Stephen Burke - The Reluctant Contact

‘I’m sure we can manage from here without you,’ Yuri offered.

‘No, I’m fine now,’ she said, wiping her mouth. ‘I can do this. I said I would help.’

‘You’re sure?’ he asked. ‘You’re a little green.’

‘A glass of water and I’ll be fine,’ she insisted. ‘No need to make a fuss over me.’

Next they made the trip to the scene of the accident, with everyone now more concerned about Catherine than about poor Semyon’s demise. The location where he had met his end had been cleaned up since Yuri had last been there. And why not? No one had publicly admitted that they considered it a crime scene that ought to be kept intact. At this point it was showtime for Timur, who took to his stage with relish. He gave the visitors a verbal and theatrically mimed performance of Yuri and Igor’s reports into how the accident had most likely happened, all with simultaneous translation from green-faced Catherine.

Suitably impressed with the thoroughness of what they had seen and heard, along with assurances that such a thing would never be allowed to happen again, the Norwegians declared the case closed. They rubber-stamped the death certificate, which Timur immediately took possession of. He folded it and put it in his inside pocket.

‘You must be pleased,’ said Yuri. ‘No outside investigators meddling in Pyramiden.’

‘Like the paper says, it was an accident,’ replied Timur. ‘Nothing to investigate.’

‘And you’re just going to leave it at that?’

‘For the moment,’ said Timur. ‘If I was you, Yuri, I would be pretty relieved at that news.’

It was a relief, but Yuri expected that he had not heard the last of it.

Just as the two Scandinavians were on the verge of departing, Yuri made the mistake of inviting them for a drink in the glass bar. They wanted to leave, he could see, but politeness made them accept. Yuri caught Timur’s incredulous gaze. Obviously, the official policy of the day was to get rid of the foreigners as quickly as possible, but Timur had neglected to mention this to him.

The glass house was the closest thing to a tourist attraction that Pyramiden had to offer. Built entirely from empty red, green and white glass bottles, it had been erected by the residents as a special place to unwind. Inside, the motley group drank a glass of vodka and toasted to their mutual cooperation, and regrets were expressed that their visit had to be under such tragic circumstances. Then the Norwegians gave up on second-hand conversation, and spoke exclusively in English to Catherine. Yuri could see that she was enjoying being the centre of their attentions.

Timur opened his silver cigarette case and offered one to Yuri. From the look of them, they were definitely not the usual Bulgarian tobacco. He lit both Yuri’s and his own with a gold lighter that had a military insignia engraved on its side.

‘What are they saying?’ the KGB man asked as the three foreigners talked and laughed together.

‘I believe she is telling them about her space study,’ said Yuri. ‘And the taller one, I think, is chatting her up. But I’m just guessing. I really have no idea.’

Finally, to everyone’s relief, the two men boarded their helicopter again and left.

The list of people who might have killed Semyon included every adult in town. Pyramiden was a peaceful place, and violence here was extremely rare, but lots of the men had killed before. Yuri himself had killed three men. It was not a fact that he boasted about. He had been thirteen in the dying days of the Great Patriotic War, and the men he had shot were German soldiers. The first one had been armed, and it was a case of kill or be killed. The other two he had executed in cold blood as they tried to surrender to him. They had been in a pathetic state, shoeless and starving. But by that stage of the war, Yuri had lost all pity.

Many of the miners had a similar story to tell. The older you were the more Germans you had killed. And killing a man was not something you forgot. The first one was the hardest. After that, it was not such a leap.

Yuri wondered if Semyon had any enemies in Pyramiden, apart from himself. Maybe he secretly owed someone money, or a grudge had followed him here from his home town in Latvia. Or perhaps his death had really been an act of God after all, and Yuri was just being paranoid. But he didn’t believe in God, or anything else.

He decided to give himself the rest of the day off. He thanked Catherine for her help. She nodded, proud of herself for what she had done. For him, it had just been something to get out of the way, but she had viewed it as a challenge.

‘You know I am more than happy to do anything like this any time,’ she called after him. ‘All you have to do is ask.’

He made his way back to his apartment block. Two deaths in quick succession had given him too many reminders of his own mortality and had taken a toll on his mood.

As he passed a parked snow truck, three men appeared from behind it and grabbed him. They pulled him to the side of his apartment building, out of sight. With one man in front and one behind, they proceeded to punch him repeatedly in the abdomen. The third one watched. All the breath left his body and he crumpled to the ground, gasping for air. Yuri recognised these men. He had seen them recently at Semyon’s table in the canteen.

‘Semyon was our friend,’ said one, pointing his finger down at Yuri.

‘Really?’ said Yuri. ‘How long did you know him?’

‘One month,’ said the other, before kicking him in the ribs. ‘We are Lithuanian, so he is our neighbour. One of us.’

‘We know you had something to do with it,’ said the first. ‘He told us you weren’t to be trusted.’

‘Listen comrades,’ said Yuri. ‘He was my friend too—’

Another kick hit him just below the sternum.

‘Don’t call me comrade, you Russian pig,’ said one of his attackers, he wasn’t sure which.

Just then a vehicle noise nearby disturbed them and they decided to leave.

‘We’re not finished with you,’ said the first over his shoulder as he walked away. ‘We’ll be seeing you. It’s not like you have anywhere to hide.’

Yuri staggered to his feet and continued his journey home. Once he was safely inside his apartment, he collapsed on to his bed. He held the ice-cold bottle of vodka in his hand, for pain-killing purposes, both inside and out. The Soviet dream of diverse nationalities working together under one communist banner had obviously not taken hold in the Baltics. But at least he wasn’t the only one interested in Semyon’s death.

That night, when all was quiet, Yuri exited his room and made his way up the stairs to the next floor. He had never visited Semyon’s apartment when he was alive, and he felt bad about breaking into it now. He wished to avoid any visible damage, so he slid a thin piece of wood into the doorjamb and prised the lock open. Home security was not an issue in Pyramiden. There were zero burglaries. Few people had anything worth stealing anyway. No one would know he had been in here, unless he was seen going in or out.

He guessed Timur would already have paid this place a visit, so perhaps he was wasting his time. He started with the bed, checking under the pillow and inside the bedclothes. Under the mattress he found a magazine with black and white photographs of naked middle-aged women, which he put back where he had found it. Kneeling on the floor, he saw a suitcase under the bed. It was heavy; he had to slide it out with both hands. He clicked open the locks and found it full of engineering manuals. The poor guy really did want to better himself. Some of the volumes were beyond even Yuri’s level of expertise. Inside them, passages had been underlined, with handwritten notes in the margins.