The house of russian dol.., p.4
The House of Russian Dolls, page 4
Frankie observed the vein in Mozzarella’s stubby forehead beginning to throb; he clearly had no answers prepared for that one.
‘And if it is Marina’s body in the mausoleum, then why would her identical twin have been found hanging over the Thames?’ continued Hal unconscious of the potential health problems he was creating for his under stress boss.
‘The answer’s in the room!’ announced Mozzarella gnomically. ‘Sergeant take over whilst I update Upstairs on our findings.’
And with that piece of management claptrap he exited the briefing room in order to finish eating his early elevenses.
Frankie found herself once again being asked to take the briefing, a task she was more than up to, but one which would have been far more palatable if she’d been allowed to maintain the rank and pay scale of acting DI which had been hers for the taking before Midgely’s fat carcase had knocked her off the perch.
‘One of the key preliminary findings is the very worrying possibility that the bodies placed inside the mausoleum may not have died in the UK.’
‘How on earth could they tell that?’ queried Hal.
‘For one thing the soil samples taken from beneath the fingernails of the girls are not local. They’re not even British. They’re trying to find out exactly where they’re from, but my educated guess would be…’
‘Russia,’ concluded Charlie.
‘We’ll know more when they’ve completed the analysis of their stomach contents, but it does look like these girls were from Eastern Europe.’
‘So, you’re suggesting that these girls were killed in Russia and moved over to the UK? But that’s crazy!’
Frankie had to agree with Nelson’s initial assessment – it did seem bizarre.
‘There’s a probability that they weren’t all murdered though, isn’t there?’ asked Hal. ‘And if they were, it would seem to suggest a different killer given that strangulation, stabbings and a possible bludgeoning are among the methods used.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ agreed Frankie. ‘You might come across a serial killer who has refined his methods over time, but of the victims whom we believe to have been murdered it would be very unusual to find that they were all killed by a single person.’
‘Not another conspiracy,’ groaned Charlie as he recollected their last case.
‘I think we’d be grateful if it was that simple,’ answered Frankie. ‘And yet it doesn’t explain the presence of the victims who appear to have died from overdoses, although most of them have been identified as users. Though they’re having problems identifying the one found positioned at eleven o’clock.’
‘Were they on the game?’ chipped in da Silva.
Frankie shot him a disapproving look.
‘Sorry, Guv, it’s just that if they’re all young girls with drug problems and have come from Eastern Europe then it has got to be a possibility.’
Overcoming her dislike of how quickly the identification of their victims as prostitutes could prejudice their investigation, she gave a reluctant nod to her Portuguese colleague.
‘Could the heroin have been administered after death?’ tried Hal.
‘It’s possible, but then that would leave no obvious cause of death. And then there’s another worrying aspect to this.’
‘Marina Davenport’s body?’ guessed Hal.
‘Before we even consider that angle, there’s the suggestion that these girls died many years apart.’
‘That’s not so unusual, is it?’ asked Charlie. ‘If they were the victims of a single killer or even a group of killers we might expect the killings to take place over years if not decades.’
‘But it would appear that they were placed in the mausoleum at the same time,’ replied Frankie. ‘The bodies are all at different stages of decomposition and yet the mummification process they’ve gone through in the mausoleum is identical in each case.’
‘So someone has gone to the considerable effort and risk of transporting eight corpses from the other side of Europe and interring them over here?’ asked an incredulous da Silva.
‘Welcome to our world,’ smiled Frankie grimly.
‘And what about those Tarot markings on the walls? When and why were they added?’ asked Charlie as his long fingers unconsciously sought out the New Testament in his desk drawer.
‘And did we interrupt the killers before they had finished?’ suggested Hal. ‘The bodies were displayed at different hours of the clock and there were still four spaces left to fill…’
As Frankie looked at the expectant faces seeking answers from her, she began to appreciate why Mozzarella had taken refuge in his office and yet unlike him she led by example – even if she wasn’t getting the credit for it.
‘Okay, we’ve got lots of questions which need answering, not least on why we’ve now got two bodies in the morgue tagged as Marina Davenport. Hal, I’d like you and Charlie to interview Arkady Listyev. Find out when he last used Belmont Park and what he knows about any of the girls we’ve identified so far. But make it softly, softly. Upstairs seem to want us to treat him like royalty. But with another eight bodies in the morgue, I don’t think even Upstairs can object to us interviewing him this time. And if does go pear-shaped, I’ll take the rap for it. Nelson do you know anything about the Occult?’
‘When my father was a little boy, Aleister Crowley tried to hurl himself off the cliffs by his uncle’s home in Portugal,’ smiled Nelson. ‘He proclaimed himself as the wickedest man in the world and once claimed to have raised the Devil in the Mojave desert. The place where he jumped is still called the Mouth of Hell.’
‘Well, I suppose that will do for starters, you can come with me and see whether there’s anything meaningful behind those paintings they found in the tomb.’
****
‘There’s a war going on. You either prepare to fight or prepare to die.’
