GRAVE MATTER

SIXTEEN

Blanche drives me home and offers to cook me something.

"That's probably not a great idea," I reply, but she's already opened the fridge. I'm embarrassed by the contents. Six bottles of Peroni, grated mature cheddar, parmesan, orange juice, sundried tomatoes and half a dozen eggs."

She opens another cupboard and finds a lone onion and some sad-looking potatoes that are starting to sprout.

"This is going to be a challenge," she laughs.

"I could get a takeaway," I suggest.

Blanche gathers up the meagre supplies and pauses to pull back her hair and loop a band around a ponytail.

I open two beers and watch her cooking, and we make small talk about our likes and dislikes, involving politics, food, theatre, cinema, sport, and past relationships. The conversation becomes a little strained.

"I'm not very good at this," I say. "I've been on my own for a long while."

"Me too," she replies, raising her bottle of beer and clinking it against mine. "What a great pair we make."

With the potatoes cooked, Blanche cuts them into slices and layers them with a mixture of sautéed onions, sundried tomatoes, and herbs. The beaten eggs are poured over the top before she adds the cheese and puts the heavy-baked dish into the oven to bake. I set out the knife and forks and open two more beers.

Later, she uses both hands to carry the pan to the table, where she slices and serves. Salt and pepper mills exchanged. The first mouthful melts.

"This is fantastic," I say.

"I'm glad you like it."

We ate in silence until Blanche has a question.

"How did you end up as a spy?"

I laughed. "I honestly can't remember."

Blanche lowers her beer, wiping her lips. "People who put honestly into a reply are normally lying."

We both go quiet, silently asking the same questions.

Blanche glances at the clock on the wall and yawns. "I know it's early, but I am a bit tired."

"You can sleep in the spare room," I say.

She smiles demurely. "What about all this mess?"

"I'll clean up."

I hear her walk to the spare bedroom and close the door. I pack the dishwasher and wipe the worktops down and then pass her door, paused momentarily, and imagine her asleep and her blonde hair fanned across a pillow.

Moving away, I go to my room and shower. Afterwards, towelling my hair, I stand in the bedroom window, gazing at the quiet street, wandering about the assassin's identity. Was it just one, or was it a team of FSB killers?

Before going to bed, I go back downstairs to check the windows and doors locked. Then, finally, I slip under the covers and feel myself drifting off to sleep when the doorbell rings.

I go downstairs, and I check the spy hole. Inspector Mark Brooks is standing on the doorstep, dressed in a dark raincoat.

"I hope I'm not intruding," he says, glancing past me into the hallway.

"Not at all. How did you find me?"

"I'm a detective."

He makes it sound obvious.

"Is this official business?"

"Yes and no."

I step back and let him pass, pointing towards the kitchen.

"How is your investigation going?"

"Probably about the same as yours," I say.

He admires the kitchen. "Your place?"

"Yes."

I let him wander a little more, waiting for him to get to the reason for his visit.

"I want to apologise for the other day," he says. "I should have shown you more respect."

"You didn't come all this way to apologise."

"No."

Pulling back a chair, he sits and undoes the buttons of his coat. His soft gut hangs over the belt of his trousers.

"I've been taken off the case."

I look at him, shocked.

"Why?"

Brooks nods and glances at the coffee machine on the counter. I offer him one. He accepts. I take a mug from the cupboard and put a pod in the machine.

"Because I didn't agree with their policy of denial?"

"Which was?"

"To suppress intelligence based on human sources, intercepted communications, and public material gathered by MI5 has been shared with the Metropolitan Police concerning a series of unexplained deaths. Yet the Assistant Commissioner of Police has ruled out foul play in every last case."

Brooks takes the mug and adds two sugars, stirring slowly. The teaspoon looks tiny in his hands.

"Did you say fourteen?"

He hands me a sheet of paper.

"What's this?"

