GANGLANDS, RUSSIA

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Ganglands: Brazil

ROSS KEMP

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Born in Essex in 1964, Ross Kemp is best known for his portrayal of Grant Mitchell in EastEnders. His father was a senior detective with the Metropolitan Police force, and as a result crime has always fascinated Kemp. In 2007 Ross Kemp on Gangs won a BAFTA for Best Factual Series.

EPILOGUE: Old Friends

Secreted in the midst of a well-to-do area of Moscow, Patriarch’s Ponds provided a serene retreat for its locals. Swans glided across the small lake, its waters rippling in the sunshine. It was a warm June day; the bitter snowfalls of winter now a distant memory. As the afternoon ripened into early evening, Muscovites escaped from their stuffy offices to stroll round the edge of the pond, and soak up the sun on the benches that lined the broad footpath. Lazy jazz music wafted over from a nearby cafe.

As the last of the afternoon’s light began to fade, a young couple appeared. They were both in their late teens: a tall boy in jeans and a T-shirt, and a girl in a flowing summer dress. They walked slowly, tentatively, the boy glancing down with concern at his companion. Even though the top of the girl’s head was swathed in thick white bandages, she still drew admiring glances from the men who passed by. Sheltering within the protective embrace of her boyfriend’s arm, she didn’t seem to notice.

‘And he’s just as big a fuss as you are.’ She reached up and kissed Alexei on the cheek. ‘Thank you, though. You have no idea how nice it is to breathe fresh air again. I thought I’d never get that hospital smell out of my nose!’

‘A little too pleased,’ Lena replied solemnly. ‘They want me to go back to Volgograd as soon as possible.’

‘After everything that’s happened, I can’t blame them for that,’ Alexei said. ‘But what about you – what do you want to do?’

Lena sighed, and looked out across the pond. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘The modelling’s certainly out for a while. I don’t think fashion photographers are all that keen on the bandaged look.’

Lena smiled, and squeezed his arm. ‘Maybe I should go back to Volgograd,’ she continued, ‘but it doesn’t feel right somehow … kind of like I’m running away. Does that sound crazy?’

Alexei shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’d still like to study here one day. But right now, wherever you go, I’m going too.’

He had known that from the very second Lena had woken up. It was the only thing that Alexei was sure of any more. The previous eight weeks had been a crazed blur of activity. Having escaped down the hospital’s back stairs moments before the police had arrived in Lena’s room, Alexei had been relieved that his true identity had remained a secret. Although Rozalina Petrova’s release had been splashed across the news reports and the papers, in her account of her ordeal the lawyer had never once mentioned his name, or that of Trojan Industries. The identity of the so-called ‘Good Samaritans’ who had saved her in Novodevichy Cemetery had remained a mystery, despite one tabloid offering a reward of 100,000 roubles if they stepped forward. Comforted by his anonymity, Alexei was able to attend the trials of Pavel, Medved and Marat – which had been fast-tracked due to the intense media glare surrounding their case. He concealed himself at the back of the gallery, watching with silent satisfaction as Rozalina provided a confident and damning testimony against the three men.

When the judge eventually handed down lengthy prison sentences, a piercing scream rent the gallery. Alexei looked across and saw Svetlana clutching at the guardrail.

Medved looked dolefully down at his feet as his girlfriend spat curses at the judge. Officers sprang forward to restrain her. As she was carried kicking and screaming from the courtroom, Svetlana’s eyes met Alexei’s. Hateful recognition flashed across her face before she was bundled outside.

For all her protestations to the contrary, Alexei could see that Lena was starting to tire. He led her over to a bench and sat down beside her. A copy of the day’s Moscow Times lay abandoned on the wooden slats, its pages rustling in the soft breeze. Its headline blazed ‘BILLIONAIRE TYCOON ARRESTED’. The accompanying photograph showed Boris Lebedev being led out of the entrance of his Construktko building in handcuffs. Just as Darius Jordan had predicted, someone in the Moscow Eagles had implicated the tycoon. Apparently, the authorities had already frozen Lebedev’s assets – Lilya was going to have to wait a while for a new fur coat. The Moscow Times was already eagerly anticipating Russia’s ‘Trial of the Century’.

As he sat in a comfortable silence with Lena, his arm around her shoulders, Alexei felt his skin tingle in warning. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a slender figure watching them from the trees. It was Nadia.