Overly dressed for the golf course, Arkady Listyev didn’t strike Charlie and Hal as much of a soldier, although the acres of parkland surrounding Belmont Park could have concealed an army and the imposing Regency library they were taking tea in might once have echoed to topical discussions of the Napoleonic Wars.
‘Selling up?’ enquired Hal rather disconcerted by Arkady’s conversational gambit and noticing the dust sheeted furniture in the rest of his temporary office.
‘I’m buying somewhere safer,’ continued the billionaire from behind the type of desk that might have graced the stately home’s study since the days of Waterloo.
‘You have no knowledge then of the bodies we’ve found on your estate?’ pursued Charlie frustrated by the man’s seeming indifference to the shocking crime they had unearthed. Though at least he had conceded to meet them at a house he claimed no longer to use.
‘How do your politicians say when you bomb a hospital in the Middle-East? Collateral damage. Isn’t that the way you like to describe such casualties?’
‘Collateral damage!’ spluttered Charlie as he eyed the absurdly young oligarch facing them.
How on earth a man hardly into his forties had made his billions was beyond him. Well no, not beyond him. Charlie as ever had clued himself up on the man who had made his fortune on the backs of the privatisation vouchers which had once been intended to distribute wealth more equally among the citizens of the fledging Russian Federation and yet had ended up in the hands of a few crooks who had seized this new opportunity for themselves.
‘And these girls were casualties of this war?’ tried Hal more diplomatically.
‘Of course.’
Arkady smiled at them as if this was the most natural thing in the world. Spreading his big peasant hands behind the desk he looked very much like the Kulak who had got the cream thought Hal. And 13 was going to have tread very carefully here, their friends in Thames House had already made their feelings very clear about the police treading on their turf, even if 13’s remit was to investigate murders with potentially sensitive political, celebrity or royal connections. And Marina’s death certainly ticked the first two boxes, it might even tick the third if some of Nelson’s wilder theories about connections to the Romanovs were on the money…
‘Can you tell us how eight young women came to be interred in your mausoleum?’ demanded Charlie finally losing patience with the man playing at being Lord of the Manor.
‘You should ask the Kremlin. I am sure my friends in Moscow can help you.’
Hal couldn’t but help note the slight downturn of the man’s over plump lips as he ironically alluded to his poor relations with the current Russian government.
‘Are you trying to suggest that you’ve been set up?’ asked Hal incredulously.
‘This has not been my main residence for a number of years,’ answered Arkady carefully. ‘It is no longer safe for me here.’
‘You feel safer in London,’ asked Hal as he considered the imposing townhouse the oligarch owned in Mayfair.
‘When you live on the same square as two embassies and a diplomatic mission then you have shall we say certain additional security features already in place.’
Recalling the in your face security they had had to negotiate to even arrive at this interview in the first instance, Hal was surprised. He’d found it easier getting access to some maximum security prisons than Belmont Park.
‘And you need security because of this war?’ interjected Charlie. ‘Who’s fighting it, because as far as I can recall the Cold War ended in 1991 and the last time our two countries fought was back in the Crimea in the 1850s!’
‘Our countries?’ smiled Arkady as he took in Charlie’s Nigerian features and placed a deliberately goading emphasis on the possessive pronoun.
Refusing to back down, Charlie fixed the man with a hard stare.
‘The war is not between Russia and England,’ explained Arkady as he turned to face Hal. ‘It is between the old Russia and the new Russia.’
‘And which side would you be on?’ asked Charlie as he struggled to maintain his composure.
‘And it will not be fought in Russia, but here in the West,’ continued Arkady as he continued to ignore Charlie. ‘The casualties of this war will not die on the streets of Moscow or St Petersburg, but on the streets of London and in houses like this.’
He gestured expansively around the wood panelled library.
‘Is that a threat?’
By this point Charlie was feeling very heated indeed, in spite of the modern air conditioning that the man provoking them had somehow got past the planners; if indeed he’d ever bothered applying for planning permission.
‘It is simply what I was explaining to your Mr Blair the last time we met at Chequers. If the West wants to see progress in Russia and better relations with our energy giants, then they need to protect people like us and our interests. We are your best hope for the future.’
Even Hal could feel the chill in the room now and it had nothing to do with the thermostat.
‘I think you’ll find Mr Brown’s in charge today,’ smiled Charlie as he shoved his unwanted tea to one side.
‘But not for long. Your Mr Brown is unelected. How can a country so proud of its long tradition of democracy have an unelected leader?’
The very fact that Arkady Listyev was sitting in front of a painting showing the Second Duke of Sydenham hunting alongside one of the more aristocratic British Prime Ministers of the 19th Century, rather spoilt the man’s point thought Hal sagely.
‘He’ll be ratified by the next General Election and anyway, we vote for MPs and not Prime Ministers over here. New Labour has a majority and are free to choose their own leader now Blair has stepped down,’ retaliated Charlie.
‘As you people say – “If you believe that you’ll believe anything”. I follow winners and my nose tells me that your Mr Brown is not a winner.’
‘But your Mr Putin would appear to be,’ tried Hal vainly hoping to steer the conversation away from the diplomatic row it was threatening to become.
