The Oktober Projekt (21 page)

‘If anything’s not up to spec we expect a refund,’ Danny called
after him.

‘Sure…sure…whatever,’ echoed back to them.

After stowing their kit in the boot of Danny’s new motor Nick
climbed in, rubbing his eyes as Danny explained that his sister did after all
mind about his constant borrowing of her Peugeot, minded very much actually.

‘Plates are clean, engine tuned until it sings,’ Danny
explained, as Nick sat beside him in a gleaming metallic red BMW M3 Coupé, its
interior and leather seats in complimentary black.

 
Determined not to
ask how or where he’d got it, Nick simply said, ‘Very nice, Danny.’

Not seeming to have considered ‘nice’ as a viable option Danny
just smiled and drove, the night cold and bright, Danny pushing the BMW as
though practising for a front place on the grid. ‘It’s part of his routine,’ he
disclosed, as the Chemical Brother’s
Galvanize
broke free on the CD player.

‘He never misses a session?’

‘Ruin his reputation wouldn’t it.’

‘I suppose it would,’ said Nick. He lowered the volume and
Danny didn’t object.

Through rifts in dark cloud snatches of a high brilliant moon
made the streets appear immaculate, strangely clean. They drove on in silence
squaring up for what was ahead. Nick, his eyes closed, was on the drive out of
Moscow with the little accountant and Foula, hearing rapid fire and seeing the
roadblock again, rough images pasted together to form a graphic close-up; the
provenance of nightmares, knowledge as bitter as bile.

‘This is it and it’s a complete dump,’ announced Danny, nudging
Nick.

The Eagle and Child stood alone, a Victorian pub marooned in a
sea of Seventies industrial units where houses once stood. A patched-up local
on a corner, it was the type of place you saw in moody horror films; cobbled
streets, barrel organs, a noisy pub and fog. On one side of its faded brickwork
loomed grey cold stores, on the other, workshops that no one could let.

‘How do you want to play this?’ asked Danny, parking behind a
builder’s skip buckled by fire. ‘Soft, hard, take it as it comes?’ he wondered,
silencing his CD, the steady throb of live music seeping from the pub.

‘Hard,’ said Nick, taking in the front of the pub, his sweep
picking up a top of the range Mercedes. ‘Definitely hard,’ he announced.

Out of holdalls in the boot, Nick and Danny selected individual
pieces of kit before setting off towards the Eagle & Child. Stopping at the
Mercedes, Danny squatted at a rear wheel removed the dust cap and inserted a
thin steel wire to deflate the tyre, doing the same with a front wheel. Beneath
the thrash of guitars a dog started to bark, before the music increased on the
wind blotting out everything else. A poster at the door offered WHITE KNUCKLE
RIDE. ONE NITE ONLY. TWO SUPPORTS. BE EARLY.

Inside, a full house of heavy metal fans packed into a
cavernous ground floor; a long bar running its full length, a small stage to
the right. Skirting round the crowd they checked their route, bumped and barged
as a band crashed through its repertoire. One way led to the toilets another
door had PRIVATE STAFF ONLY emblazoned across it, and to Nick’s relief it was
neither locked nor had anyone waiting on the other side. Danny led, straining
upwards to see how the stairs turned, his neck twisted right. At the first
floor landing they stopped, inserting ear defenders, double checking their kit,
Nick drawing the Mossberg from its scabbard inside his jacket.

Moving forward with Danny in front, Nick covering their backs,
they halted outside the only door showing a light underneath it and took up
positions either side of its frame. Using his fingers to count down to three,
Danny kicked the door in, took out a pin from a mini-bang stun grenade and
rolled it in. Shielding their faces from the detonated charge, Nick and Danny
waited a couple of seconds for the smoke to ease. Nick was first in, kicking
over a card table, grabbing hold of Ricky Penda’s collar before flinging him
across to Danny at the door. One of the poker players picked himself smartly
up, but decided he wasn’t that brave as Nick levelled the Mossberg at his
midriff before backing out. Taking hold of Ricky’s arm Danny ran him to a fire
escape door, banged the bar open and pushed one dazed Ricky Penda out into the
night. Clattering down the fire escape behind them, Nick picked up speed as he
ran for the car. Opening up the BMW, Danny had to contend with Ricky’s kicking
and flailing, which only stopped after Nick rammed him into the door.

