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

He held both hands up, halfway to a surrender. ‘Let’s calm down. Whoever you spoke to was mistaken. I always get to the office early on Friday. I was here between seven and eight; in fact, I was here all day.’

She poised with her pen over her notepad. ‘I want you to understand that you are giving me an alibi. Is there anyone who can corroborate it?’

‘Ask anyone who gets in that early, they’ll tell you the same thing. There again I’m not under any kind of suspicion so you can do what you like with my so-called alibi.’ He snorted. ‘Why are you persisting when you already have her killers? If I make some calls it won’t be me facing difficult questions.’

‘If that’s a threat you’d better be very careful.’

‘Not a threat – mere curiosity.’

‘A girl is drunk on the streets when the two suspects—’

‘Call them what they are,’ Lagunov spat, ‘ gopniks .’

She ignored him. ‘The two suspects find her drunk on the street. The one hooked on krokodil steals her money, the other sexually assaults her. They take her somewhere for nearly three days then they kill her and burn the body.’

‘That’s what the police are saying.’

‘But there are still unanswered questions. If they dragged her to the park, alive or dead, someone would have seen them. The only way she got there was voluntarily.’

‘Voluntarily?’ Lagunov smirked. ‘She danced to the park hand-in-hand with those gopnik scum? That’s ridiculous.’

‘Then how did they get her there without being seen? It’s the White Nights, remember, no one sleeps. Teenagers are out there all night. Someone would have called the menti . Besides, it’s a stupid place. Why not dump her on a building site or wasteland, wherever was nearest… unless…’

She trailed off but Lagunov had no interest in prompting her; he tapped his fingers on the desk in irritation.

‘Unless… it was deliberate. Her killers wanted it to be public,’ she added.

He sighed. ‘You give too much credit to a pair of junkies. From what I read they were high on krokodil . Who knows what goes on in their addled brains? Maybe they carried her between them and everyone mistook them for drunks.’ Lagunov folded his hands behind his head. ‘Just let it go and Thorsten will thank you.’

She was amused by his persistence. ‘And how much would he offer? Ten thousand dollars?’

Lagunov laughed out loud. ‘That’s kopeks to him.’

‘Then what about fifty?’

She anticipated laughter but Lagunov was matter-of-fact. ‘Now I’ll answer your questions,’ he began. ‘Thorsten isn’t the man you saw on the plane. He’s tired and withdrawn. Yes, he’s in Piter but there’s a media circus waiting for him in Stockholm and no one knows him here. Piter is also the last place Zena knew before she died and that gives him great comfort. As for Felix Axelsson, the security advisor that got you so excited, well, it would be insane for Thorsten to travel around the city without a bodyguard. There’s no mystery to any of this. The gopniks confessed, they left their prints on Zena’s handbag, and they took indecent pictures of her.’

‘I’m not saying they didn’t do it, but there’s more to this case than a pair of wasted teenagers. Where was Zena kept? How did they get her to the park? Why go to the trouble of burning her body to destroy the evidence when they go and leave her handbag behind with their sticky fingerprints on it. You know what my favourite one is?’

‘Humour me.’

‘They hadn’t washed for days when they were caught but they didn’t they smell of smoke.’

Lagunov exhaled heavily. ‘So what’s your theory?’

‘Someone else was involved, and he set them up.’

Lagunov was incredulous. ‘For what reason?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Natalya… Captain, this is beneath you. You should keep these ill-considered ideas to yourself. You’re not going to exploit Thorsten or get his hopes up. In fact you’re not going to do anything. As we discussed I’m happy to come to an arrangement so that you leave Zena Dahl to rest in peace and let a father grieve for his daughter.’

She pulled out her mobile and studied it as if there had been a missed call then tapped the screen for voice memos. Instead of pocketing it, she shoved it under the chair’s cushion.

Lagunov stood then turned to face the wall and pressed the keypad of his safe. ‘Enough. I’ve got euros and dollars. Euros are worth more right now so have them if you like. Fifty thousand to leave the case alone, agreed?’

She watched, hypnotised, as he pulled out bank-fresh bundles of notes and piled them on his desk.

At reception she nodded a curt goodbye to Daria then waited until the lift doors had closed and Lagunov’s secretary had disappeared from view. A man with thinning hair and a briefcase brushed past her and swiped his card through a slot in the door to exit the building.

She took out her ID card but the red-haired receptionist waved it away. ‘You’re Oleg, right?’

‘Yes, Detective.’

‘Those things.’ She pointed at the slot by the door. ‘Do you have to use a pass to get in and out of the building?’

‘Unless I let you in.’

‘Do they record who uses them?’

‘On here.’ He lowered his head and she peered over his desk to see a blue screen in front of him.

She spoke sotto voce , ‘Oleg, this is confidential: Mister Lagunov thinks his wallet was stolen last Thursday evening. Can you check if his pass has been used?’

‘When?’

‘Friday morning. It’s possible he had it then but he’s not sure.’

‘The menti come out for a stolen wallet now?’

She spoke in a monotone as if the subject bored her. ‘It’s a new initiative: we crack down on street crime to stop petty thieves becoming bigger ones.’ She shook her head to suggest her superiors were idiots for thinking of it.

He fixed his concentration on the screen and pressed a few keys. ‘Anything else you need?’

‘No, thanks… Oleg.’ She patted her pockets. ‘I’ve left my phone upstairs.’

He took out a temporary pass and handed it to her, ‘You’d better take this.’

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ She started walking away.

‘Wait… they are just coming now.’ He gathered several sheets of A4 paper from a printer and stapled them together. ‘This is everyone from Friday morning. Mister Lagunov’s code is C13284.’

‘Thanks.’

She took the papers and headed for the stairs, continuing until she reached the floor above Lagunov’s office. On the landing, she examined the sheets of A4, noting each had the same three columns: “ID Code”, “Entry Timestamp” and “Exit Timestamp”. She knelt and flicked through them until she saw the first occurrence of C13284. Taking out an old biro, she made a mark against Anatoly Lagunov’s ID Code then drew a line to find the corresponding time. It stopped on an entry timestamp of “07:05:37”. She checked the date to confirm Oleg had printed a log for the right date – he had.

It was disappointing but these things happened. Early on the Friday morning, Lagunov had gone to work half an hour before Lyudmila Kuznetsova reported seeing the grey-haired bureaucrat from her window. Sometimes, by being overly helpful, witnesses caused more trouble than those who kept quiet. The old woman’s hearing was clearly bad, maybe her eyesight was too.

To complete the task Natalya scrolled through the remaining pages. There was another instance of C13284 and she drew a fresh line to find the corresponding timestamp. It was “07:12:04”. She stared at the paper and smiled. Lagunov had been at work for less than seven minutes, barely enough time to establish an alibi by talking to a few early birds. Further down the list she found another C13284 and tracked it with her pen to see when he had returned: “10:15:48” – three hours later.