"A substantial trove of papers, phone records, and secret recordings shows Robbie Chase was part of a group of nine men, including the exiled oligarch Igor Akinfeev, who all died suspiciously in Britain after making powerful enemies in Russia. The files reveal what we already know about Chase living in fear of the FSB and mafia groups after fronting for Akinfeev, a sworn enemy of the state, in a series of deals that enraged the Kremlin, including a doomed Russian property deal. British police declared the deaths of all the men in Akinfeev's circle non-suspicious. Still, these documents reveal that MI6 has collated information about each of them in the context of assassinations."

"Why are you bringing it to me?"

"You might be the only person interested."

I don't believe the answer but let him go on.

"Akinfeev was found hanged in his bathroom. Police ruled it a suicide, but I suspect murder. His business partner, and best friend Alexi Zelenyy, dropped dead from an apparent heart attack, as did their acquaintance, Dmitry Zhivoglyadov, the cofounder of the troubled oil giant Zhivoglyadov oil who died in London. I have intelligence suggesting murder, and my sources have said that Russia is an expert at using poisons that kill without a trace, particularly by triggering cardiac arrest. Two British lawyers are possible victims of Russian hits. Freddie Cumber succumbed to a sudden heart attack aged 46. Paul Eden, who died in a helicopter crash last month, may have become targets after helping the Russian oligarchs funnel money into Britain. Named in the files documenting suspected Russian-linked assassinations, three of Robbie Chase's friends lost their lives." He pauses to sip his coffee. "The tale of this ring of death illuminates one of the most disturbing geopolitical trends of our time, the use of assassinations by Russia's secret services and powerful mafia groups to wipe out opponents around the globe, and the failure of British authorities to confront it."

We both hear a sound from the hallway. Brooks turns towards the door as Blanche appears in one of my shirts. He gets to his feet.

"I didn't realise you had company."

"Blanche is an old friend of mine."

"I'm sorry, I didn't realise."

I can see him trying to place her. Is she my girlfriend? Is she just visiting or living here?

"The intelligence suggesting targeted killings in Britain comes amid mounting international concern that the Kremlin is brazenly interfering in the west," I say.

A mobile starts buzzing. It belongs to Brooks. He answers it, speaks in monosyllables, and then ends the call.

"Got another one," he says, finishing his coffee.

"I thought you were off the case?"

"I am, but I still have friends in the force."

"Who is it this time?"

"Daler Kuzyaev."

Blanche and I exchange glances.

"We met him earlier today," I say.

"Well, he's dead now."

"What shall we do?"

"Well, I can't go," Brooks says, "but nothing is stopping you two."

"How did he die?"

"Collapsed and died while out jogging."

"What?"

"According to my source, Kuzyaev returned home this morning from Paris, and after visiting Zelenyy's widow at her request, he ate a bowl of Russian sorrel soup prepared by his wife and 8-year-old daughter for lunch. Asked about his trip, he told his wife Paris had been grey, gloomy. He took his daughter out before going for a run late this afternoon. Later, his slumped body was caught by the lights of a car as it approached the brow of a hill where he'd fallen. The driver got out to seek help, and a local chef in full whites rushed to resuscitate him. Kuzyaev was deathly pale, and both men told my source. He threw up into the mouth of the chef who was trying to revive him, and by the time the ambulance arrived, he was completely non-responsive and was then pronounced dead."

Blanche's pager goes off in her handbag, and after taking what seemed to be age to find it, turned to me and said, "I'd better go."

"I'm coming with you," I tell her.

She didn't argue, and within fifteen minutes, we were on our way.

By the time we arrived, Ingrid Kuzyaev is holding a crumpled search warrant in her fist and moving to one side to allow the intent heavy boots to go from room to room. Cupboards opened, drawers pulled out, books feathered, rugs lifted.

For Ingrid, this must seem like one more indignity added to a steaming pile. A dead husband and a traumatised young daughter.

