The Half Truth (14 page)

Martin had been waiting outside in the car for John. The two men were now heading for an address a few miles away. As they joined the A259, a black 4x4 slipped into the traffic behind them.

John looked in the wing mirror.

‘They’re letting Adam drive?’ he said.

‘Yeah, he’s been nagging them so much to let him drive the Range Rover, I think he wore them down in the end.’

John looked at the road ahead of them. ‘How certain are we that this is the address for the Bolotnikov brothers?’

‘About as certain as we can be with anything in this game,’ said Martin. ‘It’s an old farm cottage on a back road which has been empty for a couple of years, apparently the owner went into a nursing home. A few weeks ago, the farmer who lives at the end of lane noticed lights on one night. He thought it was squatters or something and phoned it in.’

‘Did the local police go and have a look?’

‘Yep. All checked out, apparently. It was the nephew. Just visiting, making sure everything was okay with the house. ’

‘So, this is where you tell me how our Russian brothers are connected,’ said John.

‘The house is owned by one Alice Smith, or as she was formerly known, Natalia Muratov.’

John mulled the name over. He knew it, but was having trouble placing it. He saw the grin on Martin’s face. He was enjoying having one up on his partner. John thought hard.

‘Muratov. I’ve got it. Ivan Muratov, cousin to the Bolotnikovs’ grandfather.’

‘Yep. Now you can see where we’re coming from.’

‘Makes sense. Those boys have got to be holed up somewhere,’ said John.

‘How’s Tina?’ asked Martin as they powered east along the dual carriageway.

‘Bearing up,’ said John. ‘She’s a strong woman.’

‘Has she said any more about the attack?’

‘Only confirmed what we thought. It was Pavel who came and sorted out our two Russian guests.’

‘On his own?’

‘No. He had someone with him. Sounds like it was Sasha,’ said John, checking his mobile phone. ‘She said she thought it was Sasha at first, but that she was mistaken.’

‘And you believe her?’

‘You seem to ask me that question on a regular basis,’ said John.

Martin shrugged. ‘You’ve neatly side-stepped giving me an answer, though.’

John tapped the screen absent-mindedly with his forefinger. ‘There’s something. I don’t know what it is yet. Whether she’s waiting to tell me something or ask me something, I’m not sure.’

Martin left the dual carriageway at the next roundabout, turning left and heading north.

‘ETA two minutes,’ he said.

Both men lapsed into silence as they considered their arrival at the cottage.

They cruised to a stop a few metres short of the entrance to the dwelling.

‘I can’t see any cars in the driveway,’ said John. ‘I suppose they could be parked up in that barn at the back.’ He took out his binoculars and scanned the area, then the house itself. ‘No sign of life anywhere. Come on, let’s move in. Nice and easy, we don’t know if they are armed.’

It was a frustrating raid. The cottage was empty. There were signs that it had been occupied very recently; the bins contained discarded food and empty takeaway cartons.

John swore as they regrouped at the vehicles. ‘Looks like we were too late. They must have had the jump on us.’

‘No one outside this circle knew we were coming,’ said Martin. He kicked the tyre of his car in frustration.

‘But the Bolotnikovs did. How the hell did they know?’ said Adam. ‘What about the wife?’ His voice faded.

John’s glare was enough to stop him mid-flow.

‘Don’t even go there,’ warned John. Then, to reassure his team, he added, ‘She didn’t know about this. She couldn’t have given them the heads-up, even if she wanted to.’ He made a point of making eye contact with each man, daring them to even think Tina might have been a mole.

‘There is one way they could have known,’ said Martin. ‘If they were in Belfour Avenue watching the house.’

‘So, if we’re here and they’re there …’ said Adam.

‘Shit,’ said John. ‘Let’s go.’

The knock at the front door startled Tina. She hadn’t been expecting John back so quickly. She stopped as she saw the silhouette through the door’s glass panel. That wasn’t John. It was too short, too stocky.

She knew who it was, though. Oddly, she was neither surprised nor frightened. She had been half expecting this. Maybe not quite so soon, but she knew it would happen at some point.

Tina opened the door.

‘Hello, Pavel,’ she said, her voice measured. She couldn’t claim to be pleased to see him. This was no happy family reunion.

‘Hello, Tina.’ He gave a small nod. ‘Get your coat. We do not have much time.’

Tina did as she was told, picking up her handbag at the same time.

