Jack Grimwood - Moskva

A Walkman balanced against it.

First and Last and Always , Love , Power, Corruption & Lies , Hyæna.

The cassettes inside the boxes matched their titles.

Nothing was taped to the underside of any of the drawers, nothing hidden in the dead space below the lowest. Bare hangers showed where clothes had been taken. The last thing Tom did was drag a chair to Alex’s wardrobe and step up so that he could check the top. It was dusty, but nothing like as dusty as it should have been.

In the space below the detachable top were Alex’s secrets.

Some of them anyway.

A new edition of Yevtushenko and a Complete Andrei Voznesensky , both collections of poetry in the original Russian. Kisses for Mayakovsky was English, by Alison Fell. Loved obsessively from the look of it. The book had been published only the year before and was already falling to pieces. Inside, Tom found a postcard of the wedding-cake monstrosity that was Moscow University:

You will hear thunder & remember me & think: She wanted storms…

‘Dxxxxx’? Five kisses?

Immediately, Tom wondered if D was the East German girl and all of this was more complicated than Sir Edward and Anna were prepared to admit. Perhaps Alex’s old school friend’s sulk was about more than her lack of letters. How careful need he be in how he asked about that?

By the way, do you know if your daughter is a lesbian?

Oh, you’re right. Of course. It’s probably just a phase she’s going through.

Beside the books sat three Soviet pin badges and a gothic cross on a chain. Tom wasn’t sure if the last was cheap or expensive. His wife would know. Caro was good at things like that. Two computer disks sat underneath.

Amsoft WordProcessor , LocoScript.

Tom had decided this was his lot when he saw a cassette box at the back. It was empty, the insert homemade. A photocopied Soviet Star coloured in with fluorescent highlighter. For Alex said the spine.

He wondered if she’d taken the tape, then had a better idea.

Putting the chair back where it belonged, he flipped open her Walkman and found a C60 ferrous-oxide tape, American made, no writing either side. Hitting play, he heard drumming so precise it had to be a machine, followed by a few bars of intro from an electric guitar and then a voice dark enough to come from deep inside a cave.

A second track followed, then a third.

It was the third Tom recognized. The words of ‘Comfortably Numb’, familiar and frighteningly true. But this version was darker and stranger and altogether more anguished than any he’d heard. The hissing of the tape told him that Alex had played it half to death. Looking round her room, Tom read what he saw.

The purple-haired gonk on the window ledge, the photograph of her friend, the copy of When the Wind Blows said fragments of an earlier Alex remained. But they were fragments. The sense of a newer, more complex, more adult Alex was overpowering. Tom ran through the options.

She’d run away. She’d been enticed away. She didn’t want to come back. She wanted to come back and couldn’t…

There was no her to come back.

Tom was heading down the steps from the embassy on to Maurice Thorez Embankment when he spotted Anna Masterton standing by a low wall, staring at the frozen river. She was huddled in a sheepskin coat, and carried leather gloves in one hand. Her surprise at seeing him was so overdone he wondered how long she’d been waiting.

‘Find anything useful?’ she asked.

‘Not yet.’

Her smile faded at his answer. ‘Edward says you served in Ulster.’

Tom nodded, face carefully neutral. ‘Both sides of the border.’

‘Do I ask what you were doing?’

‘Best not. I have to ask. Might Alex have gone home?’

‘Home?’

‘To the UK. To her father?’

Anna looked as if she’d just been slapped. ‘He’s dead,’ she said flatly. ‘And this is her home, for now. For better or worse.’

‘I’m sorry. An accident?’

‘Cancer, prostate. Alex took it badly. Well, you would.’ Anna tried to smile. ‘Do you have time for a coffee?’

Tom pretended to glance at his watch. No one senior would read the report he’d been sent to Moscow to write. At least, no more than the necessary skim through to confirm he’d written the bloody thing. ‘The Resilience of Religion in Soviet Russia’.

Maybe he was misjudging his bosses. Maybe he was meant to find a magic lever to bring the whole Soviet state to its knees.

Personally, he doubted it.

You are required to present yourself at the Palace of Westminster on 14 February at 3.45 p.m. Please use the Cromwell Green entrance… You may, if you wish, make a written submission in advance of the hearing.

He didn’t wish. He didn’t wish at all.

Tom was in Moscow to keep him out of the clutches of a parliamentary select committee on Northern Ireland, who’d whine at his absence and note their displeasure and move on to safer matters. Much safer. Safer for everyone.

‘I should probably get back to work,’ he said.

‘You have a deadline?’

‘Oh yes.’ He did too. Although he couldn’t remember what it was.

‘I’d better let you go then.’

‘Anna…’

She turned back.

‘What did you really want to ask?’

‘Oh God, look, between us… All right? Alex was keen on an American boy at the university here. Nineteen, so a bit old for her. They met at the swimming pool. I’ve been trying to leave David messages but they’re not getting through.’

‘That’s where Alex is?’

‘That’s what I’d decided.’ Anna bit her lip. ‘Hope against hope, really. Anyway, after I left you up there, I cracked.’

‘You’re driving out there?’

‘Dear God, no. Edward would want to come. I called the American ambassador’s wife. We get on well enough. The thing is, our embassy keeps a list of British exchange students at Moscow University. We’re their post office. They come in now and then to check on mail from home. The Americans run the same system.’

‘So you got a message to him that way?’

‘He doesn’t exist. At least, there’s no David Wright.’

‘Your daughter told you about this boy?’

‘I lied about Alex not having a diary.’ Anna Masterton coloured slightly. ‘He must have given her a false name.’

‘Or she suspected you were reading it and used a false one.’

That thought obviously hadn’t occurred to her.

‘Where’s her diary now?’ Tom asked.

‘Gone… Along with half her clothes.’

‘Boy trouble is good,’ said Tom. ‘Certainly better than your other options.’ Anna looked so sick he regretted his words immediately.

‘Ask your husband what Alex said in her note.’

‘There wasn’t…’ Anna stopped. Her face hardened, and Tom was glad not to have her as an enemy. She’d make a bad enemy. ‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘That’s why he’s so bloody calm, isn’t it? She didn’t simply vanish. She left a note.’

Tom imagined so. There usually was.

Her glance was sharp. ‘How long have you known?’

Since your husband looked shifty when I asked, would be tactless even for him. So Tom shrugged and said it was just a hunch. He doubted she believed him.

‘Do you have a photograph I could borrow?’

‘Of Alex? Probably. Why?’

‘I’ll go out to the university first thing tomorrow.’

The storm was already in him when Tom opened his eyes. It didn’t need some passing slight or cruel memory to birth it. The damn thing was there and waiting as he rolled out of bed, took a second to balance and knew he was going to do what he’d told Anna Masterton he’d do.