Mark Blair - Stroika

A loud bang on her apartment door made Viktoriya jump. She switched on the security camera. Outside in the corridor three uniformed police stared up at her while another argued with her two bodyguards, waving a piece of official-looking paper at them.

Viktoriya pulled open the door.

‘Viktoriya Nikolaevna Kayakova?’ asked the one with the official-looking paper in his hand.

‘Yes.’

‘We have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the death of Pavel Pytorvich Antyuhin.’ The officer showed her the warrant and his badge.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ she lied. How did they know? What could they know? Kostya wouldn’t have betrayed her, not when he was directly involved. ‘You’ve made some mistake.’

‘You’ll have to come with us, madam, I’m afraid. You can either do it peaceably or not.’

He stood there and stared at her, calmly, daring her to disobey him.

Vladimir stepped in between her and the police officer.

‘You’re not taking her anywhere.’

The last thing she wanted was a fight.

‘Vlad, it’ll be all right. I’ll sort this out; there’s clearly been some mistake. You can follow me to the police station. I was meant to meet Misha and Konstantin Ivanivich later. Will you please tell them straightaway what has happened?’ Indeed, she had no plan to meet Kostya that day, but maybe he could figure out what was going on.

‘So where is she being held?’ asked Konstantin. He’d arrived unannounced five minutes before at Malaya Morskaya and been quickly ushered in to Misha’s office.

‘Leningrad Oblast Main Internal Affairs Directorate, GUVD,’ replied Ivan. Vladimir had just radioed through that they had moved her to police headquarters on Suvorovskiy Prospect.

‘That’s a shithole of a place,’ said Misha. ‘People go in there and never come out, not in one piece anyway.’

‘Why was she arrested?’ said Konstantin.

‘I’ve sent a lawyer over there to find out. It’s something to do with the murder of that Khozraschet director who got washed up on the Neva years ago. It doesn’t make any sense… what would she have to do with that? She was only a student at the time.’

Konstantin rubbed his chin. What could they have on her after all this time? How many years had it been? Only five people had known, if he included Viktoriya’s father, and he was clearly no longer a witness.

‘Any ideas?’ prompted Misha.

‘Nope,’ he said, genuinely at a loss. And if they had something on her, did they have something on him? The police weren’t knocking on his door, not yet. He had to trust she would keep her cool and deny everything, but the GUVD were hardly famous for their record on human rights. They had broken stronger people than Viktoriya.

‘Let me dig around, see what I can come up with. Let me know what your lawyer says.’

For once, thought Konstantin, not without some irony, they were on the same side.

Viktoriya waited for what seemed hours. The room was airless, lit by two recessed lights protected by a metal mesh. Her jewellery and watch had been removed when she had arrived and there was no way she could measure passing time. A policeman entered and took down her personal details: date of birth, address, place of work, marital status. When she had asked for a glass of water she was simply ignored.

A few minutes later the interview room door swung open. Two police officers walked in and took the chairs opposite her: one a woman – a sergeant by her stripes – and the other, the man who had served the arrest warrant at her apartment.

‘So tell me, where were you on the night of December 11, 1982?’ asked the man.

‘I’ve no idea; you can hardly expect me to remember so far back. Can you remember what you were doing that night?’

The sergeant leaned forward threateningly. ‘You may have money and a fancy apartment, but in here they are worth nothing… don’t be smart.’

The man extracted a photograph from a file.

‘Do you recognise this man?’

It was Antyuhin. She felt her heart quicken and her face go red.

‘No,’ she said, looking him directly in the eye with a confidence she did not feel.

‘The night before he disappeared it says in the file he drank at the Muzey bar. You worked there as a student – it says so here in your file.’ He referred to a second file with her name on it. It was at least three centimetres thick.

‘Yes, that’s true, I waitressed there as a student… but I served hundreds of customers. I don’t keep a mental log of each of them. Do you remember everyone you interview?’

‘Absolutely.’

He picked up the other file again. ‘It goes on to say that a young girl, of your description, was spotted outside the Palace Bar the following night, the night he disappeared and was probably murdered.

‘ Murdered? ’ She acted astonished. ‘And you think I had something to do with it?’

‘There are witnesses that say he drank at the Palace that evening.’

‘I did meet my boyfriend that night outside the Palace Bar. I remember the policemen. I never saw this man though,’ she said, tapping the photograph.

The captain reached into the file again and tossed an ID card onto the table.

‘And you haven’t seen this before?’

It was Antyuhin’s ID card. How had it got into their hands? Had Kostya betrayed her? But that didn’t make sense either; he would only be incriminating himself if he had.

‘It came with this note.’

He showed her a piece of paper with her name on it, nothing else.

‘An anonymous note, it’s all circumstantial. You should be trying to find the person who sent you this. I want to see my lawyer.’

The captain picked up the papers he had spread on the table and carefully put them back in their folder.

‘We are trying to locate your previous flatmate, Agnessa; maybe she can throw some light on this.’

Konstantin sat in his armchair, staring at his desk, going over that night nearly seven years before. Ilia, who, with his friend Lev, had been with them on that night long ago, had been as surprised as he when confronted with Viktoriya’s arrest. What possible motive would he have anyway? And Ilia knew the price of disloyalty.

He reached into his desk drawer and felt for Antyuhin’s ID card, as if by looking at his photo it might tell him more… nothing. He scrambled around, unpacked it; the ID was nowhere to be found. For a moment he wondered whether it had fallen down the back of the drawer, but then he noticed the bag of coke. He held it up to the light. It was a good deal emptier than when he last looked at it. He picked up the telephone and dialled the bar upstairs. A minute later Dimitri Bazhukov appeared in the doorway.

Konstantin looked at his watch: eight o’clock.

‘Where is Adriana?’

‘Upstairs, getting ready to go on?’

‘Get someone else to cover for her and send her down. In fact, accompany her down. I don’t want her doing a runner.’

Alone again, Konstantin wondered what was happening at the GUVD. He knew Viktoriya; she was smart, but she wasn’t indestructible.

Adriana walked into the room and sauntered over to his desk. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her hair was pulled back tightly from her face and held in place by a headband.

‘Early for you, Kostya. As you see, I’m not properly dressed yet,’ she said sarcastically.

Konstantin picked up the small polythene bag containing the cocaine and waved it in front of her.

‘I reckoned you owed me after last time,’ she pouted defiantly.

‘Anything else you removed from my desk?’ he said casually. She shifted onto her other foot.