The Senility of Vladimir P (26 page)

‘No.'

‘Aleksandr Semyonovich?' cried Sheremetev in desperation.

‘You heard her.'

The two watch thieves headed out of the dressing room.

‘Wait!' said Sheremetev, running after them.

‘What now?' demanded Belkin irritably.

‘You've taken everything!'

‘So?'

‘You have to leave something. People are used to seeing a watch on his wrist. One day one watch, one day another. If they don't, they'll start to wonder what's happened. Someone will investigate. And people saw you come in today, even if you gave a false identity. There are cameras here also.'

‘He's got a point, Sasha,' said Rostkhenkovskaya.

‘You think so?' said Belkin. ‘I think it's a trick to make us leave him something. If anyone does investigate, how much will it take to buy them off?'

‘In the case of the ex-president's watches,' said Rostkhen­kovskaya, ‘who knows?'

She gazed at him pointedly. Eventually Belkin sighed and shook his head. He put his briefcase down on Vladimir's bed and opened it, looked over the tangled mass of watches, selected half a dozen and put them on Vladimir's bedside table. As he went to close the case, he stopped and fished another one out.

‘You can have this one for yourself,' he said derisively, and he tossed it to Sheremetev. ‘In the whole collection, this was the only piece of shit.'

He snapped the briefcase closed.

Rostkhenkovskaya was already heading for the door. Belkin went with her.

Vasya gazed at his father, who stood helplessly, arms by his sides, his face with its lacerated cheek torn between confusion and despair. For a moment, their eyes met.

Vasya shrugged and followed his clients out.

Sheremetev slumped to the floor. He looked at the watch that Belkin had thrown him. You didn't have to be an expert to recognise this one. Even he knew what it was – a plain old Poljot from Soviet times, battered, scratched and worn.

Disbelief. Humiliation. Hopelessness. Sheremetev
felt like an old rag that someone had picked up and wiped themselves with and thrown away. He was nothing: Nikolai Ilyich Sheremetev, a worm, a slug, a mushroom, a little man who knew nothing about how anything worked, a fool who had been taken advantage of all his life in this Russia which was a paradise, above all, for those who took advantage of fools. Well, here he was, unable to find a way to get even a few hundred thousand dollars to save his nephew when for six years he had had a cabinet of watches worth – How much? Ten million dollars? Twenty million? – at his sole disposal.

He keeled over and lay flat on the floor in self-hatred and misery.

Eventually the sound of Vladimir's mumblings and grumblings, growing in volume, penetrated his consciousness. He lay listening for a while. He had to get Vladimir up, get him into his pyjamas, get him into bed . . . And for what? So he could do the same thing tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, as he had done for the last six years . . . And in the meantime, his son had turned into a gangster, and not just any kind of gangster. A gangster who would stand by and watch as his own father was cheated and abused.

He got wearily to his feet and put the Poljot watch with the others that Belkin had left on Vladimir's bedside table. The laceration in his cheek, which had been partially reopened the previous day, throbbed a little, just enough for him to be conscious of it.

He went to the sitting room.

‘Come on, Vladimir Vladimirovich,' said Sheremetev quietly, feeling that he didn't have the energy even to hate this man any more, as he had started to do. ‘It's time for bed.'

Vladimir scrutinised the face that had suddenly loomed up in front of him. He could smell the Chechen. He was definitely somewhere here. Vladimir tried to peer around the small man in front of him to see if the Chechen was behind him.

‘Vladimir Vladimirovich,' said Sheremetev, almost in tears, ‘please.'

He pulled gently on Vladimir's arm. After a moment, the old man got up and Sheremetev led him to the bedroom.

As Sheremetev got him changed, Vladimir kept scanning the room. Sheremetev slipped him an extra sedative tablet with his pills. Vladimir lay in bed staring straight up, as always, in that pose of his that made him seem so alone as he went to sleep.

‘Goodnight, Vladimir Vladimirovich,' murmured Sheremetev, and left.

He felt numb, not knowing how even to start to understand what had happened to him that evening. He had had no food since he ate Vladimir's leftovers from lunch. Maybe, he thought, having something to eat would make him feel better – it certainly couldn't make him feel worse. He remembered Eleyekov saying that Stepanin had made it up with Barkovskaya. The thought didn't do much to lift his spirits, but it was something. At least he could go down without having to hear about another firebombing or arm-breaking or shooting.