‘I think you’ll find that Russia is a democratic country under Putin in name only and that if your next elected Prime Minister wishes to promise your people lower energy prices then he should be careful about which side he backs.’
‘Or she,’ added Charlie thinking of Frankie.
‘And so you’re the New Russia?’ quizzed Hal trying to get this straight in his mind. This conversation was taking them a long away from the murders of up to eight girls and the double death of Marina Davenport, but then again perhaps it was supposed to mislead?
‘Let us just say that there are people who can help your country and people who will oppose it. I happen to love this country for its great traditions of democracy, law and order,’ declared Arkady in a tone which was far too over-rehearsed to Charlie’s ears.
‘And so you think the dead girls in your mausoleum are an attempt to smear you?’ enquired an incredulous Hal.
‘Why not? I would not be dragged away from my business to a house I rarely use if this latest attempt to discredit me was not working would I? As I said there’s a war going on, but it’s a civil war between the Russians. Your government has to decide which side you’re on. And so if the messenger boys have finished delivering their message perhaps I may get back to business.’
And with that postscript, the portly oligarch decanted himself from his temporary office as the engines of his personal helicopter started up outside to announce that this voluntary interview was at an end. Though far more interesting for Charlie was the face of the man holding open the door for his employer, as he was sure it was a face he had seen very recently indeed but in which context he just couldn’t recall. And why was the man pretending he rarely used this house, when that was such a bare-faced lie?
****
Frankie was almost beginning to wish she’d left da Silva in the canteen as although the expert they’d brought in to tell them about the Tarot seemed to be talking utter bollocks, she could have listened to her lovely Scottish accent talking this shite all day and all night. Especially as this far too young to be a professor woman had the most lovely figure and Frankie was finding it hard to draw her eyes from the very athletic figure being shown off to considerable effect by the tight Lycra top.
‘… quite possibly this is the Russian Tarot introduced in the…’
Frankie’s mind had got snagged on Dr Alison May’s description of The Lovers a few sentences back and she was just hoping that da Silva was justifying his gooseberry status by getting it all down in his notebook.
‘… and if we were to try and infer any meaning from the cards about the manner of their death, or what the symbolism of the major and minor arcana of their deaths may have been intended to convey…’
Frankie’s brain lurched again as one of the neurons in her brain dug out the quite unnecessary information that a gooseberry had once been thought to allude to a woman’s genitals, unfortunately in forcing her eye upwards from an involuntary glance in the direction of Dr May’s gooseberry, she found herself staring a fraction too long into the almond eyes of her delicious interlocutor.
‘… the Baroque bling typical of the time.’
Frankie was suddenly aware that the woman had finished speaking. She also appeared to be playing with the wedding ring on her finger, not that Frankie’s memory neurons told her that was going to be a problem. The actual problem was that the lovely Alison appeared to need Frankie to say something and the part of Frankie’s brain which appeared to be in charge of articulating her thought processes had obviously received a warning to keep her big trap shut.
‘It’s a lovely theory, but there’s no explicit connection between the designs painted above where their bodies were positioned and the Tarot, is there?’
Nelson’s voice grated on her ear after the honeyed tones of the fair Dr May, yet at least it filled the awkward silence she’d left hanging in the room.
‘Well, no Detective Constable. As I prefaced my remarks, people have a tendency to think of a single deck of Tarot cards when in fact the Tarot is as fluid and as varied as its history.’
Part of Frankie’s brain was applauding the putdown given to her colleague and yet the more rebellious party in her mental parliament couldn’t help but recognise that this beautiful woman was still talking shite.
****
‘We’re not exactly happy with the manner in which your team interviewed Mr Listyev. He may well be the victim in this sad affair.’
As a newly promoted DI, Midge Midgely knew he was just supposed to suck this all up and not question the civil servant briefing him on how to conduct himself. He quite liked the “your team” part, though as a cop with thirty years service behind him he resented being dragged in a second time by Upstairs in as many days. He didn’t expect to be treated like an imbecile and decided to fight fire with fire.
‘What’s the link to the victim I found?’
He liked the look of the woman he’d put on the back foot, but would have preferred to have seen a man in such a senior Whitehall role. Not that he was surprised, it was all political correctness gone mad under New Labour – no wonder his own promotion had taken so long in coming. He was just glad that he hadn’t changed into his better suit for today’s briefing as no-one had commented on the effort he had made yesterday.
‘If there’s a link, then that’s for you to establish Inspector.’
The emphasis on his new rank would have been pleasing, if her tone hadn’t carried a sarcastic undertone.
‘We’re rather undermanned at the moment, what with Inspector Sideserver being away.’
For a moment there was a blank look on the young woman’s face. A face which would have benefitted from a little more lipstick, as well as a great deal more friendliness in his opinion.
‘Oh, you mean DCI Zaitseva’s trip to Russia? Do you mean that you’re struggling to run 13 in her absence? Would it be helpful if we appointed another senior officer to cover for her?’
This time he did not welcome the smile being levelled in his direction.
