7

  The next day I was due at the State Prosecutor’s Office and so Porfiry, whose journey to his offices in the passenger seaport took him in that general direction, gave me a lift in his car. This was a bright red new Zhiguli and Porfiry was as proud of it as he was of all his other toys. All the way across the city he talked about how he had driven it into the country from Helsinki, and I was quite glad to get out by the time we got to Yakubovica Street.

  The State Prosecutor’s Office was a decrepit building much like the one I inhabited on Kalayeva Street, with the same green walls, the same ancient lift and the same sour-piss smell. Vladimir Voznosensky’s box of an office was on the second floor and he shared it with a broken microwave oven, several tonnes of papers and an ancient army carbine with which he claimed he went hunting, although I could not imagine that it could ever have fired. Voznosensky, a slight, fair-haired figure with a flourishing moustache and a cardigan that, despite the warm weather, he wore zipped up to the neck, greeted me cordially.

  ‘I prosecute most of the cases involving organised crime in this city,’ he told me. ‘So I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. It’s a difficult business. And it’s not made any easier by the fact that my predecessor is now Petersburg’s number-one Mafioso lawyer.’

  ‘Luzhin? He used to work here?’

  ‘I see Grushko’s already told you about him,’ said Voznosensky. ‘Yes, Semyon Sergeyevich Luzhin was assistant state prosecutor in Leningrad for five years. Now he makes his old monthly salary in one hour. And he’s not the only one to have left this place to go and work for the other side.’ He shrugged and lit a pipe. ‘Everything comes down to money these days, doesn’t it?

  ‘Another thing: when you do make an arrest, what you’ll always find is that your Mafioso will claim that whatever it is he’s supposed to have done was a personal matter. He’ll deny membership of any gang. He’s killed another gangster? It was an argument they had about a girl, or an old gambling debt, or an insult received. A Mafia killing? No way. He’s never heard of the Russian Mafia: he thought that was something the Party invented to try and discredit capitalism and the free market.

  ‘But our biggest problem is still with the intimidation of witnesses.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s the same in Moscow,’ I said. ‘We’ve been trying to set up a witness-protection programme, but of course there’s not enough money to make it work. And nothing’s going to improve until we’ve changed the way we try racketeering cases in the courts. We need a proper jury system, with jurors compensated for taking time off work. Nobody wants to serve on a jury and get paid nothing.’

  ‘Nobody does something for nothing these days.’

  ‘Unless you’re a policeman,’ I suggested provocatively.

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Voznosensky. ‘There are plenty with their paws out for what’s available. It’s the Mafia’s biggest expense. That and weapons.’

  ‘What’s that? Mostly military stuff for hard currency?’

  He nodded. ‘And it’s all top quality, too. There’s enough military hardware on the streets of this city to fight a war.’

  Tell me, do you get much interference from the military prosecutor?‘

  ‘More and more.’ He uttered a scornful sort of laugh. ‘Prosecution is the one area of military life that is actually expanding.’

  He made tea and we talked some more: lawyer’s talk, about protocols, evidence, who the best judges were and the latest crime figures.

  ‘So, tell me about Grushko,’ I said after a while. ‘What kind of a man is he?’

  ‘Worked his way up through the ranks. The militia’s been his life. And never a breath of scandal. Grushko believes in what he’s doing. Things are black and white with him.’ Voznosensky shrugged and tapped his forehead. To that extent he’s like a typical Stalinist. You know —a bit rigid and inflexible sometimes.

  ‘Of course, politically, he couldn’t be more different. Stuck his neck out when it was still dangerous to do it, especially for a militiaman. It’s a story worth hearing. A couple of years ago, Grushko was selected as the Central Board of Leningrad’s delegate to the 22nd Party Congress. He announced his resignation from the Party while making a speech from the lectern. It caused quite a stink at the time, I can tell you. After that about half of the detectives and investigators in the Central Board left the Party, including General Kornilov. These days it’s split pretty evenly down the middle between those who support Yeltsin and those who support the old Party. That’s your Grushko.’

  ‘What about at home?’

