People often ask me to explain the difference between the two departments Criminal Services and Central Investigating and to tell them which of them is more important, the detective or the investigator. Sometimes I think that these things seem complicated only because of how these two jobs are perceived in the West. I can't say how officers work outside the New Commonwealth but here, an investigator is in charge of how an indictment is prepared for the Prosecutor's Office. It's surely a very old argument which of them, the detective or the investigator, is more important, but it's a kind of typically Russian argument in that there is no right or wrong answer. It's not something that excites me very much, but then everyone is different. You scratch where it itches, as the saying goes. Detectives say that an investigator is never properly a policeman until he has tasted a criminal's fist. Generally it's best to say that within the whole forensic process the relationship between investigator and detective is one of cooperation between peers; and since both hold a military-style rank according to experience, things are usually fairly clear-cut. I am a lieutenant-colonel; and I have a small scar on the underside of my chin to prove that I have indeed had a taste of a criminal's fist.
Grushko's department, with which I was to liaise exclusively, investigating organised crime, was a relatively recent creation and did not yet operate at a federal level, although the existence of a Soviet Mafia had been well- known since 1987.
When we talk about the Mafia this is just an easy way of describing gangs of organised criminals. So far as Grushko knew there was no connection between them and the Mafia that existed in Italy and America. And whereas those gangs tended to be run along family lines, in Russia the gangs were often racially constituted Ukranian, Byelorussian, Georgian, Chechen, Ukrainian, Armenian, Tazhak, Azerbaijani, Kazakhpeople from what used to be the southern republics of the Soviet Union.
Like most inhabitants of northern Russia Grushko called them churki people from the swamps even though his name and downward-slanting eyes seemed to indicate that there was something of the Cossack in him. He could certainly drink more than any man I ever met. But to come back to our original flock of sheep, the churki were very different from their Italian-American counterparts. The suits they wore were not particularly well cut and they drove Zhigulis instead of large Cadillacs, although a few did own Mercedes. They tended to be younger men, often physically well endowed from years in state-subsidised sportor a labour camp. But while the Russian Mafia may not have lived as well as its Western stereotypes, it was just as ruthless.
If I had needed reminding of this I found myself quickly prompted by Grushko handing me a file of photographs almost the minute I set foot in his office.
Take a look at this little album,' he said. This is what happens to a cash-cow who holds out on her pimp.'
I am not a squeamish man. Even so the day needed to be a little older before I was ready to dwell on the various injuries that had been inflicted on the body of a seventeen-year-old prostitute as a precursor to her being drowned in a bucket of water. Perhaps if I had slept better on the overnight train from Moscow I could have put up more of a show of interest. As it was I glanced through the photographs, nodded quietly and then returned them without a word.
Just one of the cases we're dealing with at the moment,' Grushko said with a shrug. We know who did it: an Armenian they call the Barrel. He's an old customer.' He tapped the window-pane with his fingernail. One of the frozen-minded. Oh, you'll get to meet them all, my friend.'
I took out my cigarettes and came across the parquet floor to the dirty window with its cheap yellow curtains to offer him one. He took one into his thin lips and lit us both with a handsome gold lighter.
That's rather elegant,' I said, wondering how a policeman on Grushko's salary could afford such a luxurious- looking object.
From the Swiss police. We get all sorts of delegations coming to see us from Interpol nowadays. Tourists mostly, like all the rest of them. They come to spend their dollars and make sympathetic noises and then they go home again. Funny thing, though, wherever they're from, they always buy me a gold lighter as a thank you. Must be something about cops the world over. Mind you, it's just as well. I'm always losing them.'
The phone rang and while he was answering it I looked out of the window at the street below. Housewives were heading to the shops, crowding on to an already overcrowded trolley bus. They were none too gentle about it and for a moment I entertained myself with the thought of my ex-wife doing the very same thing somewhere in east Moscow.
I turned away and looked back at the room: Grushko's desk with its self-important array of telephones; on the wall, the huge map of St Petersburg with all twenty-two districts neatly marked out like cuts of meat; in the corner the huge safe containing Grushko's files and papers and, standing on top of this, a cheap plaster statue of Lenin, like the one I had left in my own office in Moscow; the line of chairs neatly ranged against the far wall; the fitted cupboard with its own wash-hand basin and coat hook; and the colour television set on which a girl was performing gymnastic exercises. I didn't know it then, but the story had already started.
Grushko replaced the receiver and, as he took a superhuman drag of his cigarette, closed one eye while fixing me with the other.
I think this will interest you,' he said. Come on.'
I followed him into the corridor that was busy with other detectives and investigators. He barked at two of them to come with us. On the way down to the car he introduced them as Major Nikolai Vladimirovich Vladimirov and Captain Alexander Skorobogatych and added that they were the best men he had.
Nikolai Vladimirov was a big, heavy man, with a pugnacious little boy's face, his green eyes set rather too closely together and his mouth almost permanently puckered, as if he was about to kiss someone. He wore a black sweatshirt with a Bugs Bunny motif. Alexander Sasha' Skorobogatych was a fair-haired, Nordic-looking man, his features long and lugubrious and his voice a whispering, sandy sort of rasp, as if he had spent the previous afternoon shouting at a football match. They made an odd trio, I thought. Nikolai and Sasha were each taller than Grushko by a head, and yet they were as careful of him as if he had been their own father; and although Grushko wasn't quite old enough I guessed him to be in his mid-forties it wasn't so very far from the truth either: Grushko was an old-fashioned sort of policeman and very paternal with all his men.
The car headed south along the banks of the Fontanka Canal. It seemed very beautiful and, but for the speed of Grushko's erratic driving, I might have been able to enjoy it. Almost to take my mind off the journey, I found myself quizzing Grushko about the Mob and how it got started in Russia.
You know, I've often thought that we simply swapped the Party for the Mob,' I said.
Grushko shook his head firmly.
Whatever gave you that idea?' he said.
I was just starting to explain when he cut me short.
No, no,' he said. The Mob is the product of our own Soviet greenhouse effect.' The car swerved one way and then the other along the road as he lifted one hand from the steering wheel to light another cigarette.
It came out of a black market which was allowed to flourish under Brezhnev. A black market was only ever a back-hander away from active encouragement, as the main operators were allowed to buy themselves legal immunity. So then, in order that they could offer larger bribes to more important Party officials. Well, you're an intelligent sort of fellow, for a Muscovite: work it out.'
They got themselves organised,' I said.
Then, after Brezhnev, organised crime received a bonus in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev.'
I don't see how we can hold him to account for the Mob as well as everything else.'
Grushko chuckled. Oh, I'm not saying that Gorbachev was some kind of Godfather. But it was his endorsement of the cooperative movement that gave the green light to people to start their own businesses. What he failed to realise was that operating a private business obliged all these would-be capitalists to break the law in a number of small ways. Well, that left them vulnerable to the Mob and its demands for protection. So you see, it was the Party which created the atmosphere that helped the Mob to grow.'
The Soviet greenhouse effect you were talking about.'
Precisely. But like everything built in the Soviet Union, the Party was poorly constructed and, as it became weaker, the Mob spread its roots and grew strong. Soon it was so tall that it pushed through those gaps in the roof that Gorbachev had made and, rather than perishing in the cold light of glasnost, the Mob thrived. By the time the Party collapsed, the Mob no longer needed it to survive.'
And now that the Party is outlawed?'
Grushko shrugged.
