“That’s three hours a day!” he’d complained.
But they’d stayed on another week. Lucky them.
“Apparently a car drove down the street about 6.00 pm last night, shooting at passersby.” Angela was reading from the newspaper. “Paul Edgar was wounded in the leg. Mr Clarkson received a chest wound, and several people walking their dogs received multiple injuries. Lady Chesney was killed outright, and so was Mr Kendrick. The car drove off at high speed, and then our house exploded.”
“What?! Over a planning application?!”
Malcolm sank into a chair, which had a load of dirty dishes and mugs on it. He didn’t notice.
Then he muttered, “The bastards!” A blinding rage suddenly overwhelmed him.
Three days later, Malcolm found himself on a plane heading for St Petersburg.
Malcolm was not one for heroics, and normally he would have avoided any confrontation, but this was different. His wife and son were being threatened. He had to confront the man or men who were threatening them.
Nobody knew what he was up to. He didn’t even know himself at first. He had cooked up an excuse about a manuscript he needed to look at in Edinburgh, and secretly booked the plane. He already had Grigori Koslov’s address from Anton. All he had to do was find the man and… and then what? Reason with him? Buy him a pair of slippers? Give him a good talking to? No.
As he sat sipping a gin and tonic, a calm came over him. He suddenly understood why he was on this plane, why he was heading for St Petersburg. He knew what his errand was.
He was going to kill Grigori Koslov.
When he first saw the house where Grigori lived, he nearly turned around and went straight back home again.
“Well, I guess I knew the guy must have enemies, but there must be some way to get in.”
The house itself would have been very attractive had it not resembled a concentration camp. It was a light blue colour and built mainly from wood, with pretty pillars at the front. Around it, however, was a five-metrehigh electrified fence, complete with guards who were, at that very moment, staring at him. They didn’t look as if they were going to invite him in for a cup of tea.
“Think!” Malcolm told himself. “What examples from history do we have? Siege of Syracuse 214 BC? The Romans got in during some feast when the citizens were all drunk. But how will I be able to tell when Koslov is drunk? No. I know! Siege of Alexandria 1366!
Someone managed to crawl into the city through the sewage pipes, and then opened the gates at night.”
But a quick tour of the drains around the house soon convinced him that that was not a practical solution. The guards were getting more and more interested in him as he circled the house. Malcolm was forced to walk away from the scene of his intended crime.
A little further down the road was a small line of shops with a run-down café. He sat himself at a table by the window, from where he could just see the main gate, if he leant forward. He ordered a black tea and sat there trying to think.
There’s something obvious I’m missing, he thought. After a short while the gate opened and a car slid out and disappeared down the road.
“Maybe that’s it?” he muttered. “I should let him come to me.” But how could he do that? Write Koslov a letter? Say “Come and meet me or…” Or what? “Or I’ll blow your house up like you did mine? Or I’ll come and shoot everyone in your street?” That would hardly encourage Grigori Koslov to agree to a meeting. Even if he did meet him, he’d have tough guys hanging around, ready to pounce.
As Malcolm was thinking these things a van pulled up in front of the café, blocking his view of the gate. The side of the van bore a crude picture of a bunch of flowers and writing in Russian which read ‘Courtesy Flowers, Kolpino’.
The driver came into the café and nodded at the samovar of tea. “One,” he muttered.
The owner of the café poured some liquid into a cup and pushed it towards the driver along with a jug of hot water. The driver poured a tiny amount of water into the tea and leaned forward.
“I’m looking for the Koslov place,” he said, as if he were proposing a drugs deal.
The proprietor of the café grunted and stuck his thumb in the direction of the blue mansion surrounded by the fence.
“Uh!” replied the driver. “Somebody’s birthday,” he added.
Malcolm, who had been listening to this, nearly jumped up out of his seat and ran to hug the van driver. “Of course! That’s it!” he almost shouted out, but managed to restrain himself. “The Siege of Troy! The Trojan Horse!” Why hadn’t he thought of it? “That’s how I get in.”
He put his cup down and sauntered over to the counter.
“Hi!” he said to the van driver. His Russian wasn’t bad, but they would know he was foreign. “Could you give me a lift to Pushkin?”
The driver shook his head. “I only go as far as Kolpino,” he said.
“That’s half way,” said Malcolm generously. “It’ll do.”
“And we’re not allowed to give lifts,” added the driver.
“It would save me the train fare,” said Malcolm, taking out his wallet. “I’d be really grateful.” He held out a few notes.
The van driver stared at them. Malcolm added a few more, and the van driver took them, paid for the tea with one of them and strode out without saying another word.
Malcolm grabbed his haversack and followed the van driver out.
“You’ll have to get in the back,” said the van driver. “I can’t let anyone see you.”
“Good idea!” said Malcolm. And he really thought it was.
As the van driver closed the doors on him, Malcolm sneezed a couple of times. The pollen count in the back of the van was so high that, if he’d been a bee, Malcolm would have thought he’d arrived in heaven. But he wasn’t a bee. He suffered from chronic hayfever, and, as the van bounced over the pot-holes in the road, Malcolm started sneezing again.
Between sneezes, he felt the van stop and heard the driver explaining his mission to the guard at the main gate. Malcolm was once again overcome with sneezes, and the next thing he knew the van had stopped again, and the driver had opened the doors.
“Shh!” he hissed. “People will hear you!”
“I can’t help it!” Malcolm tried to say between sneezes.
“Then you can get out here!” snapped the van driver, and he pulled Malcolm out of the back of the van. Malcolm stood there in a haze of pollen, still sneezing, as the van drove off round the corner of the house. Malcolm found he had been dropped outside a side door, out of sight of the main gate and the front door.
There was an open window beside the side door. There was also an American pit bull glaring at him from under a lean-to shed across the lawn.
Malcolm sneezed again. The pit bull hesitated for a moment, as if it didn’t recognise such a command. Malcolm took his chance and ran. The pit bull ran. Curiously it didn’t bark, but it ran extremely fast. However, Malcolm was at the window in half a dozen steps and, before the dog could sink its teeth into the flesh and bone of his leg, he had dived head-first through the window. He landed with a crash amongst a pile of empty jam jars.
Malcolm lay perfectly still for some minutes. The pit bull had now started barking, as it jumped up at the window, and Malcolm could hear running feet outside. It was one of the guards.
“You stupid mutt!” he heard the guard say. “You’re always trying to get that pork! You can’t have it!” Malcolm saw the guard’s face at the window.
He lay quite still. The guard glanced in, and then slammed the window shut. “Just forget it, Fido!” he heard the guard say. “You aren’t eating them joints!” Then he moved off, pulling the dog with him.