Jack Grimwood - Moskva

‘Why would Beziki’s boy do this?’ he demanded.

And Svetlana’s answer came as easily as if it was obvious.

‘Because he had no choice. Because he was protecting his father or someone else. Because the consequences of not doing it were worse.’

‘Ah,’ said a voice. ‘They said I’d find you here.’

Vedenin’s words made Svetlana stiffen. The minister came to stand behind her. He barely glanced at the sniper. The old man’s face was drawn, his thoughts turned inwards. ‘We’ve found children.’

‘Children, sir?’ Svetlana said.

‘A dozen or so. In the cellar. Behind locked doors.’

‘Are they all right?’

‘You’d better come with me.’

Trying not to think about what he might find, Tom followed him down the spiral staircase, past a dozen men he barely noticed. If he’d had the adrenaline rush of battle, it might have been different. If you could call killing a child holding a rabbit rifle battle. But all he felt was a growing dread as Vedenin led the way to where steps descended to vaulted cellars below.

At the bottom, five children sprawled on a rug.

Three boys, two girls, all young.

They could have been sleeping, but they weren’t. In the middle stood a two-litre bottle of Coke, the real thing, not some Soviet copy. It was a quarter gone. Paper cups lay nearby. A crime-scene photographer was already shooting the corpses, his flash bleaching out their faces and throwing shadows on the wall.

‘Any more?’ Tom demanded.

‘In the next room.’

‘How many?’

‘Eleven so far.’

‘Is Alex one of them?’

The old man looked shattered, on the verge of tears. All the bombast, all the pride in his elite troop had gone out of him. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He gestured helplessly at the cellar beyond. ‘You tell me.’

Tom stepped unthinking over bodies, moving past the ghosts, who shuffled aside to let him through. An officer dipped to retrieve a half-empty Coke bottle and sniffed it, putting it down more or less where he found it. Only the camera flashes and photographers suggested that this was a crime scene.

The rest of them seemed to have forgotten that.

Five more bodies lay in the cellar beyond, one of them dark-haired and on her front with a denim jacket neatly folded under her head, as if she were sleeping. Her arms were pale, her jeans new, her plimsolls undone. The one shaken free said her death had not been as peaceful as her form made it seem.

Kneeling, Tom reached for her.

When he hesitated, fingers gripped his shoulder hard. He could smell Svetlana’s scent and feel the heat of her on the back of his neck. ‘Do it,’ she said.

He rolled the girl over and saw a stranger.

Very beautiful and very young, but a stranger. Unbroken but for the fact she was no longer alive. The police hadn’t let him see Becca. What the paramedics cut from the Mini the authorities put in a box after the autopsy, screwed down the lid and advised Tom not to look. Even now, even this many months later, he felt guilt that he hadn’t made someone show him.

‘Yours?’ Vedenin asked.

Mine’s already buried, Tom almost replied.

Taking Tom’s silence as a negative, Vedenin followed Tom towards the door to the cellars and stopped to talk to the Spetsnaz officer who had briefed him earlier.

‘Six boys, five girls,’ he said on his return. ‘That’s the lot.’

‘Eleven in total,’ said Svetlana.

‘Twelve,’ Tom corrected her. ‘With Beziki’s boy upstairs.’

Comrade Vedenin stared at him. ‘That’s Gabashville’s son?’ His face, already pale, was unreadable as he reached into his pocket for a cigar, lighting it mechanically, his first puff a stronger imitation of their warm breath in the frozen air.

‘Yes, sir, I think so.’

Vedenin peeled a strip of tobacco leaf from his lip and flicked it on to the crime scene floor. He looked round the room and when he turned back his face was hollow, almost haunted. Dropping his cigar, barely smoked, he ground it under his heel without really noticing, his movements mechanical.

‘At least your girl isn’t here. I suppose that’s something.’

‘I pity her mother,’ Svetlana said.

Both men turned to stare at her.

‘If Alex were here and dead, at least she’d know where her daughter was. As it is, she still won’t know and we’re no closer to finding her.’ She shrugged at Vedenin’s look. ‘A hard truth is better than no truth. You ask her mother.’

‘Svetlana…’

‘I’ll wait outside,’ she told him.

‘Her childhood was complicated,’ Vedenin told Tom, lighting another cigar. ‘Sometimes the ones with complicated backgrounds make the best officers.’ He looked Tom up and down, as if seeking proof of this. ‘I’m told yours was similarly messy?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘People,’ he said heavily.

The way Vedenin kept staring round the cellar made Tom wonder whether he simply couldn’t believe what he was seeing or hoped somehow that if he looked hard enough he might change it. Several times the minister opened his mouth to say something before changing his mind. Finally, he stubbed his cigar out on the wall, barely a quarter smoked and in total disregard of the need not to corrupt evidence.

For a second, his hand hovered over the pocket where he kept his cigar case and then he shrugged. ‘We should go,’ he said.

‘What happens now?’ Tom asked.

‘Svetlana will drive you back to Moscow.’

‘I mean here, sir. What happens here?’

‘I imagine the case will go to the local militsiya . I can see no evidence of a cult. Can you? Simply local delinquents squatting in a ruined house and poisoning themselves with homemade alcohol. It happens daily. I shouldn’t say that to a foreigner but you must have heard rumours. They’ll try to match the dead to files on missing children. Well, someone will. I doubt they’ll find much.’

‘And Gabashville’s child?’

‘If this is him, then he obviously fell in with a bad crowd. Given his upbringing that’s hardly surprising. The cult of individuality. First they want rock music, then…’ The old man looked around him. ‘You get this.’

A howl of sirens from the road prevented Tom from answering.

A few minutes later, panting paramedics hurtled in, too late to do anything but kneel by each body to confirm death and decide in which order to load the stretchers. A crumpled-looking man in a cheap suit came in after them, glowering at the sight of the Spetsnaz.

‘If you’ll excuse me…’ Vedenin said to Tom.

He wandered over and within seconds the crumpled man was nodding seriously, and nodding some more to confirm that he was paying attention and agreed with everything the minister said. It was a surprisingly effective display of power on Vedenin’s part. Vedenin clapped the man on the back one last time, nodded curtly to the Spetsnaz officer and headed for the door, glancing over his shoulder to say Tom should follow.

Outside, the first stretchers were being carried down the track.

Three ambulances were parked behind two VV trucks, the only ones left. Despite a paramedic’s shout, Tom clambered into the first ambulance and began pulling back a sheet. A growled order from Svetlana stopped the paramedic from trying to drag him out of there. She watched Tom go from stretcher to stretcher with something close to pity in her eyes. By the time he’d checked the last of them, a tight knot of fury had taken root. He’d known Alex wasn’t there.

The pain in his chest made him look anyway.

‘Where’s Vedenin?’ he demanded.