The house of russian dol.., p.21
The House of Russian Dolls, page 21
‘You like the Beatles? John, Paul, George and Ringo?’
Dodo nodded politely, wondering where the latest non sequitur in her conversation with Leonid was taking her. Again her heart lurched as his left hand moved from the steering wheel and started rifling through some cassette boxes in the dusty footwell. Being killed in a car crash alongside a Russian pensioner had not been amongst the fates she had considered when volunteering for this mission. Being executed by gangsters had seemed a more likely scenario and one that had nearly taken place when Olenka had taken her to the factory and then again when she had presumably sent that assassin after her. Although her own attempts to ride a motorcycle and now this kamikaze ride down a Russian motorway were more likely ways for her to end up cashing in her chips.
What did they say Russia’s two biggest problems were – Fools and bad roads?
****
By the time they’d reached Harriet Soames’ tomb, Natasha’s headache was killing her and although she could clearly see the monument, she was badly out of breath and baffled as to why the walk had been such an effort. She needed painkillers and a break. She had no idea why she had let Hans steer her out here; she had to be back at the house to find her sister. That was the one overriding word getting through the fuzz in her clouded brain – sister.
And yet she was letting Hans lead her down some steps on the other side of the monument. Part of her brain felt that it should have been cooler here and yet the unexpected warmth of the May night still made her backless ball gown feel like a fur coat. She wanted to resist, yet Hans had a grip like steel and she had been pushed through the unlocked door into the tomb even before she could protest.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she managed to get out as they stood in a darkened antechamber lit only by the light of Hans’ mobile phone.
‘We’re here to meet your sister.’
‘Oxana?’
Even as she said this, Natasha knew that she was incapable of keeping anything back.
‘So that’s her name – at least we’ve identified both of our Lady Davenports now.’
And with that she was thrust into a room lit only by the light from two storm lanterns placed either side of a baroque catafalque on which rested the mortal remains of Harriet Soames. Without Hans to guide her, she immediately collapsed head first onto the cold flagstones.
‘Natasha!’
She heard her twin’s voice emerging from the shadows and her eyes rose to meet it and yet her strength was failing, but still she knew it belonged to her sister.
‘Ox –an- ‘
And with that she collapsed.
‘What have you done to her?’ hissed Oxana angrily as she wrestled free of the man holding her back and cradled her dying sister in her arms.
‘A touching reunion,’ smirked Hans as he turned to other man in the vault. ‘Was there any problem detaching her from the others, Aslan?’
‘No – Arkady was expecting a dozen girls tonight and so I simply brought thirteen to account for this one.’
The Caucasian looking man in dark clothing indicated Oxana.
‘What have you done to her?’ screamed Oxana as Natasha showed no sign of life.
‘Oh, don’t threat she’s already dead. But what does that matter when we still have one Marina Davenport left alive?’ smiled Hans grimly.
****
Dodo was beginning to trust Leonid’s driving skills, as he hummed along to what might have been “Rubber Soul”, a tape that they were now listening to for the third time in a row as the sun began to sink in the West. At least it had helped drown out the engine and gave her more time to think about what she should do now that she was being driven South to an unknown location by a man who might or might not be visiting his daughter, or his daughter’s grave. Dodo was in two minds about her driver’s sanity – at times he spoke to her with complete coherence and then at other times he seemed in a world of his own.
The good thing was that she was now over 200 kilometres from where she had escaped the motorcyclist and still no-one appeared to be following them. But then how was she to get home? If she’d made it to Moscow, she’d thought about making a dart for the embassy and getting out that way, yet here she was heading further and further into Southern Russia…
‘There we are!’
She wondered at first what, who or when Leonid might be referring to before she became aware of the city they were approaching.
‘Belgorod!’
Looking up in acknowledgement she identified another Soviet looking skyline emerging from the darkening sky.
‘This is where Raisa lived?’ she enquired, wondering if she’d used the correct tense.
‘Raisa?’
Dodo felt the conversation lurching again as Leonid followed a stream of traffic turning off the motorway.
‘Your daughter,’ she suggested tentatively.
‘My daughter?’
Despite the street lights, Dodo managed not to bring up the subject of the photograph as she preferred it when he gripped the wheel with both of his hands.
‘I thought you had a daughter who might once have lived here?’
‘Yes.’
Dodo wondered what Leonid was affirming as Belgorod began to assume a more substantial presence around them. She began to consider how safe it would be to get out here. It wasn’t a metropolis like Moscow where she could more easily lose herself, yet she still had the money she’d found in the Night Wolf’s pannier and despite her surreal conversation with Leonid still spoke what she regarded as faultless Russian; although the hard currency in her pocket was more likely the better passport to her escaping the country.
She was looking for a likely place to ask Leonid to stop, especially as the vehicle hadn’t slowed down greatly despite the encroaching cityscape, but he seemed to be heading away from the centre and towards the suburbs.
‘You want to meet John Lennon?’
Dodo gave Leonid the latest in a long line of incredulous looks as he turned down an avenue of apartment blocks.
****
‘You were working for Arkady all along?’ cried Oxana as she fought against her bonds.