‘You’re in serious trouble,’ Nick yelled in his face, snatching
at his white shirt. ‘I hate liars.’ He shook him, ripping off a handful of
buttons. ‘Thought you were big and smart,’ Nick shouted, slapping Ricky hard as
Danny tipped the seat forward. Grabbing Ricky’s collar, Nick threw him head
first into the back.

‘A misunderstanding,’ Ricky complained through gritted teeth, a
trickle of blood running down his chin from his ruptured lip. He was close to
throwing up, his guts heaving worse than when he’d drunk far too much champagne
at the Derby.

‘No… It’s your big mistake.’ Nick slammed the seat on Ricky’s
legs as he got in, making him flinch and howl again. Crunched up, his fierce
eyes never moved from Nick as Danny put the BMW into gear and moved off. Jolted
by the sudden acceleration of the car, Ricky fell back and cracked his head on
the side pillar.

Danny selected a route by the river, keeping his speed average,
taking no chances with a guest on-board.
 

‘Where we going?’ Ricky demanded, craning his neck as the
street lights faded behind them.

At Lovell’s Wharf Danny kept the engine running as Nick jumped
out, and with a pair of bolt cutters from the boot snapped the chain holding
the gates together. Waving the BMW in, Nick jammed the gates closed, winding
the severed chain back through. Parking close to a ruined double-storey office,
all of its windows smashed, Danny turned off the engine and sat back.
  

Leaving the Mossberg with Danny, Nick got into the back. ‘Isn’t
this cosy,’ he said, looking at Ricky. ‘Can’t see Galina anywhere, Ricky, this
is where she came, working for Mr. Lovell, wasn’t it?’

‘I know my human rights,’ Ricky said, lamely, trying to shift
away from Nick.

‘You’re not close to being human and don’t qualify,’ Nick
advised him quite reasonably. ‘I think it’s going to be a long night,’ he said
to Danny.

Trying a different defence Ricky tried menace. ‘I’m going to
have my friends make a mess of you two jokers,’ he vowed.

Danny pointed the Mossberg at Ricky’s crotch. ‘Your friends are
going to find it difficult to talk to you when you’re in two pieces,’ he
politely informed him.

‘Where is she?’ Nick slapped the back of the seat. Ricky
blinked and huddled tighter, one eye trying to lock onto a landmark, find a way
home.

‘Who the hell are you, coz that ain’t no ordinary sawn-off?’

‘Your worst nightmare,’ said Danny.

Ricky actually laughed, foolishly thinking Danny was a
comedian.

‘He doesn’t think we’re serious,’ Danny added.

Hardly seeming to move, Nick delivered a precise controlled
punch to Ricky’s throat which sent him across the back seat. Gasping, Ricky
scratched at his window trying to claw his way out, his other hand gripping his
throat.

‘Now, you were about to tell me something, Ricky,’ Nick
reminded him as Danny turned on the interior light so a soft radiance bridged
the night. ‘From the top, don’t think about leaving anything out or sparing our
blushes.’

Still clutching his throat Ricky offered a humble gruff,
‘that’s right, but it’s not what it appears, okay,’ he complained, almost in a
whisper.

‘I’m waiting,’ said Nick.

Tinted by the interior light Ricky had shrunk to an old man.
‘I’ve had to work hard to get where I am,’ he confessed.

‘Don’t we all,’ said Nick. ‘Galina, where is she?’ Nick shook
his head, raised his fist and Ricky held up his hands.

‘Okay, okay,’ he promised. ‘She came to work for me, I should
have told you that, did some turns at the club.’
                  

Dropping his fist Nick waited for Ricky to continue. ‘And?’
Nick swallowed his irritation.

Reluctant to complete his narrative it took Danny raising the
Mossberg to persuade him to take up his story once more.

‘She walked in, straight out of the blue.’ And Ricky pointed to
the sky even though it was night. ‘Did an audition and I gave her a job.’

