Scorn

Robert was an impressive man, a talented man, a man who had found his place in life by depending solely on himself. Others chose to believe in God or Fate or Karma or whatever you called random occurrences. Woolly concepts like these repelled him; they were for immature people not in control of their own lives.

The evening he lost everything had started well.

He walked into the restaurant, gave a perfunctory nod to the hostess, who jumped to take his hat and sheepskin coat, and strode leisurely to the table, accepting curious glances from women, fielding abrupt once-overs from men.

At fifty-six, tall, with an army-trained posture, a large leonine head, a hawk nose dominating his face, he was attractive. For sure, he looked after himself, and he was powerful - much more so that many in Moscow – but there was more to it. His sense of superiority was innate – Robert didn’t remember it ever not being there, and it only grew stronger as the years went by.

The girl was waiting for him at the table. He had met her by chance a few months earlier, at a friend’s birthday party in one of the downtown restaurants. She was the right kind – mid-thirties, in good shape, well-groomed, subtly made up. He noticed with pleasure that her eyes lit up with a mixture of interest and admiration when she saw him.

“Hello,” he said, bending down and giving her a warm hug and a kiss. “So happy to see you.”

He ordered Rioja, steaks for both, salads. They held hands. She talked of what she was doing – something with languages – and he watched the crowd. A standard Friday selection – office workers in white shirts, girls, hoping to meet wealthy men, sipping white wine and flicking blow-dried hair, businessmen on their phones. A man in his thirties, bald, with a good physique, watching them from a nearby table.

“I am stronger than him, you know,” he said, noticing with his side vision that the girl was looking at the man and savouring the effect his comment made.

Robert had kept their meetings rare enough that she knew the essentials – his version of the events - and had no access to his life to question or disprove it. He was divorced, with two grown-up boys and an unfortunate love affair that had ended his marriage and in which he had behaved like a saviour and had been mistreated like one. He had a young child with that second woman, a girl he saw too rarely, as her mother was bitter about him not marrying her. He was a maverick, misunderstood, with a brilliant mind and a vulnerable soul, a version close enough to reality, save the last bit. In truth, he despised vulnerability and held the view that blaming oneself never worked.

She was asking about his work. Robert sighed, making a face – it was complicated, people only wanted to hear themselves, he said. He kept this part mysterious – he was a mathematician, held a military rank, and worked for one of the secret government agencies. The first time she had asked what he did, he had taken a napkin and drawn a rocket on it.

“I calculate how they fly,” he had said, smiling benevolently.

“War rockets? Syria?” she had asked, eyes widening.

He had kept smiling, not denying, not confirming.

She would do a google search and find a single brief notice, dated several years ago, about him being awarded by Putin for his extraordinary contribution to the defence industry. It was more than enough.

They finished the Rioja, and Robert ordered another bottle. He was looking forward to the night – the girl was good in bed, quick to warm up, attentive to his needs. But she was saying something about having to go, she had an early morning meeting, an interview, in fact.

Robert felt anger rising – he had wasted three or four hours, and he valued his time above all else. His life was well-oiled, efficient, his attention targeted, his efforts minimal. He was proud of that.

He ignored the girl’s question about meeting the following week. When he was angry, Robert knew, his only flaw – the cold, penetrating expression in his hooded narrow eyes – could not be hidden, making him appear lizard-like. He motioned for the bill and called her a taxi.

It was around nine thirty when he came out of the restaurant into the snowy street. The night was young, and he could go on, go to another restaurant or a club, pick up a girl. But he was no longer in the mood. Traffic was appalling; the six-lane street glowed red as far as he could see. He considered taking the metro, which would be faster, but the thought of others close to him was intolerable. He headed to the parking lot.

It took half an hour to get out of the centre. The four by four crawled, stopped, took off again. Finally, Robert left the main avenue and headed down the streets he knew well, sighing with relief. He felt tired. At home, he would take off the suit, change into a pair of old sweatpants and sit in bed, reading.

He stopped at the familiar light at the last intersection, two blocks away from his house, and watched the people crossing the road. Dark-coloured coats, warm hats and hoods, men wearing big boots and women clinging stubbornly to heels. He hated winter in this city.

The orange light came on, and, knowing exactly when the lights would turn green, he accelerated. Probably a second, two at the most too early, he thought morbidly afterwards. A dark shape on the left, a thud, a muffled scream - they all came too fast to register. He slammed on the brakes, the four-by-four jerked, slid, the breaks engaged, sending him forward, and the car stopped. His heart went cold.

The first phone call he made from the police station was to his friend Andrei.

