Moscow USA. Gordon Stevens
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open and children playing on the green areas between the apartment blocks. They approached the junction with Krasikova Ulica and the entrances to Profsojuznaja metro station. The buildings here were more grey and featureless, arcades of shops along the street and brightly painted kiosks selling liquor, food, vegetables and bread along the pavements on each of the roads leading into the junction, men and women milling around them. Sherenko turned left at the lights, stopped in a pull-in for buses and trams in front of a line of kiosks, and got out, Kincaid behind him.
Most of the kiosks on this stretch of road were selling alcohol or cigarettes; the doors were locked and the vendors were seated inside behind a small window. Sherenko checked along the line, stopped at the third, crouched slightly because the windows were low, examined the bottles on display, and pointed.
Stolichnaya.
Small bottle.
The woman inside took a bottle from a shelf, and placed it on the wooden ledge inside the window. Sherenko counted out nine 1000-rouble notes, passed them through, and the woman passed him the bottle. Sherenko checked that the seal on the top was intact, checked the writing on the label, checked the number stamp on the back of the label, turned the bottle over and checked that the glue on the back of the label ran in wide even lines, shook the bottle and watched for the vortex of bubbles. When he was satisfied the vodka wasn’t counterfeit he turned back to the car and put the bottle in the glove compartment. The evening was still warm, still sunny. They drove up the hill and turned into C’urupy Ulica.
Kincaid left the subway and crossed to Belle Vue hospital. Manhattan was noisy around him, a helicopter in the sky above and the wail of police sirens from the other side of the block.
Washing hung from the balconies of apartment blocks on the right and children played on the grass in front. A woman pushed a pram and a young couple walked together, holding hands. They passed a tennis court, also on the right, two thin girls playing with one ball and broken rackets. Silver birches lay on the ground where they had been cut down during the winter but not sawn up or hauled away, foliage still clinging to them and children playing in them. A dog crossed the road in front of them.
Kincaid stepped through the reception area. Time running out already, he knew. And he shouldn’t be here anyway.
The building to the left was new and low. Beyond it was another, set back from the road and grey, seven storeys high. Sherenko passed the modern building, passed the grey building, and turned left down the rough earth track along its far side. The link metal fencing on either side was torn, grass and weeds growing up through it, and the security gate at the bottom was hanging off its hinges. Beyond it was a second grey-brick building, two storeys high though the height and shape of the wide doors in front suggested there was only one level. Two policemen lounged in the doorway and a rubbish skip lay in the weeds to the right. A young man with blond hair, blood splashed over his surgical greens and white boots, fetched something from one of the three cars parked on a dust patch in front.
Sherenko parked, got out, nodded at the policemen and shook hands with the attendant. A bird was singing in a tree behind the grey-brick building. Kincaid left the car and glanced inside. The building was dark and cavernous, high ceiling, no upper levels, and a large concrete floor with a tarpaulin over something in the centre. No bodies, though. The attendant went into an office on the right and returned with two pairs of surgical gloves. ‘I’ll see you down there.’
The corridors smelt of antiseptic and the hospital bustled around him. Kincaid picked up the signs, turned left, then right. Checked his watch and hurried on.
Sherenko took one pair of gloves, gave Kincaid the other, and walked past the building. The area was rough and overgrown, grass and weeds growing on mounds and through a tangle of metal to the right. In front of them and to their left a ramp dropped underground towards the block on the road at an angle of around twenty degrees. The surface had been tarmacked at some stage but now it was torn and rough, and the sides were red brick, washed over with concrete. It was some fifty metres long, the last ten under the overhang of the ground above.
They walked down. No birds any more, Kincaid realized. The sides now were tarred black as protection against wet and damp, though the black and the concrete were peeling off and the brickwork underneath was decayed and crumbling. They stepped out of the sunlight. There were two doors in the semi-darkness at the bottom. The one to the right was metal and painted black, a padlock on it, and the one to the left was rusted red, no locks visible on it, therefore apparently no way of accessing it. They stood and waited, not speaking. There was a grating sound from inside the door to the left, as if someone was turning a handle, then the door was pushed open and they stepped through.
The corridors were silent around him now, though the smell of antiseptic was stronger. He turned right and stood in front of the door, punched the combination into the security lock, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
The corridor was long; its floor, ceiling and walls were tiled white, but the tiles were discoloured and chipped, and eerie in the low-power overhead lighting. Left, Kincaid assumed, was back to the building at the rear. The attendant turned right. They followed him fifteen metres, turned half right then half left. The door was to the right. It was large and metalled, rusting at the edges and the bottom, a large metal handle in the centre also rusted slightly. The attendant looked at them. ‘You ready?’ He grasped the handle and turned it anti-clockwise, the sound the same as when he opened the main door to the outside, then pulled open the door. The light inside was already on. The attendant moved aside and Kincaid stepped through.
The morgue was empty, but that was the way it had been arranged. No attendants to ask questions and no pen-pushers to request signatures when the footsteps came down the corridor in two minutes’ time. The gleaming white examination slab was in the centre of the floor and the plastic body bag lay upon it. I was point man for you. I was baby-sitting you, Joshua; I was the one who was supposed to bring you through. I was the one Leo Panelli recommended to you, the one in whose hands you put your faith and your trust and your life. And I let you down. He walked round the slab, unzipped the bag, and looked at the face.
Oh Christ, Kincaid thought.
The bodies were naked and stacked on top of each other to the ceiling. Some blue, some white, some a garish tinted orange. Four or five deep, shoulders and heads hanging over one edge of the two tables which ran from the door to the far end, and legs and feet over the other. More on the floor underneath – again stacked on each other – as well as on the trolleys between. Eyes staring at him and mouths open to him. The lighting was in grilles overhead and the refrigeration bars which ran round the walls halfway up were rusting.
Oh Christ, he thought again.
The body nearest him had once been a man. The hair was long and matted, the eyes and mouth were open and twisted so the corpse seemed to be looking at him, the front of the torso was stitched following an autopsy, and the skin was orange. The body on which it lay was white, the one below that tinged a pale blue. The woman on the nearest trolley to him had a scarf tied round her head. A dirty sheet covered her nakedness – the only body covered – but her mouth was still open, her eyes were twisted up so that no matter where he stood they seemed to be staring at him, and the smell drifted out at him. Perhaps her smell, perhaps the smell of them all.
He looked for Joshua and saw the girl.
What had once been a beautiful face. Body still beautiful, breasts still full and nipples still dark on them. Blond hair splayed like corn over her shoulders and long slender legs slightly open as if the male body below was penetrating her.
Sherenko showed the attendant Whyte’s photograph and pulled on the surgical gloves. ‘He went missing yesterday, so where might he be?’
‘Should be at the front, but I’ve been away, and in this place you never know.’
Sherenko nodded. ‘Vpered.’ Let’s do it.
Sherenko picked his way between the two tables and Kincaid squeezed along the narrow space along the wall to the right.
Male, stiff and old, yellow skin and gunshot wound in lower abdomen. Woman, mid-forties,