Jack Grimwood - Moskva

Dennisov didn’t nod but he didn’t shake his head either.

‘What do they have over you?’

Tom followed Dennisov’s gaze towards the curtain and the box room beyond where Yelena slept. ‘What do you want this time?’ Dennisov asked.

‘Besides vodka? I want to know if a tattoo of a wolf’s head wearing a cap means anything… I forgot to ask last time.’

‘What colour cap?’

‘That makes a difference?’

‘It might,’ said Dennisov. ‘And it’s probably a bear.’

‘All right. A bear’s head. What does it mean?’

‘This has to do with that girl of yours?’ Dennisov sucked his teeth. ‘Of course it has. If the cap’s blue, whoever has the tattoo probably served with the Airborne. That doesn’t look like it makes you happy.’

‘It doesn’t…’ Tom ended up telling Dennisov about going out to the university. About a call that afternoon from Davie to say he’d remembered that the Russian boy Alex liked had a wolf’s head tattoo.

‘You have no proof Kotik and the girl saw each other again.’

‘I have no proof they didn’t.’

‘You think he was the boy who died in that fire?’

Tom nodded. ‘Someone must know.’

Taking a record from a stack, Dennisov slid it from its sleeve and set his deck spinning. Music blasted from the speakers. ‘Nautilus Pompilius,’ he said. ‘We played this before battle. They tried to kill us. We tried to kill them. I liked it when life was simple.’

‘Me too,’ Tom said.

They clinked glasses.

At a shout from behind the curtain, Dennisov turned the sound down slightly, then shrugged and clicked it off. ‘My turn,’ Tom said. He pulled an LP from his bag and put it on the zinc, first wiping away scraps of food with his elbow.

Dennisov slid the record from its sleeve, holding it at an angle to check for scratches and wear. ‘This is punk?’

‘Irish folk music.’

Dennisov snorted. But as soon as Moya Brennan’s haunting voice echoed from the speakers Tom stopped regretting bringing the record and felt a shiver run down his spine, his eyes fill with unexpected tears. He turned away.

‘Your enemy’s music?’

‘And their language,’ Tom said.

‘What does it say?’

‘The obvious. In a war like this no one will stop fighting. In a war like this no one can win, everybody will lose… It’s from a poem.’

‘You’re allowed to own this?’

‘It’s very popular. Well, it was. They still play it on the radio. Of course, most English people don’t understand what it says.’

‘What a country.’

Reaching into his bag again, Tom said, ‘We also produce this.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘A great British tradition.’

‘Selling slaves? Persecuting workers? Sucking up to America?’

‘Bacon. For sarnies.’

Pulling a pan from under a pile of plates, Tom slopped in oil already used to fry something else, flicked on the gas and lit the ring. While the oil smoked, he hacked slices from a Russian loaf the consistency of sawdust, spread it with Anchor butter and fried four rashers of bacon until almost burned.

Tipping the rashers on to the bread, he slathered Heinz ketchup over the top, sealed the sandwich and handed it to Dennisov.

‘Eat,’ Tom ordered.

Yelena came through to see what the smell was, took one look at the packet of bacon, found herself a knife and began slicing away the rinds, which she piled like worms into a saucer.

‘For the wild birds,’ her brother said.

Tom nodded.

‘I still don’t like you,’ Yelena said.

He made her a sandwich anyway.

‘My brother likes you. But then he’s a fool.’ She shrugged. ‘You’ve seen our customers. When they first come in, they mournfully try to match him glass for glass, then stagger home. Some don’t even make it that far. They never try again. You keep coming back. You keep drinking. Of course he likes you…’

‘We’ve seen the same things.’

She looked at him, surprisingly severely. ‘I hope not.’

Tom wondered which of them she thought had seen worse.

Her brother sent her back to bed two sandwiches later, the bruise on her cheek unmentioned, and Tom put the remaining bacon, butter and tomato sauce in her fridge.

‘Bribery?’ Dennisov asked.

‘Soviet butter isn’t better?’

‘We have butter?’

‘You look dreadful,’ Sir Edward said.

‘Insomnia, sir.’

‘Have you seen the embassy doctor?’

‘He suggested sleeping pills, sir. I don’t like sleeping pills. They can cost you your edge.’ Tom was amused by how hard Sir Edward had to work not to ask, ‘What edge?’

‘He’s a doctor, Fox. You should take his advice.’

‘I will if it doesn’t go, sir.’

Sir Edward nodded doubtfully.

Even after Tom arrived twenty minutes late, he got the feeling the ambassador couldn’t decide whether to be irritated or grateful that his unshaven underling had turned up for the meeting at all. Tom had spent forty-five minutes under the shower at Sad Sam trying to turn into something vaguely human. He was clean if not shiny, his suit almost uncreased. He even had a razor in his pocket in case the chance arose.

‘I’m told you want copies of Alex’s photograph?’

If nothing else, he couldn’t fault Sir Edward’s spider’s web. The other reason Tom was late was because he’d wasted time in Photographic trying to persuade a technician that turning a Vivitar enlarger over to making copies of Alex’s photograph came ahead of any other embassy business. That information had reached Sir Edward’s office before Tom did.

‘Can I ask why?’ Sir Edward said.

‘Your stepdaughter was seen in GUM.’

That wasn’t his real reason, but it would have to do. Tom’s real reason was he wanted Dennisov to try to find anybody who’d admit to seeing Alex arrive at or leave the warehouse where the body was burned.

‘Unlikely, as it turns out,’ Sir Edward said. ‘Although Anna told me that too. Unfortunately, she forgot to get the number of the militsiya officer who told her. What were you planning to do with them?’

‘The obvious, sir. Take them down there, go round the stalls and ask them to notify us if she returns. It might help if we can offer a reward.’

‘No need, Fox. The Soviets have found her.’

‘We’re talking to them now?’

‘Yes,’ Sir Edward said. ‘We’re talking to them now. Mary called London and London talked direct. Calls were made. Ground rules set. You know how it works. Alex has been traced to some kind of commune. We have that from Vedenin himself. He wanted to know if we’d like help retrieving her.’

Tom had thought that the ambassador was looking more relaxed than he’d seen him in a while. It wasn’t relaxed, he realized. It was relieved.

‘A commune, sir?’

‘More of a cult really. Didn’t know they had them here. But, as Mary says, these are the people who produced Rasputin.’

Becca’s voice was in his head before Tom could stop it, followed by the memory of discovering her dancing round the kitchen to the radio, how she’d frozen on being caught and retreated into silence as the joy went out of her, becoming the stiff, controlled little thing he remembered. Nothing as simple as a cult for Becca. Nothing so comprehensible.

‘What happens now, sir?’

‘What do you know about the…’ He looked at a sheet of paper. ‘The Vnutrenniye Voiska?’

Tom searched his memory.

‘Soviet equivalent of the French Gendarmerie Nationale,’ Sir Edward said impatiently, ‘but better armed. They deal with internal unrest. Riots. Terrorist outrages. Religious problems. Also cults, apparently. They report to the MVD, the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs.’