A Negotiable Instrument

Chapter Thirteen

Tursunov set out straight away, hangover gone, appetite whetted, and found an alleyway across the street from the address Ostrikova-Buhmann had written in his notebook in her tiny, spidery, almost unintelligible hand. The factory was old and unloved, left to die like so many in the area surrounding Vereiskaia Street and along the banks of the Obvodnyi canal. No doubt it was soon to be demolished, another sacrifice to perish on the altar of the apartment building mania that was sweeping the city. Apartment buildings were growing ever-higher and more lucrative as the city's population continued to expand at an extraordinary rate. The builder would be granted the necessary permissions and exemptions only upon payment of the obligatory bribes and inducements. The apartments would be built, costly and time-consuming regulations avoided, with sub-standard materials and second-rate workmanship to keep costs to a minimum.

The builder's friends and business contacts would buy apartments and then let them to other less wealthy friends and business contacts. They would then sub-let them to their friends and business contacts, and so on down the line. Each link in the chain, naturally, taking their cut. The actual family who lived, often eight or more to a room, in the divided and then sub-divided apartment might rent it at up to ten removes from the actual owner. The overcrowding was often appalling, disease and misery endemic. The death and destruction that trailed in the wake of the munitions these factories had once produced, Tursunov thought, was being slowly transmuted by the mysterious alchemical properties of supply and demand, the market forces that were sacrosanct to the predatory capitalist, into the exploitation and suffering of the poor of Piter. The men who made the profits, he knew, remained the same.

He lit a Zefir and tried to ease the tension in his shoulders. The factory was quiet. He had seen nobody enter or leave and no signs of movement from within in the two hours he had been watching. The street had got busier in the last few minutes as midday approached and thoughts everywhere turned to food. He had the same thoughts, heightened by the need to make up for the torment inflicted by this morning's seven hairy devils.

He always found surveillance a trial by combat. On one side was the need for constant vigilance and the concentration required to focus on the important, filtering out the extraneous. Ranged on the other side was the vast panoply of physical and psychological needs, wants, and peccadilloes of the watcher that constantly prodded, scrabbled, and clawed at the edges of hard-won professional skill and experience. Hunger was one, thirst another, boredom a third. He also had the constant nagging at the back of his mind that he was wasting his time. The old woman had appeared genuine in her desire to help but he couldn't be sure. Even if she had told him the truth there was no way to know whether Stangl's associates were still using the same building. He was also uncomfortably aware that he should have returned to headquarters and collected enough men to raid the factory, rounding up anyone, and any evidence, they found. He had chosen not to for one very simple reason. He couldn't take the chance that the Okhrana would find out what he was planning to do and either warn the gang or make the raid themselves.

The noonday cannon rang out from the Peter and Paul Fortress, a reliable and reassuring daily presence to the average Petersburger, one they would only notice in its absence. To Tursunov it had become a daily provocation, a constant reminder that the Okhrana's dungeons, hidden away in the bowels of the fortress, always had room for one more heretic. The thought that the cells had been graced by the presence of such luminaries as Dostoevsky and Chernyshevsky did little to reassure him. As if propelled by that same cannon, a sinister revenant haunting its place of creation, a large man was discharged from the side door of the factory and began to hurry along the street. His progress was hampered by a pronounced limp and by the careful side-on manner in which he carried his large frame. The man looked like he had received a beating, possibly a broken rib. Tursunov set off in pursuit with no pretence at hiding his intent, knowing there was no way the man could outrun him. He let the man round the corner, out of sight of the factory, before he caught up with him.