Anatoly’s maternal grandparents were regular Soviet citizens. His grandfather, also named Anatoly, spent his life working in a components factory and lost two fingers in machines; his grandmother, Zinaida, always insisted young Anatoly finish his food. Anatoly Sr was highly intelligent, but at the age of twelve, with the Soviet Union fighting for its existence against the Wehrmacht, he was forced to leave school and find a job. He finally went to technical college in his thirties.
Anatoly was named after his grandfather, now aged eighty-three and still living in Moscow. He said they are similar in character. ‘He’s quiet and introverted. He loves chess and mental games. He was unbeatable at dominoes. His colleagues at the factory got angry because he won every single match. If he were born later, he’d have been an avid gamer.’
As a child in Russia, Anatoly thought his father worked in some kind of law enforcement. After he moved to England he told his schoolmates his dad was a journalist and a police officer. He remembered his father as the more indulgent parent. Marina was the strict one – a ‘typical communist mum’, as she put it to me. Father and son would play chess. Anatoly always won – Alexander was a lousy opponent.
‘My dad loved England. He felt extremely safe here. He loved the freedom of expression, the fact that people could vote for whomever they liked,’ Anatoly said. One photo shows a visit to Hyde Park. Alexander introduced Anatoly to Speakers’ Corner; they posed together next to two London bobbies in uniform. Litvinenko is grinning and wearing a pair of knee-length khaki shorts. Alexander told his son that, unlike in Russia, you could trust British justice. You could stand up on a box and say anything.
Anatoly was aware his father was a personal enemy of Putin’s. But, by 2006, Moscow felt like the past. ‘It was over. We were having a quiet normal life,’ he said. The family would go for pizza at La Porchetta, their favourite local Italian restaurant on Muswell High Street. Once a week the two of them went to Finsbury leisure centre. Anatoly had a taekwondo class; Alexander went for a 10-mile (15-km) run. Afterwards, Anatoly would splash in the kids’ pool, while Alexander swam lengths of vigorous front crawl.
On the way home to Osier Crescent, Anatoly would make a short cut – taking the diagonal across a muddy park and crawling through a hole in the fence. Alexander would go on the path. He was, Anatoly said, reluctant to get mud on his trainers. Like other Russians who had grown up with very little, Alexander had something of a ‘a post-Soviet rush’ towards consumer stuff, he said.
Sometimes his father was away on business trips. ‘When he was there, he was fun,’ Anatoly said. ‘He was quite relaxed, happy to joke around with me.’ That summer of 2006, they watched the World Cup on a giant screen, cheering on England against Trinidad and Tobago. Alexander flew a Union flag from their balcony. When they first arrived in London, Anatoly asked Alexander which team he should support. His reply: not Chelsea, Abramovich’s club. ‘I picked Arsenal,’ Anatoly said.
I had asked Anatoly if he might write something for the Guardian. We had discussed this during earlier conversations. He was considering becoming a journalist after university, maybe specialising in Russia. He handed me several handwritten pages of A4.
His piece was moving. One of the hardest aspect of losing his father, Anatoly wrote, was not having had the opportunity to become friends with him – as he had with Marina:
‘As a kid, you tend to perceive adults, be it parents or anyone else, differently from how you would at age sixteen, eighteen or older. These days I’m able to joke around and have interesting conversations with my mother. We have discussions and arguments. I have gained a certain maturity that allows for mutual respect. And through this sort of relationship you are able to get an insight into the other person: how they think, what troubles them, what forms their views on life and so on. You get to understand what really makes the person.’
With his dad, Anatoly wrote, he was forced to reconstruct the person from what was left – from ‘little titbits’ here and there. ‘From small things I remember. How I used to run to him if I did something wrong and was getting scolded by my mother, how I could run to him for sanctuary, or how incredibly proud he was of my smallest academic achievement.’
Alexander had loved rock music. Anatoly hadn’t much liked it as a child, but now found himself as a young adult listening to the same bands as his father. ‘But I can never share my opinions of the music with him,’ he wrote.
He continued: ‘This, perhaps, is why the inquiry is so important to me. When there is a story of a death so sensational, it’s very easy to get lost in the events of the few days and weeks, those of November 2006, with facts, accusations and intrigue. For me personally, this isn’t paramount. For me, it’s important to understand what Alexander Litvinenko was like behind the scenes, beyond the press conferences and the polonium; to construct an image, even half a one, in order to have a role model to look up to.
‘And most importantly perhaps, to always remember him as a person, a human being and my father, rather than just an aspect of political history.’
After coffee and croissants we set off together to visit his father’s grave. Litvinenko is buried in Highgate West Cemetery in north London. We took the Northern line to Archway and then waited at a bus stop in the chill. ‘That’s about as weird as it gets,’ Anatoly said, pointing to the electronic sign that tells us which bus is arriving when. One of the buses that go to the cemetery is the 210 – as in polonium-210. ‘How crazy is that?’ he smiled.
We got on another bus and walked up to the cemetery’s imposing black gates. They are locked to visitors, but Anatoly was known here; a woman radioed her colleague inside: ‘There’s a grave-owner; can you let him in?’ Anatoly, Marina and a few close friends visit every year to mark the anniversary of Litvinenko’s death.
We walked up a small bucolic path. It’s an incongruous resting place for a patriotic Russian officer. Litvinenko’s grave is set among mid-Victorian tombstones and fluted funerary columns. There are squirrels and magpies in a tranquil clearing; opposite lies an admiral whose family vault resembles a grand naval warship.
The conversation returned to the question of Putin’s guilt. ‘You have to ask yourself, which countries have the capability to produce polonium? Which country did my dad have a problem with? It’s simple,’ he said. And added: ‘There was a radioactive trail that leads back to Lugovoi. You can’t make that up.’ Of Putin, he said: ‘Dad used to get irritated about how many people in the west trusted Putin. The reality is: he’s dangerous. He shouldn’t be appeased.’
After Emmerson’s opening statement, Marina and Anatoly Litvinenko gave evidence from the witness box. It must have been harrowing for Marina to relive it all again. Over two days she told the story of her husband’s life and death.
There was also testimony from Dr Nathaniel Cary, the consultant forensic pathologist who examined Litvinenko’s body. The scene in University College Hospital was extraordinary, like something from a horror movie. Cary said that he and other officials examining the corpse wore two protective suits, two pairs of gloves taped at the wrists and large battery-operated plastic hoods into which filtered air was piped.
Cary said that medical staff left Litvinenko’s radioactive corpse in situ for two days. It fell to him to remove drips and disconnect tubes. He took a small sample of muscle from the right thigh to test for polonium. He then put the corpse in two body bags. Following this ‘very hazardous’ recovery operation, Cary said he conducted a post-mortem on 1 December 2006, together with a full team wearing protective gear.