For the Sake of the Game Page 5

  He studied me. “Have you told the police he’s missing?”

  “Yeah, they’re gonna care that some random American won’t answer his sister’s texts. Or that his cat’s been kidnapped and a dog has stolen her collar.” The thief in question was now dozing, emitting fitful dog snores. “Nope. I’m gonna throw in my lot with you, Kingsley-if-that’s-even-your-name.”

  “Not entirely your call,” he said.

  “I can be persuasive.”

  “Persuade me.”

  “I’ve got a gun in my purse,” I said. “Once you catch up to your Russian friend, the one we’re following to Norwich, it could come in handy.”

  An eyebrow went up. “Nicked that, too, did you? From the tunnel?”

  “Yeah. Which wasn’t easy, given that I was in the dark, in a hurry, and hauling a dog.”

  “Is that it, then?”

  “I’ve also got your wallet. You’re flat broke.”

  The other eyebrow went up. “Pinch any bullets?” he asked, and held out his hand.

  “You didn’t give me much time.” I passed him the wallet and our fingers touched. He smiled. “Fair enough. Even a non-loaded weapon is a weapon.”

  The countryside out the train window raced by, deeply green, with hills so rolling they looked fake, accessorized by contented-looking sheep. To someone used to the parched fields of southern California, it was downright exotic. Kingsley, in the seat opposite, had a view of coming attractions, while I watched what we were leaving behind.

  Kingsley and I had steaming cups before us, thanks to the Greater Anglia Railway dining coach. Kingsley was a far cry from “Mirko”—unrecognizable, even—but even so, it took confidence to risk running into the guy he was tailing, just for a cup of tea. Not that I was complaining; he’d brought me back a black coffee. I didn’t ask how he knew my beverage preferences. Perhaps I had a speck of ground espresso on my earlobe.

  “I’m a consultant,” Kingsley said, stirring his milky tea. “I was hired to investigate the clandestine dealings going on at the shop of Mirko Rudenko. Having tapped his phone, I heard Mirko converse with a woman named Sarah Byrne, in a dialect called Surzhyk, a hybrid of the Russian and Ukrainian languages in which I am conversant, but not fluent. So when Sarah Byrne made an appointment with Mirko, I rang up your brother to come eavesdrop with me.”

  I blinked. “Robbie’s a spy? You guys are spies?”

  “No, a consultant,” he repeated. “Robbie, of course, knows eastern European dialects the way a sommelier knows wine. I needed his expertise.”

  “Okay, whatever. Go on.”

  “We met outside the shop—’round the back—and listened through the flap of a dog door as Sarah Byrne and the Renowned Mirko had cream tea and a tarot card reading. All nonsense, of course, the tarot business, but then talk turned to gemstones.” Kingsley’s eyes lit up. “Mirko told Sarah he’d recently acquired a red diamond for a client. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’ But when she stood, she was suddenly unwell. Mirko expressed concern. We heard the sound of creaking wood, people moving about, and then—silence.”

  “They’d gone into the tunnel.”

  “They had. If Mirko suspected foul play, he’d certainly avoid the front door. Robbie and I let ourselves in and found no one in the shop but a French bulldog. He was clawing at the bookcase so near the point of entry they may as well have posted a sign saying, PRESS HERE FOR SECRET PASSAGEWAY.

  I glanced down at the snoring Gladstone.

  “Although it did take me seven minutes to find my way in,” he went on. “Embarrassingly slow. I left Robbie in the shop, as a safety measure. I’ve been locked in cellars once or twice, and wasn’t keen to do it again.”

  “And did you find Mirko and Sarah Byrne?” I asked.

  “No, but I could hear them, at the far end. The woman was growing hysterical. I listened for their exit, and then moved fast. Do you recall the tunnel’s final meters, where the brick floor ended and the last bit was dirt?”

  “No.”

  “Try to be more observant,” Kingsley said crisply. “Fresh footprints, one of them a lady’s spiked heel, size four—six to you Americans—told me she was short, plump, vain, and increasingly unsteady on her feet. Mirko half-carried, half-dragged her those last meters and up the stairs, through Tesco’s and onto the street. Which is where I found them. I helped them into a taxi, and in the process managed to acquire Mirko’s mobile and the remote that opened the tunnel door. You’re not alone in your pickpocketing skills. By this point Mirko was also feeling seriously ill, so I accompanied them to University College Hospital.”