  ‘He lives quite modestly really. He’s married, with a daughter who’s the apple of his eye. Any spare money he’s ever had he spent putting his daughter through med. school. She’s now a doctor at one of the big hospitals here in Peter.’

  ‘A sociable man, would you say? I only ask because I don’t want to be a nuisance to him if I can help it. But if he’s the affable type then it won’t matter.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call Grushko sociable, no. But he’s straight with you. He likes a drink and although I’ve seen him drink a lot I’ve never yet seen him drunk. Oh yes, and Pasternak: he loves Pasternak.’

  At the Big House Grushko was not to be found. Nor were Nikolai and Sasha. In the office they shared with two other detectives I found a younger officer, working his way through Mikhail Milyukin’s Filofax, telephoning every name and number that was written there. Replacing the phone he stood up and introduced himself.

  ‘Lieutenant Andrei Petrov, sir,’ he said, shaking my hand. Better dressed than most of the men working for Grushko, Petrov was another of these blond-haired northern Russians. ‘And this —’ he nodded across the desk at a man who was playing idly with an automatic. The man stood up and extended me his hand —‘this is Lieutenant Alek Svridigailov —one of your investigators.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.’

  Svridigailov was smaller than Petrov and as wiry as a pipe-cleaner. He had the lugubrious face of an undernourished bloodhound.

  ‘Glock semi-automatic,’ he said, explaining the gun. ‘Made in Austria. Fires thirteen rounds of .45 ACP-calibre ammunition. Better than anything we’ve got. You see, there are only thirty-five parts. A real quality weapon. I’d love a gun like this. They took it off some Yakut hood. Can you believe that? You wouldn’t think one of those bastards would be intelligent enough to get himself a gun like this, would you?’

  Andrei Petrov chuckled. ‘You know what they say about those Yakuts? The only reason they don’t eat cucumbers is because they can’t get their heads in the jars.’

  Svridigailov looked at Andrei and then back at me, shaking his head as if to apologise for his colleague.

  ‘Grushko’s gone to the TV station,’ Andrei explained. ‘He’s recording Georgi Zverkov’s show. And as for Nikolai and Sasha—’ He frowned as he tried to remember where they had gone.

  I sat down at Nikolai’s desk and glanced over what was on it.

  ‘Doesn’t he keep a diary?’ I asked. It occurred to me that I might make a note of some of Nikolai’s contacts.

  Andrei nodded at the safe beside Nikolai’s desk.

  ‘I expect he’s got it locked up,’ he said.

  ‘I remember,’ said Svridigailov. ‘They went to the Pribaltskaya Hotel. To see some Georgians.’

  Opened for the 1980 Olympic Games, the Pribaltskaya Hotel stands on the western edge of Vasilyevsky Island, looking out across the Bay of Finland. Triptych-shaped, with seventeen floors and 1,200 rooms, it is one of the biggest hotels in the city and although the citizens of St Petersburg were forbidden to use it, the hotel’s swimming pool, sauna, bowling alley, gymnasium and massage parlour —not to mention the five bars, the five restaurants and the fifteen coffee shops —made it very popular with some of the more nefarious elements of local society. The methods of the Mafia required strong arms to implement them and, like most racketeers, the Georgians liked to work out and use the weights at least once a day. From years of strict regime in the zone, many of them had physiques that would have been the envy of any Olympic athlete, and in their expensive designer track-suits and gold necklaces they would have been easily distinguished from any other people who dared to use the gym at the same time. The gang leader was a swarthy-faced tough called Dzhumber Gankrelidze and he and his lieutenant, Oocho, seemed to be wearing more gold than the rest of the gang put together. These two were among those exercising in the Pribaltskaya gym with a couple of heavies watching the door when Nikolai and Sasha presented their IDs.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Dzhumber, wiping his hairy neck with a towel. ‘I think these dogs are here to bark, not bite.’

  Nikolai pushed the man obstructing his path to one side.

  ‘Who’s he? Your secretary?’

  Dzhumber Gankrelidze grinned, showing off a status-enhancing gold tooth.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I get him to take some dictation now and again.’

  Oocho laughed and continued to work on his grapefruit-sized biceps.

  ‘I bet you do,’ said Nikolai. ‘What’s his shorthand? Twenty rounds a minute?’

