Jack Grimwood - Moskva

‘He’s escaped?’ Tom said.

He saw the shock on Sveta’s face.

‘It’s either that,’ said Tom, ‘or he’s been released.’

‘Who told you?’ she demanded. ‘Even my grandfather’s only just discovered that. How could you possibly know?’

Tom explained about the articles.

‘He’ll be working his way towards Moscow.’

‘He’s here already. Or he’s been and gone.’ Tom told her about the dead cat, about dismembering its body and disposing of the pieces, pretending to himself and to whoever did it that it had never happened.

‘He won’t have liked that,’ Sveta said.

‘Believe me, I didn’t like it either.’

Tom asked himself whether Kyukov had been behind the murder of the girl in the park and dismissed the thought. That murder had been too clean, too sterile. It wouldn’t have satisfied Kyukov at all.

‘I imagine General Dennisov will be pleased.’

‘Why?’ Sveta said. ‘Would you want someone bat-shit insane as your self-professed best friend? I imagine he’s terrified of the man.’

‘He wasn’t behind Kyukov’s release?’

‘Gorbachev declared an amnesty for politicals. Kyukov qualified. By the time anyone realized he’d be on the list he was gone.’

Tom considered that.

‘Should you find him…’ Sveta said.

‘Your grandfather would like to know?’

‘My grandfather would like him dead.’ Sweeping up Kyukov’s file, Sveta thrust it almost angrily into her satchel, pushed back her chair and glanced instinctively at her reflection in the window before straightening her collar.

Tom was too early for the bar to be open for lunch, and the blind was down over the door and the windows so steamy their glass looked frosted. He hammered on the door anyway. Yelena allowed herself almost a smile when she realized who it was.

Glancing both ways along the concrete walkway, she hurried him inside and shut the door firmly behind her. ‘My brother’s out,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back soon.’

Tom had to fight the urge to ask where he’d been.

Dumplings boiled in a steel pan in the kitchen, the steam turning to condensation and running down the wall Tom leaned against, trying to stay out of Yelena’s way as she chopped onions and piled them into a bowl. ‘What are you making?’ he asked.

‘I’ll decide later.’ Having finished chopping, she glanced across at him. ‘Need vodka?’

Tom shook his head. ‘I’ve got a question.’

‘For me?’ she said. ‘Or for my brother?’

‘Three Sisters.’

‘Chekov? The play?’

‘It’s where Alex is being held.’

Yelena’s face was unreadable. ‘Beziki told you this?’ she asked finally.

‘Before he shot himself.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’

Because I was trying to work out if I could really trust you didn’t seem the right answer. Any more than I’m still not entirely sure was an acceptable rider to that thought. The problem was that he had to trust someone. The alternative was to reach a point where he wasn’t even sure that he trusted himself.

Outside, Dennisov rattled his key in the lock and the sound of a woman shouting and a child crying on the walkway entered with him, fragments of misery that ended the moment he shut the door and headed for the kitchen.

‘You okay?’ Dennisov asked.

‘He’s asking about Three Sisters.’

Coming to stand beside his sister, Dennisov wrapped his arm round her and hugged her tight until she leaned her head into his shoulder.

‘They’re rocks,’ he said.

Yelena nodded. ‘There’s a boathouse.’

‘With steps down from the Cormorant’s Nest.’

‘There are two sets of rocks,’ Yelena said. ‘The Big Sisters and the Little Sisters. The Little Sisters are below the Cormorant’s Nest… That’s a castle in the Crimea,’ she added. ‘A little castle.’

Dennisov nodded. ‘It used to be ours.’

‘What happened?’ Tom asked.

‘It became someone else’s.’

‘Beziki’s?’

‘Yes,’ Dennisov said. ‘Gabashville’s.’

Letting go of his sister, he retrieved a tatty school atlas from the box room and found a double-page spread of the Crimea, peering at it closely. When he couldn’t find what he wanted, he turned to the index and then back to the spread, trying to find the coordinates.

‘Give it to me,’ Yelena demanded.

Tom wasn’t even sure she looked at the page properly. But she jabbed her finger with such certainty that he went to stand by her side and peered at the jagged shoreline she indicated. There were few roads and no big ones. The colouring of the map and the tightness of the contour lines said she was pointing at cliffs.

‘How do I get there?’ Tom asked.

‘You don’t,’ Dennisov said. ‘Sebastopol’s a closed city. You’d have no chance of getting travel papers. Even if you got to Sebastopol, you’d have no way of reaching the house. Tell your embassy. Let them tell the police.’

‘The embassy aren’t taking my calls.’

‘You know…’ Yelena said.

‘No,’ said Dennisov. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘They won’t let him into the Crimea alone.’

‘They won’t let him in at all,’ Dennisov said firmly.

‘So he’ll need a guide.’

‘Yelena…’

‘We’ll take the train.’

‘You really think anyone will sell him a ticket?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ll take the train .’

Yelena looked stubborn, Dennisov close to tears. Something unspoken passed between them and then it was her turn to put her arms round her brother, hugging him fiercely. ‘You said you’d never go back,’ he said forlornly.

‘I said I didn’t think I’d ever be able to. That’s different.’ She looked him. ‘You know it’s different. If I don’t go back now, I’ll know it was because I was afraid and that will be worse. Tom will pretend to be you.’

‘Yelena…’

‘I’m sad. So very sad I have to see places where I was happier . Places from when I was young. Who could deny me that?’

Her mouth twisted at the thought.

‘He goes, I go… We catch the train.’

Dennisov had lost his nerve about letting his sister take Tom to the Crimea but was losing his battle to stop her. This was a Yelena that Tom hadn’t seen before, stubborn to the point of planting her feet firmly and sticking her fists on her hips. In anyone else it would look childish.

He doubted she’d even care.

She’d furiously brushed aside the matter of Tom having two legs to her brother’s one, just as she’d rejected Dennisov’s insistence that he go instead of her. His final offer was that they should both go and leave Tom behind. Her counter-suggestion that Sveta go with Tom he rejected with such force that Yelena laughed.

‘I’m an only child,’ Tom said in the taxi heading for the station.

‘What makes you tell me that?’

‘Watching you argue with your brother.’

‘In my family, we’re all only children,’ Yelena said. The taxi driver glanced up at that and Tom realized he was a regular from the bar. Seeing Tom notice, the man concentrated on the road ahead.

‘Don’t hurt my brother,’ Yelena said.

‘What makes you think I’d hurt him?’

‘I don’t think you’d mean to.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m like that too. I don’t mean to. Well, mostly not.’ They went back to watching the traffic and Tom was grateful when the station came into view. ‘Wait here,’ she said.

She bought two tickets for a local line, and they changed at the next station. Disappearing into the women’s lavatories, she reappeared five minutes later beautifully made-up and dressed as someone else. Her eyes when she saw him examining her were distant. Her face immobile.