  “Didn’t they think that was odd?” I asked.

  “Not once I saw who ‘Sarah Byrne’ was. She wore an absurd black wig that fell off as we bundled her into the taxi, revealing her to be as blonde as you are. I recognized her at once as Yaroslava Barinova. I had only to profess myself her greatest fan and beg the privilege of helping her. Frankly, they were both too sick to care.”

  Poison, I thought. “And who is, uh, Yaroslava—?”

  Kingsley sighed. “The greatest mezzo-soprano since Frederica von Stade. I saw them to hospital, got them admitted, and texted your brother with an update.”

  “And?”

  He looked at me steadily. “I’ve heard nothing from Robbie since that day.”

  I stared at him.

  “Breathe,” Kingsley said, and I realized I’d stopped. “I found his mobile on Mirko’s bookshelf, its battery dead. Not in itself a sign of trouble; your brother’s careless about such things. I returned it to his flat, by the way.” He frowned at me. “Stop leaping to dire conclusions. We haven’t sufficient data, and you’ll be no use to me in Norwich if your amygdala hijacks your cerebral cortex.”

  “That’s an oversimplification of cognitive processes,” I snapped.

  “Don’t quibble with me; I wrote a monograph on the subject.”

  I said, as casually as I could, “So what happened to Mirko and the mezzo-soprano?”

  The pause scared me as much as the words that followed. “They were poisoned, of course,” Kingsley said at last. “They’ll be dead by the weekend.”

  Norwich, the end of the line, had an actual train station, old and stately. Kingsley and I strolled through it side by side, with Gladstone waddling between us. “Look relaxed,” Kingsley said, “but prepare to move quickly. We’ll soon need a taxi.”

  Our quarry was Igor, the Russian who’d come to the shop.

  Igor had been the first call on Mirko’s cell phone, after it was in Kingsley’s pocket and Mirko off to the hospital. Kingsley could tell, from Igor’s Russian and his use of the formal pronouns, that the man hadn’t met Mirko. This gave Kingsley the confidence to impersonate the psychic when Igor offered to come round and collect a red diamond, and hand off a suitcase of rubles.

  “He had one moment of doubt,” Kingsley said, “but I’m extraordinarily convincing as a gemologist.”

  “Old school money laundering,” I said.

  “A refreshing change from offshore banking,” Kingsley said.

  “Delightful,” I said. “But what’s Igor got to do with my brother?”

  “With luck, nothing. But we must eliminate the impossible.”

  While Gladstone and I had hidden behind the screen, Kingsley, in a feat of deduction involving Igor’s footwear and clods of dirt—he’d apparently written a monograph on that, too—had determined that Igor was bound for Norwich, and on either the 11:52 train, or the 12:04. So here we were in a town with the kind of bucolic vibe I’d come to expect from watching Masterpiece Theatre. I had no trouble spotting Igor as the train crowd dispersed, outside the station. He was a hulking figure, mostly bald but with a patch of red hair. Wearing a bright green windbreaker, he lumbered through the cobblestone streets with a bearlike gait.

  We followed him to the town center, thick with boutiques and cafés. A large after-school crowd, noisy kids in plaid uniforms and their attendant adults mixing in with gen pop, mean
t that Kingsley and I didn’t worry about being spotted. But Igor never looked back. He headed to an open-air marketplace, an Anglo-Saxon sort of souk in the shadow of a Gothic cathedral, with row upon row of vendors under striped awnings. We kept our distance now, and when Igor stopped at a kiosk we stopped too, twenty yards back, and Kingsley bought French fries served in newspaper. We then made our way up terraced stone steps overlooking the plaza.

  “I assume Igor’s getting his red diamond appraised,” I said, nodding at a blue awning marked: POPOV Fine Jewelry, bought and sold. Walk-ins welcome.

  “Chips?” Kingsley pushed the French fries toward me, but as they were covered in vinegar, I passed. Gladstone, however, helped himself. “And what will the appraiser tell him?” Kingsley asked me.

  “He’ll say, ‘Igor, I hope you didn’t pay more than thirty bucks for this because it’s a third-rate garnet plucked from some dog or cat collar with a Swiss Army knife.”

