Chazov noted my wrinkled nose and shrugged.
Department of Health wanted some samples from the staff,' he said. We had a small outbreak of salmonella just after we opened.'
You don't have to leave them lying around in here, do you?' I said.
No, I guess not.' Chazov collected the bag of samples and walked out of the kitchen. I wondered where he was planning to put them this time.
Nikolai hauled open the door to a large walk-in fridge-freezer and Grushko touched his hairline with his eyebrows. There were cartons of meat stacked almost as high as the ceiling. For a moment we just stood there sniffing excitedly at the sour, fleshy air like a pack of hungry dogs.
Did you ever see so much meat, sir?'
Nikolai touched a piece of frozen beef that lay partly chopped on a butcher's block almost reverently, as if it had been a relic of St Stephen of Perm.
I'd almost forgotten what the stuff looked like,' Grushko said quietly.
Hard to remember on a militiaman's salary,' observed Nikolai.
Do you think it might be stolen?' I heard myself say.
Both men turned and looked at me with quiet amusement.
Well, I don't imagine he bought it in the state meat market,' said Grushko. No, these co-ops rely on illegal sources of supply. That's another reason why they're vulnerable to the squeeze.' He looked back at the meat for a second. I bet that's why he didn't want the militia involved in the first place.'
Nikolai fed a cigarette between his lips and closed the fridge door behind them.
Want me to sweat Chazov about it?' he said. It might help him to recall who tossed the vodka martini through the window.'
Good idea. Ask him better still, tell him, to come and explain it to us at the Big House tomorrow. That should give him something to think about this evening.'
Nikolai chuckled and lit his cigarette. The match dropping from his thick sausagey fingers stayed alight on the greasy linoleum. Grushko regarded it with friendly disapproval.
Maybe you're planning to sell them some fire insurance yourself.'
Nikolai grinned sheepishly and extinguished the small flame with the toe of his trainer.
Outside the Pushkin on Fontanka, Sasha was speaking on Grushko's car phone. Seeing Grushko he waved the handset at him and then stepped away from the open passenger door.
It's General Kornilov,' he whispered.
Grushko took the call and gradually his wide, peasant face grew more sombre. By the time he had finished listening to what the general had to say he was frowning so hard his brow looked as if it had been clawed by a bear. Sighing deeply he handed Sasha the phone and walked to the railing beside the canal, where he flicked his cigarette butt into the still brown water. I looked at Sasha who shrugged and shook his head. When Nikolai finally emerged from the restaurant I wandered over to where Grushko was standing.
You see that building?'
I followed his eyes across the canal to an old grey palace.
That's the House of Friendship and Peace. Well, there's precious little of that about, I can tell you. Not these days. He lit another cigarette and waved Nikolai and Sasha towards him.
I take it you've all heard of Mikhail Milyukin?'
The three of us said we had. There wasn't anyone who watched television or was a fan of the two most popular magazines of the day, Ogonyok and Krokodil, who hadn't heard of Mikhail Milyukin. As the old Soviet Union's first investigative reporter he was virtually a national institution.
He's been murdered,' said Grushko. And it's on our sheet.'
We usually leave the murder inquiries to the State Prosecutor's Office, don't we, sir?' said Nikolai.
Kornilov says that they want us to handle it.' Grushko shook his head vaguely. Apparently there are certain circumstances which make them think that it might be our flock of sheep.'
What sort of circumstances?' said Nikolai.
Grushko propelled himself off the railing and walked purposefully towards his car.
That's what we're going to find out.'
3
Zelenogorski lies about forty kilometres north-west of St Petersburg along the M10 which, some 150 kilometres further on, reaches all the way to the Finnish border. It wasn't much to look at. By the time I had realised that it was a town we had passed it by and were heading out into the country again, along a smaller A road that lies along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Several minutes later we turned off this road and drove for a short way until we came upon a militia van parked at the edge of the forest. Grushko drew up beside the van and asked one of the militiamen waiting there for directions to the scene of the crime and the rest of their colleagues. Then we were off again. Uncomfortably fast, Grushko's small, strong hands a blur of opposite lock and gear changing, as if he had been a driver in some kind of car-rally. But the drive along the forest track seemed to cheer him up a little and when finally he caught sight of the other militia vans and brought the car to a slithering halt, he grinned sadistically at me. I wondered if he still thought I was there to spy on his department.
We got out and walked down a gentle slope towards a small clearing in the trees. The vans were parked around a black Volga that was the subject of attention for ten or fifteen experts and militiamen. A stout, red-haired woman wearing the uniform of a colonel of militia and who seemed to be in charge walked towards us. Grushko quickened his pace to greet her.
It's Iron Lenya,' Nikolai murmured. And I'm not wearing a tie.'
You don't even have a uniform, if I remember right,' said Sasha. You sold it to a Japanese tourist for 200 roubles.' Sasha chuckled and found a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He tossed it expertly into his mouth and lit a match with the flick of a thumbnail.
The head of the Department of Scientific Experts, Colonel Lenya Shelaeva, greeted Grushko coolly and ignored the rest of us altogether. In the weeks that followed I got to know her well enough to respect and even to like her. But she was particular about smartness among her own staff and while she and Grushko exchanged a few preliminary remarks, Sasha told me that Lenya had once sent a man home because he wasn't wearing a tie. Having had little sleep on the overnight train I wasn't exactly looking my best and I was glad that Grushko didn't bother to introduce us.
We followed her to the passenger door of the Volga. Inside the car a man lay slumped forward in his seat, his forehead resting on the blood-encrusted dashboard. There wasn't much that would have detained the average teleologist, assuming that there were still people who placed much credence in this kind of Marxist working method. The copeck-sized hole in the back of his head indicated the way in which he had met his end clearly enough. He stared at us with grey-green eyes out of a waxy, pale and overweight face. He was dead as mutton but the more I looked at him, the more I had the impression that with a decent-sized sticking-plaster to cover the bullet's exit wound, the man would have sat up and offered me a cigarette from the packet of Risk he still held in his podgy hand.
Grushko crossed himself and then sighed.
Mikhail Mikhailovich,' he said sadly. That's too bad.'
Did you know him?' Shelaeva sounded surprised.
Grushko nodded and for a moment I thought he was going to cry. His upper lip inflated as he struggled to bring himself under control. He cleared his throat several times before answering her.
Ever since the Openness,' he said, when Mikhail first started writing about the Mafia. That was when the government still denied that such a thing as a Soviet Mafia even existed. You could say that my own department owes its very existence to Mikhail Milyukin.' He sniffed loudly and then lit a cigarette with clumsy fingers. He helped us with a number of cases. Got us started with a few of them, too.'