‘So where is she?’

Looking between the Mossberg and Nick’s fists, Ricky Penda
chose his answer carefully.

Ricky swallowed hard, but rather than being a convivial
storyteller he went back on the defensive. ‘Gone,’ he said quietly, ‘she’s
gone, okay.’

 
‘Waste him, he’s
no use to us,’ Nick decided and Danny started to open the BMW’s door.

‘Okay…okay,’ Ricky pleaded, turning his attention to Nick who
nodded for Danny to close the door. ‘She was class, okay, Galina was top drawer
material, a good looker and a high earner but she had attitude, know what I
mean.’

Nick and Danny both shook their heads inviting Ricky to
explain.

‘Good with clients, give ‘em what they want, got a name for
herself, and when some of the City boys started asking for her she thought she
was a bleedin’ celebrity. Except she couldn’t satisfy her craving and I thought
she’s going to self-destruct,’ explained Ricky with a show of false compassion.

‘She dead?’ Nick asked, his voice harsh, ‘that what you’re
trying to say?’

‘No…no…,’ Ricky said desperately, ‘Galina now works in a
different department of my operation,’ he said as though Nick and Danny were
now his two best business associates.

Knowing that Ricky might be taking them on another wild ramble,
Nick had heard enough. ‘This is your last, one and only chance to redeem
yourself.’

‘I own a few properties, put the girls who give me problems in
‘em, bottom end of the market,’ offered Ricky.

‘Where?’ Nick yelled.

Glancing between Danny and Nick as though he needed to convince
himself of his final options, Ricky nodded. ‘Okay, sure,’ he agreed and spoke
fast, as though sitting an oral exam and he knew the answer off by heart.
‘Ashington Grove, Flat 3A.’

Snatching Ricky’s collar Nick hauled him forwards. ‘You mention
a word of this,’ Nick said, ‘and we’re coming back to see you.’

‘Lips sealed, God’s my honour,’ promised Ricky seeming
satisfied.

Pleased with himself he relaxed, another crisis comfortably
dealt with by Ricky Penda and he was lost in his own world of admiration when
Nick swung fast and laid him out cold.

Cautiously opening one eye then his other, Ricky Penda came
slowly around, freezing; his head suffering a storm, worse than if he’d been
knocking back Tequila. The pair of slags had dumped him in the old offices,
well how bleedin’ decent because he was already planning on meeting them again,
Ricky and his boys delivering some proper payback. He didn’t care who they
worked for… they’d have their own bleedin’ nightmare, and Ricky would enjoy
making ‘em talk. As for the scroat who punched him, he’d get it first.
 

One thing Ricky knew, they weren’t interested in his wallet,
snug in his jacket, or his watch still on his wrist, but they had taken his
phone, the pair of slags. His logic, never his strongest attribute was quite
hazy; which may have led Ricky to view his options of getting home as risking
going out through the gates where the slags might be waiting, or taking a short
cut along the river, coming up somewhere away from the wharf. Not fancying
meeting the slags so soon, Ricky opted for a river front journey, scrambling
out over smashed furniture strewn across the wrecked office floor. Standing on
the concrete wharf where it butted the Thames, Ricky peered at the muddy flats,
made up his mind and set off.
 

None of these relevant detail ever found its way into the River
Police report, which concerned itself only on how its officers based at Wapping
recovered Richard Harry Penda’s body from the mouth of Greenland Dock, where it
had been carried by the flood tide, trapped in a vicious eddy.

Nine

Face to Face with Galina Myla

London, November

Ashington
Grove was in Westcombe Park, a Victorian house converted into flats
for tenants with no prospect of life ever getting better. Nick had seen squats
with more care lavished on them, he decided buzzing Flat 3A’s intercom. Above
it a strip of scruffy card declared the flat’s occupant to be ‘Pallion’. A male
voice in a thick Newcastle accent responded, wanting to know who was calling.

‘For Galina,’ said Nick.

After a pause Pallion snapped that he’d have to come back in
half an hour, Galina was busy. Holding his finger on the intercom, Nick set off
a constant buzzing.
 