In the dining room, Sheremetev found Lyosha and half a dozen of the security men gathered around the table with bottles of vodka, looking as if those weren't the first ones they had opened.

The conversation stopped.

‘Good evening,' said Sheremetev.

A couple of them grunted in reply.

Sheremetev glanced at his watch. Normally, at this time, the dining room was empty.

He spotted a big dish of chicken fricassee on the sideboard, still warm. Sheremetev took a helping and sat down.

No one said a word.

He took a mouthful of the fricassee. Over the past couple of weeks, he had come to realise that you could tell Stepanin's mood from the quality of his cooking. The cook had obviously cheered up.

He ate more. The guards around him drank.

‘How's Artur?' he said.

Lyosha shrugged. ‘Not too bad. Not too good,' he muttered. His shaven scalp gleamed with a slick of alcohol-induced sweat. He had obviously put a lot away since Sheremetev had glimpsed Stepanin with him earlier in the evening.

‘Any news on whether he'll walk again?'

There was no reply.

‘Shouldn't you boys be out terrorising someone?' Sheremetev asked, only half jokingly.

‘How do you know we aren't?' retorted one of them, slurring his words.

Sheremetev ignored that, thinking it was just a smart-aleck remark, as he took another forkful of the fricassee.

‘So Stepanin has made it up with Barkovskaya, huh?' he said, chewing on the chicken.

The guards exchanged glances. There were a couple of smirks.

‘He made it up with her, didn't he? Eleyekov told me today.'

‘Oh, yes, he made up with her alright,' said one of the guards. ‘She had a big dish of fricassee to celebrate.'

The sniggers were turning to laughter.

‘What is it?' said Sheremetev. ‘What's so funny?'

One of the guards, drunker than the rest, giggled. ‘Stepanin's —'

‘Shhhhh!' hissed Lyosha, but he had drunk as much as the others and was struggling to keep a straight face.

‘What?' said Sheremetev, taking a mouthful of fricassee.

The giggling guard threw back his head, laughing. ‘The chickens will have company.'

‘What chickens?'

‘The chickens outside.'

Sheremetev didn't understand. The guards were laughing so much now they were almost crying. Lyosha made a last, vain attempt to stop them, and then, throwing a vodka down his throat, joined in.

‘The chickens outside?' repeated Sheremetev uncomprehendingly.

‘In the pit,' squeaked one of the guards.

‘The pit? What do you mean? The pit outside where —'

‘You've got to watch what you eat with a cook like Stepanin,' blurted out another, before collapsing in amusement.

‘What's he done?' demanded Sheremetev.

The guards around the table, doubled up, didn't even hear him.

Sheremetev jumped up and pushed open the doors to the kitchen. Stepanin stood by a stock pot, spoon to his lips. ‘Vitya,' demanded Sheremetev, ‘what's going on?'

The cook looked around. ‘Have you tried the fricassee, Kolya?'

Suddenly Sheremetev's blood ran cold. He clutched at his throat.

Stepanin laughed. ‘It's okay. You didn't get the special batch. Only Barkovskaya got that.'

‘What have you done?'

‘Not so loud.' He glanced around at the potwashers.

‘
What?
'

‘The only thing I could do.'

‘Vitya, you can't kill her!'

‘Not so loud!' hissed the cook. ‘Whatever happens to her, it's her own fault. She left me no choice. She knew that herself.' Stepanin turned calmly back to the pot and tasted with his spoon again. ‘Needs seasoning,' he murmured to himself, and he threw in a big pinch of salt.

Sheremetev watched him for a moment. The cook had been drinking, that was obvious, but there was something eerie about the way he was behaving. He seemed to be both completely insane and perfectly rational at the same time.

‘Where is she?' demanded Sheremetev.

‘In her room.'

‘Is she still alive?'

Stepanin shrugged.

‘I'm calling an ambulance.'

‘No.'

Sheremetev reached for his phone.

Stepanin grabbed his arm. ‘I can't let you do that, Kolya.'

‘You can't stop me.'

