The man called kyril, p.12
The Man Called Kyril, page 12
‘We can’t figure it out,’ Royston had said to him earlier that day. ‘Chummy seems to have gone to pieces.’
He’s not the only one, thought Sculby. The Sanson inquest was in a mess, he had an intolerable backlog of paperwork and to cap it all he had spent the day arguing at Marylebone County Court in an unsuccessful attempt to save a client from being committed to prison for contempt of court. Royston was the last straw. His face was drawn and there were dark rings under his eyes. Sculby thought he looked tired and ill. So when Royston told him that Loshkevoi had gone to pieces, Sculby thought that that made three of them.
‘He shuts up the garage at five or six and goes on the bottle. But that’s not all. He keeps futzing up to this road in Clapham and hanging around, as if he’s supposed to be meeting someone, then loses his nerve and goes home again. We’ve got a pretty good idea who it is, too. Woman name of Bradfield, Vera Bradfield.’
‘Who’s she?’ inquired Sculby.
‘Never mind. But we’re interested in that, Laurie. Very interested. Go and see him. Try to find out what’s going on, will you.’
Sculby rifled through his ‘In’ tray. ‘You might be in luck, at that. I seem to remember the depositions coming in a while back… oh yes, here we are. Regina v. Victor Gregory Loshkevoi. I suppose I could always make an appointment to go and see him.’
‘You do that.’
Royston stood up and Sculby walked with him to the door. ‘You look all in,’ he remarked cheerfully, and Royston made a face.
‘I’ve not been sleeping too well.’
‘Early night, then.’
‘Fat chance. It’s my wedding anniversary today.’
‘Congratulations.’
Royston grunted. ‘She’s expecting to be taken out to dinner. That’s thirty quid down the drain for a start. Then there’s the taxi…’
Sculby grinned. ‘Think of all the years you’ve been coming here for a “divorce”, Michael. Just say the word and I’ll make it for real.’
But now, sitting in his car on Loshkevoi’s forecourt, he didn’t feel like laughing. It was bitterly cold, and he pulled up the collar of his overcoat even for the short walk from the car to the entrance to Loshkevoi’s flat. He pushed the bell-button and waited for the whine of the entry-phone. Nothing happened. Sculby began to feel uneasy. Loshkevoi had sounded strange on the telephone when he had rung earlier to make the appointment; as if he’d been drinking, perhaps. Sculby tried again. This time the buzzer sounded and the latch of the door clicked back. Loshkevoi obviously didn’t care to find out who was calling.
Inside the door some narrow stairs led straight up to the first floor. Sculby found himself in one of the most depressing living-rooms he had ever seen. The only lighting was provided by a single table-lamp half obscured by a dark brown shade. The predominant colour of the wallpaper and the furnishings was deep, dark red; the materials struck the eye as heavy and substantial.
‘Hi, Laurie.’
Loshkevoi was lying across the sofa, apparently watching a portable television. Sculby looked again and saw that the picture was of the forecourt where he had stood a moment ago. It seemed a lot of expensive trouble to go to over a tiny flat in one of the poorer quarters of London.
Loshkevoi was holding a remote-control unit; he flicked a switch and the picture dissolved into darkness.
‘That’s neat.’
‘Thank you. I like gadgets… mechanical things. You wanna drink?’
Sculby examined his client carefully. It was impossible to say how much Loshkevoi had drunk before his arrival, but the lawyer sensed that it was a good deal. The effects showed only in the slow, ponderous movements of Loshkevoi’s body, and speech that was faintly slurred. To Sculby, it was rather like encountering the real Loshkevoi in a dream: everything was fuzzy at the edges.
‘Thanks. Gin.’
‘Help yourself. Over there…’
A large, heavy mahogony table carried a wide selection of bottles. Sculby poured himself a drink and looked in vain for tonic.
‘Don’t you have any mixers?’
‘Never touch the stuff. Water in the tap if you want.’
Loshkevoi gestured vaguely in the direction of a door and Sculby went through to find himself in the kitchen. There everything was at sixes and sevens. Loshkevoi couldn’t have washed up anything for at least a week. Sculby negotiated his glass round a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and added some water to the neat spirit, trying to avert his eyes from the globules of cold fat floating on the surface of the nearest plate.