Perhaps he should have been more surprised than he was. In a strange way, Alexei had expected to run into Nadia again. There had been a couple of times when he had thought about phoning her to check that she was OK, but somehow it hadn’t seemed right. She must have felt the same, because she hadn’t contacted him either.

Alexei got to his feet. ‘I’ve just seen someone I’ve got to speak to,’ he whispered to Lena. ‘Don’t run off anywhere.’

Alexei strode over to where Nadia was waiting, her hands clasped awkwardly in front of her. The blonde-haired girl’s face was grave, and there were dark rings beneath her eyes. She smiled uncertainly as Alexei greeted her.

‘I was waiting outside the hospital for you. I wanted to talk to you but you came out with your girlfriend and I didn’t want to intrude.’

‘Marat told the police that I had uploaded the videos of the Eagles fighting on the net. Apparently once he started talking, he couldn’t stop – he implicated anyone who’d even heard of the Eagles. They’re going to charge me with abetting hate crimes. There’s a good chance I’ll end up in prison.’

‘They can’t do that!’ Alexei protested. ‘Without you, Rozalina would be dead! I’ll tell the police that!’

Nadia smiled sadly. ‘What will you tell them, Alexei? That I helped your secret gang-busting organization stop my brother? Marat tried to implicate you, but when the police couldn’t track you down they thought he was making it up. And they won’t believe you either – they’ll think you’re making it up to get the reward for saving Rozalina.’

‘I don’t know,’ Nadia said softly. ‘But I should have found a way. My brother’s gone now, and I want to make a fresh start. But I’ll never be able to move on if I don’t pay the price for what I did for the Eagles.’ She paused. ‘I haven’t slept properly since Viktor killed himself. Maybe when I’m in prison …’

‘I don’t understand,’ Alexei said, with a frown. ‘If you’re under arrest, how come you’re out here?’

Nadia nodded behind her. Peering through the trees, Alexei noticed a man in a suit standing unobtrusively over by a set of railings.

‘Police escort,’ she said. ‘I promised them more information if they let me say goodbye to an old friend.’

‘Nadia …’ Alexei began hesitantly. ‘Whatever happens, I won’t let you face it alone. Even if you do go to prison, I’ll come and visit you as often as I can.’

Nadia shook her head. ‘Your girlfriend is waiting for you. She needs you more than I do. Goodbye, Alexei.’

She turned and walked away without looking back. With a slight shake of the head, Alexei returned to the bench, where Lena was shielding her eyes from the sunlight as she observed his approach. ‘Pretty girl,’ she remarked. ‘Friend of yours?’

Alexei watched as the man in the suit escorted Nadia away from the pond and helped her into the back of a white, unmarked car.

‘I hope you haven’t been playing around behind my back,’ Lena said, with mock-seriousness.

‘Never,’ Alexei replied, kissing her on the forehead. ‘Come on. Let’s get back to the hospital. I promised Uncle Stepan I’d cook for him tonight, and he gets grouchy if his dinner is late.’

As she got to her feet, Lena caught Alexei glancing at the newspaper headline. She gave him a shrewd look. ‘Why do I get the funny feeling that something’s gone on that you’re not telling me about?’

A thoughtful look passed over Lena’s face. ‘I remember when I woke up …’ she murmured, ‘when I first saw you again … your face was bloodied and bruised. It looked like you’d been fighting. Did you get beaten up in the ring again?’

‘I got knocked down a few times,’ Alexei replied, gently squeezing Lena’s side as they walked away through the waning sunshine. ‘But I won in the end.’

1. Hate Crimes

Lena Saroyan hurries through Mayakovskaya metro station, her trainers squeaking softly on the tiled floor. At this time of night, the station is relatively quiet, the breathless crowds that press the Moscow underground during rush hour having thinned to a trickle of commuters. Even so, there had been a lengthy queue at the ticket booth, and Lena is running late as it is.

Even as she rushes, she can’t help but admire her surroundings. Lena has been living in Moscow for only three weeks, and the labyrinthine underground system still makes her as wide-eyed as a child – especially Mayakovskaya, with its colonnaded central hall, resplendent in white and black marble and pink rhodonite, and high vaulted ceilings inlaid with mosaics. Every time Lena travels down the long, snaking escalators, it feels as though she is travelling to the very centre of the earth.

