II
Chief Superintendant Anthony Paulson's hand fluttered over the file as Hunt and Drake sat before him. They were side by side – Hunt leaning on his wrist as if trying to prop himself awake and Drake legs crossed and eyes expectant. "We have to be careful about how these matters are handled, you understand. These two in the file might be illegal and trying to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Union, but we still have to be conscious that the embassy is ready and willing to blow small incidents into international problems."
"Ahh sir, could you explain a little more about the case?" Alex asked. Paulson's outburst was the first thing he'd said after ushering them into his office and shaking her hand in welcome back to the Met. Of course he was nervous, she thought. Six weeks ago he'd politely threatened her future as a police officer if she didn't go quietly off to sift files for Julian Marbury in Lambton.
Hunt was thinking more or less the same – except he knew that Paulson couldn't look at the two of them without seeing those black and white photographs sent to him anonymously by Dorothy Lange. "Compromised" – that was the word Paulson had used at the time before ordering that the matter never be raised again. Well it got a little more compromised later on, Your Worship.
"Oh sorry, yes well the matter was drawn to our attention a couple of days ago. Two sailors from the Soviet Union have disappeared from a fishing vessel that is currently docked down at Woolwich." Paulson paused to open the file before deciding not to pronounce the names of the two Russians listed in it. "Yes, the ship is the Yevgeny Basarov and it has been in dock for repairs for a month. You know how those rusty old fishing buckets get – barely seaworthy. Not like when I used to race skiffs every weekend and half the jolly time was spent cleaning and scrubbing...."
"I know what you mean," Hunt interrupted and they both turned to look at him in astonishment. "I raced dinghies as a child. Up in the Lakes District. But Sir, you were talking about these missing sailors?"
"Oh yes." Paulson collected his thoughts quickly. "Yes, it's not even that they're just missing, although we do need to get them sent back to Moscow as soon as possible. We've got reports that they and other Russian sailors have been causing damage around Woolwich and becoming aggressive." He stiffened as the door opened and Adrien Vanderzee walked into the room and strolled past them to the window. "Sir, I've just been briefing DCI Hunt on these incidents at Woolwich; he understands it's a priority right now."
Vanderzee nodded without expression and let an itchy silence drift on. Finally, "I do not want this to go any further than the couple of fights that have already happened down there. These things get out of hand too quickly." He barely looked their way, not at Drake at all. "Put your team down there, find any of these Sovs causing trouble and get them processed out of the country." He picked up a random report from Paulson's desk and flicked through it.
Hunt reached across the table for the file on the sailors.
"Thank you, Hunt," Paulson smiled. "I know you'll deal with this quickly. Hopefully you're refreshed from your Christmas holidays. You were up North I hear? Didn't manage to get out and do any sailing while you were up there?"
Hunt's hand froze over the file. Paulson's expression hadn't changed, and he noted how Vanderzee didn't turn from the window, but stared even more intently down at the report. Vanderzee's eyes didn't move. "No, Sir." He took the file. "I did get out into the woods though for some exercise. Up in Bowland, if you've ever been there."
"No I haven't – and I had no idea you were a nature lover, Hunt."
"Oh well, Sir. I do love the empty places … although it was surprisingly crowded out there in the woods." He followed Alex out the door and shut it behind them. Not until they reached the lifts did she turn to him, arms crossed, eyebrows raised.
"Dinghies in the Lakes District? Were you sailing the Swallow or the Amazon and were the Railway Children also involved?"
"I had to shut him up somehow."
"Well I'm glad that you didn't start telling him about that time you found a magical kingdom in the back of your wardrobe." He didn't say anything, didn't smile. Oh whatever. Alex pressed the lift button again.
"I thought we were at war with these blokes. Why are we letting them get through the front door?" Ray had brought his notebook with him, and he'd written down the names of the two sailors gone missing. As he climbed out of the Quattro, he practised the two Russian names in his head. Arkady Levitsky. Ilya Solovyov. "How am I supposed to write the names of any witnesses if they're Sovs? Do they use the same letters as us if I have to spell their names out?" He continued to fret loudly as he followed Hunt and Chris through the dockyards at Woolwich, picking their way among towering blocks of empty containers that implied this particular dock area of the Thames was on its last legs.
Hunt found the Yevgeny Basarov docked midway down a long empty wharf. Paulson had been right about it being a rust-bucket. Smelly too. A month of sluicing hadn't erased the smell of the blood, fish guts and – he passed a drunken man slouched over in a chair beside the ramp leading up into the ship – vodka and sick.
"Chris, have a word with this one," he nodded back towards the comatose man.
"How'm I supposed to get anything out of him?" Chris bent down to the man, wincing because his jeans were tighter after a week of his mother's puddings and fry-ups.
"Give him another drink, talk dirty to him, I don't care." Hunt disappeared up into the deck. With Ray behind him, he slowly walked around, port to starboard, noting the flinty chop of the Thames and the film of oil floating around the stern of the boat. "Hey up!" He yelled down through an opening into the dark hold.
