Ganglands: Russia: Russia
Read Ganglands: Russia: Russia Online
Authors: Ross Kemp
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Social Issues, #Mysteries & Detective Stories
PENGUIN BOOKS
Born in Essex in 1964, Ross Kemp is best known for his portrayal of Grant Mitchell in
EastEnders
.
His father was a senior detective with the Metropolitan Police force, and as a result crime has always fascinated Kemp.
In 2007
Ross Kemp on Gangs
won a BAFTA for Best Factual Series.
Also available:
Ganglands: Brazil
ROSS KEMP
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2010
Text copyright © Ross Kemp, 2010
Map copyright © Tony Fleetwood, 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-141-95104-1
Table of Contents
1. Hate Crimes
20 April: 2045 hours.
Lena Saroyan hurries through Mayakovskaya metro station, her trainers squeaking softly on the tiled floor.
At this time of night, the station is relatively quiet, the breathless crowds that press the Moscow underground during rush hour having thinned to a trickle of commuters.
Even so, there had been a lengthy queue at the ticket booth, and Lena is running late as it is.
Even as she rushes, she can’t help but admire her surroundings. Lena has been living in Moscow for only three weeks, and the labyrinthine underground system still makes her as wide-eyed as a child – especially Mayakovskaya, with its colonnaded central hall, resplendent in white and black marble and pink rhodonite, and high vaulted ceilings inlaid with mosaics.
Every time Lena travels down the long, snaking escalators, it feels as though she is travelling to the very centre of the earth.
At the bottom of the escalator, a male announcer in a glass booth openly stares at Lena as she walks past him.
Lena barely notices.
Even though she is only seventeen, she has already learned to ignore men’s reactions to her
presence; the leering smiles and the wolf-whistles that follow her as she walks down the street.
For this, she has her Armenian mother to thank – or to blame: anyone who has seen the two women together knows the source of Lena’s slender figure, her raven-black hair and her beautiful, feline features.
It had also been her mother who had persuaded Lena to enter a modelling competition back home in Volgograd – an industrial city in southern Russia.
Just a bit of harmless fun
, she had argued lightly,
besides, you might even enjoy yourself
.
And Lena
had
enjoyed herself, once she had got over her nerves at parading up and down in front of strangers.
Not only that, but she had won, earning herself a six-month contract with an agency in the capital.
Which was how Lena had found herself spending the afternoon in a run-down photographer’s studio in the Presnya district of Moscow, modelling summer dresses for a catalogue.
Not exactly the Paris fashion show, Lena thinks to herself ruefully, but as Alexei had pointed out, it was all good experience.
At the thought of her boyfriend, Lena smiles.
Alexei had insisted on coming with her to Moscow, arguing that he could enrol on an engineering course at the city’s State University in the autumn.
Although she was too proud to admit it, secretly Lena had been hoping that’s what he would do.
Moscow was a large place to have no friends in, and she always felt safe around Alexei.
Only he seemed able to calm her wilful temper – a trait as strong in Lena’s Russian father as beauty was in her mother.
In private, Alexei teases her about it, jokingly calls her an angry bear. No one else could get away with that.
Lena checks her watch, stifling a squeak of exasperation. Alexei’s fight was going to start any minute now, and she wouldn’t be there at ringside to support him.
It was the wretched photographer’s fault – he hadn’t been happy with the shoot, and Lena had had to sit there, inwardly seething, as he fussily fiddled with her dress and the lighting.
Still, at least he had kept his hands to himself.
Even after only three weeks, Lena has already heard enough cautionary tales from other models to keep an eye out for photographers’ wandering hands.
She hurries along the central hall, the grand architecture illuminated by rings of electric lights above her head.
The serene atmosphere suddenly reminds her of the church she used to go to back in Volgograd, a thought that gives her an unexpected pang of homesickness.
Lena decides to call her parents after she has caught up with Alexei.
If
she ever manages to get to the gym …
Thankfully, a train pulls up just as Lena arrives on the platform.
The carriage is half empty: a handful of office workers who must have been working late, and late-night shoppers laden with bags.
Lena sits down opposite an elderly Tajik man with a long white beard that is bright against his weathered skin.
He waits patiently for the train to move off, his hands clasped in his lap.
Lena pulls out a magazine from her bag and flicks through photos of actors and celebrities, idly wondering whether one day she will open up a magazine and find a picture of herself staring back.
As the train continues north along the Green Line, stop-by-stop passengers slowly begin to drain from the
carriage.
Wearied by her long day in front of the camera, and the lullaby rocking motion of the train, Lena puts down her magazine.
Her eyelids droop shut.
Then, as the carriage doors open at Sokol station, everything changes.
Lena smells the men before she sees them: a thick mixture of cigarettes, alcohol and body odour.
At once wide awake, she glances up to see two young men barge on to the train.
The first is muscular and bull-headed, his shaved scalp gleaming in the carriage lights.
He wears a leather jacket over a T-shirt and combat trousers, an air of sullen menace hanging off him like deodorant.
The second is a teenager, less heavy-set, his young face topped with short blond hair.
A tattoo of a dragon rises up from above his collar and writhes around his neck.
He drunkenly surveys the carriage, a look of disgust in his eyes, then raises his right arm in salute and shouts out: ‘
Sieg Heil!
’
No one responds.
The teenager notices Lena looking at them and elbows the other, making a lewd gesture about her breasts.
The giant skinhead sniggers.
‘Hey, baby,’ he calls out to Lena.
‘You like what you see?
You want to spend time with a real Russian man?’ He grabs his crotch, laughing.
Lena looks down at her magazine, trying to ignore him.
This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened to her.
It was typical, though: of all the carriages in Moscow, she has to pick the one with these assholes in it.
‘Don’t play hard to get,’ the blond-haired one says cajolingly.
‘The Eagles know how to treat a lady.
We’ll make sure you’re satisfied.’
Opposite Lena, the elderly Tajik man shakes his head and makes a small sound of disapproval.
The teenager looks at him sharply.
‘What did you say to me, you piece of shit?’
The Tajik says nothing, only shakes his head again.
‘I asked you a question,’ the boy said, through clenched teeth.
‘Don’t you speak Russian?’
Lena realizes that she is holding her breath.
Instead of replying, the Tajik man rises slowly to his feet and moves to find another seat in the carriage.
The bull-headed man runs over to him and grabs his arm, unleashing a furious barrage of punches.
The older man tries to cover himself with his arms, but it is no protection from the clubbing blows raining down upon him – he collapses back on to the seat.
With a whoop, the teenager leaps on to the seat next to him and begins kicking him in the head.
For a few seconds, the other passengers are too shocked to react.
But as the violence continues, a middle-aged woman hurriedly collects her bags and goes over to the other side of the carriage; a teenage boy buries his head in a book and refuses to look up.
No one wants to get involved.
As the Tajik crumples to the floor of the train, Lena stands up, indignation coursing through her veins.
‘Stop it!’ she shouts.
‘Leave him alone!’
‘Who asked you, bitch?’ the skinhead spits.
‘Stay out of it!’
A voice at the back of Lena’s head – her mother’s – is urging her to walk away, to protect herself.
But at that
moment, Lena is her father’s daughter.
Righteous anger takes over.
‘Oh, you’re real heroes, aren’t you?’ she says sarcastically.
‘It takes two of you to beat up a harmless old man!’
The blond teenager strides over to Lena, drenching her in the smell of beer.
She forces herself not to back down as he sticks his face so close to hers that their noses almost touch.
‘You’re not pure Russian either, are you?’ he hisses. ‘Typical of you mongrels to stick together.’