greasy linoleum. Grushko regarded it with friendly disapproval.
Maybe you're planning to sell them some fire insurance yourself.'
Nikolai grinned sheepishly and extinguished the small flame with the toe of his trainer.
Outside the Pushkin on Fontanka, Sasha was speaking on Grushko's car phone. Seeing Grushko he waved the handset at him and then stepped away from the open passenger door.
It's General Kornilov,' he whispered.
Grushko took the call and gradually his wide, peasant face grew more sombre. By the time he had finished listening to what the general had to say he was frowning so hard his brow looked as if it had been clawed by a bear. Sighing deeply he handed Sasha the phone and walked to the railing beside the canal, where he flicked his cigarette butt into the still brown water. I looked at Sasha who shrugged and shook his head. When Nikolai finally emerged from the restaurant I wandered over to where Grushko was standing.
You see that building?'
I followed his eyes across the canal to an old grey palace.
That's the House of Friendship and Peace. Well, there's precious little of that about, I can tell you. Not these days. He lit another cigarette and waved Nikolai and Sasha towards him.
I take it you've all heard of Mikhail Milyukin?'
The three of us said we had. There wasn't anyone who watched television or was a fan of the two most popular magazines of the day, Ogonyok and Krokodil, who hadn't heard of Mikhail Milyukin. As the old Soviet Union's first investigative reporter he was virtually a national institution.
He's been murdered,' said Grushko. And it's on our sheet.'
We usually leave the murder inquiries to the State Prosecutor's Office, don't we, sir?' said Nikolai.
Kornilov says that they want us to handle it.' Grushko shook his head vaguely. Apparently there are certain circumstances which make them think that it might be our flock of sheep.'
What sort of circumstances?' said Nikolai.
Grushko propelled himself off the railing and walked purposefully towards his car.
That's what we're going to find out.'
3
Zelenogorski lies about forty kilometres north-west of St Petersburg along the M10 which, some 150 kilometres further on, reaches all the way to the Finnish border. It wasn't much to look at. By the time I had realised that it was a town we had passed it by and were heading out into the country again, along a smaller A road that lies along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Several minutes later we turned off this road and drove for a short way until we came upon a militia van parked at the edge of the forest. Grushko drew up beside the van and asked one of the militiamen waiting there for directions to the scene of the crime and the rest of their colleagues. Then we were off again. Uncomfortably fast, Grushko's small, strong hands a blur of opposite lock and gear changing, as if he had been a driver in some kind of car-rally. But the drive along the forest track seemed to cheer him up a little and when finally he caught sight of the other militia vans and brought the car to a slithering halt, he grinned sadistically at me. I wondered if he still thought I was there to spy on his department.
We got out and walked down a gentle slope towards a small clearing in the trees. The vans were parked around a black Volga that was the subject of attention for ten or fifteen experts and militiamen. A stout, red-haired woman wearing the uniform of a colonel of militia and who seemed to be in charge walked towards us. Grushko quickened his pace to greet her.
It's Iron Lenya,' Nikolai murmured. And I'm not wearing a tie.'
You don't even have a uniform, if I remember right,' said Sasha. You sold it to a Japanese tourist for 200 roubles.' Sasha chuckled and found a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He tossed it expertly into his mouth and lit a match with the flick of a thumbnail.
The head of the Department of Scientific Experts, Colonel Lenya Shelaeva, greeted Grushko coolly and ignored the rest of us altogether. In the weeks that followed I got to know her well enough to respect and even to like her. But she was particular about smartness among her own staff and while she and Grushko exchanged a few preliminary remarks, Sasha told me that Lenya had once sent a man home because he wasn't wearing a tie. Having had little sleep on the overnight train I wasn't exactly looking my best and I was glad that Grushko didn't bother to introduce us.
We followed her to the passenger door of the Volga. Inside the car a man lay slumped forward in his seat, his forehead resting on the blood-encrusted dashboard. There wasn't much that would have detained the average teleologist, assuming that there were still people who placed much credence in this kind of Marxist working method. The copeck-sized hole in the back of his head indicated the way in which he had met his end clearly enough. He stared at us with grey-green eyes out of a waxy, pale and overweight face. He was dead as mutton but the more I looked at him, the more I had the impression that with a decent-sized sticking-plaster to cover the bullet's exit wound, the man would have sat up and offered me a cigarette from the packet of Risk he still held in his podgy hand.
Grushko crossed himself and then sighed.
Mikhail Mikhailovich,' he said sadly. That's too bad.'
Did you know him?' Shelaeva sounded surprised.
Grushko nodded and for a moment I thought he was going to cry. His upper lip inflated as he struggled to bring himself under control. He cleared his throat several times before answering her.
Ever since the Openness,' he said, when Mikhail first started writing about the Mafia. That was when the government still denied that such a thing as a Soviet Mafia even existed. You could say that my own department owes its very existence to Mikhail Milyukin.' He sniffed loudly and then lit a cigarette with clumsy fingers. He helped us with a number of cases. Got us started with a few of them, too.'
Shelaeva turned her own mouth into a tight, thin slit of disapproval.
I always thought him a bit of a troublemaker myself,' she said crisply. Well, then, here you are: he's got you started on another case, hasn't he? All you have to do is find out who sat behind him in this car, sometime between twelve and two this morning, and blew his brains out. But let's not forget our small friend in the boot, shall we?'
She moved round to the back of the car, brushing past me as she came. Her tone had been so harsh and unsympathetic that I wasn't at all surprised to discover that she was wearing the same scent as my ex-wife. Shelaeva elbowed the militia photographer out of the way and presented the contents of the car boot with an indifferent wave of her rubber-gloved hand.
By contrast with the man in the passenger seat, the occupant of the Volga's boot could not have looked more dead. Bound hand and foot, and doubled up like the occupant of some ancient burial pit, it was difficult to say much about him save that he had been shot several times through a length of sticking plaster that covered his mouth.
Grushko sucked his cigarette as if reminding himself that he still had a mouth, tipped his head to one side the better to see the dead man's face and then uttered what sounded like a grunt of affirmation. But it was Nikolai who offered the explanation.
Looks like Mafia morse code, sir,' he said.
That is what it looks like,' agreed Grushko. Maintain radio silence.'
Sasha detached himself from our group and went over to speak to one of the militiamen. Having no particular taste for cadavers myself I was half inclined to join him, but then I was supposed to be gathering in these same small nuggets of Grushko's esoteric knowledge, so stayed put.
Well,' said Shelaeva, I guess it's details like that which made the State Prosecutor think this might be your case, Yevgeni Ivanovich.'
Grushko gave her a quizzical glance, no doubt wondering, as I was, if she had meant to be sarcastic or merely pedantic. I decided it was the latter.
She took up the position of an imaginary gunman, her arms extended in front of her as if she had been addressing a golf ball. It wasn't a bad stance. And she had the build to be a hard-hitter.
Your gunman stood here when he fired his shots,' she said. I guess only his mother could have missed him.'
She dropped down on to her haunches and pointed out several cartridges that were lying on the ground and which were indicated by small paper flags.