At the bottom of the escalator, a male announcer in a glass booth openly stares at Lena as she walks past him. Lena barely notices. Even though she is only seventeen, she has already learned to ignore men’s reactions to her presence; the leering smiles and the wolf-whistles that follow her as she walks down the street. For this, she has her Armenian mother to thank – or to blame: anyone who has seen the two women together knows the source of Lena’s slender figure, her raven-black hair and her beautiful, feline features.

It had also been her mother who had persuaded Lena to enter a modelling competition back home in Volgograd – an industrial city in southern Russia. Just a bit of harmless fun, she had argued lightly, besides, you might even enjoy yourself. And Lena had enjoyed herself, once she had got over her nerves at parading up and down in front of strangers. Not only that, but she had won, earning herself a six-month contract with an agency in the capital. Which was how Lena had found herself spending the afternoon in a run-down photographer’s studio in the Presnya district of Moscow, modelling summer dresses for a catalogue. Not exactly the Paris fashion show, Lena thinks to herself ruefully, but as Alexei had pointed out, it was all good experience.

At the thought of her boyfriend, Lena smiles. Alexei had insisted on coming with her to Moscow, arguing that he could enrol on an engineering course at the city’s State University in the autumn. Although she was too proud to admit it, secretly Lena had been hoping that’s what he would do. Moscow was a large place to have no friends in, and she always felt safe around Alexei. Only he seemed able to calm her wilful temper – a trait as strong in Lena’s Russian father as beauty was in her mother. In private, Alexei teases her about it, jokingly calls her an angry bear. No one else could get away with that.

Lena checks her watch, stifling a squeak of exasperation. Alexei’s fight was going to start any minute now, and she wouldn’t be there at ringside to support him. It was the wretched photographer’s fault – he hadn’t been happy with the shoot, and Lena had had to sit there, inwardly seething, as he fussily fiddled with her dress and the lighting. Still, at least he had kept his hands to himself. Even after only three weeks, Lena has already heard enough cautionary tales from other models to keep an eye out for photographers’ wandering hands.

She hurries along the central hall, the grand architecture illuminated by rings of electric lights above her head. The serene atmosphere suddenly reminds her of the church she used to go to back in Volgograd, a thought that gives her an unexpected pang of homesickness. Lena decides to call her parents after she has caught up with Alexei. If she ever manages to get to the gym …

Thankfully, a train pulls up just as Lena arrives on the platform. The carriage is half empty: a handful of office workers who must have been working late, and late-night shoppers laden with bags. Lena sits down opposite an elderly Tajik man with a long white beard that is bright against his weathered skin. He waits patiently for the train to move off, his hands clasped in his lap. Lena pulls out a magazine from her bag and flicks through photos of actors and celebrities, idly wondering whether one day she will open up a magazine and find a picture of herself staring back.

As the train continues north along the Green Line, stop-by-stop passengers slowly begin to drain from the carriage. Wearied by her long day in front of the camera, and the lullaby rocking motion of the train, Lena puts down her magazine. Her eyelids droop shut.

Lena smells the men before she sees them: a thick mixture of cigarettes, alcohol and body odour. At once wide awake, she glances up to see two young men barge on to the train. The first is muscular and bull-headed, his shaved scalp gleaming in the carriage lights. He wears a leather jacket over a T-shirt and combat trousers, an air of sullen menace hanging off him like deodorant. The second is a teenager, less heavy-set, his young face topped with short blond hair. A tattoo of a dragon rises up from above his collar and writhes around his neck. He drunkenly surveys the carriage, a look of disgust in his eyes, then raises his right arm in salute and shouts out: ‘Sieg Heil!’

No one responds. The teenager notices Lena looking at them and elbows the other, making a lewd gesture about her breasts. The giant skinhead sniggers.

‘Hey, baby,’ he calls out to Lena. ‘You like what you see? You want to spend time with a real Russian man?’ He grabs his crotch, laughing.

Lena looks down at her magazine, trying to ignore him. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened to her. It was typical, though: of all the carriages in Moscow, she has to pick the one with these assholes in it.

‘Don’t play hard to get,’ the blond-haired one says cajolingly. ‘The Eagles know how to treat a lady. We’ll make sure you’re satisfied.’

Opposite Lena, the elderly Tajik man shakes his head and makes a small sound of disapproval. The teenager looks at him sharply.

‘I asked you a question,’ the boy said, through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t you speak Russian?’

