A thundering silence. Jones is deeply embarrassed and red in the face. Valerya has stopped in mid-sentence and is boring into me with those green eyes which don’t seem so beautiful anymore. Iamskoy has snapped his head away toward a wall and the three others who I didn’t think spoke much English are looking down at the carpet. When Iamskoy brings his head round again to face me his mouth is crooked. “Is that what you came to ask me?”
“Yes.”
“Get out!”
“Andy!” Valerya says.
“Get the fuck out of my flat!”
“Andy, you can’t talk like that to a Thai cop. You’re a Russian pimp in a foreign land. Stop it.”
For a moment I think he is going to stand up to hit me, and he does begin to rise, but he is too drunk to make it all the way up from the floor and falls back in despair with his head resting on the seat of the sofa as if he has lost the use of his limbs. “Why?” His eyes plead with me. “Why bring that up? Didn’t your people do enough? Haven’t I spent enough of my life in that purgatory? Was it my fault?”
I turn to Valerya, whose cynicism might be exactly what I need, in the face of all this indecipherable Russian emotion. “You know what I’m talking about?”
“You’re talking about Sonya Lyudin.”
“Shut up,” Iamskoy tells her.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Andreev, the whole of Vladivostok still talks about it. Why shouldn’t we tell him?”
“He knows already. He’s just being a sly Thai.”
“I don’t,” I say. “I don’t know already. Already what?”
“If you don’t know already, what are you up to? This is very hush-hush over here, you know. Very hush-hush. Oh yes.” Upset, Iamskoy has lost his urbanity and control over his tongue. “You’re not shupposed to talk about it, even if it’s shtill the big story in Vladivostok. At leasht in the grimy circles in which I am now forced to mix.” Picking up the vodka bottle and looking at it. “Grimy circles. I who once shat at the feet of the great Sakharov.” He bursts into cackles. “That’s good. Shat at the feet…”
“The story of Sonya Lyudin is tragic,” Valerya explains, “but not typical. If it was typical none of us would be here. We’re not orphans or street whores. We’re smart women here to make a fast buck in a hard world. There’s no way we would risk our bodies like that. Sonya Lyudin was different.”
“How different?”
“She was a street whore. No education, born into an urka family. Hard as nails, a real Siberian. She’d do anything. She had no fear. She thought all men were dumb animals to be led by the nose. I’m not a great fan of men myself, but I think that’s a dangerous attitude for a woman to take. Especially in this job.” One of the women on the floor says something in Russian. “Natasha says I’m being a snob, that Sonya Lyudin was not so stupid as that. Just unlucky.”
“She was supposed to have protection,” Natasha explains in English. “She wasn’t an independent. She was brought here by a gang of urkas. They were supposed to protect her. Andreev was just used for the introductions.”
“That’s true,” Valerya concedes. “They took a contract out on the American’s head. They’ll get him sooner or later.”
“They won’t,” Natasha says. “The American paid them off.”
“No he didn’t,” Iamskoy says. “He tried to, but they refused. They couldn’t let it go, it was a matter of credibility. Of face, as they say out here. So the American had to get protection of his own. The best protection, so I hear.”
“What American?” Jones is alert now, leaning forward.
“Someone called Warren. A jeweler. A big shot in this country.”
“This is known? You’re telling me in Vladivostok the name of Warren is openly associated with this?”
“Oh yes. He’s a kind of bogeyman amongst women like us. You know, the worst nightmare: Be careful you don’t get a Warren tonight.”
“There’s a video,” Valerya says. “I’ve spoken to women who have seen it. A white American and an enormous black man.”
“Andreev,” I say, “I have to know. Do the Thai police have a copy of this video?”
He seems to have reached the passing-out stage. I think he is nodding but I can’t be sure as his head falls forward, then throws itself wildly back, then falls forward again. I look at Valerya and Natasha, who avoid my eyes. Iamskoy slides inexorably into the horizontal with legs together and arms by his side. All of a sudden he’s the tidiest thing in the room.
Laid out on the floor, Iamskoy opens one eye. “The Thai police bought the video from the urkas, paid a fortune for it. Of course the money came from Warren and of course the urkas promised it’s the only copy. They don’t care about the video, they want Warren.”
“Valerya, how tall was Sonya Lyudin?” Jones is locking eyes with the child psychologist, who turns to Natasha, who turns to the woman next to her. Now everyone is looking at Iamskoy. “About six feet,” he says with his eyes closed. “Slim. Very good body.”
“How much time did she spend with Warren before she died? Were there a number of assignations?”
“There were two. The first was quite short and according to her nothing happened except that she stripped for him and he fondled her. He gave her a short gold stick and told her if she wore it in her navel he would set a jade stone in it. Of course, she was only too delighted to go to the nearest body piercer and wear the gold stick. She never came back from the second assignation.”
“Did she mention a black American?”
“No. Only people who saw the video talk about a black man. I never saw the video.”
“Often the killer in this kind of case will need a trigger,” Jones explains to Valerya. “Sometimes it’s racial, sometimes social, sometimes physical-only tall or small victims for example-sometimes it’s social background. Usually it’s something that somehow gives the killer a proprietorial feeling, some claim on the body of the victim. It looks like Warren was very particular.”
“He’s a jeweler,” Valerya says. “He would be, wouldn’t he?”