Sitting in the car as it sped along the A27, Tina took out her phone and arranged for her mum to collect Dimitri from school.

‘I’m meeting an old friend. It’s all a bit spur of the moment,’ she said. A lie. ‘Thanks ever so much, Mum. I really appreciate it.’ A truth.

John was out of the car, almost before it had stopped. He sprinted up the path and, using the spare key Tina had given him, he pulled himself up and walked calmly into the house.

He called out her name, but he could tell she wasn’t there. The house had that empty feel; one when you knew you were alone. The kitchen door was closed. He took it as a good sign. She must have left of her own accord, allowing time to shut Rascal in the kitchen. Maybe she had gone for a walk or to the shop.

When he looked in the living room, however, his relief turned sour. He took in the open briefcase, the confidential file and the photographs scattered across the coffee table and sofa.

‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ He pulled his hand through his hair and thumped the door with his palm.

‘John?’ Martin came up behind him and looked into the room, taking in the debris of papers. ‘Yep, it’s definitely a fuck moment.’

John began gathering the photos up and replacing them in the briefcase. He stopped at the postcard on the floor. Picking it up, he looked at the front and then at the back. He stood up.

‘I think I know where she’s gone.’ He handed the card over to Martin.

‘Brighton?’ said Martin. ‘But it’s for “Chris” – whoever that is.’

‘Chris. Short for Christina.’ John picked up the file from the floor and threw it into his case. ‘Tina. Also short for Christina. It’s what he called her. A pet name for his wife.’

Tina stepped onto the boardwalk of the pier and for a moment she wasn’t sure if her legs would take her forwards.

The off-shore breeze licked at her arms. Step by step, Tina walked further along the pier. The fourth bench on the right, facing east, her destination.

And then he was there. He must have seen her at the same time. The world around her stopped spinning. Life was put on pause as he looked back at her. For that moment, there was no one else on the planet.

He’d aged a lot in five years. More than she was expecting. He had deeper frown lines on his forehead that she remembered and his dark hair had a few flecks of grey above his ears. His eyes were the same dark pools of ebony, but now there was an intensity, a haunting that hadn’t been there before.

His skin looked more weathered and he had lost some weight. He had the look of a troubled man. But, despite all this, he was still Sasha Bolotnikov. He was still the man she had married and had loved so completely.

Then he was walking towards her, his pace increased with every stride. Tina realised her legs were already carrying her forward. The metres between them rapidly diminished. The last few steps found her running and in seconds she collapsed into his arms. She held onto his neck as if clinging to the last strand of grass on the edge of a cliff. As if her life depended on it. In actual fact, she was clinging onto her past.

‘Tina, Christina, my Chris,’ he muttered over and over again into her hair. ‘I knew you would come.’

She pulled back from the embrace. This was where she wanted to slap him as hard as she could.

‘You sent me to hell and back,’ she said, her voice wavered slightly. His eyes dropped away and when he looked back at her she could see tears fighting to escape as he struggled to compose himself. ‘How are you?’ she asked him like she had just met up with an old friend but she needed to hold onto a bit of normality.

‘I’m okay,’ he said. His accent was stronger than before. A sign he had not been living in the UK. ‘You?’

Tina nodded. ‘I was,’ she managed to say. She wondered when she was really last okay. Before Sasha died she was okay. She was very okay. But since then, she wasn’t sure. Maybe since John had been about she had become okay again.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sasha, his hands held the tops of her arms and he looked directly into her eyes.

‘Since I got your postcard, I have been going through all the possible things you would say to me,’ she said. ‘Sorry was top of the list, but it doesn’t even begin to cover what I’ve been through.’

‘I know …’

She cut him off. ‘Don’t you dare tell me you know. You have absolutely no idea.’ The anger was simmering inside her. ‘I thought you were dead. My heart broke. I was broken. I have never known pain like it. I didn’t think I could come back from it. I was free-falling into an abyss of pain and desolation that knew no end. Do you understand what you did to me? Do you?’

Tina was aware her voice had risen an octave as the anger turned into a rolling boil. She shrugged his hands from her and thumped his shoulder. She didn’t care. She punched his chest with her other hand. Then both together. She pummelled him.

For a while he stood still and allowed the blows to batter him. Then he held her wrists, saying her name over and over again. He pulled her into a bear hug.

‘I hate you,’ she sobbed. At that moment she really meant it. She hated him and yet she loved him. She cried for a long time, vaguely aware that Sasha had led her over to their bench. Eventually she calmed down and began to regain her composure, whilst reassuring a concerned passer-by that she was okay.