‘Can't I?' He hurled Sheremetev across the room.

Sheremetev crashed under a bench, smashing the back of his head against a steel leg and knocking over a large bin of refuse that covered him in chicken carcases and offal and a stinking brown sludge that oozed over his shirt.

Stepanin rushed to him. ‘Are you okay? I told those fucking potwashers to empty that stuff —'

Sheremetev kicked at the cook, striking him hard on the knee, and got to his feet while Stepanin jumped in pain, slipping on chicken guts. He ran. The cook ran after him. He got to the kitchen door and . . . a wall of surly, drunken guards confronted him, not showing any signs of amusement now.

One of them pushed him down on a chair.

‘He stinks,' said another, holding his nose.

Stepanin had followed him out. ‘Have some fricassee,' he said, dishing up a fresh helping of the chicken.

‘I don't want it,' said Sheremetev.

‘It's fine!' said the cook, and he angrily shoved a forkful into his own mouth to demonstrate its safety.

‘You expect me to eat while you've poisoned a woman and she's dying? I'm not hungry.' Sheremetev rubbed at the back of his head where he had hit the bench. His fingers came away smeared with blood.

‘Eat!'

‘Vitya, you can't kill her!' cried Sheremetev.

‘Of course I can.'

‘What do you want?'

‘I want her to go away.'

‘Very good way of making her,' slurred a guard, wagging a finger. ‘Excellent plan.'

‘Not like this!'

‘Yes like this!' snapped the cook. ‘Exactly like this!'

‘No!'

‘Yes!'

‘Well what if . . .' Sheremetev's mind raced. An idea sprang to his mind. ‘What if she agrees to go? What if she signs something saying she resigns?'

‘That's fucking ridiculous!' retorted Stepanin. ‘Why would she do that?'

‘Because . . . otherwise she's going to die. What if she signs it and then we send her to the hospital and we say you realised you made a mistake with her food and accidentally poisoned her? Then she's gone, just like you want. We have the paper. She's resigned.'

Stepanin's eyes narrowed. Sheremetev watched him anxiously. It occurred to him that he had got the idea from Oleg's suggestion that he get Vladimir to sign a request to have Pasha released. He didn't think it had been a very smart suggestion when Oleg suggested it, and in this situation, the version of the idea he had come up with was even more absurd, worse than something in a movie. On the other hand, the cook's behaviour was so erratic that he might just be persuaded by it.

Stepanin shook his head. ‘No. She'd come back.'

‘She had Artyusha shot,' said one of the guards. ‘She's got to die!'

The other guards nodded.

‘Did Artyusha say that?' said Sheremetev.

There was silence for a moment. ‘He'd want us to do it,' said the guard, but something in his tone was less than certain.

Sheremetev knew nothing about gangsters apart from what he had seen in movies, and he had totally misjudged Artur Lukashvilli, but he had a feeling that a gang boss didn't keep a bunch of men like this under control by letting them kill whoever they felt like killing. ‘What happened the last time you killed someone Artur didn't tell you to kill?'

The question hung in the air.

‘Remember Tolya?' murmured someone.

The guards glanced nervously at each other. A couple of them grimaced. ‘We should take her to hospital,' one of them said.

Stepanin looked at them in dismay.

‘Come on, lads,' said Lyosha. ‘Let's go and get her! We'll say it was all the cook's idea.'

‘No!' cried Stepanin. ‘No one gets her!' He turned on Sheremetev. ‘She's not going to hospital! Understand? I've told you before! I've got three hundred thousand dollars. To open my restaurant, I need five! Five! And I've only got three!'

The guards glanced at each other.

‘She is not . . . going . . . to
hospital
!' shouted Stepanin, shaking Sheremetev by the shoulders.

Another guard appeared in the doorway. He went quickly to Lyosha and whispered into his ear.

Lyosha nodded. ‘Well,' he said to Stepanin, ‘looks like it's not a question any more.'

‘Has someone taken her already?' asked one of the guards.

‘Idiot!' said Lyosha, giving him a slap on the head. ‘She's dead.'

There was silence.

‘Fuck!' muttered one of the guards.

Sheremetev looked up at Stepanin, who was still standing over him. In his moment of triumph, the cook seemed to be frozen, bewildered.