  “Very good,” Kinglsey said. “Not a garnet, though. Swarovski crystal.”

  I scratched Gladstone’s neck, my fingers finding the empty setting where the crystal had been. “Where’s the real diamond?”

  He shrugged. “The tunnel, I imagine. Some government functionary will be months getting that place sorted.”

  “Wasn’t it a risk, giving him a fake rock?”

  “It shouldn’t have been. But I fear I’ve miscalculated,” Kingsley admitted. “I expected he’d go straight to his boss, at Finchlingly Manor, six kilometers down the road. Where government agents are waiting to take Igor into custody. That’s where I planned to question him.”

  “But why wouldn’t he authenticate the diamond?”

  “Because Mirko was well-trusted. The Cartier of money-launderers. The De Beers of Marylebone. You don’t survive in his trade by ripping off customers.”

  “Mirko isn’t going to survive,” I reminded him.

  “And Igor has just reached the same conclusion regarding himself.” Kingsley stood abruptly. “Off we go.”

  Igor lumbered along at a good clip now, leading us across a pedestrian overpass into a working class neighborhood.

  “Where’s he off to then?” Kingsley asked. “If not to his employer, or the train station, or the airport—”

  “Church,” I said. “To pray for his immortal soul.”

  “Nonsense. If he were the churchy sort, Norwich Cathedral was right in front of him.”

  “But that’s Anglican, right?” I asked. “He made the sign of the cross as he left the marketplace.”

  “That wasn’t the sign of the cross, it was psoriasis. He’s been scratching regularly. And in any case, Anglicans also cross themselves.”

  “But Anglicans cross left to right for the Holy Ghost part,” I said. “Igor went right to left. What do you bet he goes to a Russian Orthodox church?”

  “I’m not going to bet with you. Wouldn’t be sporting. I’ve failed only four times in my entire career, and—now what’s he doing?”

  What Igor was doing was staring at his phone as he walked, twice doing a one-eighty, the sign of a man at the mercy of Google maps. Seven minutes later he reached a one-story brick building with all the charm and spaciousness of a vacuum cleaner store. A sign near the door read RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH. But the door was locked. Igor rattled it twice, then gave up and checked his phone.

  “Let’s go question him right now,” I said.

  “Have you never done a proper ambush?” Kingsley asked. “We need privacy. Pity that church is closed.”

  “Yes, pity that Russian Orthodox church is closed.”

  “Don’t gloat,” he said. “It’s unattractive.”

  Minutes later Igor got his bearings and took off, with us following, until Gothic spires came into view, rising out of the drab suburbs.

  “Cathedral of John the Baptist,” Kingsley said. “Roman Catholic. He must’ve converted. And unless there’s a mass in progress, that’s where we’ll make our move.”

  St. John’s was what a cathedral should be, all white marble and stained glass resplendent in the dying light of late afternoon. A dramatic Pietà dominated the left half of the church, just past the transept, and that’s where Igor stopped. He genuflected, crossed himself and knelt.

  Kingsley and I found a pew near the back. “It’s weird to be in a church with a dog,” I whispered. “And a gun. Why ambush him here?”

  “We won’t ambush,” Kingsley answered. “We’ll converse. Note his body language: he’s dying to confess.”

  As if he heard us, Igor straightened his spine, turned, spotted us and bolted.

  Kingsley was after him in a flash, leaving me to grab Gladstone and follow, down the nave toward the altar, a left at the Pietà, around the back and out the side door. Igor was faster than he looked, sprinting across a parking lot and into someone’s backyard.

  But it wasn’t a backyard, it was an entrance to a park. We sped down a walkway, past a sign saying PAY HERE pointing to an “Honesty Box,” through a vine-enclosed path and around a bend, into a glorious sunken garden.

  The garden was rectangular, ending in a beautiful stone facade. Igor headed that way, then peeled off to the right, scrambling with difficulty up a terraced wall and disappearing into a thick copse.

  “Go left,” Kingsley called over his shoulder. “The understory! I’ll take the right!”

  Having no idea what an understory was, I nevertheless scurried up a side stairway, and into a thicket so dense, day became night. I set Gladstone down onto the forest floor and unclipped his leash so he wouldn’t strangle himself, and made my way blindly forward, thinking I may as well have been back in the tunnel. I imagined Kingsley doing the same on the opposite side of the garden while our quarry waltzed back out and onto the street.

