that the Party is outlawed?’

Grushko shrugged.

‘What remains of it has tried to ally itself with the Mob. After all, it’s in both their interests to ensure the failure of everything from the free-market reforms to food aid from the West. Half the new cooperatives in Peter are a front for the Party. A useful way of laundering all the money they got away with after the coup failed. Party money or Mob money, it makes no difference to us. For most people in Peter the whole cooperative movement is synonymous with the Mafia.’

‘It’s the same in Moscow,’ I said. ‘Where the businesses are legitimate they’re a target for the racketeers.’

‘The cooperative restaurants and cafés are especially vulnerable,’ said Grushko. ‘Not only are they obliged by the nature of their business to operate in public, but also they rely on illegal supplies in order to be able to serve food in any reasonable quantities, as well as to justify the high prices they charge for it. A good dinner in one of the better cooperatives costs... how much would you say, Nikolai?’

The big man stirred out of the reverie he was sunk in. Grushko’s erratic driving didn’t seem to bother him much.

‘More than you and I could earn in a week, sir,’ he growled.

‘Apart from the tourists, the only people who can afford to eat in such places are those Russians who have access to hard currency; and the crooks.’

‘In my book, they’re one and the same,’ said Nikolai.

‘Most of the cooperative restaurants in Peter are paying protection,’ said Grushko. ‘It’s usually a fixed percentage of the takings.’

‘But how do the Mafia know how much that is?’ I asked.

Nikolai and Sasha exchanged a look. Grushko smiled drily as he answered:

‘The restaurants are obliged to tell the city council so that they can pay their taxes. In confidence, of course. But for a small fee the Mafia can learn the precise figure. Which is why most of the restaurants fiddle their books in the first place. Then they pay less when eventually they get squeezed. Even so, it can be as much as a thing a day that they’re paying these churkis . That’s a thousand roubles to you and me. But before you can take that kind of burky off them, you’ve got to squeeze them hard. You’re about to see just how hard that can be.’

He steered off the road and into a small parking lot next to a white-fronted building. I lurched forward in my seat as Grushko hit the brake. I got out of the car unsteadily and followed the others up to a heavy wooden door.

The Pushkin Restaurant on the Fontanka Canal was relatively new to the cooperative-restaurant scene. No expense had been spared with the decoration that, I discovered later, was a reproduction of the Green Dining-Room in the Catherine Palace at Pushkin. The walls were light green with white bas-relief ornamentation depicting a selection of scenes from Greek mythology. Two green marble pedestals, each displaying a small imitation jade urn, stood on either side of a white plaster fireplace. On the mantelpiece was a large gilt clock. And in all the arched windows curtains of shiny green satin obscured the view of the Fontanka. All the windows except one, that is. This was broken and blackened from the Molotov cocktail that had been thrown through it the previous evening.

Things could have been worse. None of the Pushkin’s staff or privileged patrons had been injured: for once, the fire extinguishers had performed as they were supposed to. Apart from the window and a couple of well-scorched dining tables there was little other damage. But for one of the customers reporting the arson attack to the local militia, Grushko’s department might never have heard about it.

Grushko sniffed at the blackened tables like an inquisitive cat.

‘Well, they knew what they were doing,’ he said finally. They didn’t leave out the oil. Amateurs usually forget it and just use gasoline. But it’s the oil that makes a good Molotov. Makes the flame stick more.’

The owner-manager, a Mr Chazov, did his best to play down the incident.