Garry Abson - Motherland - A Gripping Crime Thriller Set in the Dark Heart of Putin's Russia

He glared at her. ‘Don’t get sanctimonious. Tanya is underage. Her parents heard about the body in the park and couldn’t find her anywhere.’ He raised his hands in surrender. ‘What’s going on with us? Are you seeing someone?’

‘Jesus, Misha – never! I just went out last night to check up on a lead and drank too much. It was stupid, I know, but there’s nothing more.’

She could feel his eyes boring into hers. ‘Don’t do that, I’m telling the truth.’

‘Yeah, well.’ He straightened up and looked at his watch. ‘Shit, I’m late. I was supposed to be meeting Stepan.’

‘What happened to our talk?’

‘Another time, Angel.’ He stood up and stretched, then went for the door.

She opened it for him while he fumbled with his jacket.

‘Goodbye Misha. Stay sober tomorrow.’ She closed the door behind him.

There was a case of wine in the pantry and she opened the seal with a craft knife. She’d had it since 2006 after a brief relationship with the owner of a local restaurant. Boris had been fun, a little too old for her perhaps, but he’d been repatriated when all the Georgians were sent home after the brief war with Russia. As a parting gift, he left her four cases of vintage Satrapezo that he couldn’t sell because their wine had been banned. Now only two were left. In the kitchen she opened a bottle and poured herself a large glass before taking it to the study.

The computer took an age to boot up and she sipped the rich, smooth Satrapezo , feeling it calm her nerves. Hacking into a spouse’s private account was deceitful and if she consulted the Criminal Code, no doubt illegal too. As if to underscore the enormity of what she planned to do, the computer loaded the background image. It was a photograph Mikhail had selected from their wedding day: Anton had grown his hair two centimetres long for the occasion, and looked uncomfortable in a suit; Mikhail was handsome and proud, his black hair slick and shining; and she was between the two of them, her arms barely visible around their waists, and their arms engulfing her shoulders – they were invincible.

The computer finished its boot up and she took another sip of the Satrapezo . Apart from the image there was nothing obvious on the screen until she typed “Heidelberg”, then a window appeared. She clicked an option to “view” and a list detailed every keystroke Mikhail had made since she had installed the software. She scanned it while sipping the wine:

Lenta.ru

UEFA Euro

Limassol Trading Bank

‘Shit,’ she hissed, seeing the bank’s name. Until then, there could have been an innocent explanation – the account could have belonged to someone who owed Mikhail money – but now she knew the truth: it was his.

She opened the Yandex search engine to check what sites he’d visited. All the football ones were there but the bank was missing – he’d deleted it from the internet history. The keylogger was still open and she copied the bank name and pasted it in Yandex then clicked on the link it returned. When the ‘Limassol Trading Bank’ page was loaded, she selected the flag icon to change the language from Greek to Russian.

Outside, she heard heavy, stumbling footsteps on the stairwell but dismissed the thought that Mikhail would be back so early. His drinking sessions with Rogov had an almost mythic status in the department – unless, she realised, he had forgotten his wallet or keys. She keened her ears, listening intently, but heard nothing other than the noise of the traffic in the streets below.

She returned to the keylogger and saw two blocks of numbers separated by a tab. The first was a sort code and she copied, then pasted it onto the first field on the bank’s webpage. She repeated the process with the account number. The keylogger displayed six digits: “060444”, and she pasted them into the security code box. The numbers looked familiar but she couldn’t place them. There was one field left to complete. She flicked back to the keylogger to select the name of the account holder. She saw the letters Mikhail had typed earlier in the evening and felt the urge to laugh: “ Misha Buratino .”

Misha , well, that was obvious, but the last name was a joke; it was his way of saying the whole thing was a fairy tale: Buratino was Tolstoy’s version of the Pinocchio story. She cut then pasted the name into the field for “Account Holder” and clicked “Go”. Immediately a new screen appeared and she tapped the Russian flag again. She was in.

Natalya went to the kitchen to refill her glass and listened out for the footsteps she had heard a moment earlier. They had gone and all she could hear was Sergei, the neighbour above them, singing “Everything’s going to be alright” in a mournful voice. He was a retired violin teacher who anaesthetised himself regularly with vodka because it was the only decent painkiller he could get for his back injury. Sergei’s voice slurred to a halt and she caught the clank of weights in the basement of the abandoned office next door where local skinheads had built a makeshift gym; further away, there was the low blast of a ship horn somewhere on the Neva.

Back in the study, she noted that Mikhail’s account was in euros and two hours ago he had transferred enough to cover the bribe for Anton’s university place. That left a new balance. Mikhail had one hundred and two thousand euros held offshore that he had decided not to tell her about. It was tempting to move it all to her personal account then sit back and wait for his reaction. She glanced at the previous transaction, then stared at it in shock; her fingers gripping the wine glass. Exhaustion had set in and she rubbed her eyes, desperately wanting the sleep to make it all go away.

Misha had lied to her. There was a printer option on the screen and she made a hard copy of his account history then folded the pages and tucked them in her handbag.

‘You bastard,’ she muttered.

They had bought the apartment using money his mother, Violka, had left him. He’d made such a show at the time of being surprised that she had put so much away. Except she hadn’t. In front of her, in sober numbers and digits, she could see it had all come from his secret account.

She uninstalled the keylogger and removed it, then deleted her own search history. Before crawling into bed, she grabbed the bottle of Satrapezo to guarantee the next day wouldn’t be any better.

After putting out some cereal for Anton’s breakfast she left early for the office. She had expected to find Mikhail sleeping on the sofa but there was no sign of him. If he hadn’t appeared by roll call she would check with Oksana and see if he had stayed at Rogov’s. Now that she thought about it, she would call anyway to make sure he hadn’t had an accident – it was odd considering what she had discovered about Mikhail, but when it came to other women she trusted him. After fifteen years in the department she had a very good idea of who screwed around and who didn’t. For all his faults, Mikhail was more respectful to women than any other male ment she had known.

Outside it was grey and wet, and the spray from the Neva mingled with the fine rain to make them indistinguishable: the ideal weather for a Monday morning. From home, Suvorovsky Prospekt was an unpleasant one kilometre walk from the Ploshchad Vosstaniya Metro station or two bus journeys, and so the Volvo was her only option when the weather was bad. Luckily the traffic was light and she was in the station by eight.

The area reserved for detectives was quiet and she found a Post-It note stuck to the receiver of her desk phone. It was from Semion, the barman at Cheka, asking her to call him for another interview. The note was an unsubtle attempt at seduction and she screwed up the message and dropped it in the bin. She made herself a coffee, avoiding the machine which produced something that tasted like ground acorns in mud. Back at her desk, there was a backlog of eighty emails and she started clearing them down.