Филип Керр - Dead Meat

‘I don’t think there’s any reason for you people from Internal Affairs to become involved in something like this,’ he said hopefully. ‘It was nothing. Just a bunch of kids probably. Nobody’s been injured, so can’t we forget about it?’

‘And the men who did this?’ Grushko replied obstinately. ‘Do you think they’ll forget about it?’

‘Like I said, it was most probably a bunch of kids.’

‘You got a look at them, did you?’

‘Not as such,’ said Chazov. ‘No, what I mean to say is, I heard them — laughing.’

‘It’s true, a grown man doesn’t find much to amuse him these days,’ said Grushko. ‘But to be sure that these were kids just from their laughter, well, that’s impressive.’

He smiled and wandered round the restaurant nodding appreciatively at the decoration. I saw him catch Nikolai’s eye and jerk his head meaningfully. Nikolai nodded curtly and went through to the kitchens.

‘Of course, the criminals are getting younger and younger,’ Grushko continued. ‘Although it’s equally possible that I’m just getting older and older. Either way they’re vicious bastards and don’t mind who they injure. But that’s the carelessness of youth, I suppose. Wouldn’t you say so, Mr Chazov?’

Chazov sat down heavily at one of the tables and dropped his head into his hands. He swept his lank brown hair back across his sweating head and then rubbed his unshaven jaw with the desperate air of a man who needed a drink.

‘Look,’ he gulped, ‘I can’t tell you anything.’

‘I don’t know that I’ve really asked you anything yet,’ said Grushko. ‘What I do know is that these men — these kids — they’ll be back. And they’ll keep coming back unless you help me. Next time someone might be seriously injured. Or worse.’

‘Please, Colonel, I have a family, you know?’ There was a tremor in his voice.

‘Maybe I should ask them who did this.’

Nikolai reappeared in the doorway, almost filling it, like a toy bear in its box. He called to Grushko.

A cockroach scuttled out of our way as we followed the big man through the kitchen door. Dirty saucepans and unwashed dishes lay everywhere inside. Crates of vegetables stood on a greasy linoleum floor next to an open bag of foul-smelling garbage. Several flies performed slow aerobatics within easy range of a large slab of chocolate cake. My eyes fell upon a collection of tiny bottles that were collected in a plastic bag that had been placed on top of a box of apples. For a moment I thought they were phials of drugs, but on looking more closely I realized that each bottle contained a tiny fragment of human stool.

Chazov noted my wrinkled nose and shrugged.

‘Department of Health wanted some samples from the staff,’ he said. ‘We had a small outbreak of salmonella just after we opened.’

‘You don’t have to leave them lying around in here, do you?’ I said.

‘No, I guess not.’ Chazov collected the bag of samples and walked out of the kitchen. I wondered where he was planning to put them this time.

Nikolai hauled open the door to a large walk-in fridge-freezer and Grushko touched his hairline with his eyebrows. There were cartons of meat stacked almost as high as the ceiling. For a moment we just stood there sniffing excitedly at the sour, fleshy air like a pack of hungry dogs.

‘Did you ever see so much meat, sir?’

Nikolai touched a piece of frozen beef that lay partly chopped on a butcher’s block almost reverently, as if it had been a relic of St Stephen of Perm.

‘I’d almost forgotten what the stuff looked like,’ Grushko said quietly.

‘Hard to remember on a militiaman’s salary,’ observed Nikolai.

‘Do you think it might be stolen?’ I heard myself say.

Both men turned and looked at me with quiet amusement.

‘Well, I don’t imagine he bought it in the state meat market,’ said Grushko. ‘No, these co-ops rely on illegal sources of supply. That’s another reason why they’re vulnerable to the squeeze.’ He looked back at the meat for a second. ‘I bet that’s why he didn’t want the militia involved in the first place.’

Nikolai fed a cigarette between his lips and closed the fridge door behind them.

‘Want me to sweat Chazov about it?’ he said. ‘It might help him to recall who tossed the vodka martini through the window.’

‘Good idea. Ask him — better still, tell him, to come and explain it to us at the Big House tomorrow. That should give him something to think about this evening.’

Nikolai chuckled and lit his cigarette. The match dropping from his thick sausagey fingers stayed alight on the greasy linoleum. Grushko regarded it with friendly disapproval.

‘Maybe you’re planning to sell them some fire insurance yourself.’

Nikolai grinned sheepishly and extinguished the small flame with the toe of his trainer.

Outside the Pushkin on Fontanka, Sasha was speaking on Grushko’s car phone. Seeing Grushko he waved the handset at him and then stepped away from the open passenger door.

‘It’s General Kornilov,’ he whispered.

Grushko took the call and gradually his wide, peasant face grew more sombre. By the time he had finished listening to what the general had to say he was frowning so hard his brow looked as if it had been clawed by a bear. Sighing deeply he handed Sasha the phone and walked to the railing beside the canal, where he flicked his cigarette butt into the still brown water. I looked at Sasha who shrugged and shook his head. When Nikolai finally emerged from the restaurant I wandered over to where Grushko was standing.

‘You see that building?’

I followed his eyes across the canal to an old grey palace.

‘That’s the House of Friendship and Peace. Well, there’s precious little of that about, I can tell you. Not these days.’ He lit another cigarette and waved Nikolai and Sasha towards him.

‘I take it you’ve all heard of Mikhail Milyukin?’

The three of us said we had. There wasn’t anyone who watched television or was a fan of the two most popular magazines of the day, Ogonyok and Krokodil , who hadn’t heard of Mikhail Milyukin. As the old Soviet Union’s first investigative reporter he was virtually a national institution.

‘He’s been murdered,’ said Grushko. ‘And it’s on our sheet.’

‘We usually leave the murder inquiries to the State Prosecutor’s Office, don’t we, sir?’ said Nikolai.

‘Kornilov says that they want us to handle it.’ Grushko shook his head vaguely. ‘Apparently there are certain circumstances which make them think that it might be our flock of sheep.’

‘What sort of circumstances?’ said Nikolai.

Grushko propelled himself off the railing and walked purposefully towards his car.

‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’

Zelenogorski lies about forty kilometres north-west of St Petersburg along the M10 which, some 150 kilometres further on, reaches all the way to the Finnish border. It wasn’t much to look at. By the time I had realised that it was a town we had passed it by and were heading out into the country again, along a smaller A road that lies along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Several minutes later we turned off this road and drove for a short way until we came upon a militia van parked at the edge of the forest. Grushko drew up beside the van and asked one of the militiamen waiting there for directions to the scene of the crime and the rest of their colleagues. Then we were off again. Uncomfortably fast, Grushko’s small, strong hands a blur of opposite lock and gear changing, as if he had been a driver in some kind of car-rally. But the drive along the forest track seemed to cheer him up a little and when finally he caught sight of the other militia vans and brought the car to a slithering halt, he grinned sadistically at me. I wondered if he still thought I was there to spy on his department.