talk. Having Irene wasn’t enough. So Dubai gave orders that you were to be silenced in prison.’
Oleg nodded slowly.
‘Tell me about Dubai,’ Harry said.
‘I’ve never met him. But I think I’ve been to his house once.’
‘And where’s that?’
‘I don’t know. Gusto and I were picked up by his lieutenants and driven to a house, but I was blindfolded.’
‘You know it was Dubai’s house, do you?’
‘That’s what Gusto told me. And it smelt occupied. Sounded like a house with furniture, carpets and curtains if you-’
‘I do. Go on.’
‘We were led into a cellar and that was when the blindfold was taken off. A dead man lay on the floor. They said that was what they did to people who tried to trick them. Have a good look, they said. Then we had to tell them what had happened at Alnabru. Why the door hadn’t been locked when the police arrived. And why Tutu had disappeared.’
‘Alnabru?’
‘I’m coming to that.’
‘OK. This man, how had he been killed?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did he have stab wounds to the face? Or was he shot?’
‘Well, I didn’t know what he’d died of until Peter stepped on his stomach. Then water ran out of the corners of his mouth.’
Harry moistened his lips. ‘Do you know who the dead man was?’
‘Yes. An undercover cop who used to hang around where we were. We called him Beret Man because of the cap he wore.’
‘Mm.’
‘Harry?’
‘Yes?’
Oleg’s feet were drumming wildly on the concrete. ‘I don’t know much about Dubai. Not even Gusto would talk about him. But I do know that if you try to catch him you’ll die.’
PART THREE
26
The rat scrabbled around the floor impatiently. The human heart was beating, but it was getting fainter and fainter. She stopped by the shoe again. Bit into the leather. Soft but thick, solid leather. She ran over the body again. The clothes smelt of more than shoes, they smelt of sweat, food and blood. He — because she could smell it was a he — was lying in the same position, he hadn’t stirred, he was still blocking the entrance. She scratched at the man’s stomach. Knew it was the shortest route. Faint heartbeat. It wouldn’t be long now before she could begin.
It’s not that you have to stop living, Dad. But that you have to die to put an end to the shit. There should be a better way, don’t you think? A pain-free exodus into the light instead of this damned cold darkness that seems to close in on you. Someone should definitely have put a pinch of opiate into the Makarov bullets, should have done what I did for Rufus, the mangy dog, should have bought me a single ticket to Euphoria, bon voyage for Christ’s sake! But everything that’s good in this shit world is either on prescription, sold out or so expensive you have to flog your soul to taste it. Life is a restaurant you can’t afford. Death the bill for the food you didn’t even have the chance to eat. So you order the most expensive thing on the menu, you’re in for it anyway, right, and you might get a mouthful.
OK, I’ll stop whingeing, Dad, so don’t go now, you haven’t heard the rest. The rest is good. Where were we? Yes, just a couple of days after the burglary in Alnabru Peter and Andrey came for Oleg and me. They tied a scarf round Oleg’s eyes and drove us to the old boy’s house and took us down to the cellar. I had never been there before. We were led into a long, narrow, low corridor where we had to bow our heads. Our shoulders scraped against the sides. I gradually twigged that it wasn’t a cellar but a subterranean tunnel. An escape passage perhaps. Which hadn’t helped Beret Man. He looked like a drowned rat. Well, he was a drowned rat.
Then they took Oleg back to the car while I was summoned to the old boy. He sat in a chair opposite me, with no table in between.
‘Were you two there?’ he asked.
I looked him straight in the eye. ‘If you’re asking whether we were in Alnabru the answer’s no.’
He studied me in silence.
‘You’re like me,’ he said at length. ‘It’s impossible to see when you’re lying.’
I wouldn’t swear to it, but I thought I detected a smile.
‘Well, Gusto, did you understand what that was, downstairs?’
‘It was the undercover cop. Beret Man.’
‘Correct. And why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have a guess.’
I imagine the guy must have been a crap teacher in a former life. But, whatever, I answered: ‘He’d nicked something.’
The old boy shook his head. ‘He found out I lived here. He knew he had no basis for a search warrant. After the arrest of Los Lobos and the recent seizure of Alnabru he saw the writing on the wall, he would never get a search warrant, however good his case was…’ The old boy grinned. ‘We’d given him a warning we thought would stop him.’
‘Oh?’
‘Cops like him rely on their false identity. They think it’s impossible to discover who they are. Who their family is. But you can find everything in police archives, provided you have the right passwords. Which you do if, for example, you hold a trusted position in Orgkrim. And how did we warn him?’
I answered without a second’s thought. ‘Bumped off his kids?’
The old boy’s face darkened. ‘We’re not monsters, Oleg.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Besides, he didn’t have any children.’ Chug-chug laugh. ‘But he had a sister. Or perhaps it was just a foster- sister.’
I nodded. It was impossible to see if he was lying.
‘We said she would be raped then put out of her misery. But I misjudged him. Instead of thinking he had other relatives to keep an eye on, he went on the attack. A very lonely, but desperate attack. He managed to break in here last night. We were not prepared for that. He probably loved this sister a lot. He was armed. I went down to the cellar, and he followed. And then he died.’ He tilted his head. ‘Of what?’
‘Water was coming out of his mouth. Drowning?’
‘Correct. But drowned where?’
‘Was he brought here from a lake or something?’
‘No. He broke in, and he drowned. So?’
‘Then I don’t know-’
‘Think!’ The word cracked like a whiplash. ‘If you want to survive you have to be able to think, draw conclusions from what you can see. That’s real life.’
‘Fine, fine.’ I tried to think. ‘The cellar’s not a cellar but a tunnel.’
The old boy crossed his arms. ‘And?’
‘It’s longer than this property. It could of course come out in a field.’