Tight-lipped and tired, I watch her body language, looking for signs of deception or omission. Instead, shy, and unadorned, she strikes me as private and uncomplicated.

On the other side of Welham Green, not far from the cottage, a long unbroken line of police officers shuffles across open ground. Uniformed. Silent.

They call it a fingertip search, but nobody is crouching on hands and knees.

Detective Chief Inspector Sandra Burton is on a bridge, and her fist clenched around a cigarette, rasping orders. She's dressed in a parka jacket and Wellingtons. They're using police dogs to trace the route that Daler Kuzyaev took while out jogging.

We walk towards the Kuzyaev's, where Ingrid has retreated outside, leaving the police searchers to do their worst. Pulling a cardigan tight around her chest, she lights a cigarette and ignores the stares of neighbours who have gathered to watch. Not embarrassed. Past caring.

Something topples and break upstairs. Ingrid glances at the window and flinches. Then she gazes past me as though imagining another life—different choices.

Pulling a crumbling tissue from her sleeve, she has to squeeze it together to wipe her nose.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs Kuzyaev."

Before she can respond, another police car pulls up in the lane. Sandra Burton emerges and walks quickly down the path to the front door. She signals towards Blanche and me, wanting me inside.

Apologising to Ingrid, we follow the DCI through the house to a workshop in the back garden. An old motorcycle, partially disassembled, takes up much of the floor space—one entire wall above the workbench filled with every tool imaginable. Beneath the bench, there are clear plastic drawers containing nails, screws, brackets, nuts, bolts, welding equipment, and soldering irons. On the opposite wall, a series of shelves hold grease guns and cans of motoring oil. The workshop was a proper one, kept neatly ordered by a man who perhaps dreamed of being a craftsman but settled for something else.

Burton sits in a tall office chair with a wonky wheel. Her feet propped on a milk crate.

"I've heard about you, Mr Grave." She laces her fingers together on her chest. "And, of course, I know you, Miss Bradbury."

"Hello, Sandra," Blanche chirps.

"I have a hypothetical question for both of you," she said.

"Go on."

"Two months ago, medical checks required by a life insurance policy gave Daler Kuzyaev a clean bill of health," she began. "Nevertheless, I have been instructed to announce that he died naturally of a heart attack. In a few days, a press release will announce that a range of toxicology tests had revealed nothing suspicious in his system. There will be no evidence to suggest that there was any third-party involvement in his death, and the case will be closed."

Blanche and I sat in silence.

"However, if I ordered Blanche to carry out a fresh battery of tests and she got in her plant expert friend from Kew Gardens, they would identify traces of a deadly poison in his stomach. The toxin will come from a rare Chinese flowering plant called gelsemium nicknamed heartbreak grass because its leaves trigger cardiac arrest if ingested."

"How do you know all this?"

"Because the Assistant Commissioner told me before I got here on how all this is going to pan out."

"So, we're buggered before we even start," I say.

"Not necessarily," Burton said. "You could go to Paris."

"Paris?" Blanche exclaims.

"None of Daler Kuzyaev's family, friends, knew what he had been doing in the French capital. The only clues are that the financier took a Eurostar train, and his credit card statements showed he'd booked into two hotels simultaneously. Furthermore, Kuzyaev returned with a €1,000 receipt from a top store on the Champs-Élysées and yet nothing to show for the purchase."

"Go to Paris, find out what he was doing there and who did he meet up with," she said, "he stayed at the Le Bastille in Paris. Then, if you find what you're looking for, I will back you all the way when you come back."

"Why are you doing this?"

There's no hint of triumphalism in her tone. Instead, I sense that her instincts had been right.

"It will look like I botched the investigation because I did not immediately suspect foul play, even though Kuzyaev was high-profile and in the Kremlin's crosshairs. Being told to look the other way because Russians invest in real estate and property is not how I do things."

"I'll follow the money," I said.

"Good," Burton said, "and find out where it all ended up?"