Instead of replying, the Tajik man rises slowly to his feet and moves to find another seat in the carriage. The bull-headed man runs over to him and grabs his arm, unleashing a furious barrage of punches. The older man tries to cover himself with his arms, but it is no protection from the clubbing blows raining down upon him – he collapses back on to the seat. With a whoop, the teenager leaps on to the seat next to him and begins kicking him in the head.

For a few seconds, the other passengers are too shocked to react. But as the violence continues, a middle-aged woman hurriedly collects her bags and goes over to the other side of the carriage; a teenage boy buries his head in a book and refuses to look up. No one wants to get involved. As the Tajik crumples to the floor of the train, Lena stands up, indignation coursing through her veins.

A voice at the back of Lena’s head – her mother’s – is urging her to walk away, to protect herself. But at that moment, Lena is her father’s daughter. Righteous anger takes over.

‘Oh, you’re real heroes, aren’t you?’ she says sarcastically. ‘It takes two of you to beat up a harmless old man!’

The blond teenager strides over to Lena, drenching her in the smell of beer. She forces herself not to back down as he sticks his face so close to hers that their noses almost touch.

‘You’re not pure Russian either, are you?’ he hisses. ‘Typical of you mongrels to stick together.’

‘If you’re the best that “pure Russia” has to offer,’ retorts Lena, ‘I’d rather be a mongrel.’

The boy nods slowly, an amused smile creeping over his face. He turns as if to walk away, then wheels back and gives Lena a shuddering backhanded slap across the face. Her head snaps back, her cheek on fire. Before she can react, he punches her, sending her sprawling to the floor by the carriage door.

The carriage swims in front of her eyes. Dimly, Lena realizes that her nose is bleeding, and that she is not going to see Alexei tonight after all. The blond teenager laughs.

‘Think you’re better than us, you mongrel bitch?’ he snarls. ‘I’ll show you who’s in charge!’

The last thing Lena sees is the giant skinhead standing over her, his fist drawn back, then his arm comes down and everything goes black.

2. Round One

As the bell rang for the first round, Alexei realized that he was in deep trouble.

His opponent came charging out of his corner, catching Alexei off guard with the ferocity of his attack. The other boy was a few centimetres taller than Alexei, and he knew how to make his extra reach tell, moving in behind a series of powerful jabs. Alexei had spent half of his sixteen years learning to kickbox – spending hour after hour sweating in the gym, working the bags, trading punches and kicks inside the ring. He’d never been in better shape. And still he knew, as he backed away towards the ropes, that it wasn’t going to count for anything tonight.

As the two fighters traded blows with one another, there were shouts of encouragement from the meagre audience. Although rows of chairs had been laid out across the gym, a match between two local kickboxing clubs hadn’t proved much of a draw. Friends and family, mostly, and Alexei was a long way from the majority of his. Only his uncle and Lena were with him in Moscow, and Stepan was visiting an old friend that evening.

Concentrate, Alexei! he urged himself. The sheer aggression of his opponent was forcing him on to the back foot. Alexei’s plan had been to stay calm and wait for his opponent to over-commit, but that seemed impossible with the other boy swarming all over him, snarls of effort emanating from behind his mouthguard with every punch.

Struggling to defend against a vicious body shot, Alexei never saw the roundhouse kick coming, only felt the impact as it rattled his skull. As he shook his head to try and clear the fog from his mind, Alexei saw his trainer, Ruslan, wince in his corner. Sensing an opening, Alexei’s opponent redoubled his attack, his punches carrying even greater weight now. Alexei tried to bob and weave out of the way, but it felt as though every movement set him on a collision course with his opponent’s fists. Even though they had only been fighting for a minute or so, Alexei found himself desperately wanting the bell to ring and the round to end.

He tried to throw a couple of punches back, but they were wild swings. His defence was unravelling, he knew. Another kick caught him in the side, and it became difficult to breathe. As a thumping right connected with Alexei’s jaw, he felt his world begin to spin, and then suddenly the referee was standing between them, waving his arms. The bell rang, and Alexei’s opponent strode back to his corner with his arms aloft. Dazed, Alexei allowed the referee to check him for signs of concussion, before walking slowly back to his corner. Ruslan gave him a consolation pat on the back, and removed Alexei’s mouthguard.

His trainer barked with laughter. ‘OK, so you took a beating tonight. You’ll be back. Might even land a punch next time.’

Alexei touched a tender part of his face, wincing. ‘What happened, Ruslan?’ he asked despairingly. ‘I’ve been training harder than ever. Why did I just get my head kicked in?’