‘At least we know what the police are going to say now,’ he called. ‘It doesn’t add up to much. I reckon we’re going to win this one without too much trouble, Victor.’
Loshkevoi seemed not to be paying attention. Sculby went back into the living-room and poured a couple of drops of Angostura into his glass. He looked around for a chair. There was only one, opposite the sofa, and he flopped down into it. A spring had broken, allowing him to sink down further than he expected, and causing him to spill his drink.
‘I’ve got the depositions here. We can go through them if you like.’
Loshkevoi waved a hand. ‘Later. Cheers.’
They drank.
‘Would you mind passing me the bottle, Laurie. Vodka.’
Sculby obliged. Loshkevoi poured himself a generous treble and then appeared to forget about it.
‘These charges,’ he said. ‘A joke. A fraud. What’s that expression? To do with cards…’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘Trumped up.’
‘Could be. It’s pretty flimsy stuff. It’s there, but only just. But why would anybody do that to you?’
Loshkevoi rested his glass on the floor and sat up, placing his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. Sculby heard him sigh.
‘Oh… all kinds of reasons. You get to make enemies. There’s a lot of trouble I could make for a lot of high-up people in this city, you know?’
Sculby sipped his drink and said nothing. It was a sentiment which most of his clients expressed at one time or another, but if Royston was involved it just might be true.
‘Sometimes I think I’d trade it all for a little peace and quiet. You know what I mean? Another name.’ Loshkevoi paused and sighed again. ‘Somewhere warm, where it don’t rain too often. A little money as well, maybe.’
Sculby raised his eyebrows. ‘You’d have trouble finding a buyer if that’s your price.’
‘No.’ Loshkevoi seemed to talk to himself rather than to Sculby. ‘There’s plenty of people in this country who’d pay my price, Laurie. Aach…’
He stood up, putting out a hand to steady himself on the arm of a chair.
‘Life used to be simple. Y’know? Uncomplicated. There can only ever be one boss, Laurie. S’right, isn’t it? One boss…’
Sculby shifted uneasily in his seat.
‘Forget it. Just forget I said anything, will you?’
Loshkevoi was standing by the window. Sculby saw him pull the edge of the curtain aside a fraction and peer out.
‘I tell you want I need… I need a woman.’ He giggled. ‘I fancy a night out. Coming, Laurie? It’s on me. There’s a massage joint round the corner. Anything you want. Hand job. French. Even a screw. Nice girls, they are. Cheap.’
He was swaying slightly, his back still turned to Sculby.
‘…Or maybe we could go and see Vera… sweet little, pretty little Vera B.’
Sculby stood up, not quite sure whether he had heard correctly. ‘Who?’
‘Vera, Vera, Vera B.’
Then Loshkevoi did the most extraordinary thing. With slow, elephantine movements he knelt down in front of the window, as if about to pray: first one leg, then the other. Having done that he paused, as if not sure what to do next. Sculby moved forward uncertainly.
‘Victor…?’
As if in response to some unspoken command reflected in Sculby’s voice, Loshkevoi keeled over to the left and began to snore.
At first Sculby was so taken aback that he couldn’t do anything. When he recovered from his initial surprise he went over to where Loshkevoi was lying and arranged him more comfortably, placing a cushion from the sofa under his head and loosening his collar. Then he stood up, wondering what to do next. He realised that there was nothing he could do.
He took his glass out to the kitchen and left it on the dresser. Then he let himself out quickly, pausing for a second at the top of the stairs for a last look at this curious room the colour of blood, before descending to the forecourt and getting into his car.
French, Loshkevoi had said. Even a screw. Maybe Judy would be free tonight…
Sculby drove away in search of a phone-box.
Chapter 15
Stanov stood in his favoured position by the tall windows, looking out over the square. From the other side of the room Colonel Yevchenko watched him curiously. For once the chief was unsure. Yevchenko could tell from the way he twisted his steel-rimmed spectacles this way and that, unconscious of what he was doing.
