Dead Meat

Name of Merab Laventrivich Zodelava,' he said. A drug-dealer, apparently. His pockets were full of wheels.' He showed us a plastic bag containing lots of pills. Amphetamines, I should say. The whores buy them to keep awake on the job. Anyway, it seems like he was standing here about to make a sale when this other churki showed up and blasted a window in him with a sawn-off. Both barrels, it looks like. Makes the autopsy easy, I suppose.'

Any witnesses?'

Just the one. But don't get too excited.' The detective jerked his head at an old man who was sitting patiently on an empty beer crate under the watchful eye of a militiaman. The man had one leg.

See that one leg?' he said. Well, he's got just the one eye to match.'

Great,' said Grushko.

He was here to beg a few copecks off the people going into the cathedral. I reckon the only reason the gunman didn't pot the old man as well was because of those dark glasses he's wearing. Probably thought there was no point in shooting a blind man.'

Did he give you a description?' asked Grushko.

The detective flipped open his notebook.

It's not much. He didn't stare too much in case he got a dose of lead. Well dressed, aged about thirty, dark hair, dark moustache, dark complexiona__.' He shrugged. Like I said, a churki.'

What about the pipes?' asked Grushko. Did he take it with him?'

The detective shrugged.

Drag the moat anyway,' Grushko ordered, just in case he dumped it. And better check both cemeteries in case he tossed it over the wall on his way out.'

What's the form on this one, sir?' asked the detective. Have we got another turf war on our hands? One of the scientific boys was saying something about a couple of Chechens getting their tickets to Allah this afternoon.'

I don't know about a turf war,' said Grushko, but there's plenty more blood where this lot came from.'

11

Vaja Ordzhonikidze's funeral cortege represented a small fortune in motor vehicles: Mercedes, Saabs, Volvos, BMWs there wasn't one that would have been within the purchasing range of a whole syndicate of militiamen, always assuming that they were straight. Not in this lifetime.

I thought of my own battered Volga back in Moscow, awaiting a new head gasket from the factory in Nizhniy Novgorod, and cursed the luck that had made me an honest man. Well, almost an honest man. Honesty is not always so clear cut. The nature of what I do requires that sometimes I have, as Dostoevsky might say, a Double, to do things of which one disapproves, such as misplace some evidence, or look the other way. Or to search a man's desk when he is out of his office and look for a sign of that man's corruption: a bank book, a name in a diary, a letter, a receipt from an expensive restaurant. A man who might have worked alongside you and thinks of you as his friend. A lie can sometimes illuminate the truth, but this can be hard. Still, nobody ever said the world was perfect.

The cars came down Oktabrisky Prospekt and pulled up at the gate of the Smolensky Cemetery. Several well-built men in dark suits and white shirts jumped out and stared with paranoid expectancy in several directions. Satisfied that there were no likely threats in the area they squired their team leaders and bosses, the Georgian Mafia elite, out of the cars.

From the other side of the canal, on Decembrist's Island, we watched the Georgian funeral through binoculars Nikolai, Sasha, Dmitri our photographer and myself. Grushko was the last to arrive, with General Kornilov.

Grushko shot a look of puzzlement at Dmitri and then leaned towards Sasha.

Who's he?' he said. Where's Arkady, our usual man?'

Sick,' said Sasha. This is Dmitri.'

Grushko nodded uncertainly and watched Dmitri turning the focus on a huge telephoto lens.

You needn't worry about him, sir,' said Sasha. He used to do surveillance work for the KGB, until he got made redundant.'

Oh? And what does he do now?'

Weddings, mostly.'

Grushko sighed and raised his binoculars.

Weddings,' he muttered darkly.

A group of Georgians were taking Vaja out of the hearse. He lay on an open bier like Lenin, covered in flowers. They lifted him on to their broad shoulders and, preceded by a priest of the Georgian Orthodox Church reading from a prayer-book, his acolyte swinging a censer and a third man bearing an icon, the funeral party started to proceed into the cemetery.

That's Dzhumber Gankrelidze, said Nikolai. The one straightening his tie. He's the boss.'

The power-wind of Dmitri's camera whirred busily.

It's quite a show,' observed the general. It doesn't much look as if they could have thought Vaja was an informer.'

This is nothing compared to the Little Gypsy's funeral in Sverdlovsk last year,' said Grushko. Brought the whole town to a standstill.'

Yes,' said Kornilov. Gregory Tsyganov. Who was it killed him?'

Azerbaijanis.'

Still, it's quite a show by our standards.'

And then, the year before that, there was Bosenko's brother.'

The Black Swan? I'd forgotten that one.'

Blown up in his car, he was,' said Grushko. There was hardly enough of him left to fill a shoe box, let alone a coffin, but the Cossacks still gave him the brass handles.' He smiled.

All right, Yevgeni,' said Kornilov. You've made your point.' He didn't enjoy taking lessons from Grushko. Do we know where they're holding the party afterwards?'

Our informers told us they're going to a restaurant called Tblisi. It's a little Georgian place on the other side of the Neva, in Petrogradsky Region. I've had the placed bugged, just in case they say anything coherent.'

The procession passed inside the cemetery and everyone lowered their binoculars. Dmitri started to wind back his film.

And what about this pimp?' said Kornilov, lighting a cigarette. The one who might have had a grudge against Mikhail Milyukin. Any sign of him yet?'

We're keeping an eye on all the tourist hotels,' said Grushko. If he is running a new herd of cows then that's where we'll find him.'

Yes, well, make it soon, Yevgeni. Since you mentioned Sverdlovsk, then remember what happened there. It was a war.'

Yes, sir.'

What puzzles me is how he got out of the zone so early?'

According to my contact in the GUITI,' I said, it was someone in the Department who fixed it.'

Does he have any idea who?'

I shrugged and shook my head.

What are they up to?' he muttered. Let's just hope you're right about this Chechen, Yevgeni. You know, without him, you've really got nothing. Nothing.'

I could see Grushko didn't much like to be ridden by Kornilov in front of us, but he just bit his lip and nodded sullenly. That was why Nikolai, Sasha, Andrei or any of his men would take it from Grushko: because they knew he had to take it from Kornilov.

By the way,' said Kornilov, after the funeral procession had disappeared from view. That icon they were carrying. Who was it?'

Grushko smiled thinly.

George, sir. Who else for Georgians?

There has been a police prison on the site of the Big House since the time of Catherine the Great. After the assassination of Alexander II the site at Number six Liteiny Prospekt became the headquarters of the newly created political police, the Okhrana. Following the abandonment of Leningrad as the country's capital, the Leningrad NKVD plotted the murder of Stalin's rival Kirov from the old building at Number six. They then used his death as a pretext for purging the local party and, for that matter, the local NKVD as well. Stalin's most notorious henchman, a Georgian named Laventri Beria, had spent some considerable time working in the newly built Big House. His desk and typewriter were still in use. It was small wonder people joked that from the top of the building you could see Solovki, the most notorious of all Stalin's White Sea Canal labour camps, where hundreds of thousands of people had perished; and it was only fitting that the Department, even in its post-Party truncated form as the Russian Security Service, should occupy the top two floors.