Dead Meat

Once, many years ago, when I was a small boy, my parents took me to Georgia for a holiday by the Black Sea. I remember how hot it had been and the kindness of the people with whom we had stayed. Now, as I looked at the truculent faces of the men who had been brought to the Big House, it seemed almost impossible to associate them with the warm and distant land that I remembered from my childhood; and all too easy to associate them with the violent struggle for power in Georgia that followed the end of Communism. But for all their black looks and weary yawns, the Georgian Mafiosi conducted themselves with dignity; and treating Grushko's men with courtesy they found that their courtesy was returned.

It was, I realised, a relationship born of mutual respect. The Georgians knew that the men of the Central Board were not the kind of militia that people were inclined to make jokes aboutthe kind that you could see strutting on the streets, blowing whistles, waggling batons and extracting fines for fictitious offences in order to supplement their wages. At the same time, the men of the Central Board knew that these Mafiosi were hard men, many of them having spent time in the labour-camp system that, despite the provisions of the Corrective Labour Code, treated men little better than animals. Having survived that dehumanising experience, most Mafiosi were sufficiently resourceful to make them hard to convict.

There were seven Georgians in custody and since the police rules regarding identity parades only required that a suspect be placed in a line with two other persons, this meant that fourteen members of the public were now required. Grushko explained that in order to make what was an admittedly crude procedure as fair as possible they had often gone to the blackmarkets at Autovo and Deviatkino in order to recruit suitably swarthy citizens; there was among these, however, an understandable lack of enthusiasm to go anywhere near the Big House and, as a result, all of the men who now volunteered to take part in Central Board identity parades were cadets from the local army barracks.

Not that there was even much of a parade: the suspect waited in a room with two of the volunteers and several militiamen; all three were asked to stand; the witness was brought into the room; and then he was asked if he recognised any of the three men standing before him. It was as simple as that.

Valentin Bogomolov looked at all seven Georgians in this way. He took his time and there was no pressure exerted on him to pick out a face. And seven times he shook his head. With the last of the Georgians, their boss Dzhumber Gankrelidze, Grushko asked Bogomolov if he was absolutely sure and Bogomolov said that he was.

All right,' said Grushko and Nikolai ushered Bogomolov out of the room.

When both of the army cadets taking part in the parade had left, Dzhumber lit a cigarette and smiled.

So, what's this all about, officer?' he asked.

With nothing to connect the Georgians with the burglary of Mikhail Milyukin's apartment Grushko decided to return to an earlier line of inquiry.

You told my men that on the night Vaja Ordzhonikidze was killed, you spent the whole evening at the Pribaltskaya Hotel.'

Dzhumber shrugged. Did I? I don't remember.'

But you were at the Pushkin Restaurant.'

Dzhumber pointed at the door that had closed behind Valentin Bogomolov.

Not according to Elvis,' he said.

Grushko did not bother to correct the Georgian's misapprehension of the identity parade's purpose.

You didn't get to the Pribaltskaya until well after you said,' he said. Your car was seen driving along Nevsky just a few minutes before eleven.'

You had your Kodak at Vaja's funeral, didn't you?' sighed Dzhumber. You saw the send-off we gave him. Now why should we do that if we killed him, eh?' He was keeping away from the subject of the Pushkin Restaurant and the firebomb.

I don't know,' said Grushko. Not yet, anyway. But say one thing, do another, that's the Georgian way, isn't it? Stalin, Beria, they were both from your part of the world.'

Dzhumber smiled his expensive gold smile and shook his head.

You sound just like the newspapers,' he said. Knocking Stalin is just another way you Russians have of knocking Georgia.'

You're a naturally contrary lot,' persisted Grushko. Everyone knows that. Even your word mamaa__ means father. Double-talk and deceit are part of the Georgian psychology.'

So who are you: the police psychiatrist?'

You know what I think?'

Go ahead. Surprise me.'

I think this whole thing has been cooked up as a pretext for you to settle a turf war with the Chechens. You kill Vaja and then go after them for it.'

I didn't think much of this theory. I wasn't sure that Grushko thought much of it himself: he seemed to want to provoke Dzhumber somehow. Perhaps that was part of his whole strategy of interrogation. But Dzhumber didn't think much more of Grushko's idea than I did.

You've got an active imagination,' he said. For a Russian.'

We had the same thought ourselves for a while. About the Chechens. Sultan Khadziyev looked like a pretty good suspect. Only he couldn't possibly have murdered Vaja. He spent the night of the murder in an LTP after a two-day bender.'

So now you've come back to us, is that it?' Dzhumber gazed wearily out of the window and then back at Grushko.

Hey, Sultan Khadziyev wasn't the only Chechen in St Petersburg, you know. Maybe you're right: maybe he wasn't the one who shot Vaja. Maybe it was one of the others. Those stinking caftans don't need much of an excuse to come after Georgians. Ever since the Central Board cleared out the Armenians, those Muslim bastards have been looking to fill the vacuum.'

Our success brings its own problems,' shrugged Grushko.

So you miss one Muhammad, I say look for another. Sultan couldn't have done it you say? Fine. Then it was another Chechen.'

I'll bear it in mind.'

You do that.'

Maybe we're wrong about this firebombing, too,' said Grushko. I don't know. The owner, a Mr Chazov, he's not helping us very much, so it's hard to know what to think.'

Go ahead. Tell me your problems.'

You had nothing to do with that either, right?'

Right. We were nowhere near the Pushkin Restaurant.'

Who said anything about the Pushkin Restaurant?'

You did,' said Dzhumber, frowning. Just now.'

No, I was talking about a firebombing.' He shook his head. I didn't say that had anything to do with the Pushkin Restaurant. It was you who connected the Pushkin with Mr Chazov, not me.'

Dzhumber's jaw shifted uncomfortably. He wasn't sure if Grushko had trapped him into saying something incriminating or not.

I want to see my lawyer,' he said.

Maybe in the morning,' said Grushko. But tonight you're our guests.'

Katerina was watching television by herself when finally I returned home to the apartment on Ochtinsky Prospekt. I found the tinned meat and spaghetti she had left out for me and then joined her sitting on the sofa, although I was ready to unfold the thing and go straight to sleep. She noticed my stifled yawn. Tired?'

Like I've been listening to Gorbachev. What's this you're watching?'

Hamlet.'

Hamlet was making a good job of ravishing Ophelia, or his mother, I wasn't exactly sure which. Either way it was Pasternak's translation, the famous Moscow Arts Theatre version and just the sort of thing that Katerina, who worked for Lenfilm on Kirovksy Prospekt, was only able to watch when Porfiry was away on one of his frequent business trips abroad. Porfiry preferred to watch videos of the kind that were also enjoyed by the OMON squad.