Ruslan scratched the stubble on his cheek. ‘What do you want me to tell you? You’re a nice boy, I wish I had more like you. You train hard, you have a good technique, but you lack …’ The trainer tailed off, searching for the right word. He banged his chest over his heart. ‘Fire. That boy you fought tonight, he wanted to kill you. You?’ Ruslan shrugged. ‘You just want a good fight. No fire.’

‘That’s all you’ve got for me?’ Alexei said, with a sideways glance. ‘I haven’t got enough fire?’

Ruslan nodded. ‘And use your uppercut more. When you throw that punch, Alexei, it’s a thing of rare beauty. And I’ve seen a few in my time.’

As he stepped down from the ring apron, Alexei shielded his eyes from the glare of the lights and looked out over the sparse crowd. The girl he was looking for wasn’t in her usual position in the back row. Lena didn’t enjoy watching him fight, Alexei knew, even when he won, but she turned up anyway because she knew that it mattered to him. It was one of the reasons he loved her.

‘My girlfriend,’ replied Alexei. ‘She was supposed to be watching me tonight.’

‘Maybe it was better for you she didn’t turn up,’ the trainer guffawed, slapping Alexei on the back. ‘She sees that fight, maybe she goes home with the other guy.’

He walked moodily back to the changing rooms and showered, the cascade of warm water soothing his aching limbs. Afterwards, checking his reflection in the mirror, Alexei saw that his face was puffy and red – he’d be sporting some impressive bruises by morning.

He was towelling his hair dry when he heard his mobile ringing: probably Lena complaining that her feet were sore from wearing high heels, Alexei grumbled to himself, or some other great modelling trauma. But when he dug his phone out of his kitbag, he saw that the number was withheld.

‘My name doesn’t matter right now,’ the man replied. ‘You need to go to the hospital in Presnya immediately. Someone you care about has been badly hurt.’

With a lurch to his stomach, Alexei thought back to the empty chair at ringside. ‘Not Lena?’

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. ‘Consider me a friend,’ the man said finally, and then ended the call.

Alexei hurriedly stuffed the rest of his things into his kitbag and raced out of the locker room. On the way out, he knocked into his trainer – Ruslan shouted something after him, but Alexei didn’t stop to apologize. He crashed out through the doors and on to the street.

The hospital in Presnya wasn’t far from the kickboxing gym, but Alexei wasn’t going to waste a second. He hailed a passing cab and leaped in the back. As the car negotiated the late-evening traffic, Alexei prayed that the phone call had been some kind of sick practical joke. He’d turn up at the hospital and make a fool of himself by frantically asking for someone who wasn’t there, but it would be all right, because as long as Lena was OK Alexei didn’t care what happened. God, please let it be a joke, he thought to himself.

The hospital was an imposing modern building set back from the road. As the taxi pulled up outside the entrance, Alexei stuffed a ten-rouble note into the driver’s hand and scrambled out. Running at full pelt through the automatic doors, Alexei nearly crashed into the reception desk. A nurse looked up from her computer with surprise.

‘I’m looking for my girlfriend,’ Alexei panted. ‘Lena Saroyan. Is she here?’

‘One moment.’ The nurse tapped the computer keys as she checked her records. ‘She’s in surgery right now.’

‘I’ll get a doctor to come and explain everything to you,’ the nurse replied. ‘In the meantime, if you could please wait over there.’

She pointed to the waiting room, where a handful of relatives were sitting expectantly for news of their loved ones, their faces drawn and pale in the weak strip-lighting. They kept glancing warily back to the other side of the waiting room, where an imposing black man was sitting on his own, his arms folded. Alexei paced across the floor, trying to ignore the horrible thoughts about Lena his mind was conjuring up. As he muttered to himself, he became aware that the black man was watching him with a coolly impassive gaze. Annoyed by the scrutiny, Alexei was about to confront him when a doctor appeared and drew him to one side.

‘A gang of youths beat her up – very badly, I’m afraid to say. Lena sustained some internal injuries that demanded we operated on her immediately.’

‘We’ve staunched the internal bleeding, but she also suffered severe head trauma.’ The doctor paused. ‘Lena’s in a coma right now.’

‘There’s no way we can predict anything at the moment,’ the doctor said sympathetically. ‘For the time being, she’s stable. Would you like to see her?’

ROSS KEMP

Table of Contents

EPILOGUE: Old Friends

1. Hate Crimes

2. Round One