Stephen Burke: The Reluctant Contact

‘Is it safe in here?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Igor. ‘It’s safe.’

Yuri looked from the body-shaped tarpaulin to Timur, waiting for him to make an inspection of the remains. He was the agent in charge, after all; what passed for the force of law in this Soviet outpost. Igor, he saw, was expecting the same thing, but Timur appeared to have no intention of going anywhere near the corpse. He wasn’t even looking at it. Instead, he started to order the contents of his engraved silver cigarette case.

‘What happened?’ asked Yuri, getting impatient.

‘The ventilation unit. He was working on it and it seems to have come loose and fallen on him,’ said Igor. ‘Part of the wall collapsed too.’

‘So it was an accident?’ said Yuri.

The foreman paused and caught Timur’s eye, before nodding without conviction.

Timur sighed. ‘Get him out of here. I’ll tell the Norwegians.’ And he started to head back the way they’d come.

‘Aren’t you going to check him?’ demanded Yuri. ‘He could be alive for all you know.’

Timur shot him an angry glance. ‘I already did. I want to see you in my office now.’

‘That’s it?’ asked Yuri. ‘I want to see for myself.’

Timur continued on his way. ‘You can play doctor, and policeman, if you want. My office, ten minutes. Then get him up top, Igor. And I’ll need a written report from you, by tomorrow.’

Igor remained silent and expressionless throughout this exchange, which was probably how he had gotten to the senior position of mine foreman.

‘He was already down here?’ asked Yuri.

‘Yes,’ said Igor. ‘One hour ago.’

Yuri realised that this sideshow had been put on just for him, to see how he would react at the scene. Which meant Timur had put two and two together and had come up with a crime, with his name as prime suspect. So perhaps this wasn’t the accident it appeared to be. At least, if Timur was really convinced he had anything to do with this he would already have locked him up. The KGB man was just fishing. Yuri hoped he hadn’t unwittingly given him any encouragement in his suspicions.

He knelt down and pulled the tarpaulin up with one hand. The sight that greeted him was not pretty. He was glad he had not had the chance to eat much of his second course. Semyon had a deep, open gash on one side of his forehead, and smaller abrasions across both sides of his face. Judging by his pallor, there seemed to be no point in checking for a pulse. Unlike Yuri’s brother, laid out at the funeral home in Moscow, Semyon did not have the expression of someone who was at peace. The man appeared to have suffered in his final moments.

‘Maybe his skull cracked,’ said Igor. ‘Or his neck. That’s usually what happens.’

‘Usually?’ said Yuri.

‘When something heavy lands on a man’s head.’

‘How many mine collapses have you had here?’

Igor looked Yuri in the eye. ‘Since I’ve been here, none. I put the safety of my men first. They know that and they trust me. You can ask any of them.’

‘No one is blaming you,’ said Yuri. ‘So what happened? Did this wall give way?’

‘No,’ said Igor, taking the suggestion as a personal affront. ‘The wall is strong. I don’t let anyone work unless the walls are strong.’ He slapped the side of the tunnel with his large palm to prove the point. The man did inspire confidence. Yuri could see the other miners putting their lives in his hands.

‘How did this happen then?’ asked Yuri. ‘Any of the other men see, or hear, anything?’

The foreman shook his head and pointed at the bulging tarpaulin. ‘He was down here alone. I met him when he arrived, up at the entrance. I offered but he said he didn’t want any help.’

Yuri could well believe Semyon refusing assistance. He was the kind of person who thought he knew everything, and could handle things better on his own. Yuri walked around the body to the ventilation unit, which was lying on the ground where it had fallen. With two hands, he lifted one side of it in the air. He didn’t get very far. It was certainly heavy enough to kill someone if it hit them in the right spot. One bottom corner had a large dent in it, and long scratches in the same place, as if from metal against metal. Igor saw what had attracted his attention, and he nodded.

‘I saw that too,’ he said. ‘To me, it looks like he deliberately pulled the whole thing down off the wall on top of himself.’

Yuri stood up and brushed the coal dust from his hands.

‘You putting that in your report?’ he asked.

Igor stared at him for a moment. It was the familiar Soviet pause. The who-am-I-talking-to hesitation. Gauging how well do I know this person in front of me? Could he or she be a paid informer? It was impossible to tell for sure, even if it was your grandmother.

Igor shook his head. ‘I will write “accident”.’

Yuri was about to leave when a thought made him kneel down again beside the body. First, he went through Semyon’s pockets. Igor stared at him but did not interrupt. He found some keys and money in Semyon’s trousers. At the bottom of the inside pocket of his jacket, he found a miniature notebook, the kind with only twenty or thirty pages in it. He opened it and saw some odd words written at the top of each page, with a list of dates underneath, all within the last year. He had no idea what the lists referred to, but he put it in his own pocket for later. Then, with two hands, he pushed the body on to its side. The dead man let out an eerie breath. Underneath was the usual black mine debris. And stuck to the back of his jacket were Semyon’s glasses, bent and shattered.

Yuri had heard and witnessed many strange things in his lifetime, but suicide by ventilation unit seemed unlikely. It was true that he had never gone to the bother of getting to know the man, but he had not pegged Semyon as the self-harming, defeatist type. He was ambitious, with solid goals in life. And he was still young enough to harbour realistic expectations of achieving them.

An accident was the most likely possibility. Semyon could have discovered that he needed to get the ventilation unit on to the ground in order to work on it properly. At which point he might have found the fixings difficult to dislodge; the humid conditions in the mine rusted metal fast. So then he could have decided to use brute force to get the unit off the tunnel wall, at which point it had all gone unexpectedly and horribly wrong. Tragic but simple. That is what Yuri’s report would say too. An unfortunate accident. No one’s fault, just bad luck.

However, even though this explanation had a degree of logic to it, it didn’t sit easy with him. And the alternative even less so. If Semyon’s death wasn’t suicide, or an accident, that left the involvement of a third party. Person or persons unknown. Part of him knew that was what had happened. Someone had gone to some trouble to try to make this look like an accident. Yuri’s first instinct was to resist the temptation to delve any deeper, and instead walk away from the whole thing. Normally, he would have done exactly that. But if someone had killed Semyon, then there must be a reason. And not knowing what it was would keep him awake at night until he found out.

Against his better judgement, Yuri left the mine and obeyed Timur’s summons. He made his way to his office, which was hidden away down a corridor in the administration building. When he arrived, he found the door wide open. Timur had just made himself a fresh coffee.

‘Want one?’ he asked. ‘There’s enough for two.’

‘No thanks.’

Was he really going to offer him a coffee and then accuse him of murder?

‘Sit down, Yuri.’

Yuri pulled up a wooden chair as Timur sat down behind his desk. He blew on the surface of his steaming cup and sipped. Yuri’s stomach felt hollow and twisted. A combination of hunger and his reflex reactions to the sight of a bloodied dead body. Timur put down his cup and started rhythmically tapping his fingers again, this time on the table.