I heard myself whimpering, like Nemya under the table.
‘Don’t take it so hard,’ said Suhbataar, tucking the package containing the Delacroix under his arm. Why did his voice never alter? Always the same, dry, soft and gritty. ‘Your gang’s been on borrowed time for months. Rudi and Jerome were traitors. Mr Gregorski can’t permit you to walk away. Pawns get sacrificed in endgames. Your Interpol friend Miss Makuch and her Capital Transfer Inspectorate are too close.’
‘What?’
‘Innocuous name for an anti-mafia squad, isn’t it? That reminds me, I gave them an anonymous tip-off via a dead letter-box on Kirovsky Island. They’ll be here in a few minutes. Calm down. Ex-spies are an embarrassment these days, what with the IMF and trade delegations — nobody’s going to throw away the key on you for killing Jerome. The stolen pictures are irreplaceable, but nobody will believe you were the mastermind behind that. Fifteen years at most, out in ten. The prison reform lobby in Moscow is beginning to gain a little ground. Slowly.’
He walked towards the door.
‘Put it down! That’s my picture! That picture belongs to Rudi and me!’
Suhbataar turned, feigning surprise. ‘I don’t think Rudi is going to be dealing in stolen masterpieces for a while.’
‘I want it!’
‘With the greatest respect, Miss Latunsky, you don’t count. You never have.’
What had he said about Tatyana? ‘I’ll tell the police everything about Gregorski!’
Suhbataar shook his head sadly. ‘You’ve become a murderer, Miss Latunsky. Your prints are on the gun, the ballistics match up... Who’s going to listen to you? The only possible corroboration to your whistle-blowing is lying in this apartment, slumped in pools of their own innards.’
Pressing into my knuckles. I still had my gun.
‘If it becomes expedient to oblige you to stop telling stories, Gregorski will know where to find you. Even in Miss Makuch’s division, the level of corruption is startling. Mongolians long ago made corruption a national pastime, but even I’m impressed with you Russians.’
‘Drop the picture now drop it now you son of a bitch or you are dead dead dead dead DEAD! Put it down slowly and put it down now! Hands in the air! You know I can use this thing!’ I aimed the gun straight at where his heart should be.
A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.
‘Look at Jerome, you Mongolian fuck, that’s you in ten seconds’ time.’
Suhbataar smiled, an in-joke smile.
Fine. Fine. It will be his death mask. What’s the difference between one murder and two? I pulled the trigger.
The hammer clapped down on an empty chamber. I pulled the trigger again. Nothing. Again. Nothing.
Suhbataar pulled out five golden bullets from his jacket pocket, rattled them in his cage of fingers.
I was left alone staring at the locked door.
None of this happened. None of this really happened.
London
My smirking hangover gave me a few moments to make my last requests, and to take in the fact that whoever’s bed this was it wasn’t Poppy’s. Whash! Then it laid into me, armed with a road-surface shatterer. I must have groaned pretty loudly, because the woman next to me rolled over and opened her eyes.
‘Good morning,’ she said, pulling a sheet over her breasts. ‘I’ve lost an earring.’
‘Hi.’ I grimaced as pleasantly as I could, peering through the sheets of pain. Not a face I could imagine smiling easily. I hoped this wasn’t going to turn into one of those GuiltLine wake-ups when she tells you about her boyfriend and her dead brother and her run-over-last-month dog Michael and you end up wondering how many people are in this bed. Still. Stern, rather than neurotic. A strong profile. Late thirties. Not bad, but nothing so special. Either she had aged since last night or I was getting less and less choosy. Red hair. Quite heavily built. That’s right! I’d been at the private view on Curzon Street. Oil paintings by some artist friend of Rohan’s, Mudgeon or Pigeon or Smudgeon or something. This redhead had come up to me then, and we’d done the old quantum physics equals eastern religion bollocks. Then — a taxi — a wine bar on Shaftesbury Avenue — then another taxi — that would be most of my money gone — and then another wine bar on Upper Street. Then to here, though how was anybody’s guess. What was her name? Cathy? Katrina? It was something convent schoolgirlish. I always have this problem with women’s names, once I’ve slept with them.