‘Oh, no. You and I were working towards the same ends, I assure you,’ answered Hans as he helped position Natasha’s body at six o’clock.
She looked on uncomprehendingly as Hans indicated the other bodies in the tomb.
‘I know what a nasty piece of work Listyev can be, so we’ve been using Aslan here to help incriminate him even further by storing all the empties here.’
‘Empties?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Dead whores – like the one in there.’
He tapped the coffin.
‘It’s interesting how the English like to celebrate their whores, isn’t it? Harriet Soames and this vast tomb. And then there’s the legend of Nell Gwynne and all those pubs named after Emma Hamilton. It’s almost as if it’s okay if you’re English, but we Russians are a little more circumspect, aren’t we?’
She glared at him and then stared mutely at the ground.
‘Oh be sulky if you want to. I’m not going to beat it out of you. At least Natasha’s body will be helping to damn him – after all she was one of Listyev’s favourite whores as shown by your impersonation of her tonight.’
She must have shown some acknowledgement in her face.
‘I see I’m right. Well, Arkady has been a very bad boy hasn’t he? He’s been saying some very nasty things about some very good friends of mine in Russia and they haven’t been liking it one little bit. Though your mother’s plan had a very high approval rating with my friends when we discovered it. Not much gets past our people.’
Again her face must have betrayed her.
‘You didn’t know?’
‘I have no mother!’
‘You really didn’t know, did you? But you and your sister were part of her House of Russian Dolls?’
‘We escaped that life.’
‘So why were you working as a whore while your sister played Lady Davenport? ’
‘We had a plan!’
‘Your mother may have had a plan, yet we couldn’t work out what you two were playing at with this elaborate charade. Was it the cancer? Did you decide to try and give the remaining months of your life to free Natasha? Or did you miss playing the whore?’
‘You never objected to whores!’
Ignoring her, he swept the circular tomb triumphantly with his hand.
‘This was your mother’s plan.’
Again, Oxana refused to meet his eyes.
‘Oh, you think we’re making this up? No, no, no. We quite approved of her plan to embarrass her most generous client.’
Again her eyes flashed in the darkness.
‘Sadly, it seems she’s had a change of heart about her favourite exports. Isn’t that sweet? Maybe she missed her darling daughters and thought we’d return them to her all wrapped up in candy cotton if she went along with us.’
Oxana refused to rise to the bait.
‘And to think that these are the girls who weren’t good enough to work in the West – damaged goods you might call them. Your Mama has been storing them up for a long time – must have been plotting her revenge for years. And we weren’t averse to making some suggestions and helping a certain shipping container to reach these shores. We even offered to help out at this end.’
‘We?’
‘Come, you must know who we are by now. Everyone likes to write Russia off as finished and powerless. The loser in the Cold War. So many Westerners like to listen to Arkady Listyev and bad-mouthing of our friends in the Kremlin. They like to believe how bad and barbaric we are. And yet we are not like Listyev and his friends with their depraved tastes and stolen money.’
‘Then who killed these girls?’ demanded Oxana.
‘The decadent ones back home. The ones who need to be taught that people like Listyev are traitors and degenerates. This will be Listyev’s last May Ball here. The surveyors they will send to this place in preparation for the High Speed line, which will no longer be built with Listyev’s dirty money, will find this tomb next month and our country’s greatest critic will have a great deal of explaining to do.’
‘But why kill Natasha?’
‘You and your sister have both played a dangerous game. And let us just say that this Marina Davenport you both enacted has not always been seen as a friendly face to those back home who count themselves as patriots. You and your husband were far too friendly with Listyev and his cronies.’
‘Neither of us cared for Listyev, we hated him!’ spat out Oxana.
‘That is as maybe, but we want to make another gift to him first. And as Lady Marina Davenport you are very much the face of the New Russians in the West. Tonight Marina will have added considerable lustre to Mr Listyev’s credentials by being the guest of honour at his Victory Ball. But think how it will look in the morning when this person you created is found hanged over the River Thames. You will become another Marilyn, another poor girl who could not bear the shallow company she kept nor the corrupt people she played with. Your death will be the first warning to Arkady Listyev that his days are numbered.’
As Oxana saw the needle in Hans’ hands she at least had the satisfaction of knowing that his face had been included on the link she had left for posterity in the event of her death. A death that no longer seemed so very frightening now that it would finally re-unite her with Natasha.
****
It seemed in Leonid’s world that both John Lennon and Raisa were alive. Mercifully, they were both out of his car and she had let him lead her to a not dissimilar apartment block to that her Moscow relatives lived in. Thinking it better to get her bearings and not to start looking for a way out of this surreal experience until she’d had some rest, Dodo followed a man who had now turned from her driver to her host into the lift of the apartment block.
Her defences were still in place, yet she didn’t think this man’s madness was of the kind which had caused Marina Davenport’s body to be cut down from the Millennium Bridge, nor that of the kind which had arranged the bodies of 8 girls and 3 of their babies in the tomb of Harriet Soames. Leonid might be crazy, yet he had the old world craziness of the confused and not the current psychosis affecting so many modern minds in the present millennium.