‘Piss off if you like your face the way it is.’

Nick, shaking his head pressed harder on the intercom, standing
to one side of the door, Danny taking the other. Nick couldn’t retain the hate
any longer; a corrosive slowly dripping onto his nerves, eroding his patience.

Emerging at trot a heavyset Geordie in his late twenties, a
front door key on a string around his neck, his
neat pale blue tracksuit complemented by immaculate white trainers.
He
introduced himself with a wild swing at Nick. Parrying the punch, Nick landed
one rapid blow then another, kicking Pallion inside, leaving him on his knees.
Twisting one of Pallion’s arms behind his back, Nick grabbed his short hair,
smacking his face into the banister until he was out cold. Removing the key
from around Pallion’s neck, Danny set the pace as they double timed
upstairs.
 

At a plywood-faced door Danny worked the key slowly into the
lock, Nick gripping the handle. With a nod, Danny carefully twisted the key in
its barrel as Nick let them in. Stale, stinking, not cleaned for years, inside
was a mess, a dump. Moving softly, they crossed to two panelled doors side by side.
Leaning forward listening, Danny pointed to a door which Nick without prompting
kicked open.

The bedroom was just as bad, a small girl’s dream gone sour.
And there on a double bed, Galina Myla rising and falling as she straddled a
fat client. Never missing a stroke she seemed surreally untroubled, as though
having her door taken off its hinges was an everyday event. Only when Nick took
hold of her arm, dragging her off the punter did she react, locking eyes with
Nick as she slithered under a dirty sheet for protection.
 

‘I haven’t finished,’ protested the punter, struggling to sit
up, groping for his pants. ‘I paid this bitch for half an hour.’

Danny used both hands locked together in a backhanded punch to
the punter’s belly, doubling him up. Spilling him off the bed, he sent him
crashing into a bedside cabinet. Scared, Galina began a scream that Nick
reduced to a low keening wail by shouting at her in Russian to be quiet.
Pushing and kicking, Danny herded her client to the door warning him that if he
ever came back, Danny would surely make him hurt some more.

‘You have a choice, Galina Myla,’ Nick severely informed her in
Russian, ‘to tell me the truth or face serious punishment.’

Red eyed and craving for a fix, she started yelling insults and
oaths at Nick in Russian with the sheet yanked up at her neck. Taking hold of
her wrists Nick shook her hard until Galina Myla was calm.

‘Someone gave you a phone as a present? Who gave you the
phone?’ Nick continued in Russian.

Looking bemused, her eyes darting to the door expecting Ricky’s
minder to reappear, Nick had to shout the question in his best official voice.
Jumping, pulling the sheet tighter she shook and trembled.

‘My mother did, on a visit, but I can’t remember when. Is my
mother in trouble?’ She began crying.

‘Your mother could be in very grave trouble Galina Myla,’ Nick
said, ‘It all depends if you tell me the truth.’

‘I will do my best,’ she vowed.

‘Do you remember a neighbour from your Moscow block, Vasily
Lubov?’ To which Galina nodded. ‘Did Lubov send anything with your mother for
you to look after?’ Galina nodded again. ‘Tell me, Galina Myla, tell me all
about it,’ insisted Nick.

And Galina in a slight hesitant and fumbling voice did as the
stranger directed her. Her mother is so proud of her only daughter working in
London that she visits whenever she can, the last time must have been in
October. Only Galina doesn’t let her see her daughter this way; she makes an
effort, dresses up, meets in the hotel where her mother stays. Her mother asked
if she remembered Lubov from across the landing and Galina did.
 

Imagine, her mother told her; imagine the strangest thing my
little Galina. As she was leaving for London her mother bumped into Lubov on
the stairs. Lubov was excited, shaking, asking her if she could do him a big
favour, take this present to London for him, he was meant to send it to his
wife’s niece studying in London but he simply forgot. If she leaves it with her
daughter Galina, he’ll make arrangements for it to be collected. He even has a
phone her daughter can have; free, a gift for her assistance, and someone will
call the daughter on the new phone to arrange for the collection.
 