  And then there he was, on the path in front of me.

  Igor looked more startled than threatening. He stared at my hand, and I looked down too, to discover I’d drawn the gun from my purse.

  Our eyes met. He was pale, and from the ears up, bald. From the ears down he sported a fuzzy glob of red hair, a clown wig cut in half. It gave him a hapless air, Larry of the Three Stooges.

  I tried to say “Stop” in Russian but what came out was zdravstvujtye, which of course meant “good day” which was equally useless. Because Igor had already stopped and neither of us was having a good day.

  “Where’s my brother?” I blurted out, and then “Gde moy brat?” before realizing that this man would have no idea who I was, let alone my brother, in any language.

  “You can shoot me,” he responded, in very good English. “Please.”

  Maybe it was the influence of the Honesty Box at the entrance, but I said, “I’m sorry. My gun isn’t loaded.”

  At that point Kingsley came crashing through the thicket behind Igor. He looked at my gun and between gasps of breath, said, “Let’s go down to the garden and find a nice bench, shall we?”

  Kingsley was right about one thing: Igor was dying to unburden himself. Mopping his sweaty brow with his windbreaker sleeve, he said, “I was hired by—”

  “Spartak Volkov,” Kingsley said. “We know all that.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I don’t know all that. Who is Spartak Volkov?”

  “Russian émigré,” Kingsley said. “Tons of money, ties to both your government and mine. He hired Igor to assassinate—”

  “Sarah Byrne,” said Igor, nodding. “A simple job.”

  “For one with your skill set, yes. You’re a poisoner by vocation and a baker by avocation. Your passion is pastry.” Kingsley said, and then, noting Igor’s surprise, “I saw it immediately.”

  “But how? You are not psychic!” Igor said.

  “There are bits of calcified dough on your collar,” Kingsley said. “Your fingers are stained from food coloring. Red Dye #3, which you must’ve brought from Moscow, as it’s banned in England. Only an aficionado travels with his own food coloring.”

  “I use but a drop,” Igor said, a tad defensive. “For my
icings. Okay, and my jellies. Because Sarah Byrne, she loves to eat the English desserts. This I learn from Spartak Volkov. He makes my job easy. Sarah Byrne has been a long time from England, he tells me, and she visits now and wants her cakes. She will die for her cakes.”

  “Victoria Sponge: arguable,” Kingsley said. “But Spotted Dick?”

  “Banoffee!” Igor said. “Figgy Duff!”

  “What on earth are you people talking about?” I asked.

  “The remains of their cream tea,” Kingsley said. “Masterfully done, Igor.”

  “I paid the chauffeur,” Igor explained. “He tells me she goes on Thursday to a psychic. I set up my cart, outside the shop. I wear my apron. My hat. She comes. She buys. Two of everything! She goes into the shop. I hear through the window: Mirko makes tea, they eat her cakes.”

  Little hairs on the back of my neck sprang to life, but I couldn’t yet account for them.

  “But when I report to Volkov, he grows mad! The woman, yes, the woman should die, he says. But Mirko? No. Because Mirko the Psychic, he tells me, is also Mirko the—the—” He waved his hands.

  “Money launderer?” I offered.

  “Fence?” Kingsley suggested. “Procurer? Black Marketeer?”

  “Yes! The whole world trades with Mirko! Everybody loves Mirko! Russian, Ukrainian, Bosnian, Herzogovinian—”

  “Yes, yes,” Kingsley said impatiently. “We get the drift. So you’re in trouble. You call the number on the sign in front of the shop. I answer. You’re relieved: Mirko is alive, you think. And Mr. Volkov is particularly relieved, as he has given Mirko a very large down payment on a very small rock. And now Mr. Volkov sends you with the balance, to collect his diamond. Like a common courier, but what choice do you have? Come, no need to look amazed, Igor. I happen to be a genius. But tell me: something made you suspect I was not Mirko. What was it? My accent?”

  Igor shook his head. “It was the sign. ‘Walk-ins welcome. Both kinds.’ Do you remember? I say to you, ‘I myself would like to be a walk-in. How does this work?’ But you did not answer. At first I thought, you don’t know the answer. But then I thought . . . .” he shrugged. “We were there for business. For diamonds, not for spirits. We did not have all day.”