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

‘I concur,’ added Major Belikova.

Natalya stared at the television; it had moved on to show the latest Donald Trump revelations, but she was thinking about the man with the bristly hair. ‘Zena was two years old in 1999, you can’t be her father.’

Dahl sank in his chair as if his two metre-frame could possibly become less conspicuous. ‘No, I’m not her father.’

‘Did you steal her?’

Belikova ran a tongue over her teeth, ‘There’s no need to get excited, Captain. He won’t face any charges – as long as he’s a good boy. I would be more worried for yourself. Unless you do as I ask, it will be you in prison and your stepson, Anton, fighting Ukrainian fascists in the Donbass People’s Militia.’

‘You can’t do that!’ Tears were in her eyes, betraying her weakness. She tried to blink them away and they rolled down her cheeks.

Belikova twisted her head. ‘Nahodkin, did you hear anything?’

‘Not me.’

‘So let’s get this right,’ said the Major, ‘Zena is Yuri and Kristina Volkov’s child?’

There was an uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the television in the apartment next door as the volume was turned up to near maximum volume. Nahodkin finished off Lyudmila’s vodka, sniffed at the whisky bottle then put it down with a look of disdain.

‘Her birth name was Ksenia… Zena was the closest equivalent.’

‘Thorsten,’ Natalya hissed, ‘did you steal their child?’

‘No.’

‘But she wasn’t yours.’

‘This isn’t easy,’ Dahl said. ‘The last person I told was my father, over seventeen years ago.’

‘Just tell me the fucking truth for once.’

He tried to placate her. ‘Anatoly told me not to trust you, but I wish I had done it sooner.’

She snapped: ‘Don’t flatter me, Thorsten. If you hadn’t lied, Felix Axelsson and Yulia Federova might still be alive. I thought Zena had been abducted and you didn’t feel it was relevant to mention you once screwed a gangster’s wife? Are you stupid? You didn’t think it was worth telling me you stole his fucking child?’

‘Please let me explain.’

‘Hey, Nahodkin? Give the Captain her clip back, I think she’s going to shoot him.’

‘Keep it, I don’t trust myself.’

Dahl offered a weak smile as if she had made a joke; Natalya glared at him until the smile died on his face. ‘I didn’t tell you about Yuri because I didn’t think he was a threat. Kristina and I were careful. Yuri never knew I had Zena.’

‘Well, I’d say he does now,’ said Belikova.

‘Yes,’ Dahl poured more whisky, ‘he does now.’

Natalya heaved a sigh. How had she got herself into this mess? She needed to warn Mikhail about Anton.

Belikova sucked on her cigarette. ‘I adore love stories. What happened after Kristina left the Astoria?’

Dahl was morose though he had no right to be. Zena was alive and the FSB weren’t threatening to send her to a war zone. ‘I thought Kristina had done it to break off our affair. At the beginning of October I left for Yekaterinburg – Anatoly had discovered a gas pipeline manufacturer going out of business with no debts and a full order book.’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘When I returned to the Astoria, a letter was waiting for me. It was from Kristina, she told me her husband had been arrested. She had left a mobile number and told me to only use it for urgent messages.’

He leaned back in his chair. ‘I asked to see her straight away. The next day I got a reply telling me to meet her at a café near the Eliseyev Emporium. It was the middle of December and she was dressed like a Siberian Yupik. She couldn’t stay long – her husband had assigned a pair of young bulls to guard her and she had managed to lose them.’

‘And?’ asked Belikova.

‘They were not there to protect her; they were her jailers.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Thorsten,’ shouted Natalya, ‘not them, her. What did she want?’

‘She was in shock – her husband had been charged with killing a man.’

‘What had he done?’

‘She thought Yuri was a businessman, maybe a little crooked sometimes, but she had no idea he was trafficking girls from Moldavia. One of them was the thirteen-year-old daughter of a local police chief. He managed to track down Yuri then got murdered for his trouble. The chief’s family caused a scene. Yuri got seven years.’

‘So while he was away you tried to steal his wife?’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he snapped. ‘Kristina asked for my help. Yuri used to beat her. While he was away she was kept as a prisoner in her own house.’ He held up his glass to check the contents, then finished the remains of his whisky and reached for the bottle.

Natalya pulled it away. She measured one finger of whisky into his glass then handed it back to him. ‘Now slow down.’

‘Natalya, how can you understand when you’ve never been in love?’ He turned in his chair, knocking over the glass and spilling whisky across the table. He picked it up and cradled it in his hands. There were dregs of whisky left and he put the glass to his lips. ‘I still haven’t told you everything.’

Natalya rolled her eyes in contempt. She figured it was the reaction he’d wanted all along. Dahl needed her to despise him in order to consolidate the way he felt about himself.

‘You don’t understand,’ he repeated, then grabbed the bottle and cradled it in his arms. ‘I killed Kristina.’

After his big announcement, Dahl fell silent.

‘So, to recap.’ Belikova said. ‘Mister Dahl has confessed to kidnapping a child and killing her mother. There are a number of unanswered questions, chiefly: why is he still alive? But, actually, I have little interest in that. What I want is—’

Dahl shook himself from his reverie. ‘Me?’

Belikova clapped. ‘A dancing dog, how delightful. No, my preference is to put a bullet in your head and blame it on the homo. Regrettably, I am constrained by orders.’

‘I haven’t got anything left to give.’

Belikova put her hand on her heart. ‘My poor rich man, you don’t understand the Russian way. Let me explain.’ She gave Dahl the smile of a bear observing salmon swimming upstream. ‘The FSB has many divisions. There is counter-terrorism, border control, and internal security to name a few. My own is called the Economic Crimes Directorate. Until recently we have been out of favour with the president. Now we have an opportunity to embrace his warm breast and suck the cream from his teat.’

‘It’s always about money and yet you call yourselves patriots.’ Natalya said.

Nahodkin appeared at her elbow.

‘No, leave her. See if the old woman has got any beers.’

Nahodkin returned a moment later and shook his head. ‘No beer.’ He leaned past Natalya with deliberate slowness to take the lighter from the table.

‘That’s a shame,’ the Major said. ‘Now let me finish my story. On Sunday night, my colonel tells me the police have found a dead girl in St. Petersburg and there’s a rumour her father is having difficulty selling his Russian companies. We put the two together and decide the girl’s death is connected to an extortion attempt. He orders me to intercept the criminals—’

‘So you can steal his companies yourself. You’re too late – Thorsten ransomed them for Zena yesterday morning.’

‘Shit,’ the Major hissed. ‘Dostoynov didn’t tell me this.’

‘And I might have stopped the exchange if you hadn’t been so busy trying to scare me off the case.’

Belikova was unmoved. ‘You were in the way, nothing personal. We’ll just have to take them using another method. I assume Volkov is behind it?’

‘It makes sense,’ Natalya said grudgingly.