Farewell to Russia: A Pyotr Kirov Detective Novel by Jim Williams

Author:Jim Williams [Williams, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marble City Publishing
Published: 2014-12-11T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

George Twist had once prided himself on his sense of place: not on knowing his way about, though a street map inside his head was a useful enough possession, but on having a feeling for the concreteness of a city, the fine distinctions that made this one different from that one. Now he had lost it.

‘Reminds me of Bond Street,’ said Evans, meaning that there were art galleries slotted between the milliners and café patisseries along Bulevardi. ‘London in autumn always did appeal to me.’ He squinted at the bright morning sunlight across the cobbled roadway at the office of Suomi Filmii. ‘Plane trees – are those plane trees, George? This place would suit Betjeman: “the many-bobbled planes”.’

‘Sycamores.’ The opposite pavement was planted with their saplings.

‘Near enough. Mind if we sit down for a second? I’ve got something in my shoe.’

The small garden had been a cemetery, but was now grassed and open onto the street. The headstones were still there as conversation pieces; there was a stone archway and also a monument to the Germans who had died for Finnish independence, which, as Evans observed, seemed strangely out of character for the Germans, who were normally engaged in the other thing. The lawyer sprawled on one of the green benches and flexed the toes of his right foot as he continued blithely, ‘Lovely weather, crisp,’ as if this were the season for buying dummy corporations and the sport wouldn’t be rained off.

‘Hey, George, look over there!’

George trailed his eyes round. He had been thinking that Helsinki was still special. There had been a girl, once, before Lillian; but that had been a long time ago. She was an opera fan; they had strolled along Bulevardi to the Opera House, arm in arm, she with a white cardigan slung over her shoulders and a light cotton skirt. Otherwise her appearance was forgotten: he could remember only her seriousness about music, a certain curiosity in her eyes, a smile when he hummed a tune by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

‘It’s an embassy – Danish, I think. So what?’

Evans was pointing to a house standing near the corner of a side street. Helsinki was a small town, and the embassy buildings were unusually prominent. There was a cluster of the more civilised ones in the secretive, leafy avenues near Kaivopuisto, and a leper colony for the likes of the Iraqis and Chinese in the brasher suburb of Kulosaari, where, on their off days, the Chinese could be seen swarming over their building like coolies, doing a paint job.

‘Next to it,’ Evans insisted. A travel agent with advertisements for Ibiza, Rhodes and Torremolinos stuck in the window. ‘The name, George, the name!’

The travel agent was called Spies.

‘Very amusing,’ George assented flatly. A green streetcar went past in clanking spasms. It carried posters for Hoover and Costa Rica (where spies take their holidays, George wondered, and why not?) ‘For fuck’s sake.’

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