Russian Roulette (18 page)

It was barely furnished with a table and a few hard chairs. Simon, feeling strangely placid now that his mission had failed so utterly, tried to distract the very uneasy Elizabeth by pointing out the only decoration – a faded red banner on the wall, which bore the curious exhortation “Plant more trees in ravines and gullies”. Their debate over this agricultural motto in the heart of Moscow was interrupted by the arrival of two technicians with the paraphernalia of fingerprinting. With deft efficiency, they set up their rollers and pads and within five minutes had taken two full-handed ‘dabs' from all seven of the British party.

Almost before they knew it, they were all out on the sidewalk again, blinking in the afternoon sun, free again for at least the rest of the afternoon.

The rest of the Trans-Europa tour, the innocents from the third floor, were already at the Tretyakov Art Gallery with an Intourist guide, and Gilbert Bynge hurried after them, taking the vicar and two old ladies. Simon and Liz opted out and Michael Shaw, who had not said another word to Simon since the lunchtime meeting, vanished alone in a taxi.

‘Don't fancy an art gallery, somehow,' said Simon, as he stood with Liz outside the militia entrance.

‘Too right – I never go near these cultural places in London, so why should I feel obliged to see them here?' replied the girl, with an irreverence that would have shocked the culture-loving natives.

‘Let's go down and have another look at Red Square and the Kremlin … take our minds off things,' he suggested.

In fact, the first place that they visited when they got to the huge square was not an historic monument, but the GUM Stores, the largest departmental shop in Russia. Its ornate bulk spread down the better part of the Square opposite Lenin's Tomb and even though Simon's declared hatred of shops made him reluctant, he admitted that the experience was worthwhile.

They carefully kept their conversation off the subject of murder, militia and interrogation, talking with forced interest about the immediate sights and sounds.

The GUM was a series of glass-roofed arcades, side by side, which stretched for hundreds of yards in both directions away from the main entrance. A large fountain played in the centre of the store, squirting its jets up to the first floor balcony.

‘More like a market than a shop,' said Liz, fascinated in spite of her worries. They walked around the galleries, looking at the hundreds of individual shops that lined them. Upstairs, they paused to lean over the balcony and look down at the crowded ground floor. A great throng of Muscovites, round-capped Armenians, Mongols from further east, and even some gypsies, jostled between the rows of open-fronted shops.

‘Looks like a cross between Petticoat Lane and King's Cross station,' observed Elizabeth.

‘Yes, plenty of stuff here – everything from mink coats to outboard motors, but some of it's a helluva price!'

The mention of money seemed to subdue Liz, but Simon was not in a sensitive enough mood to notice.

They left the GUM, walked across the square and entered the Kremlin through the Spasskaya gate. For an hour they wandered around the gardens and gold-capped churches, again being partly successful in losing their preoccupation in a wonderland of tourism. They duly saw the picture-postcard attractions – the Tsar Cannon and the cracked bell and spent an envious half-hour staring at the treasures in the Kremlin Museum.

Then Elizabeth declared teatime and they began walking slowly back to the Metropol.

Several times she looked back over her shoulder and became more and more agitated.

‘I'm sure someone is following us,' she hissed at Simon as they passed the red brick of the Lenin Museum. ‘Look behind,' she ordered.

Sure enough, fifty yards to their rear was the now familiar figure of Lev Pomansky, plodding along in their wake.

‘That's all right – he's trailing me, not you. Been after me all day … I got a row from the coppers, in fact, for accidentally throwing him off the scent on the underground this morning.'

He managed to convey an air of blasé nonchalance about this, as if being followed by Soviet militiamen was an everyday thing in his life.

She looked around again, only partly reassured. ‘Hope you're right. I don't want one after me, thank you.'

Before going to the smaller café just inside the main entrance of the Metropol, they made the long trip to their rooms to freshen up. Simon tapped on her door when he was ready and went in to find her touching up her war paint in front of a mirror.