"Maybe they've all run away." Ray put his notebook back into his jacket as Hunt climbed a short flight of steps up into the bridge. Inside were two men smoking as they leaned against a table covered in charts, one dressed only in a grubby polo shirt and the other proudly bare-chested, his pectorals and stomach covered in a faded tattoo depicting a red-head in a see-through Russian army uniform.
"Metropolitan Police just stopping by for a friendly chat," Hunt bent to enter the cabin. "We're looking for two ship-mates of yours," and he motioned to Ray to speak their names. "Are you in charge of these blokes or what?"
"The captain is not here," the man in the polo shirt said, contemptuous as Hunt squinted in his effort to decipher his thick accent. "I am not in charge, I just work with those men on the deck."
Hunt could barely see out of the cabin's windows, so begrimed with salt spray. "Do you know about the trouble Arkady and Ilya are in? We've got reports that they've been getting into fights and making a nuisance of themselves. And now they're gone and disappeared. They won't be turning up in a packet of fish fingers, hopefully?" Hunt offered them a new cigarette to break the silence. "I can bring you down to Fenchurch to talk if a night in our lovely cells would aid your memories...." The men hadn't moved – they sized up Ray who stood nervous and shifty in the doorway. They heard and felt Chris clambering up the gang-plank, and noted how Hunt turned his back to them, casual and at ease.
"This man don't speak English so I will tell you what we both know. We have been here for a month and no one has paid us for three months. We are all angry and no one here or at the company that owns this boat will tell us what is going on." The man in the polo shirt took Hunt's proffered cigarette the second time. "If you want to know about fighting and all that, talk to the owners. They're the ones causing trouble for us."
"What kind of trouble?"
"Arkady asked about our money and they sent down some men to beat him as a lesson to us." The man spat on the cigarette butt and flicked it through an open window in the cabin. "Maybe you should go look in the hospitals."
"I didn't know what smelled worse – that hold where they stored the fish or the toilet." Chris sat on the edge of Shaz's desk, playing with the porcelain unicorn that he'd given her for Christmas. "Luckily we legged it along the docks and popped into the Admiral Lygon for a quick one. No one wanted to talk to us in there either about them Rusky fellas."
Shaz murmured absently, watching Hunt watch Alex Drake as she wandered past the desks into the kitchen. She nodded to Chris, her eyes still fixed on the Guv as he followed Drake into the kitchen a minute later. It had been like that all afternoon. Just as the ceiling of CID looked like a checker board, here were Drake and Hunt moving like game pieces around each other. So obvious too, she rolled her eyes, not noticing that Chris was closely watching her and frowning as if he'd said something wrong. So obvious that something had happened between them up in Clitheroe although blimmin' Chris hadn't been nosy enough to actually find out what. Still what he did know – that Hunt hadn't slept in the caravan – seemed conclusive enough.
Half an hour before now Hunt had given the team their orders – fan out around the docks at Woolwich. "Search the other ships, the pubs, the doss houses, everywhere," he'd said. "Find them missing sailors or find someone who knows where they've gone to ground." Shaz had noted how he'd given DI Drake no orders, left her at her desk, and even more curiously, DI Drake hadn't complained about it. Why aren't they both out there together like they would be normally? Is there any way I can get closer to the kitchen without it being obvious that I'm trying to listen?
No, she concluded, not without having to start up a conversation with Biro. And then Shaz tuned back into Chris. Huh?
"I was just asking why you haven't taken your unicorn home yet? I was thinking, you could start a collection of 'em, like my mum."
Hmmm. Alex had told Shaz all about Chris's mum.
"Oh sorry." She'd backed right into him as she turned away from the kitchen bench with her cup of tea in one hand and a teaspoon of sugar in the other. Hunt didn't immediately move or give her room to get around him. In fact he must have been too close to start with. Smell your hair close.
"You've spilt the sugar," Alex murmured, laughing in that nervous way she occasionally had and looking down at her empty teaspoon, and the white granules running down her blue silk top. "Pour some sugar on me."
Hunt's eyes widened – she reddened.
"In the name of love? Def Leppard? Bad song? I guess it's not out ... here yet, never mind." She flung the spoon behind her into the sink and winced at the clatter against the stacked dishes in it "Can do without the sugar anyway. Lifetime on the hips and all that."
"Your hips are...." just fucking fine, he finished off silently, stepped back so she could get around him. It was a small room and yet she didn't take a seat at the table or disappear back to her desk. Instead he reached around her, looking away virtuously but his arm still grazing her breasts. And he took the sugar caddy and a great ridiculous heaped spoon of sugar, stirred it into her tea. The tea mug was between them, their heads bent as if watching the sugar dissolve were the most fascinating thing in the world.
And then he walked out back to the team, yelling out to Biro to get his fat grey arse out of his desk and off to Woolwich.