‘Marsham Street,’ Bren said. ‘Home Office. I told you, didn’t I?’
‘And there’s something else,’ Dot added. ‘We’ve just had a call from The Times. Apparently they received a letter this morning from Mikhail Moszynski, talking about threats to his life. They’re couriering it over.’
It arrived a short time later, a typed letter addressed to the editor of The Times, with Moszynski’s letterhead and signature. Dear Sir, Recent correspondence in The Times has focused on the economic performance of the Russian government. We must not lose sight, however, of big issues of human rights and threats to freedom of speech in Russia. Things have not changed since the murder of Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 by elements of Russian secret police for her criticism of the authorities. I too have been warned of threats to myself and my family by official elements who resent the success of expatriate Russian businessmen. Let me give good advice to your readers-do not be complacent about the situation in that great country. Mikhail Moszynski
The letter was dated Friday 28 May, the day after Nancy Haynes was killed.
‘The envelope is also postmarked Friday,’ Bren said. ‘There’s your motive, Kathy. Like I said, this is one for the security services, yeah?’
‘But where does that leave Nancy Haynes?’
NINE
‘But only a small oligarch,’ the man from MI5 said.
‘A minigarch?’ the Foreign Office representative suggested, with a wry smile.
They had all been assembled when Kathy arrived, the atmosphere relaxed and convivial, as if they’d just enjoyed a pleasant lunch together to which she had not been invited. The only ones to acknowledge her arrival were the second MI5 officer, a woman, who’d given Kathy a brief smile, and Sharpe, who looked stiff and uncomfortable in his uniform and who pointed to the empty seat by his side. Out of the corner of her eye Kathy saw that the MI5 woman was setting up a screen.
She sat down and Sharpe introduced her to a superintendent from Counter Terrorism Command, then leaned to her and murmured, ‘Any developments?’
‘Only this, sir. Just came in.’ She handed him a copy of the letter to The Times, which he scanned with a frown.
‘Well now,’ an avuncular man at the centre of the table began, and the others fell silent. He was the only one with a name on a wooden holder in front of him, Sir Philip Stafford, Home Office, and Kathy wondered if he carried it around with him, or if he was permanently attached to that chair. ‘We should begin with a summary of the police investigation. If you please, Commander?’
Sharpe cleared his throat. ‘Our Senior Investigating Officer, DCI Brock, is unavoidably detained by an urgent line of inquiry, and I have invited his assistant SIO, DI Kolla, to stand in for him. I’ll ask her to brief you.’
Sir Philip smiled pleasantly at Kathy. ‘Very good. Inspector Kolla?’
Kathy wasn’t sure whether she should get to her feet. She wished she had some kind of audiovisual prop like the MI5 people.
‘Last Thursday afternoon, as you’ll know, a seventy-year-old American tourist called Nancy Haynes was murdered on Sloane Street
…’
It was the wrong opening, she sensed. They weren’t interested in Nancy Haynes. After a few moments the two MI5 people put their heads together to discuss something in a whisper, while the man from the Foreign Office consulted his file of papers. Kathy hurried on to the Moszynski murder and had their attention again, but only for a short while, until they realised that the police had made little progress. They perked up again when she told them about Moszynski’s letter to The Times and passed photocopies around.
The CTC superintendent said, ‘Is it authentic?’
‘We’re checking that now. The Times intend to publish it tomorrow.’
‘Other questions?’ Sir Philip asked.
No one spoke for a moment, then the MI5 man, presumably the senior of the two, raised a finger.
‘Sean?’
He spoke with a strong Ulster accent, his voice quiet but cold. ‘You seem to assume that the two killings are connected. Is that right?’
Kathy had the feeling she was being invited down a dangerous path. ‘Two victims within a few days, close neighbours.’
‘And how would you interpret that?’
‘Our minds are open at the moment, but we are investigating Nancy Haynes’ background…’
‘You think that’s relevant?’
‘Of course.’
Sean pursed his lips, then gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘Surely there’s a much simpler explanation.’
‘I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ Sir Philip interrupted. ‘Let’s complete the briefings before we debate theories. Do you want to tell us about Mr Moszynski, Sean?’
‘Sure.’ He nodded to his partner, who tapped on her laptop. ‘Mikhail Artur Moszynski.’ The screen came to life with a picture of the Russian, standing by the open door of a helicopter, dressed only in shorts and brandishing a cigar, a glass of champagne and a broad grin. The setting, on a dazzling white beach with palm trees in the background, was deliberate, Kathy guessed, shifting their attention away from parochial Cunningham Place to a more exotic and international context. At the same time she was trying desperately to work out what Sean’s simpler explanation might be.
‘Is that your chopper, Sean?’ the Foreign Office wit asked.
‘I wish. It’s an AgustaWestland AW109 Power, eight-seater twin-engine, his latest toy this year, set him back six point three million US. Moszynski was a wealthy man, but still, as we were saying earlier, not in the same league as the big boys, like Abramovich or Berezovsky, though his story isn’t dissimilar. He was born in St Petersburg-Leningrad then-in 1957. His family weren’t wealthy, but his father, Gennady Moszynski, had influence.’
The MI5 woman was smoothly changing the image to follow Sean’s delivery. A series of old photographs of Gennady and his family was followed by street scenes and aerial photographs of Leningrad, as if the two of them had been rehearsing this all morning. Everyone was paying attention, including the FO man, who had now closed his file.
‘Before the war Gennady rose through the ranks of the party in Leningrad and then moved to Moscow, where he became secretary to the Deputy People’s Commissar of Culture. When the war started he returned to Leningrad, where he came to prominence during the siege of the city. In 1945 he was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union and was a member of Leningrad’s Executive Committee for the next thirty years. This paved the way for his son Mikhail, who studied metallurgy at Leningrad Technical University in the seventies before going to work in a turbine factory. Mikhail also joined Komsomol, the Young Communist League, and became secretary of one of the city districts. With perestroika, he and a small group of insiders in the party began developing commercial interests, import-export through the port of St Petersburg. These activities expanded when Yeltsin took power in 1991, leading to the first wave of privatisations in ninety-three to ninety-four. Mikhail and his mates set up stalls all over the city buying up the shares that the government had issued to workers in their own companies for a fraction of what they were worth, paying for them in vodka and cigarettes. By the late nineties Mikhail had acquired a major stake in the shipping company Rosskomflot, and was diversifying into other industries. Then when Putin became president in 2000 and started making noises about billionaires stealing the nation’s wealth, Mikhail sold a number of his assets back to the government and began moving his money offshore. He also divorced his first wife, and bought the house in Chelsea, making it his permanent home in 2002.’
Sean ran through some of his other properties and assets, and then outlined the Moszynski family members, including the celebrity second wife, Shaka Gibbons, whom Mikhail had wed two years previously. He came to a picture of Mikhail’s son-in-law.
‘Vadim Kuzmin, forty-five, also a native of St Petersburg, and a former party lieutenant of Mikhail and