Tina disentangled herself from Sasha. She needed a physical distance. She looked out across the English Channel, desperately suppressing the thoughts and memories of that time long ago when they had sat there. When they had been so happy.

‘You do not hate me,’ said Sasha. ‘You just hate what I have done.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

‘It is not the same.’ His voice was soft but firm.

‘Convince me.’ Tina threw the challenge down to him.

Sasha looked around. Tina watched his eyes scan the faces in the crowd. He shuffled uncomfortably on the bench, turning slightly to face her.

‘It is not what you think,’ he said.

Tina gave a derisory laugh. ‘I was told, by your own brother, that you were dead. That you had been killed in a car accident. I believed him.’ Her voice was ragged as the feeling of utter misery came storming right back to her, like it was only yesterday. The taste of the salty air settled in the back of her throat. ‘I thought you were dead. My soul partner, the father of my unborn child, the love of my life, the man who I loved more than anyone else in the world, had been taken from me. Never had I known pain like that. Before or since.’

‘I want to explain,’ he said.

‘You have exactly ten minutes to explain, otherwise I’m walking away and going back to my life as a widow.’

‘It is very complicated,’ said Sasha.

‘I’m hoping so,’ said Tina, not able to keep the sarcasm from her voice. ‘I wouldn’t want it to be a straightforward, easy reason, like you didn’t love me. No, I definitely want it to be a long, complicated reason.’

He didn’t say anything for a moment, waiting for the spike of anger to dull. He wet his lips before speaking.

‘When we lived in London and had the deli, I always told you that the money to set it up had been a bank loan,’ he began. ‘Well, that was not the truth.’

‘So, you lied to me from the very start?’ Her heart began to sink. The betrayal had begun from the moment they met.

‘It was from my grandfather,’ said Sasha, choosing not to answer her question. ‘He made me promise not to say where it had come from. The money was not supposed to come out of Russia.’

‘Why?’

‘Please, Tina. My grandfather, he had a hard life, he had to make his own way in the world. He came from a very deprived background. His family were very poor and they had to do many things that would not be accepted in the Western world – just to put food on the table.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that he got the money through criminal activity?’

‘Yes.’ He held her gaze, his own was challenging. ‘He became a very successful businessman, but he could not keep all the money in Russia. He expanded into Europe.’

Tina couldn’t help the laugh that freed itself. ‘Oh, my God, Sasha, you make it sound like something from a gangster movie. Your grandfather was involved with organised crime in Russia and he smuggled money into the UK.’ Sasha wasn’t laughing. He sat silently, his eyes answering her questions. Then she realised what Sasha was telling her. The laugh died. ‘Money-laundering,’ she said. ‘Your grandfather was money-laundering through the deli business.’

Sasha shrugged. His indifference firing the outrage within her. ‘You knew and you didn’t say anything. You let me become involved. You let me become party to a big international criminal ring.’ It was beyond belief and, yet, it was totally believable given what else she had learned in the last few weeks. ‘You bastard.’ She hissed the words at him. She gripped her hands so tightly together that her nails dug into her palms. When she opened them, she had drawn blood. It didn’t hurt. The pain of what Sasha had done was far too great. It swamped every other feeling in her body and soul.

‘I could not tell you. If I did, then you could be implicated if it all went wrong,’ said Sasha. ‘I was protecting you. The less you knew, the better it would be.’

Tina didn’t know if that was true or not. Would that argument stand up in a court of law? She had no idea. She didn’t say anything, but waited for him to continue.

‘Everything went well with the deli. You know that. We were busy. We had lots of customers. All that was real, that was true. We had a good life together, didn’t we?’

His arm rested on the back of the bench and his fingers stroked her shoulder. Tina wanted to pull away but she couldn’t. They were so happy together in London. They laughed. They loved. They enjoyed life. They were in their own cocoon. They hadn’t needed anyone else. Sasha and Tina, an independent unit; they functioned as one. Well, that’s what she believed. But in the end it had been a lie.

Tina felt the tears sting her eyes. Sasha’s touch stirred up such conflicting emotions. She buried her face in his arm and allowed him to draw her towards him. She had grieved for him and now she was grieving for their past. The past that had only been a half-truth.

‘What went wrong?’ she said, lifting her eyes now the latest round of tears had abated. She felt exhausted. She needed to know. She couldn’t walk away and not know the truth.