The office was hermetically sealed against the outside world. Somewhere in the same building men monitored transmissions, typed reports, kept the machinery grinding away. They might have been on another planet. In the office of the Chairman of the KGB no word had been spoken for twenty minutes.
‘Where is he? Where is he?’
Yevchenko kept silence. Stanov had asked the same question with a variety of emphases many times that day. Kyril had been kidnapped by SIS in Athens and given them the slip, so much was certain. Stanov’s contacts in the KYP, the Greek Intelligence Service, could help no further. After that the veil came down until Bucharensky showed up in Belgium.
‘If he ever got out of Brussels, where the hell did he go?’
Stanov continued to stare out into the darkness while Yevchenko pulled a heavy, cork-covered flask from his inside pocket and poured two generous tots of vodka. The heating was turned low in the evenings now; one of many spending-cuts ordered by the Politburo. He tossed down his drink and poured another.
‘Vodka.’
Stanov turned away from the window and absentmindedly collected his drink. After a moment’s indecision he wandered across to The Chair and sat down so that he could face Yevchenko over the desk.
‘It’s going wrong, Nikolai,’ he said abruptly. ‘None of our people put a foot wrong over Athens. The Eighth Department’s completely in the clear. I was watching every move they made. It’s the same with Brussels. The Fifth Department’s clean, too. The traitor has to be elsewhere.’
Yevchenko shrugged. He had had enough of this. He wanted to go home.
‘One thing is sure, old man. There is nothing you… any of us… can do.’
Stanov nodded glumly. ‘I agree. But things are very tight now. Today…’
He compressed his lips and for a while said no more. Yevchenko knew that the Politburo had met that morning. For Stanov life was becoming progressively more tense.
‘They took some convincing over Sociable Plover. At first they flatly refused to believe it ever existed, but I had to tell them it did, of course. Then they wouldn’t accept that Bucharensky hadn’t got it with him – or at the very least, a copy. I had to show them the original – I ask you, Nikolai, a blue file leaving this office! – and explain about the paper, how it shows up if it’s so much as touched by human skin, but even then they weren’t really convinced. Kazin said…’
Stanov tailed off, got a grip on himself again.
‘…That man is a trial to me, Nikolai.’
Yevchenko grunted but said nothing. Stanov mused, his sunken eyes glittering dully in the poor light. Since the day of his stroke the illness was fast increasing its hold on him.
Privately Yevchenko doubted whether he would ever see July 1st, and for the hundredth time reminded himself that if he did not make plans soon it would be too late.
‘Suppose, Nikolai… Stanov’s voice rose barely above a whisper. Yevchenko had to strain to hear the words that followed. ‘Suppose we find this… this one we are looking for.’ He looked up slowly. ‘What should we do with him?’
‘Kill him. Torture him until we’re sure he’s told us all he knows, then…’
Yevchenko drew his finger across his throat. Stanov nodded slowly, like a man who wants to convince himself.
‘Perhaps. But suppose we could persuade him to work for us again, just for a little while, eh, Nikolai? Perhaps he has a wife, a child?’
‘Turn him, you mean. A dangerous game, that.’
‘Dangerous… But deadly, if properly used. Does it not appeal to you, the thought that we might be able to undo some of what this traitor has done? Think of the store of trust he has built up over the years.’
But Yevchenko was still doubtful. He signified as much by raising from his seat and saying, ‘Time to go. Tomorrow I’ll tell you what I think. Now, we go home.’
Stanov placed his hands on the desk-top and used them to lever himself painfully upright.
‘Sometimes Nikolai, I even wonder if you weren’t right about Bucharensky. If I’d told him a little more of the truth…’
Yevchenko shrugged with obvious annoyance.
‘It seemed so pointless, that’s all. I thought you were being devious for the sake of it. We both know that Loshkevoi isn’t the answer. The traitor won’t have revealed himself to a slug like that. If Kyril ever does manage to interrogate him, he’ll be wasting his time.’
‘But I had to give him a goal, Nikolai. Something for Bucharensky to work towards, take his mind off the knowledge that he was really only a moving target, put up for the sole purpose of drawing fire. Surely you can see that? And you’re wrong about Loshkevoi. Have you seen his latest report?’
