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

She tapped Rogov on the shoulder. ‘Does this thing go any faster?’

He took the hint, and she glanced behind to see the Mercedes pick up speed; it overtook a bus to catch up, then ducked behind a white, VW estate.

Dahl twisted in his seat to speak to her. ‘Those boys in prison for Zena’s murder.’

‘It’s a SIZO,’ she corrected him, ‘a pre-detention facility.’

‘Well, I’d like to set up an appeal fund for them.’

She vaguely promised to make some preliminary enquiries but the process always took months; by then, it was more than likely that both boys would be dead from drug abuse or from the hands of other prisoners.

The car was silent again and her thoughts returned to Mikhail. She hoped Colonel Vasiliev was tearing up her letter of resignation. That left Mikhail in an awkward position. It was unfair to make him give up his chance of running the Directorate; not only that, she imagined life would be intolerable for everyone if Dostoynov took over. She could submit a request to transfer to a local station, perhaps the one in Admiralty, where there were fewer social problems than the outlying districts. It sounded promising but she couldn’t give up everything she had worked so hard for. They were no closer to a resolution.

She looked for the Mercedes again. She hadn’t seen the gelik in nearly an hour but it didn’t take a genius to know which direction their Primera was heading – if it was following them, maintaining visual contact wasn’t necessary.

Rogov stopped at a garage to get fuel where Dahl made admiring comments about the Primera (“it goes very well, is it very fuel efficient?”) though it must have been a heap of junk compared to the vehicles he was chauffeured around in. To her, the entire journey seemed an exercise in talking about everything except what was on their minds.

They set off again. After approximately twenty minutes Dahl turned to her. ‘Captain, can we pull over, please?’

‘I’d prefer to keep going. We’ll be at the border soon.’

‘Now please. It won’t take long.’

She gave the order to Rogov who braked harshly, skidding into a layby with a spray of gravel and dust to express his displeasure. Dahl was first out, followed by Zena.

‘Boss, what’s going on? I don’t like it.’

‘Nor do I.’ She glanced at his waist but couldn’t see Rogov’s Makarov for his belly. ‘Are you armed?’

‘Yeah, boss.’

‘Good.’

Dahl walked ahead with Zena sauntering behind – unwilling to join her father or fall back to them. The road climbed as they approached a bridge. Pine trees that had been at ground level fell away until they drew near the tips of their crowns. She watched Dahl jog across the tarmac then stop where the bank met the road again.

They caught up to him. ‘What is it, Thorsten?’ she asked.

He clasped a hand to his forehead and looked to the river’s edge. ‘There,’ he said, as much to himself, pointing to an area of thick undergrowth.

Dahl started lowering himself down the embankment. Zena stood at the top watching him. A few metres behind, Rogov offered Natalya one of his Winstons; she took it.

‘Boss, we should leave him. He might be going for a shit.’

They smoked as Dahl clambered down, clinging onto shrubs and saplings for support. He reached the bottom then looked up at them expectantly, beckoning them with his arm.

‘Oh crap, he wants us,’ she said.

‘I’ll wait up here, boss – if you don’t mind.’

Having seen Rogov’s poor attempt to master a few flights of stairs, she didn’t mind at all. ‘Keep your gun ready. If anyone comes near, be prepared for trouble.’

She stubbed out her cigarette and offered a hand to Zena. Together, they gripped the foliage as Dahl had done, and lowered themselves down.

‘Thorsten,’ she called out. ‘Wait for us.’

The day’s rain had turned the slope to mud and they struggled to stay upright. Zena slipped and Natalya cried out after straining her shoulders to grab the girl’s arm.

‘Thorsten, what are you doing? This is crazy.’

They reached the bottom and she scraped the edges of her shoes against a rock to remove the cloying earth. Dahl was ten metres away, he had found a branch and was using it like a machete to clear a path through the foliage. They trailed after him reluctantly.

‘It’s still here,’ Dahl called. His eyes were wild and there was something close to madness in them.

His hand rested on the roof of a car that had rusted a vivid orange with age. Now she was near, she could see he was crying openly. It made her feel more Russian than she had in a long time, and she fought against the desire to slap him for being so weak.

‘Kristina just needed help,’ he said.

Zena looked angry and she was fighting to contain herself. She threw Swedish words at Thorsten like stones and it wasn’t difficult to guess their meaning; Natalya imagined they went something like: “I don’t want to hear that shit”.

‘That’s your decision, but I’ll tell you the truth anyway,’ he replied in English. ‘You see that?’ He pointed through the car’s open door to a square of rusted springs poking through bright green moss. ‘I drove that car once. It’s a Zhiguli . You were in there, fast asleep on your mother’s lap.’

Natalya could see the girl was struggling. ‘You took me away!’ she yelled.

‘Yes,’ Dahl dabbed at his eyes, ‘I did. Your father was no good.’ He went to brush Zena’s hair with a palm and she jerked her head back. ‘He smuggled girls younger than you. Your mother discovered that when he was arrested.’

Zena shook her head. ‘Yuri said you killed her and took me away.’

‘I was helping you both to escape in this thing.’ He patted the Zhiguli. ‘We were going for the border crossing at Torfyanovka .’

‘Why didn’t you fly?’ Natalya asked.

‘Yuri did other smuggling too. Kristina thought he had men at the airport.’

‘You killed her,’ Zena said.

Dahl’s jaw clenched. ‘We were five minutes away from the border.’ He pointed to the top of the bank. ‘It’s my fault, I was going too fast. The car skidded on ice; we came off the bridge and ended up here.’ His voice caught. ‘Your mother was gone. I found you in the footwell, wrapped in a blanket and pressed against a bag of clothes.’

‘So you stole me,’ Zena spat.

‘Don’t you understand?’ he pleaded. ‘If I had only saved myself, you would have frozen to death.’

Zena glowered at him.

‘Yuri was in prison. What else was I to do?’ Fresh tears ran down his face. ‘I wrapped you in a blanket and carried you to Torfyanovka . My father sent a man to help us over the border.’

‘Why didn’t you take Zena to one of her relatives?’ Natalya asked.

‘Because that monster might have claimed her when he got out of prison. Anatoly told me the newspapers were saying Ksenia Volkova had been dragged away by wolves. I began to think of Zena as another girl; one I had found in an orphanage. Yuri’s daughter was dead.’

‘And that’s what everyone believed?’

‘People thought I had been naïve to take on a child alone but no one questioned the story. My father knew the truth of course – he expressed his displeasure at my recklessness but then he grew to love Zena and eventually let the matter drop.’

‘Boss?’ Rogov shouted from the top of the bridge. ‘Are you done?’

She raised her hand and waved. ‘Coming,’ she called.

The traffic approaching the border crossing was busy despite the ban on foot passengers to stem the flow of refugees and migrants entering the EU. Rogov stopped in front of a barrier and a woman in a green camouflage uniform with a thick, black ponytail came out of an orange hut. On the other side, in a parking area, Anatoly Lagunov was already waiting; he was leaning on the bonnet of his black BMW reading a newspaper.