Stephen Burke - The Reluctant Contact

‘You know why I’ve asked you here?’ Timur asked.

‘Not exactly, no,’ said Yuri.

Timur looked as though he didn’t believe his answer.

‘This Semyon business stinks. If that was an accident, I’ll eat my hat.’

‘You think he was murdered?’ asked Yuri, trying badly to sound surprised.

Timur shrugged. ‘Doesn’t it seem that way to you?’

When Yuri didn’t answer, Timur stared at him for a long time.

‘The doc is going to take a look. I told him to be thorough. If he tells me there’s something to be suspicious about then you and me are going to have a different sort of conversation.’

‘You can’t think that I… I wasn’t even down there. I was in the canteen. The waitresses will vouch for me. You can vouch for me, you saw me there yourself.’

‘When we met he’d already been dead a couple of hours. Where were you before the canteen?’

‘Swimming.’

‘With?’

‘On my own. But I’m sure people saw me about the place. The cosmonaut did. English Catherine. Ask her. I can tell you one thing for free, you won’t find a single person who’ll say they saw me down the mine tonight, because I wasn’t there.’

Timur gave a half-grin and sipped his coffee again. They both knew he could get a dozen people to swear on their grandchildren that they’d seen him dancing in the mine in a red dress, if that’s what he told them to say.

‘He wanted your job,’ said Timur. ‘He made serious accusations against you. And you didn’t like each other. Sounds like a strong enough motive to me.’

‘I didn’t need to kill him to keep my job,’ Yuri protested. ‘He wasn’t good enough to take it off me. And no, I didn’t like him. Did you?’

‘He thought he was better than you,’ said Timur. ‘Maybe you two had a fight. Is that what happened? And you didn’t mean for it to end the way it did? Now would be a good time to come clean.’

‘This is ridiculous, and you know it. I never laid a finger on him.’

‘Sabotage then,’ said Timur. ‘Maybe you did something to that ventilation unit. Left it unsafe, ready to fall. Then you sent him down there. It was you that sent him down there, wasn’t it? I believe you already admitted that.’

‘It wasn’t a confession. It’s my job to tell him what to do. I sent him down with an easy task that should have taken him ten minutes to finish. It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous.’

Timur sighed and rested his chin in his hand, rubbing his day-old stubble with his fingers. To Yuri’s relief, he seemed to have run out of questions. For the moment, there was no evidence of a crime, unless the autopsy threw up something.

‘If there’s nothing else, I’d like to go now,’ said Yuri, standing up.

‘Sure,’ said Timur, without looking at him. ‘Thanks for dropping by. I’ll be in touch.’

Back in his apartment, Yuri leafed through Semyon’s notebook. There was nothing in it other than what he had seen in the mine. One word, at the head of each page, with dates underneath. All the dates were since Semyon’s arrival in Pyramiden. But the words made no sense. Fox. Bears. Spider. Eagle. Elk. Was he some sort of a wildlife enthusiast? If he was, he’d kept it to himself. He stared at the pages a while longer, but gave up trying to figure out what they meant.

The next day, Igor told Yuri that the doctor had found nothing to indicate foul play. No signs of a struggle. Just one single blow to the head, consistent with the ventilation unit falling on top of him. Case closed. Yuri still found the explanation hard to believe. And the doctor was not a crime scene specialist. He was young and had probably never encountered a murder in his life. But for the moment, Yuri was happy to be off a potentially nasty hook, and he wasn’t about to go causing a fuss. Luckily, he had never gotten too far on the wrong side of Timur. If he had, he suspected this incident could have cost him more.

Where they were, Spitsbergen island in the Svalbard archipelago, was Norwegian territory. Russia only had mining rights here, which were enshrined in the 1920 Svalbard Treaty. And since it was their house, technically Norwegian law applied to all who lived there, whatever their nationality. As Timur had said, the Norwegian authorities would have to be informed of Semyon’s death. But Yuri knew they were not going to cause any trouble over one casualty in a Soviet mine. One of their own Norwegian mines on Svalbard had recorded so many accidental deaths, seventy-one in twenty years, that the scandal, known as the King’s Bay Affair, had brought down an entire Norwegian government in the sixties. Needless to say, in Semyon’s solitary case they would not be throwing stones.

Yuri wondered if this was why Timur did not seem too eager for a serious investigation. His own interrogation had been half-hearted. There were reasons why Timur might be pleased to leave this alone – a suspected murder would demand a Norwegian police investigation. And the KGB man would certainly not want foreigners snooping around on his patch. Especially foreigners who were members of NATO. NATO equalled America, only nearer.

The bad news spread quickly around the town. Some people were naturally upset. There had been deaths in their small community before, over the decades, and they had built a small graveyard on the edge of town. But friendships here were so transient that few people would have had the opportunity to get to know Semyon well. By rights, as his boss and co-worker, Yuri should have known him the best. The other residents assumed he had, and for the whole of the next day he was offered unwanted sympathy, and confronted with concerned enquiries about Semyon’s family back home. Yuri did not know any of the answers, so he made up some good lies, giving people the replies he figured they wanted to hear.

Two days later, a pair of tall blond Norwegians arrived by helicopter. They all saw the lights approaching through the darkness, long before the tak-tak sound of the propellers reached them. As a reception committee, Timur brought together the same trio who had been there on that fateful night – himself, Yuri and Igor – plus one other. The Norwegians spoke two languages perfectly, their own and English, but not Russian. Yuri had no English and Igor certainly did not. Timur had a couple of standard phrases, but being sent undercover to London was not on his career horizon any time soon. Yuri knew for a fact that Grigory spoke English, or at least understood it, because he had seen him reading English books in the library. But when Yuri suggested that he might help them out as an interpreter, he had offered them Catherine instead.

It had seemed a good idea at the time, and she was eager to help.

‘Did you know him well?’ she whispered to Yuri as they waited beside the helipad for their guests to disembark.

‘Not so well,’ admitted Yuri.

‘Poor man. Such a horrible way to go.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed.

‘Can you imagine a death at a space station?’ said Catherine. ‘Do you think it would be like this?’

‘No,’ said Yuri. ‘I don’t imagine any Norwegians would come.’

He heard her take a deep breath, getting herself ready for what lay ahead. On her face was a look of exaggerated determination. She caught him smiling at her.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine.’

Catherine’s first job was to translate the doctor’s report for the two visitors. His autopsy had revealed a skull fracture caused by a blunt-force blow, leading to massive bleeding on the brain. Death, he said, had been almost instantaneous. Well, at least the bastard didn’t suffer, thought Yuri.

And then they all viewed the body, after which Yuri held Catherine’s hair while she threw up her breakfast in a hospital sink.