He used an automatic, I'd say. Something heavy: 10 millimetre, or .45 calibre. And with a high-magazine capacity too, judging from the amount of brass he left behind him. It looks as if he was enjoying himself when he pulled the trigger.'
Grushko bent forward to inspect them. At the same time he picked up a small flat stone that he used to stub out his cigarette before carefully putting it away in his pocket so as not to litter the scene of the crime. Then he placed the stone back where he had found it.
That's quite a lot of noise,' he said and looked speculatively about him as if searching for a sign that someone might have heard the shots above the sound of the sea lapping on the shingle beach and the wind coursing through the fir trees.
Maybe,' she said. But I don't think he was in much of a hurry. He was smoking when he pulled the trigger. There was a cigarette end among all those empty cartridges.'
Shelaeva led us a short distance from the car, to where a trestle-table had been erected. The various pieces of evidence that were collected on it looked like a secondhand stall on the Arbat. She selected something in a plastic bag.
And it looks like he prefers American,' she said.
Don't we all,' murmured Nikolai, regarding his own choice of smoke with distaste.
We found this on the back seat.'
Shelaeva handed Grushko the plastic bag containing the empty packet of Winston. He was about to return it to the table when Nikolai checked him.
Let's see that,' he said, taking the evidence bag from Grushko. It's been opened upside down.'
He's a careless bastard,' said Grushko. What does that prove?'
Well, it could mean that he's an ex-soldier.'
And how do you work that out?'
It's an old army trick I learned in Afghanistan,' he said, and glanced uncomfortably at Colonel Shelaeva.
So, what's the trick?' Grushko sighed impatiently.
If you open the cigarette packet the wrong way up, your dirty fingers don't touch the filters you know, the end you put in your mouth.'
You know, for the last twenty years, I've been wondering what those things were,' said Grushko.
I never knew soldiers were so fastidious,' said Shelaeva with raised eyebrows.
You do tend to be when there's no lavatory paper about,' said Nikolai, colouring.
Ah, I see.' Grushko chuckled quietly. Well, no need to be so bashful, Nikolai. We all know what that's like.'
This was undoubtedly true. For several weeks now there had been a deficit of lavatory paper in all the state shops. A day or so before leaving Moscow I had seen someone on the Rozhdestvenska Street market offering toilet rolls at fifty roubles each. Fifty roubles. That was my mother's weekly pension.
Grushko picked up a passport from the table. He turned the pages with the lugubrious air of an immigration official.
Belongs to the man in the boot,' said Shelaeva.
Grushko nodded absently and then turned his attention to where one of her men was photographing an area of ground not far behind the Volga.
What's happening over there?'
Some tyre tracks,' she said. There's not much tread on them, as you might expect, so don't even hope that we can make some kind of identification. And a couple of sets of footprints going between the two cars. My guess is that whoever shot Milyukin was already sitting in the back seat of the Volga when it arrived. He shot Milyukin and then he and the driver got out, shot the second man, and then walked back to the other car.'
Grushko wandered over to look at the car tracks.
Took their time leaving as well,' he said. Nothing panicky about these tyre tracks. These boys knew what they were about.'
Sasha had the rest of what was known from the local militia.
A local angler found the bodies at around seven o'clock this morning'
Grushko grimaced. I don't know that I would want to fish in these waters,' he said.
A keen angler myself, I said that I had been thinking that it looked like a pretty good spot. Grushko shook his head vigorously and pointed south at the horizon.
You can't see it from here, but on the other side of the bay, that's Sosnovy Bor.'
The nuclear reactor?'
He nodded. You wouldn't catch me fishing in these waters,' he said ominously. No telling what's been dumped here over the years.' He looked at Sasha, who continued with his information.
According to the local boys, the area is very popular with hunters,' he said. If anyone did hear those shots, I doubt they'd have thought it at all unusual.'
Yes,' agreed Grushko. There's elk round here, isn't there?
Sasha shook his head and shrugged.
They've checked with the GAI, and apparently the car is registered to ' Sasha consulted his notebook and turned the page to Vaja Ordzhonikidze.'
Ordzhonikidze?' said Nikolai. That name hits a thumb. Isn't he one of the Georgian team leaders?'
Grushko glanced at the passport he was still holding.
Not any more he isn't.' Catching my eye, Grushko added: A year or so ago, we tried to sew a number on his jacket for racketeering. Only he had sharp scissors. And a lawyer by the name of Luzhin. That's a name you'll get to know. He only works for Mafia clients.'
What do you think, sir?' asked Nikolai. The Georgian, giving Milyukin a story?'
Well, that's what it looks like,' Grushko admitted. Sasha, have the relatives been informed yet?'
No, sir.'
Then that's our next job.' He looked at me again and shrugged. You'd better come along. If you're going to find out about the Mafia, you need to study the science of bad news.'
4
We returned to St Petersburg and left Nikolai and Sasha to go in search of the Georgian's nearest friend or relative. Grushko and I drove back to the Griboyedev Canal where, just a few hours earlier, he had pointed out the scene of Raskolnikov's crime. He made no mention of this coincidence although from the expression on his face I had half an idea that he was thinking about it.
The Milyukins' flat was in a dilapidated, pre-Revolutionary building on the opposite side of the canal from the mosaic front of a church that stood a little further north. Grushko parked the Zhiguli, thoughtfully removed the windscreen-wiper blades, which he tossed on to the floor of the car, and then led the way into the backyard. By a cheap, unpainted wooden door was a push-button combination lock; the sequence of numbers was not hard to work out thanks to the forgetful, or possibly mischievous, soul who had scratched it on to the adjacent brickwork.
It's no wonder that there are so many burglaries,' Grushko observed. He pressed the keys and, as he opened the door and mounted the narrow staircase, something scuttled away into the darkness. The steps were quite worn down as in some ancient Egyptian mausoleum and the dirty brown walls were daubed with appropriately primitive sentiments.
We climbed to the fourth floor, collected our breath with a quick cigarette and then rang the antiquated bell- pull. Somewhere the bell tolled as if from a distant church tower and for a moment I had a vision of myself as that hungry, Napoleon-fixated student, preparing to commit one murder in the delusion that a hundred others might be saved. The hunger was easy enough to imagine: since the previous night I hadn't eaten much more than a piece of bread and a slice of cold meat. From the speed of my heartbeat you might have thought I was actually planning to go through with it.
After a minute or so we heard a key turn in the lock and the door opened as far as the sturdy chain would allow. The woman appearing in the gap was in her thirties, fair-haired and good-looking in a clever sort of way and wearing an expression that was worth a whole fistful of worry beads. Grushko flipped open his identity card.
Mrs Milyukin?'
It's about my husband, isn't it?'
Can we come in please?'
