Mark Blair - Stroika

‘Your place or mine?’ said Misha, suddenly impatient to be in bed with her.

‘I think yours. It has to be better than mine,’ she said, squeezing his hand. He helped her on with her grey woollen coat and noticed its frayed edge around the lapel.

‘You’ll have to call in at the showroom, choose some samples,’ he said, holding open the restaurant door for her. They were hit by a blast of freezing cold air.

‘How long have you had this?’ Sveta asked teasingly as she walked around the red car in mock admiration, avoiding the icy snow banked up on the kerb.

Misha considered how long it had taken him to acquire his first car and how many strings he’d had to pull to find this one, even if it was a hundred years old. He knew he could afford a much more expensive model now he was beginning to make serious money, but he didn’t see any point in attracting unwanted attention, either from the authorities or the criminal fraternity.

‘All I can say is that it’s colder inside than out.’ Misha walked round the car, tugged the door open and watched her slide in. When he turned back, he nearly stumbled straight into Konstantin. He was standing almost directly behind him, Viktoriya on his arm, three bodyguards behind him.

‘Nice car,’ said Konstantin.

‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

Viktoriya stepped forward and kissed him on both cheeks.

‘Misha is not into the cars like you are, Kostya.’

‘Clearly not.’ He pointed at the ZiL parked fifty metres away. ‘You should get yourself one of those. And take my advice, you shouldn’t be walking around on your own, not in this city.’

Viktoriya and Ivan had been nagging him about the same thing. He had doubled protection at the warehouse but he didn’t want a band of men following his every movement.

‘You probably need it more than me, Kostya. What’s that old joke about paranoia?’

‘Quite,’ said Konstantin frostily. ‘We should talk business, you and I, soon.’

‘I think we’re better off doing our own thing.’

‘Pity, you need allies, we all need allies. Shall we go, Vika?’

‘She’s very beautiful, Misha,’ said Viktoriya, casting a glance into the car, a wry smile on her face.

‘I do my best. She’s probably frozen by now.’ He looked in the car. Sveta blew a cloud of iced vapour at him. ‘I rest my case.’

Ten minutes later, Misha stopped outside his new apartment. Sitting there gazing up at its newly painted neoclassical façade, he sensed Sveta was considerably more impressed with it than she had been with his car.

‘Your friend back there is very beautiful… old girlfriend?’

‘Funnily enough, she said the same thing about you… no, school friends.’

‘Really… I’m not so sure… and I know the other guy – owns that restaurant and a pile of clubs. You don’t want to be mixing with him.’

‘Good advice… I won’t be.’

He felt the warmth of her delicate hand run down his inner thigh and up onto his crutch. Misha leaned forward to kiss her, only to be pushed back by an outstretched index finger.

They took the lift to the fifth floor. She leaned back against the mirror as he slid his hand inside her coat and ran his fingers down the outside of her silky leggings. This time she did not pull away. The over-warm corridor smelled of new paint and varnish. Sveta slipped off her coat and hung it over her arm as Misha inserted the key to his apartment door. The barrel lock sounded its familiar double dead clunk; Misha pushed open the door and waved her ahead. She eased past him, heels clipping the wooden floor, her body brushing his. Misha turned his head towards the switch and glimpsed the silhouette of a fast-moving object crashing towards his skull. He raised his hand reflexively. Sveta screamed, and whatever it was connected solidly with his head, triggering a fire-burst of yellow light and… blackness.

The first thing he experienced when he came round was a sharp stabbing pain to the left side of his head above his ear. He reached up and felt a sticky wetness. It was pitch black. For a moment he struggled to recollect where he was. His flat… a girl… Sveta. He pushed himself up onto all fours. The sharp pain turned to an insistent throb; unsteadily he climbed to his feet. The room began to swim. He squatted down for a moment and was violently sick. Struggling back on his feet he edged forward until he felt the wall. It took him a few seconds to find the light switch. He clicked it on.

At first he didn’t see Sveta, but then at the end of the hallway, jutting out through the half-open living room doorway, he noticed her feet twisted at an awkward angle, one shoe partially detached hanging by a strap twisted round her ankle. Misha struggled along the hallway using the wall as a prop and pushed open the door. Sveta looked up at him with blank unseeing eyes, her neck terribly twisted.

The living room had been ransacked. Drawers lay empty and upended, contents strewn across the floor, the bookcase emptied a brand new computer he had brought home to experiment with, missing. The bedrooms and kitchen were more of the same. Even the contents of the freezer had been emptied onto the kitchen floor.

Misha stopped, walked back into the living room and looked at the sofa. It was on its side. The photographs… He ripped off what remained of the hessian underside of the sofa and came up empty-handed. He searched again, this time checking the floor in case the envelope had fallen out inadvertently or been abandoned. Nothing… they were gone.

‘Am I completely surrounded by idiots?’ spat out Konstantin. He peered closely at the four black-and-white photographs: two men standing by a waterway, the prints heavily fogged, it was impossible to make out any discerning features. He couldn’t imagine they would be of use to anyone. ‘At least we have the photos, if not the negatives,’ he added, somewhat placated. Maybe the KGB would get off his back now. He looked at the glass-domed clock on the mantelpiece of his study – a quarter past one in the morning. Bazhukov hovered apprehensively in front of him.

‘Who was it?’

‘Erik Fyodorvich Harkov.’

Konstantin shrugged; he didn’t recognise the name.

‘He’s not one of our crew, hangs out with Stef. A break-in merchant… I thought this was going to be straightforward.’

Konstantin let out a guffaw. ‘We have a dead prostitute, a man assaulted, a flat trashed and the police involved. It’s hard to see how it could be more complicated. You will have to deal with Harkov. We can’t have Mikhail Dimitrivich, the police, or anyone else tracing him back to us.’

Bazhukov nodded.

Why couldn’t the KGB take care of its own affairs? Why involve him? He wondered why with all their resources they had never managed to find these photos before.

‘Where did he find them?’

‘Inside the base lining of the sofa.’

Konstantin wondered if Mikhail knew why these photos were so important.

There was a knock. Viktoriya appeared in the doorway, her hair dishevelled from being in bed.

‘I heard voices,’ said Viktoriya, her voice throaty from sleep. Her eyes went to the photographs in his hands. He replaced them on his desk, face downward.

‘Misha is being questioned at the police station on Liteyny Prospect. Apparently some scuffle at his apartment, and that girl we saw with him is dead… He’s fine, apparently a little concussed… I would have told you later.’

Viktoriya frowned uncomprehendingly, shaking off her slumber.

‘Misha wouldn’t have anything to do with that.’

Konstantin felt a stab of jealousy. Why did she always defend him?