As he waited, she abruptly asked, ‘Any idea where the street markets would be in Moscow?'

He shook his head into the mirror as he stood behind her and put his hands around her waist. ‘Not the faintest – why do you ask?'

She shrugged. ‘Just wondered. I heard they were interesting; the only places where private enterprise is still allowed. Farm people selling their stuff and all that.'

This seemed altogether out of character for the sophisticated Elizabeth.
Her only interest in markets is likely to be those in Kensington High Street
, he thought cynically.

As she repainted her eyes, he looked around the room, thinking that it was yet another replica of Fragonard's, Shaw's and his own … he seemed to have been in nearly all the rooms now. His eye caught the intriguing brown case, this time perched perilously on top of the chest of drawers. The key was in the lock and he had a sudden silly urge to go over and open it.

At that moment, Liz looked down and said a rude word. ‘My stockings – a hole in the ankle, that's
your
damned Kremlin gardens!'

She went over to the brown case and opened it.

Simon followed her and looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see it stuffed with contraband American cigarettes or hashish. All he saw was a rather untidy assortment of underclothes and packets of nylons.

Elizabeth, unaware of how close he was, suddenly stepped back with a pair of stockings and tripped over his foot.

With a squeal of dismay, she staggered and grabbed at the case for support. It crashed down from the chest and a corner caught on one of the brass handles of the lower drawer.

There was a ripe tearing sound as brown Rexine ripped apart.

With a look of utter stupefaction, Simon watched a blue shower of crisp five-pound notes erupt across the bed from the false bottom of the case.

After eighty five-pound notes fluttered to the carpet from the ripped case, Liz stood aghast for a second then threw herself on them and scrabbled them together.

‘You silly great idiot – I thought you would have had more sense than to try a mad caper like this!'

Anger at Elizabeth's folly made his usually deferential manner to her drop away like a discarded mask. He sat on the edge of her bed and glared at her with a mixture of exasperation and concern.

Liz Treasure lay across the top of the eiderdown, tearful but obstinate.

‘I need the money, Simon – my God, you'll never know how much we need it! The business is on the rocks, yet with that little bit more capital, it would be a goldmine … my friend said …'

‘To the devil with your damned friend! She needs her own mind spring-cleaned for dreaming up such a crazy scheme as this. Let her come and do her own dirty work!'

He jumped up and stalked the room in agitation. ‘Don't you realize that you could get twenty years in a labour camp for this sort of thing! In Russia, “speculating” in a foreign currency is about the worst crime in the book … murder is peanuts compared to it. They actually shot four blokes for it last year!'

She snivelled into her handkerchief. ‘It would have been all right if all this fuss about that awful little man hadn't cropped up.'

‘Like hell it would! … my God, I've got troubles enough of my own over that, but I can still go cold all over when I think of you trying to peddle four hundred quid in fivers around the streets of Moscow, looking for a black market money changer.'

‘The idea was good,' she mumbled through her sniffs.

‘“
Was
” is the right word!' he snapped, ‘That racket fizzled out over a year ago. The days when Western tourists sold everything except their underpants for roubles have gone – and so has this currency racket.'

They sat in stony silence for a moment, the woman sulking and Simon going over this latest crisis in his mind.

Explanations were obviously called for. Bit by bit, the whole story came out. Elizabeth's presence on the Trans-Europa trip was no holiday. With her boutique in the financial doldrums, she had raised enough for the fare and borrowed another two hundred pounds. Together with another two hundred put up by her partner-friend, she had set sail for Russia with the intention of quadrupling their investment, at the very least.

The friend had known someone who had worked a similar racket on a smaller scale a couple of years before, discovering that although the official exchange rate was just over two roubles to the pound, Western currency was so much sought after that twenty, thirty and sometimes even forty roubles could be got on the black market.

The contacts for this profitable game were to be found, allegedly, in the furtive men who hung about restaurants and street markets, on the lookout for Western tourists.