But her mother was not sure if she should inconvenience Galina
with unnecessary tasks. Galina has a very good job, a busy one, she explained,
her daughter is responsible for the infants of a very wealthy man. Lubov said
he understood, told her mother not to worry, he’d still keep a watch over her
place while she’s away. ‘My mother felt bad, so she accepted the phone and
present.’

‘Where is the present Galina?’

How many times she’d rehearsed her words Nick couldn’t tell,
but she delivered them with plain conviction.

‘No one called immediately, no one came,’ she cried, ‘I thought
no one wanted it, so I opened the gift, it was an iPod and I liked it, but not
the music or the other things on it.’

‘What things, Galina Myla, what besides music was on it?’

‘Files, maybe, but I can’t be sure. I didn’t know if they were
important so I copied them onto a laptop, put them into an old folder.’

‘And where is the laptop? What folder did you copy them to?’

‘It is my laptop, the file was for old nursery accounts from
the house of Cheboksary.’

‘Where is the laptop?’

‘It is gone,’ she wept. ‘Someone rang on the phone asking about
the present.’

‘Who rang?’

‘He spoke in Russian but I knew he was English,’ she admitted,
crying. ‘He knew who I was, where I lived in Moscow and said he was a friend of
Lubov and he was coming to collect the present. I was scared, I had opened the
present so I had to pretend that the laptop was the present.’
 

‘And did he come and collect it?’

‘The next day, he made me meet him on a bridge, he was a tall
man, had a ponytail, walked with a limp and he took my laptop.’

‘Did you look at these files?’ Nick wondered.

‘No, they did not interest me,’ she said and burst into tears
again, ‘Will you send my mother to prison for what I have done? Were they
important government files?’ Galina sobbed.

 
‘Yes, Galina Myla,
they were very important government files,’ Nick told her. ‘Where are the phone
and iPod?’

 
‘I needed money, I
have sold them.’

For a good few minutes Nick studied her, glanced round at the
pit where she was forced to work and sleep. ‘Get dressed, Galina Myla, put on
your best clothes, you are going home to your mother.’ And Nick didn’t care how
Rossan arranged it; he’d pay for the flight himself if he had to, even for a
stay in a Moscow clinic, because he was determined that someone would come out
of this mess with a chance.

• • •

There were no other cars ahead and no
headlights behind. What remained of the dawn retreated along the road in front
of Nick, dragging the remainder of the night with it. A conifer plantation sat
on either side of the road, high and dark, a tunnel that he never broke out of.
Except for the firebreaks and the natural woodland left to rot, its branches
torn flat in defeat. Every now and then he glimpsed a piece of the same lake,
grey as slate with boats tethered until spring. Esthwaite Water he remembered.
He had watched his mirror all the way from the motorway and nothing rolled onto
the ferry after him but a haggard Land Rover with a trailer full of sheep. Yet
he still drove with caution, feeling the car buck in the wind.

The road was narrow, single track, dropping out of sight as
rapidly as it climbed. On distant peaks there was snow and it might have been
Switzerland or Germany, only the fells were too English, too rugged, not
awesome enough; just high slopes weeping scree and forest into the valley and
lake below. Then there were the farms, tucked low with gritty names and twin
power cables on creosote poles feeding them the modern world. He recalled a
sign too. Only it was nothing more than a decrepit plank shedding its paint,
and Nick saw it far too late. Reversing, he followed a flaking arrow up a rough
track; it is where old agents come to die, he thought, and I am one of them.

He crossed a sheep grid and the car shook beneath him, spilling
his map onto the floor. Out of the trees the wind tore through the branches in
a wild shrieking symphony. Then the track shrank into wheel ruts with a grass
hump strewn with rocks that smacked against the sump. He glimpsed a holed canoe
abandoned in the ditch, and further along orange fragments from a life jacket
snarled on barbed wire, as if the lake had risen and washed them there. A board
tied to smashed gates had ‘Broom Hall Adventure Centre’ printed as big as a
warning. Nick hit the firm drive and saw it all over again as he remembered it;
house, school and sanctuary all at the same time, with somewhere in its history
a seminary for priests who never smiled.

