“Little bit more time to kill, and I’m relying on Fee having that flask, and those biscuits… then I’ll leave you with her and our good and competent local colleague. Just have to get back to town, tie up a few loose ends… See you when you come back out… First, a splash of coffee.”
He always tied loose ends, left everything tidy; Knacker believed in the value of tidiness. The coin was between his fingers and that evening he might get one of the girls to clean it.
“We’ll miss you, Major, miss you greatly.”
Many had echoed that, all lying bastards: he knew most would be anxious to see him gone. He represented power and influence beyond a level they could attain or dream of.
“Congratulations on your new appointment, Major, we have been fortunate to have you here.”
Murmansk had a fine new headquarters building, but it was a backwater and those who wished to earn promotion would want to be out of the place fast. Only an imbecile would want to be here in this city where for six weeks in summer there was no darkness, and for six weeks in winter there was no sunrise. His mother had travelled north for two visits in the twenty-three months he had been stationed there and he had seen the lustre leave her face and she had seemed to shrivel in the wind. On each occasion rain had fallen steadily. There was nothing to show her and she had remarked, when standing at the foot of the Alyosha monument, that she would have preferred a postcard of it to seeing it for herself.
“We hope you will have pleasant memories of the city, of us, Major, and remember us favourably, and we hope you will speak well of us and our work in Moscow.”
In the capital there were fine shopping opportunities, and worthwhile work and a chance to bead his gaze on the faces of the fidgeting men over whom he exercised control. And status. And the regular chance to manufacture an excuse to take a free flight down to Sochi where there was always a vacant villa or an apartment belonging to a friend of his father. The brigadier general had never come to see him. His father distrusted the navy, was an army man, had no interest in the affairs of the Northern Fleet. And work involving drugs dependency in the city would hardly have held his father’s attention, nor anything connected with the so called ‘green lobby’ that complained endlessly about the alleged dumping of nuclear waste from decommissioned submarines. He hoped he would never again have to deal with security problems involving the frontier, or monitoring foreign diplomats and occasional tourists, or the difficult relations with the naval security people, an arrogant crowd. His father had sent the two minders who lived in a neighbouring block and drove him around and mounted a loose guard over him.
“A privilege to work with you, Major, and our thanks for your insights.”
He would go out of the door and his desk would be cleared and the hard drive on his computer cleansed of his own work and a new man would soon have his feet under the table.
“Your replacement, Major, was here the day before yesterday. Seemed efficient and interested in his work. A wife and two children, and looking forward to our winter sports.”
No backward glance from him when Mikki and Boris travelled with him to the airport, and his few personal possessions would have been crated and would go south on the train. There had been no gathering of colleagues at the main entrance to see him off. Most of those serving in Murmansk looked for a lifetime of sinecure and making enough money to buy an apartment without a mortgage between the railway station and the Prospekt. Would be excited to handle a case history of the eco-people who tried to bring law suits against the government and needed warning off. He could have had the boys park his official transport at the back of the building where the cell block was located and where the closed yard and high gates prevented scrutiny. Lavrenti preferred to use the front entrance, the limited spaces for senior officers, to make a statement of his importance.
He sat alone in his room. The matronly woman who typed for him was in an outer office, the door between them closed. When he had first come to Murmansk, the same woman had managed to beard him in the staff canteen; sitting with her had been a girl in her early twenties, his assistant’s niece, and the introduction was blatant. He had, scarcely polite, turned it down. Had flushed red, had indicated that there was a significant ‘other’ in Moscow. It had been a poor lie… His phone did not ring, emails were no longer copied to him, and the room was bare of anything personal except for the last item in the room that he would take away with him. A monochrome photograph, enlarged and framed with an aged gold leaf effect which had been hard to achieve in Murmansk, showed his father beside the barbecue, the President, smiling in front of him. Lavrenti never referred to the occasion and was not in the picture, but everyone in the building on Prospekt would have known of the picture and his assistant would have spread word of it. He would take the picture down the next day and it would go in the cases to be sent south…
His father had phoned him. Not a happy call. Cold, clipped, demanding an explanation why a roof had not been supplied to a coming man who had the opportunity to exploit mineral and oil deposits. He had blustered, his father had been incisive in his criticism. The situation with the Jew was to be rectified as soon as he returned to Moscow – not a matter of debate. He would sleep badly again that night. His assistant had prepared digests of ongoing cases, investigations that he had worked on, and the following day he would meet his successor and be shot of his responsibilities.
He stared at the desk, then at the empty screen, then at the closed door – and could not forget what he had seen, what he had done. No one in the headquarters building would miss him when he was gone, and the loneliness crushed him.
He had sagged off the sofa bed, and dropped down on to the rug beside it, and his elbow hit a bottle and toppled it… another day had started in the life of the woken sleeper.
The apartment was quiet. Next door, through a thin wall, music played, but the kids had gone for the day and had switched off the radios and the TV, and he had not heard them when they had come out of the one bedroom, his bedroom, and taken any food that was in the old refrigerator. They had enough money, because one was a thief and the other was a whore and both were criminals, but they had not bought a new or even a reconditioned refrigerator. He lived from the scraps they gave him, and most of his money went on cheap booze. He was thin and gaunt, and had dreamed of being even thinner and even more drawn in the face and with his skin hanging off his bones. In his dream, he was shuffling in a line of other zeks, wearing the prisoners’ flimsy uniform, near starved, and coughing half his guts up and labelled as a man who had betrayed his country.
He cared little for his son and cared less for his son’s girl. His wife was long gone, had given birth to the one child – named Timofey which meant ‘Honouring a God’ – and had left him to bring up the brat. And his sisters had gone. Anyone with a brain left Murmansk. He remained, and a few of his drinking partners; he loved them but had never told them, never spoken of a bank account abroad or of a codeword, Matchless. He feared that he might reveal his secret when drunk, pissing against a wall beside them… He would go to a prison camp for the rest of his days if he were caught as an enemy of the state, would rot there, and die there. He loathed his son, but could not drink without the money his son gave him. Loathed the girl who some days would come out of the bedroom – naked – and parade in front of him as he lay on the sofa bed, flaunting her tits and her arse, hated her. He did not wash. Did not eat, and had tipped over the bottle and its contents had slopped on the rug.