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

Now she was the last passenger from the small propeller plane and still the woman tapped on the keyboard.

Another uniformed official entered the booth, this time a man with a red band on his peaked cap. She glanced at the two adjacent stars on his epaulettes to check his rank: a lieutenant; then she glanced at the open pores on his veined nose: a drinker.

The woman’s eyebrows were raised even higher on her forehead as she handed Natalya’s passport to the officer. He examined it then tucked it in his breast pocket. ‘Any baggage in the hold?’ he asked.

‘No.’ Natalya twisted one shoulder to show a small rucksack.

He left the booth to face her. ‘Then come with me.’

‘I’m a captain in the Criminal Investigations Directorate, what’s the delay?’

‘No delay.’ He opened his mouth and sprayed breath freshener onto a yellowing tongue.

She followed him to a white-walled room with no windows. There was a desk and two chairs. Next to a fluorescent strip light she noticed a black plastic sphere masking a security camera.

‘Someone will be with you soon,’ he said, then left, closing the door. She heard a lock click into place.

She didn’t believe him, having tried the same trick often enough to unnerve a suspect. Well, it wouldn’t work on her. She was too tired to be stressed let alone wonder why she was being detained. Slumping in one of the chairs, she dropped her head on her forearms and instantly fell asleep.

A spasm in her neck woke her. She checked her phone: it was approaching three in the morning. Her body was craving nutrition and more sleep; her mobile battery was almost flat.

She flicked through her contacts wondering who would take a call at this time: Mikhail? She selected his number and listened to his voice as it diverted straight to the answerphone. Who next? Rogov? Too unreliable. Claudia? Certainly, but Germany may as well be on another planet. Anton? Well, it was safer for him if she didn’t call. She tapped a number and saw beads of sweat caught on muscled, golden legs. Despite the oppressive room, she chuckled to herself; only Primakov could run a half-marathon and look as if he was modelling sportswear.

She tapped her phone again and heard his ring tone. She pressed an index finger and thumb to the corners of her eyes to help her focus, then wedged the mobile to her ear with her left hand. At this time of the morning she had expected him to take longer to answer but he picked it up almost immediately.

‘Leo? I’m stuck in an interrogation room in Pulkovo—’

‘Forgot to put it on silent,’ Primakov was saying, not to her though. Instead of hanging up, he left the line open.

Knowing Leo’s fastidious nature he wouldn’t be careless enough to keep the line connected accidentally – he was telling her something.

She shut her eyes and shrank the world to the voices in her ear. There was a murmur of conversation then, ‘Major, how long are we going to be here?’ The voice might have belonged to Rogov but it was hard to tell because something was rubbing against the microphone. It sounded like a zipper being pulled up and down. Was that Leo’s nylon oversuit?

‘Don’t forget you’re a fucking Sergeant.’ That was Dostoynov, she was sure of it; so Dostoynov and Rogov.

There was fumbling and before the line went dead, Primakov’s voice came through at so low a whisper it was barely audible: ‘Federova’s apartment.’

She switched off her phone to save the battery then closed her eyes. A vacuum cleaner started outside her door. It wasn’t moving and she wondered if it was an attempt to unsettle her, along with the too-bright fluorescent light. Well, they could try, but they would have to pull out her fingernails just to keep her awake. Two freckles on her right forearm; fine, translucent hairs. She focussed on them, feeling sleep draw her away. Her skinny arm became a pillow; the red of the fluorescent light through her eyelids became a desert tent at sunset; the motor of the vacuum cleaner turned to white noise; white noise was the best noise of all.

A hand smacked on the table, hard. ‘Wake up!’

‘Go away.’

Silence, then her shoulders were gripped from behind. She was shaken violently, the back of her skull connected with her spine. Her head ached and the nerves in her neck screamed. She twisted her shoulders to see a man the size of a weightlifter. He was wearing a shoulder harness with a black Grach pistol tucked in it. That was as good as an identification card. The police had been waiting for years to get their aging Makarovs updated to Grachs – the excuse they had been given was there were too many guns already in circulation. It wasn’t a problem for the FSB though; they already had them. He pushed her shoulders against the desk then did it again.

She tried to turn and punch him but his thick hands held her rigidly.

‘I swear I’ll shoot you if you do that again,’ she said.

Fingers as hard as wooden stakes pressed under her collar bone making her eyes tear up. She sucked up the pain, refusing to give him the satisfaction of knowing it was working. Her attention fixed on the black globe on the ceiling, appealing to the person watching the thinly disguised camera to intervene.

She twisted a shoulder free from his grip; he replaced the hand and shook her again. The room was spinning; she could hardly breathe. She locked the muscles in her neck, lifted her head, and twisted to spew the meagre contents of her stomach over his trousers.

‘You—’

He stopped whatever insult was coming. The weight released from her shoulders and she turned to see black hair, thick, tanned skin and an impassive face.

‘What the hell are you doing? I’m a—’

‘Nosey bitch. What were you doing in Sweden?’

He had intelligent eyes, she could see that, even if he an objectionable personality.

The hands gripped her shoulders again and he shook her body sideways. The bones in her neck cracked. ‘This gives you brain damage. Do you want to be a vegetable? What were you doing?’

‘Stop and I’ll tell you.’

He withdrew his hands and she rubbed her neck. ‘A woman I know, Renata Shchyotkina. Her boyfriend is a bastard like you; I went to have a word with him unofficially.’

‘A Sven?’

‘Yeah, except they actually have laws against beating women over there.’

‘That bitch, was her boyfriend called Thorsten Dahl?’

He wrapped her shirt into his fist and dragged her to standing. ‘I have a story for you, it’s called “you ignored the fucking warning”. If you didn’t have a uniform you would be dead already.’ He uncurled his fist and she tensed her body to prepare for another assault. It never came; he walked out of the room without looking back.

Over the Tannoy she heard an announcement for a late Aeroflot arrival from Moscow and checked the door. The handle twisted – he’d left it unlocked. Next to a silent vacuum cleaner she saw a plastic chair with a rucksack and her belongings spilling out of it. On top was her passport, splayed open to show her photograph. She pushed everything back into the bag and slung it over her shoulder then followed the line of closed sentry boxes marking passport control. A hubbub of passengers grew louder, then they came into view. There were no immigration officials for the domestic flight and Natalya attached herself to a middle-aged woman pulling a small silver case and wearing too many clothes for the mild morning, presumably to avoid paying for an additional bag. At the exit doors of Terminal 1, she left the woman at the taxi rank and went to the car park for her Volvo.

On the way home, she thought about a lot of things. In another life, Primakov’s message might have passed for intriguing, now it was damned sinister. What the hell was he doing in Yulia Federova’s apartment in the middle of the night with Dostoynov and Rogov? At least he had warned her, so there was still someone she could trust. She rubbed the aching muscles on her neck and tried to think clearly, but she was exhausted and whoever that bastard was, he’d left her with a katyusha firing inside her skull.