Jack Grimwood - Moskva

‘What does Becca have to do with Alex?’

‘I’m told it’s only six months since your daughter died. I imagine one reminds you of the other.’

‘And your interest?’

For a moment the man looked too furious to answer. But the sudden flare of anger in his eyes was for something else. Something so dark that the fat man held it inside and examined it in the few hot seconds that passed.

‘Edvard’s dead,’ he said finally.

Should Tom know who Edvard was? He made himself wait.

‘I have twins. Had twins. One may still be alive.’

Beziki swept his hand across his skull, wiping sweat from his hair, and as his forehead uncreased and his jowls lifted Tom caught a glimpse of the man he’d once been: fiercer, outwardly harder, less considered.

‘What happened?’

‘They left my boy dead below the Kremlin Wall.’

Opening the cooler box, Tom refilled the man’s glass, watched him drink it down and refilled it again. Then he drank one down himself.

‘Who are they ?’

‘I’ll tell you when I know. First, Rebecca.’

Last night’s hangover already tainted the sweat rolling down Tom’s chest to gather in his navel, before dripping between his balls to splash to the floor. He could feel the next wave of alcohol flushing his veins. Eat more and drink less. It was an easy thing for a doctor to say.

‘Sometimes it helps to tell,’ Beziki said.

‘Have you told anyone?’

‘I’m telling you.’

Leaning back, the thickset man settled his bulk and closed his eyes as if intending to wait him out. Tom didn’t make him wait long. He was shocked to discover that he wanted to talk. He had things to say that he couldn’t begin to say to Caro. Things he couldn’t say to the police, his friends, what passed for his colleagues. And Beziki was right. If it weren’t for Becca, he’d never have spoken to Alex in the first place. ‘We had her young,’ Tom said. ‘It was complicated.’

‘You married because of it?’

‘I was training to be a Catholic priest. “ Tu es sacerdos in aeternum. ”’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You’re ordained for ever. Only, not quite. I admired the car in the window, got the brochure, booked a test drive but I never took Catholicism on the road. I was twenty-two, Caro nineteen. Her mother was furious.’

‘And yours?’

‘Mine died shortly afterwards. My dad was in jail.’

Beziki opened his eyes with the laziness of a fat cat hearing the scurrying of mice. ‘He was vor v zakone ?’

‘He was a thief. And he was in the law. But nothing so grand. Bent copper.’

‘Copper?’

‘Military police…’

Beziki’s nod was carefully neutral. ‘Let’s get back to your daughter. What happened?’

‘Her car hit a tree. She was seventeen.’ Tom no longer cared that Beziki knew. He simply wanted to tell someone the truth.

‘A traffic accident?’

‘The police wondered if she’d been drinking. I told them no way. She was too careful to drink and drive.’

‘Another car was involved then?’

‘Maybe she swerved to avoid an accident? That was one of their suggestions. There was no paint from another vehicle on the Mini we’d bought her. No skid marks to say she’d been braking when she went off the road.’

‘She was racing?’

‘The police suggested that. Perhaps, if she’d been a boy… But not Bec. She was quiet. Stubborn as hell but a nervous driver, not the racing kind. The police wondered if someone had been tailgating her, or maybe she was being chased. Did we know of any reason someone might have been chasing her?’

‘Did you?’

‘She was seventeen and three months. A model student. She’d had the same boyfriend since she was fifteen.’

‘The weather was good?’

‘A clear night and a full moon. The headlights were working. The tyres were good. We’d insisted the garage give us a new set. The Mini was MOTed, taxed, newly serviced and insured. The police asked if she took drugs, if she’d been acting strangely, how college had been going, if we knew of any reason she might be upset…’

‘And the answers?’

‘Her marks were great. She occasionally quarrelled with her boyfriend but it was never serious. She didn’t seem any different. She certainly didn’t seem upset.’

‘What do you think happened?’

‘I know what happened. She killed herself.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Tom chewed at his lip. ‘I’ve asked myself over and over. The answer is… I don’t know . But she put her Mini into a tree at eighty miles an hour on a straight dry road. She died instantly. So the police were careful to tell us.’

‘What aren’t you saying?’

They’d got to the bit Caro didn’t know.

Taking a deep breath, Tom said, ‘We’d already told the police she barely drank and said dope made people stupid, but they had to be certain. My father-in-law arranged for a pathologist he knew to do the autopsy. His report…’ Tom paused, then kept going. Safer that way. ‘His report was to the point. It consisted mostly of a list of broken bones and ruptured organs. Like the police, he said that she died instantly. Unlike with the police, we believed him. There was no alcohol in her blood. No drugs. Nothing to suggest an aneurism. Her blood count was down, her haemoglobin low. A few other clues suggested she’d been tired at the time… So the coroner recorded his opinion that she’d dozed off at the wheel and only woken at the very end.’

‘You don’t believe him?’

‘Becca was three months’ pregnant. That was what was left out of the report my wife was given. I thanked the pathologist for his discretion, went straight round to Bec’s boyfriend and put him through a wall. When his dad tried to stop me, I punched him out. With his mum screaming that I’d got it wrong, I dragged the little shit into the garden and began hurting him. By the time the police arrived he’d pissed himself. It took three coppers to pull me off.’

‘How old was this boy?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Old enough. You have friends in the police?’

‘My father-in-law does. The family agreed not to press charges in return for a promise I’d never go near them again… Wounded in Northern Ireland. Back on leave from Belfast. Hush-hush work. Distraught at the tragic death of his daughter. The police suggested they let the matter drop. My marriage was in ruins by then. Charlie off to boarding school. My wife decided it was the best place for him. I moved into a hotel a week later.’

‘So you’re divorced?’

‘Temporary separation while we see how it goes.’

Beziki opened one eye. ‘And how is it going?’

‘As badly as you’d expect.’

‘In Russia, your daughter would have had an abortion.’

‘In the UK too. We’d have stood by her. We’d have been unhappy about it. Furious even. But we’d have stood by her.’

‘And the boy… Would his family have helped?’

‘He wrote to me. He wanted me to know he’d told the truth. He never slept with Becs. As far as he knew she’d never slept with anyone. He was sorry she was dead. He’d loved her. He always would.’

‘Who was the father?’

‘I’ve no idea. I sorted through her record collection afterwards. Caro couldn’t bring herself to do it. “All Cried Out”, “Tainted Love”, “King of Pain”. It was as if Bec wanted to tell us something.’ Tom shook his head.

There was no as if about it.

Reaching for the cooler box, he refilled his glass and tossed it back. Chacha burned his throat. A burn to match the sting in his eyes. It was true that he had no idea who the father was, no idea what had happened in the last six months of his daughter’s life. Since Becca’s death, he’d come to wonder if he’d known her at all.