‘But what on earth are the use of these roubles?' Simon had objected. ‘Even if you get them back to London, who wants Russian paper money?'

‘One doesn't take roubles!' was Liz's explanation. ‘There are several State-owned antique and jewellery stores both here and in Leningrad, where stuff from before the Revolution is sold, mainly to West European and American tourists. With these extra roubles, one can buy some really valuable small stones that would more than hold their price when one sold them again in London.'

‘But the shops would surely be suspicious of someone flashing hundreds of quid's worth of roubles about!'

‘You have to be sensible about it,' came the persuasive reply. ‘Not to buy too much in the same shop and to spread the purchases between several people.' She had looked spaniel-eyed at Simon. ‘Actually, I was going to ask you to help me a bit there. Of course, one would have to smuggle them back into England, or the duty will kill any profit, but with rings or loose stones, that would be child's play.'

‘So
you
say … I think you're round the bloody twist to think you could get away with it, in the best of circumstances … and now, of course, you've really had it – thank God I found out before you got yourself into real trouble.'

He talked to her like a rather irate Dutch uncle and convinced her that not only was her information out of date, due to the Soviet authorities getting wise to the racket, but that since the murder, they were all under surveillance. ‘You saw that chap today in Red Square – he was after me, but I'll bet if you wandered out looking for some black marketeers, they'd be on you like a ton of bricks.'

He turned to her now, as she lay dabbing her nose delicately with her handkerchief.

‘And you can forget any idea of trying to take that English money back with you – you can't repair that amateur false bottom on your case and we're sure to get our belongings searched at any moment, now that Pudovkin's really on the warpath over Fragonard. You'll have to get rid of it – straight away. Flush it down the loo, if you take my tip.'

This just about sent her berserk. Money seemed the substitute for babes-in-arms to Liz Treasure, when it came to protective instinct. She sobbed and argued and wailed – even pounded his chest in temper – but he remained adamant.

Suddenly she capitulated. ‘All right, damn you, but it will finish the shop. It's not even my money – half was borrowed, the other half is my friend's … as well as the hundred extra for this trip.'

‘It's that or the prospect of a Russian prison for a few years … and if you got past them, the British authorities would hammer you for illegally taking currency out of the country – so make your choice, but make it quickly.'

He offered to do the flushing act for her there and then, to get it over with as painlessly as possible, but here she was immovably obstinate.

‘I'll get drunk tonight and do it myself,' she said sullenly. ‘… what a hell of a trip; all we want now is for the ship to sink on the way home and that would be the hat-trick!'

Simon kissed her unresponsive mouth and went back to his room to ponder his own troubles.

Chapter Twelve

The telephone in Alexei Pudovkin's box-like office rang on the average about once every six minutes – he had once taken the trouble to work this out over a period of a few days.

In the late afternoon of the day of the murder, it rang with its usual insistence and he heard the fruity voice of Gyenka Segel at the other end.

He listened to the voluble doctor and replied in monosyllables. Then he slipped a hand over the mouthpiece and yelled for Moiseyenko, who appeared instantly as if summoned by Aladdin.

Still listening and muttering an occasional agreement, Pudovkin rapidly scribbled a note on a pad and pushed it across to Vasily. The lieutenant read it, registered delight and galloped out of the office. He ran all the way downstairs and only rank prevented him from running to the Metropol. He walked there as fast as he could, consistent with the dignity of a militia officer.

At the hotel, he went straight up to the fourth floor and went to the guardian virgin at the desk. She shook her head at his quick question and handed him a key. He hurried around the passageways and stopped at Room 513. As he reached the prime suspect's door, he was glad that Smith was not in – it would save a lot of talking and perhaps foolish objections that the man might have to having his property examined.

Moiseyenko was convinced that Simon was the killer and could hardly understand why the Procurator's Office had not already issued a warrant for his arrest.