Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

We climbed up together. I noticed that Dima was wheezing when we got to the top and I wondered if he was ill – although it could just have been all those cigarettes. On the way, we passed a couple of people, a man and a woman, lying on top of each other, unconscious. I couldn’t even be sure they were actually alive. Dima just stepped over them and I did the same, wondering what I was getting myself into. My village had been a place of poverty and hardship but it was somehow more shocking here, in the middle of a city.

Dima’s room was on the eighth floor. Since there was no lighting, he had taken out a torch and used it to find the way. We went down a corridor that was missing its carpet with gaping holes showing the pipework and wiring. There were doors on either side, most of them locked, one or two reinforced with metal plating. Somewhere, I could hear a baby crying. A man shouted out a swear word. Another laughed. The sounds that echoed around me only added to the nightmare, the sense that I was being sucked into a dark and alien world.

“This is me,” Dima said.

We’d come to a door marked with a number 83. Somebody had added DIMA’S PLACE in bright red letters but the paint hadn’t been allowed to dry and it had trickled down like blood. Perhaps the effect was deliberate. There was a hole where the lock should have been but Dima used a padlock and a chain to keep the place secure. At the moment, it was hanging open. His friends had arrived ahead of us.

“Welcome home!” he said to me. “This is my place. Come in and meet my mates…”

He pushed the door open. We went in.

The flat was tiny. Most of it was in a single room, which he shared with the two boys who had robbed me. On the floor were three mattresses and some filthy pillows on a carpet which was mouldy and colourless. The place was lit by candles and my first thought was that if one of them toppled over in the night, we would all burn to death. A single table and four chairs stood on one side. Otherwise there was no furniture of any description. A few bits of the kitchen were still in place but I could tell at a glance that the sink hadn’t been used for years and without electricity the fridge was no more than an oversized cupboard. The smell in the room was unpleasant; a mixture of human sweat, unwashed clothes, dirt and decay.

Dima waved me over to the table. “This is Yasha,” he announced. “He’s going to be staying with us for a while.” His two friends were already sitting there playing Snap with a deck that was so worn that the cards hung limp in their hands. They didn’t look pleased as I joined them. “He’s going to pay,” Dima added. “Two rubles a week.”

Dima opened the fridge and took out a bottle of vodka and some black bread. He found some dirty glasses in the sink and poured drinks for us all. He lit a cigarette for himself, then offered me one, which I accepted gratefully. It wasn’t just that I wanted to smoke. It was a gesture of friendship and that was what I most needed.

Dima introduced the two boys. “This is Roman. That’s Grigory.” Roman was tall and thin. He looked as if he had been deliberately stretched. Grigory was round-faced, pock-marked with oily, black hair. All three of them looked not just adult but old, as if they had forgotten their true age… which was about seventeen. Roman collected the cards and put them away. It was obvious who was the leader here. So long as Dima said I could stay, they weren’t going to argue.

“Tell us about yourself, soldier,” Dima said. “I’d like to know what brought you to Moscow.” He winked at me. “And I’d particularly like to know why the police are so interested in you.”

“What?”

So I’d been right. When I’d got back to the station I’d thought the children had been behaving strangely and now I knew why. The police had been there, looking for me.

“That’s right. Tell him, Grig.” Grigory said nothing so Dima went on. “They’re looking for someone new to town. Someone who might have come into Kazansky Station, dressed up like a Young Pioneer. They’ve been asking everyone.” He tapped ash. “They’re offering a reward for information.”

My heart sank. I wondered if I had walked into another trap. Had Dima invited me here to have me arrested? But there was no sound coming from outside; no footsteps in the corridor, no sirens in the street.

“Don’t worry, soldier! No one’s going to turn you in. Not even for the money. They never pay up anyway.

“I hate the p-p-p-police.” Roman had a stutter. I watched his face contort as he tried to spit out the last word.

“What do they want with you?” Grigory asked. He sounded hostile. Maybe he was afraid that I was bringing more trouble into his life. He probably had enough already.

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I didn’t want to lie but I was afraid of telling the truth. In the end, I kept it as short as I could. “They killed my parents,” I said. “My dad knew something he wasn’t meant to know. They wanted to kill me too. I escaped.”

“What about your friend at the university?” Dima asked.

“He wasn’t my friend.” I was on safer ground here. I told them everything that had happened in Misha Dementyev’s office. When I described how I had beaten Dementyev off using the arm of the skeleton, Dima laughed out loud. “I wish I’d seen that,” he said. “You certainly gave him the elbow!”

It was a weak joke but we all laughed. Dima refilled our glasses and once again we drank the Russian way, throwing the liquid back in a single gulp. It didn’t take us long to finish the bottle and about an hour later we all went to bed… if you can call bed a square of carpet with a pile of old clothes as a pillow. I was just glad to have a roof over my head and, helped by the vodka, I was asleep almost at once.

The next morning, Dima took me to the pawnbroker he had mentioned. It was a tiny shop with a cracked front window and an old, half-shaven man sitting behind a counter that was stacked with watches and jewellery. I handed across my mother’s earrings and stood there, watching him examine them briefly through an eyeglass which he screwed into his face as if it was part of him. Right then, a little part of me died. It had been a pawnbroker that the hero had murdered in Crime and Punishment , the book I had been forced to read at school. I could almost have done the same.

He wanted to give me eight rubles for the earrings but Dima talked him up to twelve. The two of them knew each other well.

“You’re a crook, Reznik,” Dima scowled.

“And you’re a thief, Dima,” Reznik replied.

“One day someone will stick a knife in you.”

“I don’t mind. So long as they buy it from me first.”

Dima took the money and we went back out into the sunlight. He gave me three rubles, keeping nine for himself, and when I looked down reproachfully at the crumpled notes he clapped me on the back. “That’s three weeks’ rent, soldier,” he said.

“What about the other three rubles?”

“That’s my commission. If you hadn’t had me with you, that old crook would have ripped you off.”

I’d been ripped off anyway but I didn’t complain. Dima had said I could stay with him for three weeks. It was exactly what I wanted to hear.

“Let’s get some breakfast!” he said.

We ate breakfast in the smallest, grimiest restaurant it would be possible to imagine. Somehow, I ended up paying for that too.

So began my stay in Moscow. I adapted very quickly to the way of life. The truth is that nobody did anything very much. They stole, they ate, they survived. I spent long hours outside the station with Dima, Roman and Grigory. The two boys didn’t warm to me but gradually they began to accept that I was there. At the same time, Dima had made me his special project. I wondered if he might have had a younger brother at some time. He never spoke about his past life but that was how he treated me. When I write about him now, I still see him with the sleeves of his precious leather jacket falling over his hands, his smile, the way he swaggered along the street, and I wonder if he is alive or dead. Dead most probably. Homeless kids in Moscow never survived long.