‘Oh not another one, Leonid!’
The cry of despair came from the elderly woman who had opened the door to them.
‘Leave us!’
This was directed at Dodo. It was a commandment she would happily have obeyed if she’d had anywhere else to go, but she just stood there dumbly as the old woman bundled Leonid inside.
‘I told you to go away! Can’t you see he’s ill?’
‘I have nowhere to go,’ replied Dodo in the real expectation that she would be speaking to a slammed door in any second’s time.
‘And where’s the car? You haven’t crashed it again, have you?’
Dodo was still standing on the communal landing as the woman chastised Leonid when she felt something warm and furry press itself up against her legs. Picking it up she was rewarded with a loud ‘Miaow’.
‘John Lennon!’
To Dodo’s surprise Leonid had pushed the door back open and was smiling at her and the cat.
‘Both of you – in now before the neighbours see you!’
Again the woman was bundling Leonid back into the flat, yet was also ensuring Dodo wasn’t left outside this time.
‘Where are you from?’
This was said to her as the woman began removing Leonid’s jacket.
‘Moscow,’ she said as she relished the feelings of freeing her feet from her boots.
‘Moscow! You went all the way to Moscow!’ she exclaimed at Leonid who been parked in a chair in a tiny kitchen and was contentedly fiddling with a radio.
‘No. I was on a motorway. I’m not sure where. But it was to the South of Moscow. Probably nearer Tula,’ replied Dodo.
‘I told you she wouldn’t be there!’ snapped the woman at Leonid.
Dodo presumed the woman would be in tears if she wasn’t there.
‘I’m sorry, I needed a lift to Moscow. I didn’t realise we were going the wrong way…’
But the woman was seeing to Leonid now, hardly hearing her.
Dodo turned to the sitting room on her left and was confronted by a dozen photographs of the same girl, from babyhood to Pioneer Camp to graduation –
‘Raisa!’
****
Frankie felt slightly odd addressing 13 as their commanding officer – well that was only until they got the DCI back she reminded herself.
‘Since my predecessor’s retirement,’ she waited for the ironic cheers at Mozzarella’s departure to subside. ‘I’m afraid we’ve been stood down from the investigation into Marina’s death.’
She could sense their despondency, but also knew that they were still considered lucky to have kept 13 as an on-going concern after Midgely’s mishandling of the case.
‘But we are permitted to make every attempt we can to assist our colleagues over the river in finding Dodo…’
‘Assist?’
The loaded word had been picked up by both Hal and Charlie.
‘We don’t have the remit to tread on any toes in Russia. Now everything has gone wrong, it’s surprising how many senior officers are questioning the wisdom of even having this unit and a lot of people are now very unhappy that Upstairs even allowed Dodo to go over there in the first place.’
‘So we just twiddle our thumbs?’ scowled Hal.
‘Not quite. A friend of a friend passed on some intel about a certain well known Chechen terrorist having slipped over to London last month. And given Dodo’s last report mentioned a connection between ‘The House of Russian Dolls’ and the Chechens it’s all we’ve got for now.’
****
‘He looks her for all the time,’ Zinaida said as she made up a bed for Dodo on the sofa. ‘I worry that one day he will not come back.’
‘Can you not get him any help?’
‘Maybe in the old days, but today?’ Leonid’s wife shrugged her shoulders.
‘What happened to her?’
‘She would have been thirty this year, if she’d lived.’
Dodo waited patiently. Zinaida was much more lucid than her husband, yet it was best to give people time to tell their story.
‘She was a good girl. Our only child. Leonid loved her with all his heart and she loved him too. But she had to leave to get into a good university.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘Leningrad. We were so proud of her.’
Dodo smiled reassuringly.
‘She was going to return here and teach, but then she got into bad company.’
Dodo looked again at the smiling girl in the pictures who was obviously the apple of her parents’ eyes.
‘Leonid gave up his job and tried to help her.’
‘Leningrad is a long way off,’ remarked Dodo as she considered its temporal rather than geographic distance.
‘By then she was closer to home. She went to live in Kursk. There was a boy…’
Dodo squeezed Zinaida’s hand.
‘He got her into drugs and she lost the very good job that she had worked so hard to get. Leonid went to bring her home. He would nurse her day after day while I worked and we thought she was getting better. Yet she ran away again…’
Dodo waited.
‘The police came to our door. They had found her body in a burnt out flat, but Leonid was already unwell by this point and would not accept it was her. It is why he drives out everyday looking for her, spending money we do not have on gas.’
Dodo held the old woman’s hand as she guiltily fingered the passport she had found in the flat’s no longer used second bedroom. She just hoped that the pile of dollars she had left in its place would be some compensation for the betrayal of trust she was about to make.
****
The Tsar’s Ball and the opening chords of “Stairway to Heaven” cast their timeless spell on the Russian celebrants gathered in London’s Millennium Dome. Many of the younger ones weren’t even born when Robert Plant and Jimmy Page composed this standard back in the 70s, whereas many of the older ones had been born in a country where such music was once considered decadent and corrupt. The people playing it were the crossover generation; born in the USSR but raised in the Russian Federation.
