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

She put the comb down and stared at him. ‘Rogov was the only one who knew Yulia had gone away.’

He put the iron down in the sink. ‘Angel, Dostoynov threatened to fire Stepan this afternoon for insubordination. Don’t be too hard on him, his balls are in a vice.’

She shook her head, incredulous that Mikhail was defending Rogov.

‘And there’s a witness. Federova’s neighbour has gone on record claiming he heard you threatening the girl.’

‘Is this the guy in the apartment opposite hers – the one with poor personal hygiene?’

‘I think so.’

‘Misha, this is ridiculous.’ She felt the urge to scream. ‘Isn’t Vasiliev doing anything?’

‘He’s keeping his head down. Those bastards in the FSB could make a church mouse look like it stole the Patriarch’s Breguet.’

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘You think they care? Half the unmarked graves in Russia are full of the innocent; the other half hold their defence lawyers.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Your only hope is to get away and leave the Dahl case alone. Will you do that for me?’

‘I can’t.’

‘You mean you won’t.’

‘Those two boys didn’t kill Zena Dahl on their own. They were set up or helped. When did we decide to stop going after murderers because it got difficult?’

Mikhail looked away momentarily and she wondered if it had something to do with his secret bank account. How had he been compromised?

He nodded solemnly. ‘As long as Anton’s safe I’m here for you.’

‘If that’s true, I want three things from you.’

‘Whatever you want.’

‘You promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘One, tell me where your money came from. I can’t trust you until you do that. If it’s bad I won’t forgive you, but I get to decide.’

‘Agreed. What else?’

‘Two doesn’t happen without one.’ She put a hand on his chest. ‘I’m tired and I don’t intend to sleep on the sofa.’

‘And three?’ Mikhail asked instantly.

‘That comes after two.’ She dropped the towel and watched a greedy smile break across his face.

Mikhail had a tenderness in bed that was a contradiction to his bluff personality. He ran his fat fingers through her hair and cupped her buttocks with his other hand. She pushed her body against him, feeling him harden.

‘How’s tiger?’

‘Elephantine.’

‘Tell me about the money first.’

‘You want to ruin the moment?’

She gave him a sour look.

‘OK, but now?’

She maintained the look.

He pushed himself onto the pillows and patted the table. His hand came away with a fresh pack of Sobranie Classics.’

‘When did you start smoking in bed?’

‘I picked up some bad habits at Rogov’s.’ He climbed out to look for a lighter.

‘Is it an African or Indian one?’

‘What?’

She peered at his penis and he grunted. After he left, she heard the cooker ignition; he returned trailing smoke.

He climbed back in bed and drew deeply on the cigarette. ‘What I told you about the account was the truth – just not all of it. Most of the money came from my mother. She came up with Misha Buratino . It really was my childhood nickname, you know.’

‘You said “most”. What about the rest of the money?’

He sucked on the cigarette. ‘Do you remember a murder case around eight years ago? Artur Romakhin.’

She thought for a moment then shook her head.

‘It wasn’t big news at the time.’ He spoke nonchalantly, ‘Romakhin was a pawnbroker, his wife found him dead on the shop floor with his skull cracked.’

She ripped the cigarette from Mikhail’s hand and put it to her lips, flicking her eyebrows in a “so what?” expression before he challenged her.

‘It was my first big case. You know what that’s like. You’ve got uniforms and detectives running around asking for orders and all you can think of is not screwing up. Well, the dead guy’s wife, Yana, she told me Romakhin was an actual pawnbroker.’

She looked at him in amazement. ‘You mean he wasn’t money laundering?’

‘Can you believe it? He’d made a lot of cabbage running a shop in Veliky Novgorod and liked his chances in Piter . By all accounts, he was a good citizen.’

She took a final drag on the cigarette and passed it back to him.

‘Romakhin started getting smashed windows and thought someone was going to break in so he bought a camera off the internet. Yana showed it to me – it was built into a smoke monitor in the ceiling and streamed to a laptop. I watched everything in the storeroom.’

Mikhail puffed on the Sobranie and blew the smoke away from her. ‘Imagine that? It was my first murder case and I’d solved it in five minutes. On the laptop, I saw these two bratki , mafia bulls, come in and start an intense discussion with Romakhin.’

‘Let me guess, they didn’t believe he was legitimate.’

‘Exactly.’ Mikhail sucked on the cigarette. ‘Big misunderstanding. They wanted to know whose cash he was rinsing. He told them he was legitimate. They didn’t believe him and pressed a little harder. All the while, Romakhin thought it was safe to push back because he was making his little movie with them in the starring roles. After a bit of this dancing, one of the bratki took exception to a member of a prey species pointing a finger in his face. He punched Romakhin and his head hit the marble counter. End of Romakhin.’

Mikhail flicked ash into a coffee cup he’d been using for an ashtray.

‘Before the day was over, I had both bratki charged with murder, aggravated by racketeering. One of them was built like a cage fighter, he hands me this paper with a phone number on it. “What’s this, dick for brains?” I ask. “Get out of jail free card” he says. So out of curiosity I called it.’

‘Who was it?’

‘An avtoritet for the Tambovski mafia. I mean this guy was off the fucking scale. The cage fighter happened to be his new wife’s nephew. We exchanged pleasantries then he asked me to choose between silver and lead.’

The lightness in Mikhail’s voice had gone. ‘The silver was a hundred thousand dollars to get the two bratki out of the shit and put someone in their place. The lead, well, you know what that is.’

‘Jesus Christ, Misha.’

‘I know, Angel. If it had been just me I’d have told him to get lost, respectfully of course, but I was with Dinara then and she was already unstable. Anton was in his first year of senior school too.’

Her voice rose in pitch as she spoke: ‘You set someone up?’

‘On the laptop footage, after Romakhin was killed this kid called Pyotr Voloshyn comes running in. He was a shestyorka , a mafia novice they were using as a lookout. Voloshyn was eighteen; he had a juvenile record but nothing serious. I lost the laptop and the avtoritet offered him an incentive to do the time for Romakhin’s murder. The widow knew what I was doing, so did everyone; even the kid’s mother. She cried all the way through the trial.’ He pursed his lips and stared into space. ‘The prosecutor and judge had been bought. Everyone was lined up like toy soldiers. The avtoritet even gave me a bonus of twenty thousand for making it look good.’

‘What did the boy get?’

‘Ten years in Ulyanovsk. I make enquiries every now and again, he’s still there.’

‘He’ll be out soon then.’

Mikhail’s eyes looked glassy though she didn’t know if it was from drinking. ‘I came in as an idealist and then suddenly I was one of those menti I always despised.’

Somewhere in the early morning, she’d fallen asleep in his arms before they had twisted apart to take up their usual positions. They hadn’t made love in the end. After his confession, the mood had changed. Her lungs felt tight from the few cigarettes she’d smoked but she still leaned over Mikhail for his pack of Sobranies. If she had made that call to the avtoritet and been offered silver or lead, could she have refused if Anton had been her child? She lit the cigarette off the stove and climbed back into bed. There was something existential about lying in bed naked with another human being. Exposed and vulnerable with all weaknesses on display, just as theirs were. Silver or lead, she thought. At least it took the threat of a bullet to make him dishonest. Real criminals didn’t need encouraging.