“A problem,” he said, “there’s been an accident, how soon can you get here?”

Andrei arrived within an hour, which Robert spent in the company of two policemen giving a statement. Andrei introduced himself and took over, and Robert was taken to a different room and left alone. He waited, looking at his hands folded on his knees. They were shaking, he noticed.

Andrei came in and sat down so close that Robert could smell his aftershave.

“You can’t leave,” he said. “Things are not looking good. The woman you hit, she has just died – rupture of the liver – and the breathalyser test they’ve got … it’s three times over – well, you know – over zero.”

Robert was about to point out that was mathematically impossible when he realised that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Andrei thought it was not good, and Andrei was a top criminal lawyer, they did not employ anyone below the top.

“What do I do?” he said and immediately corrected himself. “What do you suggest?”

The police would detain him at the station, Andrei said, probably until Monday, when they would assign an investigator. Andrei could act for him officially – he leaned in and whispered into Robert’s ear, making him cringe - if they were lucky, they would secure a house arrest. Unofficially, the right calls had to be made –Andrei would handle that. Robert was not to talk to anyone without him.

“Leave it to me, buddy,” Andrei said.

Robert narrowed his eyes. No one, not even those in his closest circle, dared call him anything other than Robert, a name his parents had chosen wisely, meaning Bright Fame. He allowed women to call him Rob when he was in a good mood.

“Take my keys and bring me some clean clothes,” he said.

“They won’t release the keys to anyone now.”

“Then go and buy clothes. And make the calls.”

An indifferent-looking policeman took him to a cell. It had four bunks, a metal toilet without a lid and a radiator. The window was barred, but there was bed linen and the cell appeared clean. It would do. He wasn’t staying long.

Robert took off his sweater and lay down on the bed, arms underneath his head, breathing deeply. He had faced crises before, plenty of them, and knew he could think coolly.

He was well-connected. Andrei was sure to reach the right people. He would get off on technicalities – the woman had stepped into the road without looking; the green light for pedestrians must have gone off by then. The breathalyser test could be swapped. The relatives would be compensated, generously. The situation was grave, of course, but not hopeless, not with the help of the right people.

He made a mental list, replaced a couple of names with those higher up the chain, and drew a line under thinking. Turning over on his side, he stretched out on the narrow bunk and slept.

Andrei arrived in the late afternoon of Saturday. His face, ordinarily transparent to Robert, showed no emotion. They sat together on the bed in the cell, conferring in low voices, with Robert doing his best not to scream in frustration. Andrei had met with several contacts, and they in turn had made their own enquiries. There was camera evidence in addition to the breathalyser test. But the checks on the woman had met a wall – they still did not know who she was. She had disappeared, like a stone thrown into murky water.

Robert gave Andrei three more names –the people you went to last, the trump cards. Andrei’s eyebrows went up; at any other time, Robert would have smirked smugly; now, on this narrow bunk, he fought the desire to strangle Andrei for giving him so much power over himself.

On Monday, they met with the investigator, a dry-looking man about Robert’s age. The case against him was initiated, but the strings pulled behind the scenes got him a house arrest pending trial.

Andrei and he swept the flat for bugs; it was clean. For the first two days, he clung to hope, dialling numbers on an anonymous mobile Andrei had given him, talking cautiously, framing questions in his usual suggestive manner, setting meetings for Andrei to go to. He thought he was getting somewhere.

It came out in the last phone call. The woman – he avoided thinking of her as the victim, the term the investigator had used - was the daughter of a government minister, a man beyond reach, a man whose power was unassailable. A man who was going to bury him.

He knew then that it was over. His place in life, the place he had fought for, smoothed his way to, paid for with his own essence and guarded against others tooth and nail – was lost. He was too rational and too experienced to deny the truth - there would be no way out and no coming back.

The police came on the third day, and Robert was taken to a detention centre. At the trial, he was sentenced to seven years. The correction facility was only thirty kilometres from Moscow, Andrei said, in a way that suggested an accomplishment. He was allowed visits. Maybe a few friends from work would come, maybe his sons. The women….well, there would be no women. He had called his lover, the mother of his little daughter, who had asked if his assets had been frozen. His ex-wife had said something about karma, laughing bitterly on the other end of the line. He had snorted and hung up.

What happened was a random occurrence, a miscalculation on his part. The idea that the accumulated weight of his past actions or an invisible hand of justice had something to do with his downfall was preposterous. The weak ones would wonder, wanting to surrender control, seeking redemption. A man of his talent and calibre could be sure – there was no one above him.