She found her earring and noticed the way I was looking at her. She cleared her throat. ‘Katy Forbes. The personnel manager. You’re in my flat in Islington. Delighted to meet you. Again.’
‘Hello. I’m—’ Something was gripping my windpipe. I fought free and found my Woody Woodpecker boxer shorts.
‘Marco. I know. The “writer”. We did just about get to the name-swapping stage.’
So I’d played the writer card. That was valuable information. I looked around me. A single woman’s bedroom. Lacy curtains, trees bobbing in the early autumn. A framed poster of an oil painting, with a big Delacroix written underneath it. The original was probably nice. A little nest of tissues and condoms down my side of the bed, and a bottle of red wine with almost nothing in it, but 1982 on the label. Why do the best things happen when I’m too pissed to remember them?
An Islington Saturday morning. A car alarm going off somewhere.
‘Well. This is jolly...’
She watched the end of the sentence dangling for a few moments.
‘I’m going to get up and have a shower.’ A horsey inflection to her voice. She must have seen me as a diamond in the rough, the old Lady Chatterley complex. ‘If you feel as ghastly as you look there’s some fizzy hangover medicine in the first aid box on the drinks cabinet. If you have to be sick, do try to get it all in the lavatory bowl. Help yourself to some coffee, there’s instant if you can’t figure out the percolator, but please don’t run off with the fake chandelier, it was expensive. And if you can cook I’d like some scrambled eggs on toast.’
‘Never fear,’ I said. ‘I am a casual shag to be relied upon!’ This wasn’t terribly funny but I blundered on anyway. ‘No bread knives through the shower curtain, guaranteed.’
Her face would buckle any mere bread knife. She put on her dressing gown and went through into the bathroom. I heard the pipes in the walls judder as she switched on the shower.
I got dressed, wishing I had clean clothes. I smelt hash in a burn on my shirt, between the lipstick and a stain that I tried to ignore. My bladder felt like an inflatable camping bed. I groped out of the bedroom and found the little toilet, where I wazzed the waz from outer space. Seriously, I was pissing for a whole 55 seconds. On the shelf next to the pot-pourri there was a picture of my hostess Katy Forbes and a baldish youngish chap in a punt under a weeping willow and for a moment I wondered if I shouldn’t split before hubby came home, but then I fuzzily recalled Katy saying she’d been divorced. We’d agreed that joining a pyramid savings scheme is a much more stress-free way to lose all your money and wreck your life. So. A leisurely, assault-free breakfast was in order. Odd though, the only use that divorcees normally find for photographs of their ex-husbands is for dart practice. Maybe he’s her brother. I thrust out the last few drops and mopped up the spray on the rim with a clutch of toilet paper, and pulled the toilet chain, sending the previous evening’s spermatozoa to the North Sea. Three seconds later a howl came from the shower. ‘Don’t touch the bloody water ’til I’m OUT!’
‘Sorry!’
I can cook, and Katy’s kitchen was well stocked. My hangovers never affect my appetite. In fact I like to bury my hangovers alive, in food. I poured some olive oil into a big frying pan, chopped up some garlic, mushrooms and chilli peppers, and sprinkled some basil. I folded in a dash of cream with the eggs, and mashed up a couple of anchovies that were stinking the fridge out. Onto this Vesuvius of cholesterol I grated a light snowfall of Wensleydale, and perched a few stuffed olives around the crater. There was granary bread, so I lightly browned some toast. Real butter in a Wedgwood butter dish. I helped myself to a few sprigs of parsley from a shrub on the window-sill. Some fresh beef tomatoes on the side, with chopped celery, sultanas and a dollop of potato salad. The coffee percolator was the same model as my own, so no problem there. I slurped down a mugful of the magic brew and felt my hangover being shooed away.