  ‘You’re good,’ said Gankrelidze smiling. ‘You should be in the cabaret upstairs.’

  ‘I’m fussy about who I entertain,’ said Nikolai.

  Gankrelidze kept on smiling. He was used to police harassment. Sasha dipped his head to read the label on one of the Georgians’ track-suits.

  ‘Sergio Tacchini,’ he said. ‘Very nice. Quite the lifestyle you boys have here.’

  ‘You know what they say,’ said Oocho. ‘He who sits near the pot eats the most kasha.’

  ‘I guess you’re sitting close enough at that,’ Nikolai observed. ‘All those cash-cows in the lobby. Business looks pretty good.’

  ‘Pick a girl and tell her I sent you,’ Gankrelidze said nonchalantly. ‘It’ll be my little treat. Your friend too. I like to see the militia enjoying themselves.’

  ‘That’s the thing I like about you Georgians,’ said Nikolai. ‘You’re very generous with your mothers and your sisters.’

  Gankrelidze stopped smiling and picked up a dumbbell. He began to pull it towards his big shoulder.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said evenly.

  ‘I’ve got Georgia on my mind,’ said Nikolai. ‘Specifically the late Vaja Ordzhonikidze. Let’s start with where you all were the night before last. And don’t blow me any smoke rings either. Not five copecks’-worth. You don’t have to work for Russian intelligence to decode the way Vaja took his wooden pea-jacket. Someone thought he was a pincher.‘

  Gankrelidze dropped the weight on to the mat and stood up. He was strong, but shorter than Nikolai by about a head.

  ‘You know, normally I don’t talk to strangers. But you—you’ve got a kind face. Me and the boys here spent the whole evening in the restaurant upstairs. Isn’t that so, boys?’

  There was a murmur of general agreement.

  ‘You don’t believe me, you ask your dogs on the front door. They saw us when we arrived at about eight; and when we left again around three.’

  ‘No doubt they’ve had their paws well stroked,’ sniffed Nikolai.

  Oocho laughed and shook his head. ‘Yeah, well, you hear all sorts of terrible rumours about this city’s militia.’

  The rest of the gang thought that this was very funny.

  ‘So how about this rumour that Vaja was a pincher?’ said Nikolai. ‘That it was his own side that killed him: because he was an informant for Mikhail Milyukin.’

  ‘There are people who drink their own urine,’ said Gankrelidze, ‘and people who put hot jars on their backs, because they think that it’s good for them. But that doesn’t make it true. You’re looking at the wrong cat, my friend.’

  Gankrelidze picked up his towel and wiped his face.

  ‘I tell you what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you an invitation to Vaja’s funeral. We’re giving him a real Georgian send-off. Now does that sound like we thought he was a pincher?’

  Nikolai lit a cigarette as he considered Gankrelidze’s argument for a moment.

  ‘Did Vaja like watches?’

  ‘He appreciated the value of punctuality, if that’s what you mean. What are you aiming at?’

  ‘Only this: someone baited a trap for him with an expensive watch.’ Nikolai picked up a medicine ball and began to roll it in his dinner-plate-sized hands.

  Gankrelidze tut-tutted.

  ‘Good taste. It can be a curse.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any idea who that might have been?’

  ‘You’re the local melody, you tell me. I’m just a citizen.’

  ‘Sure, you’re a citizen,’ said Nikolai. ‘And I’m the Grand Duchess Anastasia.’

  ‘And then we left,’ he said and unlocked the safe by his desk. He placed his holstered gun inside, took out his diary and locked the safe again.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked. ‘Would they really execute one of their own and then give him a Mafia funeral with all the trimmings?’

  ‘If it was good for business they’d give the Patriarch a Mafioso’s send-off,’ declared Sasha. These bastards like to think that they’re men of honour, but that’s only because they’ve seen Al Pacino in The Godfather. In reality they’ve got no more respect or honour than a hungry pig.‘

  ‘It’s true,’ said Nikolai. They watch that video over and over again. It’s like a training film for them. I wish I had ten roubles for every churki who thinks he’s Michael Corleone.‘

  The big man’s phone rang. He took the call and then asked me if I remembered the man who owned the restaurant that had been firebombed.