Sasha held her hands. His palms were rougher than she remembered, his nails shorter, the skin around the tips of his fingers jagged and torn.

‘I have much more manual work to do these days,’ he said, answering her unspoken question. Tina thought how they used to do that a lot. Be able to anticipate each other’s words. Finish the other one’s sentences. A single look between them could share the amusement of something they had seen, no words needed. They had been good together.

She caressed his hands with her fingers. She wanted to kiss them better. To kiss away the present and the nightmare she was an unwillingly part of. She looked long and hard into his eyes and, with unspoken words, urged him again to continue.

‘What went wrong?’ he repeated. ‘Pavel went wrong.’

Tina knew how much it was hurting Sasha. He adored his older brother. Sasha looked up to Pavel with a reverence reserved for the best of church-goers.

‘He got greedy. Got himself involved in some bigger fish.’

‘The Porboski gang.’

‘I did not know at first, I swear to you,’ said Sasha. ‘But I found out. I told him it was dangerous, that we were out of our depth. But, you know Pavel, he would not listen. He had a taste of life in the fast lane and he was not slowing down. He became involved with armed robbery.’

Tina sucked in a deep, salty breath of air. ‘And you?’

Sasha shook his head vehemently. ‘No. Well, not at first. I did not want to become involved in anything like this. I had you to think about. How could I put you in that position? Put you at risk? You were the most precious and pure thing in my life and I would not risk it for something as dangerous as that.’

‘But not precious and pure enough to stop you money-laundering,’ said Tina.

‘I kept you out of that. Why do you think I never let you become involved with the finances of the deli? I did not even like you handling any of the cash. I did not want you even touching what was not true.’

He was right. He had always done the cash-handling himself. She hadn’t questioned it at the time. It was his business and seemed only natural that he would want to deal with the banking.

‘It still doesn’t make it okay,’ she said.

‘I know.’ He dropped his head for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb, a gesture he always made when under pressure. Tina quelled the ripple of sympathy this evoked within her, countering it with thoughts of his ultimate betrayal.

‘You have a son,’ she said at last, her voice so quiet, she could barely hear it herself. ‘He’s called Dimitri.’

‘Dimitri. It is a good name,’ said Sasha.

She looked down at her hands, blinking back the tears gathering in her eyes. This was so hard. They were talking about their son and, yet, only one of them knew him. It just shouldn’t be like this.

‘He’s a good boy,’ she said.

‘Like his mother.’

‘He looks like his father.’

‘I know. I have seen him.’

‘So it has been you following me. You’ve been in the house when I wasn’t there. Was it you … that night … on the stairs?’

‘No. That was not me,’ said Sasha. ‘I am sorry. It was Pavel. He was impatient. I did not want him to go. He thought he was helping me.’

‘But it was you the other times?’

‘Yes.’

‘Part of me wishes I never found all this out. But now I know, I can’t undo it,’ said Tina. ‘I don’t understand why you were creeping around. What were you looking for? What else has Pavel done?’

Sasha shifted position. His jaw tightened and a pulse thumped in his neck. He shook his head. ‘He has done what needed to be done.’

‘The Russian at the dock.’ It was a statement, not a question. Sasha didn’t need to answer. His silence told her everything.

They sat side by side for a few minutes, looking out to sea, as if admiring the view. Tina watched the waves roll back and forth, scrambling over the pebbles. A couple walked along the water’s edge, hand in hand, laughing together, sharing a moment. On the outside the world was a sunny and bright place, on the inside, Tina knew life was much darker.

‘You didn’t answer me. Why you were in the house. Why you faked your own death,’ she said, hoping her voice would hold and not break with emotion.

‘Can we walk?’ Sasha asked. ‘I do not want to sit here for too long.’ His eyes swept the pier, checking the faces that came their way.

‘Who are you hiding from?’ she said, suddenly feeling unsettled. Memories of the attack back in the café resurfacing.

‘No one. I just do not like sitting in one place for too long.’

‘The truth, Sasha! Tell me the whole truth,’ said Tina. She wasn’t going to be lied to any more, no matter how big or small the untruth.

He took her upper arm in his hand and hoisted her to her feet.

‘Tina, please?’

She considered refusing but didn’t know what that would achieve, apart from drawing attention to them. Despite everything, her natural instinct to protect Sasha kicked in. She fell into step as they made their way off the pier. Tina and her un-dead husband.