She had a jaunty walk, like it was fun to go into a store and buy a spade and carry it out, like it helped to move the day on. Natacha opened her door and squeezed inside and sat with the spade between her legs.
She reached back and gave Gaz the change.
He said, “Why did we stop?”
“Because we did not have a spade where we live. We have no garden there, so no need for a spade.”
They were chuckling.
Gaz said, innocent and uncomprehending, and distracted by what he planned and how it would be achieved, “What is the spade for?”
Timofey was driving fast, and a cloud of fumes belched from the exhaust. “Charge it on your expenses – except that Natacha did not bring you a receipt. You want a receipt… you want to know the cost of everything, do you? How much does a bullet cost, a police bullet? I do not know what is the price of a bullet for a Makarov. Perhaps we give it back afterwards and tell them that we are one bullet short and they will not be concerned. What is a spade for? A spade is to dig a hole. We buy a spade because a hole must be dug.”
“It’s what they do in films,” Natacha said.
“What do they do in films?”
“Do you not go to the cinema, watch gangster films? They make the guy dig his hole. They watch him and he digs and they tell him to get the hole longer and get the hole deeper. He sweats when he digs but they have no water for him. He knows what is about to happen but, in the films, he does not sit down, refuse to dig. We will see if he does. See if he wants to fight or wants to go quietly, quickly to his Maker. We free his hands so that he can work but we keep his legs tied. But we did not have a spade and we cannot make a hole without a spade. Do you understand that?” Colour flushed the officer’s face and he was about to speak but did not.
Natacha said, “He digs the hole and we put him down in it and then tell him to kneel, and perhaps he will do so, and perhaps we have to hit him with the spade, but he is still tied and cannot run. Then it is for you. That is our part complete. Why we have to take you both out of the city you have not explained. We could have found you a place up by the Alyosha, by the monument, where there are bushes, places to hide, where the whores work in the summer. He could have been put to dig there. I think you were a soldier.”
Gaz looked full into her face. His eyes did not waver, nor hers. He had said, take him out, it was what was said in the films, the gangster movies. ‘Take him out’ was the drawled phrase in the American dialogue for a killing… Of course he was a soldier. Would have been a soldier and would have been highly regarded by his commanders, had been sent on a mission of danger. Would be a trained man, resourceful, without weakness: she almost snorted at the thought, not like the idiots that had been sent by her own government to Britain and other places in Europe and who were identified as assassins. This was a professional soldier and he would feel nothing when it came to the moment of looking into the pit and watching the officer slowly lower himself down and kneel. He would line up the pistol on the back of the officer’s neck, or the back of his scalp. Perhaps the officer’s lips would be moving, as if he recited a prayer. Might be allowed to finish the prayer and then be shot, might be getting to the last lines of it, and then the trigger pulled. As a professional he would not hesitate, would do it, and cleanly, would take him out as they said in the movies. She had never named Timofey. Had been offered inducements of early release, had been threatened with abuse, rape, but had not betrayed him. She did not think that Timofey would have been able to look over the open sight of the pistol, aim, squeeze. Not Timofey. This was a soldier and it was his training. They had cleared the bridge. No roadblock in place. Fuck knows what they would have done… scattered, and she and Timofey knowing where to meet eventually, and leaving the other two. Would have been bad if there had been a roadblock, would have been the end of the dream. In the movies, the screen first went to black and the sound was killed and the lights came up. The dream was the money. Because the mission was important enough for the ‘sleepers’ to be woken, Timofey said the reward would be huge. She did not know where they would go, her and Timofey, to spend the money… the officer saw her, and would have heard every word she had said.
Part of the pleasure for her was knowing that the officer heard, understood, what awaited him. Like it would be a small piece of revenge, instituted by her, for the men who choked to death, or drowned, in the sections below the conning tower that she could see each time she looked from the apartment, and revenge for the death of her father. She could have done it, but not Timofey. She could not have relied on Timofey to do it, in what the films called ‘cold blood’. The soldier could do it… The officer had heard, had understood, and he breathed harder and his shoulders quivered and his skin had gone pale. It was a fine spade, a strong one, and she had short-changed Gaz on its purchase.
She was laughing, was happy. They climbed on the E105 highway and the ground grew more bleak and trees rarer and an expanse of rock and lakes was exposed. She thought of the killing, closed her mind to the hunt and chase that would follow.
“I cannot believe it. There has to be an explanation that is more rational.” From the major who had replaced their man, who occupied his office space on Lenin Prospekt.
Mikki and Boris received no succour from the female captain. “You say he is missing. You say he may have been kidnapped. You are two long-retired men who achieved only the rank of starshina. I say that you are juniors and were given some vanity role in protecting Major Lavrenti Volkov. Why did he need protection? Because he was the son of an influential father, or because his mother wanted him put to bed safely each night? Why?”
The replacement echoed the captain’s sneered remarks. “Are you telling us that the major has been abducted from in front of you, that you failed in whatever duty you were given, that he has been taken in a criminal enterprise, should now be listed as ‘missing’?”
“If that is the allegation you make, then the issue goes to the colonel who commands FSB in the Murmansk oblast. He will, I assure you, pass it direct and as a matter of priority to Moscow. There will then be mobilisation of all available forces, the arrival of a responsible person, the closing of the border, and a full analysis of the major’s work here.”
“And an examination of his past duties. He served in Syria and served in Moscow. All of his history over the last five years would need examination.”
“May I offer you guidance? More likely than kidnap is scandal. Open that to public examination and you have no idea where the trail leads – could be a woman of the streets, a prostitute, or could be a boy who sells sex, or could be the result of corruption of fraudulent activity and a bitch fight over the control of the rewards of a roof.”
“There are many jealousies in this service. There are those who would rejoice at the discomfort, when displayed in public, of an officer who was universally disliked.”
“So, do you wish to tell me that – in your opinions – Major Lavrenti Volkov has been kidnapped, abducted and that a substantial rescue operation should be launched? Yes?”
“And wish also that his previous work here, abroad and in Moscow, should be forensically examined in order to pinpoint motive for this crime?”