  ‘Chazov, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘You were hoping to jog his memory?’

  ‘Care to sit in?’

  We spent a fruitless afternoon with Chazov, who was still too scared of the Mafia to add anything to his original statement. When Nikolai explained that there would be an official investigation into the origin of his meat supplies, Chazov assured him that he had bought it in good faith from a legitimate supplier, although he was unable, or unwilling, to name him. To Nikolai’s final tactic, that he intended to find out whether or not the meat had been stolen from the state meat markets, contrary to Article 92 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, an offence punishable by up to four years’ deprivation of freedom or corrective labour, Chazov answered with a shrug only. And after he had gone Nikolai banged the table in the interview room with the flat of his hand.

  ‘He knows I’ve got nothing,’ he growled. ‘If I had the first shred of evidence that the meat was stolen I’d have had it impounded and him charged. But how can I ask for a protocol purely on the basis that the very quantity of it makes the supply suspicious? He knows that.’

  He hit the table again and I didn’t fancy the idea of him ever hitting me.

  ‘But I’m not finished with him. I’ll keep having him back here until he’s so sick of the sight of me, he’ll be begging to tell me who’s putting the squeeze on him.’

  I had no doubt that he meant every word of it.

  8

  Peter the Great built St Petersburg as Russia’s window on the West. That was before television. Television is today’s window on the West. Not that there’s much worth watching, unless you like Brazilian soap operas. Which is why so many people beg, steal and borrow to own a video-cassette recorder.

  St Petersburg Television, broadcasting to over 70 million people, from the Baltic to as far away as Siberia, remained the exception to the state’s continuing broadcasting monopoly. A mouthpiece for opinions quite different from those expressed on national television, it had long been a hotbed of the new democracy. The studios of St Petersburg Television were located on Petrogradsky Island, near the top of Kirov Prospekt and easy enough for Grushko to find since they were distinguished by an enormous transmitter-mast that soared over the Neva like a smaller version of the Eiffel Tower.

  A middle-aged balding man, wearing his tie askew and his sleeves rolled up, greeted Grushko in his office.

  ‘Yuri Petrakov,’ he said, introducing himself. ‘I was Mikhail’s producer on Sixty Minutes.’

  ‘We’re speaking to everyone who worked with him,’ explained Grushko, sitting down, ‘in the hope that we might find out if he was working on anything that might have got him killed.’

  Petrakov lit a cigarette and nodded attentively.

  ‘I’ve already telephoned Mikhail Mikhailovich’s editors at Krokodil and Ogonyok in Moscow. But since I was coming here anyway I thought I’d speak to you in person, Mr Petrakov. Did you know him very well?’

  ‘Yes, I did. He was one of our finest journalists, and I don’t just mean here on Petersburg TV. He was one of the country’s finest journalists. The Golden Calf Literary Award, the Ilf and Petrov Prize for Satirical Journalism, Journalist of the Year two years running… There has never been anyone quite like Mikhail. Not in Russia, anyway. It was no surprise to me to learn that he had been lured away by national television.’

  ‘He was leaving the station?’

  ‘Yes. He told me himself exactly a week before he was murdered. Well, of course he was only ever a freelance. As you know he had other commitments besides us. But they wanted him and were prepared to pay handsomely to get him. More than we could afford, anyway. We are not as well off as they are, colonel. In fact we’re losing money. Our major source of funds remains the state budget. I dare say we’ll end up as part of the great Russian broadcasting company. They already own a fifth of our equipment and technology.’ He shook his head. ‘But here, you don’t want to hear about our problems, do you?’

  ‘Was there any resentment at Mikhail leaving?’

  ‘Some. But not from anyone who knew him. Mikhail wasn’t a wealthy man at all. Some people imagined that because he was famous he was rich. It simply wasn’t true. Mikhail wasn’t very good with money. He was never paid well for what he did. So I didn’t blame him at all for wanting to leave. And of course he wasn’t the first person to be enticed away. Bella Kurkova went last year. I don’t suppose they’ll waste any time in looking for someone to replace him.’

 

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