Stanov began to rummage about on his desk. Suddenly his hand fell on what he was looking for and he held it up to the light, eyes squinting.
‘It’s crap. Loshkevoi’s gone adrift. Why, he was drunk when he wrote this, he had to be. He knows something. I feel it in my bones. He may not know it all, but something…’
‘You could be right.’
Yevchenko hated dithering. He wanted to go home to his warm appartment and have dinner, preceded by a drink, several drinks. His flask was empty.
‘What’s happening in A2?’
Yevchenko ground his teeth.
‘Every one of our executioners was still accounted for as of five o’clock this evening. Nothing suspicious. If “Lisa” means to send somebody after Bucharensky…’
‘If!’
To Yevchenko’s horror Stanov sat down again.
‘Put yourself in Lisa’s position. What facts does he know?’
Yevchenko said nothing.
‘First. Because of the diary it is possible that Kyril knows, or may know, his true indentity. Second. He knows that I have issued a personal order; return Kyril to me alive. Third. He knows that down in the cellars here they can be very persuasive. If Kyril is caught the traitor must reckon that he will talk. So, Nikolai… knowing all these facts, what would you do, eh?’
‘Then why hasn’t he done it already?’
Stanov lowered his eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ he said after a pause. ‘Perhaps because he’s clever. Perhaps… because like us he doesn’t yet know where Kyril is going to end up.’
He rose, and Yevchenko helped him on with his overcoat, now several sizes too large for him. As the Colonel stepped aside for his chief to pass through the double-doors he heard the old man mutter:
‘But where is he? Where?’
Chapter 16
One o’clock in the morning. Sculby floated on the surface of sleep, half-conscious of the wind that drove down the street outside while scattered images from the day competed for attention behind his sore eyelids. He was distantly aware of being cold; that same night Judy had broken off relations for the third time, calling him (among other things) a self-opinionated pseudo-Marxist, and the wind’s sough made the lawyer doubly conscious of the empty space by his side.
He tugged the crumpled duvet over his shoulders, tried yet another position and pretended that he was at the beginning of a dreamless night’s sleep.
The undersheet was saturated with sweat from his naked body. He threw himself across to the other side of the bed and in desperation began deep-breathing exercises… one, two, three, in, one, two, three, four, five, out; one, two, three…
He started to go under. Judy was waiting for him, long blonde hair unleashed from its tight bun to cascade around her waist. She was so real that Sculby could see the little scar which fascinated him, a thin, blue line on the slant across her left breast… she turned her back to him and bent forward slowly, soft buttocks parting. Now she was on her knees. With one hand she reached back to caress the long strands of hair away from her supple back and over her neck.
Sculby moved in his sleep and awoke, sharp pain in his bladder causing him to lose the erection at once. He stumbled, cursing, to the bathroom. Everything in his familiar flat had suddenly grown a point or a sharp edge.
As he slumped back on the bed he fought to stifle his thoughts, but it was no good. That afternoon he had been wrestling with a point of Social Security law. Sculby was one of the very few people who knew anything about it, though that wasn’t saying much. The client had been denied a benefit to which she was entitled but there was a time limit for an appeal, he couldn’t remember how long. Sections, subsections and paragraphs floated before his tired eyes. He felt sick, nauseous with lack of sleep. The answer to his problem was there, in the regulations… it had to be there…
Time passed. Slowly, very slowly, Sculby’s hyperactive brain released its hold and he sank into a proper sleep.
The telephone rang five times before he could bring his jolting heart back under control. As he lifted the receiver his imagination supplied the illusory clicks and hums which signalled that in the telephone-tapping centre at Ebury Bridge Road tape-recorders had automatically switched on, activating the voice analysers which would determine whether the caller was known to MI5 or the Special Branch. Until lately he had resignedly tolerated surveillance as part of the price he had to pay for his cover as a standard-bearer for the Left. But recently he was becoming increasingly resentful of the all-seeing, all-hearing eyes and ears of The State. Sculby struggled upright in bed and strove to concentrate. ‘Laurie… you know who this is, don’t you?’
