An hour later Dimitri was back at the house on the Woodstock Road in Arkady’s office.
‘She’s police,’ he said. Arkady nodded. That made sense. Of course, and presumably one acting very much of her own volition. He was no expert on British police methods, but he was sure they did not include what had happened to him and Dimitri.
‘How come Joad didn’t know her, Dima?’ Aside from the obvious reason of wanting to rip me off, he thought.
‘She’s Metropolitan Police, Arkasha.’ Dimitri only ever used the diminutive form of Arkady’s name when they were alone. It would have been disrespectful to do otherwise. He didn’t want to do anything that might anger Belanov. ‘She’s investigating this Fuller character for murder. We would be his alibi.’
Arkady smiled bleakly. ‘Alibi, us! He would have to be so desperate.’
Dimitri shrugged. Who cared. He doubted Fuller would have given Hanlon their details. She must have worked it out herself. ‘Joad gave us her address, in London.’
Arkady sipped his vodka. It was a cheap, rot-gut brand from Moscow. He preferred it to the smooth, effeminate stuff he sold in the bar. It reminded him of who he was and where he had come from. He was not one of these Russian criminals who wanted to reinvent themselves as a businessman. That put him in a minority but he didn’t care. He had old-style Vor v zakone thinking in that respect. He was happy to remain outside the law. He didn’t want a house in Rublyovka or a dacha in Kievskoye.
‘Well, you’d better pay her visit then.’
Dimitri nodded. Arkady’s word was law for him. There is a word in Russian, opushenny, meaning low or debased for life. Its usual use is in the context of male rape. Arkady had saved Dimitri from this in Moscow’s Butyrka prison, where Dimitri was on remand for a stabbing and Arkady doing two years for drug offences.
It was Dimitri’s first time in prison and it was hell. He was one of forty prisoners in a twenty-four-bunk cell. Dimitri was bottom of the pecking order and had to sleep next to the parasha, the communal toilet, the dirtiest, smelliest place in the cell.
Dimitri quickly fell foul of the cell leader, the Starshi, the Oldest. He was from North Ossetia. This technically made him a Russian but for Dimitri he wasn’t. He was rossianen, Russian in name only. Dimitri was russky, a proper Russian. Full of the arrogance of youth, Dimitri insulted the Starshi’s homeland. Retribution was immediate and terrible.
At a barked command from the Oldest, he was held down by four of his cell mates, one man on each arm, one man on each leg, his prison trousers and underpants around his ankles, bucking and struggling, snarling abuse and threats, while a jeering queue formed in his cell, waiting their turn.
The line was headed by the Starshi, naked, his body a mass of prison tattoos detailing his twenty years inside in pictorial detail. His whole life story was there, from the tattooed dagger entering his neck showing he had killed in prison and was available for hire, to the stars on his knees showing he knelt for no man. Every killing, every robbery, every sentence, all inked into his skin in a life that had taken him through Russia’s grim penal system. On his stomach was written:
Death is not vengeance, The dead don’t suffer.
After they finished with him they were going to tattoo Dimitri, but this would be a tattoo of shame, a tattoo of punishment. Two eyes, one on each hip, so that Dimitri’s lower quarters would form a face, with his penis as the nose. It would be a symbol of homosexuality, marking Dimitri out as a designated plaything in the prison.
Arkady and two minders broke it up.
Arkady had saved Dimitri from gang rape. His body might or might not have recovered, maybe not – Aids was common, treatment only available to the rich – but his spirit wouldn’t. Arkady burst into the cell, shank in one hand, shouting at the Ossetian in a language Dimitri would come to recognize as Chechen. The Ossetian might have been Starshi of the cell, but Arkady was Starshi of the block. He was a Brigadir, young as he was, the trusted head of muscle for the Klitchka or Vor who ran the prison. Arkady left, taking Dimitri with him.
Ever since that moment, Dimitri was Arkady’s man. It had been twelve years ago, but Dimitri relived the shame and fear on a nightly basis.
‘Opushenny.’
The Hanlon situation was nowhere near this on the scale of things, but both had been humiliated and both men were hypersensitive to any kind of ridicule. As far as they were concerned, Hanlon had signed her own death warrant. Nothing else would really do.
‘When?’ asked Dimitri.
‘Some time soon,’ said Arkady. ‘I want you to do it, Dima, I don’t want any mistakes made.’
Dimitri nodded. ‘It will be pleasure,’ he said.