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

In Zena’s apartment, Leo Primakov had mimed a solvent being used to wipe the fingerprints from Zena’s light switches and door handles. Lagunov wasn’t a professional burglar, perhaps he had forgotten to bring gloves and had called in at the office, not to establish an alibi but to find a stationery cupboard and pick up one of those sprays used for cleaning dirty finger marks off computer screens.

The pass Oleg had given her came with a lanyard and she pushed it over her neck then ran her fingers through her hair. She found a toilet and reapplied her lipstick before tucking her checked shirt tightly in her skirt to pull out the creases. She hid her Makarov and handcuffs in her handbag and headed onto the office floor. There was an open-plan design segregated into six areas that were in turn divided into cubicles. A banner suspended from the ceiling displayed the name of a steel town in the Urals, another the name of Segezha, a prison town with a large paper mill.

She strolled to a coffee machine and watched a woman feeding coins into it. ‘Is this finance?’

The woman turned and Natalya saw that her upper lip was short, leaving her with a permanent pout. ‘Marketing. You need the second floor.’

‘Actually,’ Natalya dropped her voice and held out the temporary pass, ‘I’ve just started and the coffee there tastes like an unflushed toilet. I was hoping it might be better here.’

‘No chance of that,’ the woman said.

Natalya continued in a whisper. ‘As I said, I’ve just started and there’s a rumour that the company is being sold. No one will tell me anything and I don’t want to ask in case I get in trouble. Am I wasting my time here?’

The woman pressed a button for lemon tea. ‘That’s finance for you. I heard the deal was off.’

‘So my job is safe?’ Natalya looked relieved, ‘My husband works in offshore exploration. He’s stuck at home looking after the kids until the oil price goes up.’

The woman took her plastic cup from the machine then glanced around the room. ‘There were irregularities.’

Natalya leaned closer. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The buyer dropped out because the accounts didn’t balance’.

‘What do you mean?’ she repeated.

The woman’s eyes narrowed, ‘I thought you were in Finance?’

‘I’m admin.’

‘Well, everyone is talking about it… up here at least. Millions are missing. If you hear anything more, will you tell me? I’ve got kids too.’

Natalya screwed up her face to look pained. ‘Of course.’

She left the woman pouting and returned to the second floor, cutting a path between the accountants’ desks. Lagunov’s secretary had seen her and was making her way across the floor, ready to intercept her. ‘Daria, I need to speak with Anatoly. It’s urgent.’

‘Please wait there.’

Daria took a few paces to his inner office before Natalya brushed past her and burst in.

Lagunov whirled round. ‘Captain, what are you doing?’

He looked over her shoulder at the open door to his office and his secretary. ‘Daria, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘Please leave us.’

She heard the door close behind her.

‘Did you change your mind?’ he asked.

She frowned. ‘About the money? No’ – she shook her head for emphasis – ‘I don’t take bribes. I left something behind.’ She bent over the chair to retrieve her mobile from the side of the cushion. ‘I accidentally left it recording.’ She showed him the screen so he could see the moving bar of the voice recorder. She tapped the stop button.

‘Time to start talking.’ She put her palms flat on his desk.

‘You can keep recording us if it makes you feel better,’ he sneered. ‘I can even incriminate myself and it will make no difference, I assure you. Would you have taken more if I’d offered it?’

More than fifty thousand dollars? Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘No.’

Lagunov shook his head slowly in disappointment. ‘Then let me give you some good fucking advice: visit your sister in Germany. This is bigger than you.’

She stared at him, too shocked to speak. Finally she found the words. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

‘No, Captain. Where the hell do you think you are? This is Russia. The case is closed, don’t attempt to lift the lid.’

Mikhail, and now Lagunov. Two warnings in one day. One from State Security, which was insane to ignore; the other, from Dahl’s lawyer, which was more perplexing than anything else. She had enough to arrest him for the false alibi and attempted bribery except she could tell by his cockiness that it would backfire. Lagunov was one of those hard, clever men who would prove to be as slippery as a Baltic eel when she brought him to headquarters. And for what? Lying over an alibi for a case that was already with the prosecutor? Attempting to bribe her? Well, there were many in the department who saw bribes as a perk of the job and they would be furious if she caused mixed messages to be sent out.

‘You lied to me. You left the office almost as soon as you arrived. Why don’t you tell me what you were doing in Zena’s apartment on Friday morning?’

The lawyer sighed. ‘I know you are just doing your job but it’s of no concern to you.’

Natalya stared at him and felt an almost insatiable desire to slap him around the head. ‘What are you keeping from me, Lagunov?’ she shouted.

The lawyer was close enough for her to grab him by the collar. She did; he was as solid as a statue. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’

‘Control yourself. I’m helping you.’

She let go of Lagunov and watched him straighten his shirt. Her phone started ringing and she glanced at it to see Primakov’s name and the picture from his VK profile of him crossing the line at last year’s St. Petersburg Half Marathon. She answered it while glowering at the lawyer.

‘Leo, this is a bad time.’

In the background she heard a raw wind blowing and what sounded like a ship horn. ‘Sorry, Captain. I know it’s your day off but it’s important.’

‘Hold on, Leo.’

She held up a finger to Lagunov then stepped into Daria’s outer office.

‘OK, carry on.’

Primakov sounded breathless, ‘Major Dostoynov said you were off duty. He’s going to send someone else. He told me not to involve you.’

‘What is it, Leo?’

‘Well, can you come anyway? I’m just off Morskaya Naberezhnaya, there’s an old boatyard before the Petrovsky Fairway Bridge.’

‘I’m busy, Leo, why don’t you call later?’

‘It’s not that… Look, you need to see this. We’ve found a body. I think it’s connected to Zena Dahl’s murder.’

Natalya turned off Morskaya Naberezhnaya at the north end of Vasilyevsky Island; the rough, compacted earth of the derelict boatyard soon forcing her to drive at a walking pace. Attached to a concrete post by heavy chains, a pair of German Shepherds stopped their intense sniffing of Primakov’s Samara to watch her with mild interest. She edged past them, and ten metres on saw an ancient Zhiguli police car parked next to a civilian hatchback with an unnecessary “Doctor on call” sign in the windscreen. The path narrowed, and what appeared to be sand dunes mutated before her eyes into banks of builder’s aggregate sprouting wild grass.

She stopped by a grey-blue amphibious troop carrier with a track missing that was losing its battle against the elements. To save explaining herself to the uniforms from the Zhiguli, she fixed her handcuffs and Makarov in place before walking down a cracked concrete lane. A grey sky hung overhead, threatening rain, and she had the strongest desire for a cigarette that she had felt in years. This, she thought, was a much better place to find a corpse.