An impressive hall of granite with two stiff wings and a whiff
of Victorian eaves, there was a sense of grandeur long since departed. Over
lawns worn bare and never reseeded, dirty ropes and car tyres were draped like
rotten streamers and balloons from mature branches waiting for the saw. It
could be Aspley all over again, and the only thing missing he thought, was the
mock-up walls and fences to scale. Only you’re trying to sell a different type
of adventure here; one not involving death, Nick thought.
 

He parked in a gravel sweep next to a Ford minibus dumped on
bricks, the centre’s name feint down its side. The hall faced the lake and the
wind swept off it cold and bitter, straight into his face. A notice board sat
in a glass case dangling by wire from a trellis panel in a lych porch. Empty of
papers, rusty drawing pins made brown islands in a sea of mouldy green baize.
Next to a bell chain a cryptic notice read: ‘Twice’. So Nick gave it two long
tugs and heard nothing.
        

‘I’m afraid it’s like everything else round here, and given up
the ghost. Can I help?’
 

She had come out of the woods, a red setter at her heels.

‘I was hoping to have a word with Gav,’ explained Nick. Her advantage
was height matched by a natural beauty and Nick thought she would always use
them to get her way. Her ash blonde hair was combed forward from the crown out
to the sides, the rest splayed in an angle. She sent the dog in advance
sniffing his legs, friend or foe. Slowly she closed the distance.

‘Gavin’s down at the moorings,’ she said, making a point of
using his name in full: in capitals, in thanks, woman and girl in the same
smile. She waved a decadent arm towards the lake. ‘Some problem with a staging
or pontoon, or whatever the silly things are called.’ Her eyes were bright blue
and given an energy by her pale translucent skin. Tall and beautiful she moved
in on him, holding him in a firm greeting with her eyes and point-to-point
smile. Her defensive eyes wouldn’t let go of Nick, estimating, worrying, unsure
and remotely concerned. ‘Does Gavin know that you are coming, Mr.…?’

‘Call me Nick. No, I was just passing.’

‘I hope you won’t take this as a rude question,’ she said with
disarming energy, ‘but exactly why
do
you want to see Gavin?’ she asked, challenging him.

‘Old times.’

‘Jazz, stop that,’ she commanded, but the dog took no notice
pushing it’s nose inquiringly into his crotch. She apologised with a weak
‘Silly thing,’ the woman in her dampening the smile. ‘Suppose you’d better come
in and wait then,’ she offered with lukewarm charm. ‘We’ll take the back, we’ll
never get in this way, the lock appears to be jammed. Only Gavin has the secret
of getting it to open.’

‘Sure,’ said Nick, stepping around the dog.

Walking round the house she did all the talking; throwing
comments over her shoulder as sharp as a fin, all her plans for transforming
the place into a country hotel. Nick smiled, refusing the bait. Unlocking a
door that needed oil she kicked off her boots in what used to be the games
store, the reek of damp cricket nets still in the air, mouldy, full of the
seasons gone. For the hall had once been a prep school run by Gavin’s father
after he left the Service, until the mounting cost of repairs or the pupils had
driven him to suicide. Nick remembered the stories of priest’s holes and a
bishop’s grave in the grounds that no one had ever found. Still playing her
part, she guided him through a refectory with its trestle tables and rush
matting between the aisles and a great fireplace that could spit roast a boar;
through a kitchen big enough to serve a hundred boys, into a scullery
modernised and equipped for two. She ran her fingers through her hair lifting,
flicking it this way and that, making an effort to be noted.

‘I’m Tessa by the way, Gavin’s second chance at marriage. Fancy
a drink?’

‘Coffee if it’s no trouble,’ said Nick, recalling Gav’s first
wife, Grace. She was a brunette, dark eyed, sultry, given to much spending and
fits of pique when Gav refused to dote on her. Grace preserved in a photograph
carried by Gav because it inspired him into a state of pure hate. Nick saw the
first wife’s eyes now, staring up out of the Gav’s wallet, round, inconsolable
and devastating.