received. In effect, this was dragging their pay down. This was what the demo was about.
Hanlon had flashed a forged NUJ card she had and, claiming to be a freelance journalist, had joined in. One of the protestors, Beth, had lent her the mask. Beth had one too. Hanlon was hoping to catch a glimpse of her real quarry, Arkady Belanov.
This demonstration was beginning to cost the Russian a great deal of money. None of Belanov’s customers wanted to use his brothel while the protestors were there. Belanov charged a couple of hundred pounds an hour for use of a girl, minimum. More for specialist services. His clients were well heeled, well connected. Many of them worked directly or indirectly for the university. Many were dons, lecturers in the colleges. They were frightened in case one of the protestors knew them or local media might appear with cameras. They certainly didn’t want spouses, students or colleagues asking them what they were doing there. They were as camera-shy as wild animals.
It was setting him back several thousand pounds a day. He watched the demonstration now out of one of the upstairs windows, together with Dimitri, his minder, and a third man, local to Oxford and non-Russian.
The two Slavs made a distinctive couple. Arkady Belanov was porcine, extremely obese, virtually hairless, his eyelashes and eyebrows so pale they were practically invisible. He looked like a huge, malignant baby. His enormous stomach presented him with a perpetual clothing problem, familiar to all fat men: trouser belt under, so the rolls of fat overhung, or belt over the gut, like a parody of pregnancy wear.
The onesie had been a wonderful development, ideally designed for someone of Belanov’s shape. He often padded around the brothel in one. Today, though, he was wearing a turquoise velour two-piece tracksuit. A mockery of athleticism. Heavy rings adorned his strong, sausage-like fingers.
His companion, Dimitri, a head taller than the other two, was also wearing a tracksuit. But with his overly developed muscular physique, a hard-core bodybuilder’s ridged, ripped and defined muscles, it seemed appropriate. Non-ironic.
He had on a sleeveless, low-cut vest beneath the unzipped top, his pecs like hot-water bottles, and the third man, Detective Inspector Joad, surreptitiously examined Dimitri’s intricate array of tattoos that were visible over the inverted arc of the material. He didn’t like tattoos usually, or Dimitri, come to that, but even Joad was impressed with the artistry and theatricality of the body art. One evening Dimitri had been very drunk and had good-humouredly explained them to Joad.
The colourful multi-onion-domed cathedral on his chest (Joad had thought it was the Kremlin at first), one dome for each year served in prison.
The dagger round the neck showing he had murdered while in prison. The two drops of blood that dripped from its end the number of murders.
The spider on one shoulder in its intricate web denoted a high criminal rank.
There were plenty more. Skulls, slogans in the Cyrillic alphabet that Joad couldn’t read. One of them, he remembered, meant I live in sin, I die laughing.
There were universal symbols that needed no explanation, like a roaring tiger and a swastika that covered his arms. Unseen, but the policeman knew they were there, were thieves’ crosses on his knees, indicating that Dimitri kneeled for no man, and fetters around his ankles that referred to the length of Dimitri’s various prison sentences. All of Dimitri’s criminal history, like a graphic autobiography, inked on to his skin. The illustrated man.
Although it was only ten o’clock in the morning, all three men were drinking Ruskova vodka, a cheap, potent brand that reminded Arkady of home in Moscow. Good old Nizhny Novgorod, he thought with affection, thinking of the city where the vodka came from and where he’d opened his first brothel. He’d worked for the owner, then made him a business offer, later
Hanlon had flashed a forged NUJ card she had and, claiming to be a freelance journalist, had joined in. One of the protestors, Beth, had lent her the mask. Beth had one too. Hanlon was hoping to catch a glimpse of her real quarry, Arkady Belanov.
This demonstration was beginning to cost the Russian a great deal of money. None of Belanov’s customers wanted to use his brothel while the protestors were there. Belanov charged a couple of hundred pounds an hour for use of a girl, minimum. More for specialist services. His clients were well heeled, well connected. Many of them worked directly or indirectly for the university. Many were dons, lecturers in the colleges. They were frightened in case one of the protestors knew them or local media might appear with cameras. They certainly didn’t want spouses, students or colleagues asking them what they were doing there. They were as camera-shy as wild animals.
It was setting him back several thousand pounds a day. He watched the demonstration now out of one of the upstairs windows, together with Dimitri, his minder, and a third man, local to Oxford and non-Russian.
The two Slavs made a distinctive couple. Arkady Belanov was porcine, extremely obese, virtually hairless, his eyelashes and eyebrows so pale they were practically invisible. He looked like a huge, malignant baby. His enormous stomach presented him with a perpetual clothing problem, familiar to all fat men: trouser belt under, so the rolls of fat overhung, or belt over the gut, like a parody of pregnancy wear.
The onesie had been a wonderful development, ideally designed for someone of Belanov’s shape. He often padded around the brothel in one. Today, though, he was wearing a turquoise velour two-piece tracksuit. A mockery of athleticism. Heavy rings adorned his strong, sausage-like fingers.
His companion, Dimitri, a head taller than the other two, was also wearing a tracksuit. But with his overly developed muscular physique, a hard-core bodybuilder’s ridged, ripped and defined muscles, it seemed appropriate. Non-ironic.
He had on a sleeveless, low-cut vest beneath the unzipped top, his pecs like hot-water bottles, and the third man, Detective Inspector Joad, surreptitiously examined Dimitri’s intricate array of tattoos that were visible over the inverted arc of the material. He didn’t like tattoos usually, or Dimitri, come to that, but even Joad was impressed with the artistry and theatricality of the body art. One evening Dimitri had been very drunk and had good-humouredly explained them to Joad.
The colourful multi-onion-domed cathedral on his chest (Joad had thought it was the Kremlin at first), one dome for each year served in prison.
The dagger round the neck showing he had murdered while in prison. The two drops of blood that dripped from its end the number of murders.
The spider on one shoulder in its intricate web denoted a high criminal rank.
There were plenty more. Skulls, slogans in the Cyrillic alphabet that Joad couldn’t read. One of them, he remembered, meant I live in sin, I die laughing.
There were universal symbols that needed no explanation, like a roaring tiger and a swastika that covered his arms. Unseen, but the policeman knew they were there, were thieves’ crosses on his knees, indicating that Dimitri kneeled for no man, and fetters around his ankles that referred to the length of Dimitri’s various prison sentences. All of Dimitri’s criminal history, like a graphic autobiography, inked on to his skin. The illustrated man.
Although it was only ten o’clock in the morning, all three men were drinking Ruskova vodka, a cheap, potent brand that reminded Arkady of home in Moscow. Good old Nizhny Novgorod, he thought with affection, thinking of the city where the vodka came from and where he’d opened his first brothel. He’d worked for the owner, then made him a business offer, later
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