Straker looked up and down the avenue. Moving out into the middle of the ride he looked along it to the left. At the far end of his sightline, across the bend in the river, was the floodlit Alexander Nevsky Church – where he’d just been dropped by the taxi.
Straker scanned down the avenue in the opposite direction, to his right. The clearing headed off – deeper into the park, deeper into the darkness. That was the way he was going.
Straker was keen to move on.
He stayed in close to the treeline, tight to the right-hand side, as he jogged on for a quarter of a mile.
It appeared as nothing more than a shadow in the gloom.
Up ahead, to the left of the avenue, he could make out a shape. Something not out of keeping. Then he knew he was in the right place; he could hear the sound of plastic tape gently crackling in the breeze.
Straker dropped to walking pace.
Behind the police cordon was a man-made mound – fifty-or-so yards long running along the same axis as the left-hand edge of the avenue. The top of the bank was level with treetops all around. Its shape had been smoothed, sculpted, turfed and mown. Looking up and down the avenue again, to make sure he was still alone, Straker moved in even closer. The strip of plastic police tape was now right in front of him.
He ducked under the tape and climbed up the slope of the mound.
Straker reached the crest.
Expecting to see something of the Zhar-ptitsa Autodrom Grand Prix circuit in front of him, all he got – in the darkened gloom – was an inkling. Straker could only rely on his rod cells to see at that point. Everything was an indistinct black and dark grey.
He looked over the top of the whole Grand Prix complex, to see whether there was to be any imminent lightening of the darkness. Close to the level of the horizon he could make out the first dark-grey hint of dawn. Arriving on site considerably earlier than expected, Straker realized his study of the ground – in this light – was going to be a challenge. Waiting for more light was not really an appealing option. More light increased the risk of his being seen. And that could lead to Straker being discovered – without authorization – in the middle of a police-impounded crime scene.
THIRTY-ONE
Standing on the top of the bank in the dull Moscow morning, Straker lowered his eyes to the grassy bank below him.
This, then, was the scene of the infamous crash.
Thirty-four people – at the latest count – had been killed right here.
This was where Sabatino had had her miraculous escape and been lucky enough to survive. Would she now be able to escape twenty years’ hard labour? That thought, alone, motivated Straker to push on with his mission.
As the night slowly lifted, the horror of the scars left by the crash emerged through the gloom. First, there were the black gashes in the grass and turf directly below him. Then Straker could see some of the debris thrown from the car, missed by the police in their clearance of the site. A few minutes later, an outline of the wire mesh fence began to emerge, no longer appearing as a fuzzy grey stripe edging the circuit. With this marginal clarity came sight of the puncture wound through the mesh: the two severed ends still hanging slack, tapering out from the point of rupture. Then he could see the remains of the concrete wall. Rubble was strewn in a semicircle out from the hole that had been punched through it.
Straker readied himself to start his detailed assessment. Suddenly he was not alone.
There was an unexpected arrival.
He heard it first.
An engine, over to the right, from behind the trees. Straker dived to the ground. Following the course of the Grand Prix track, a car – travelling quickly – emerged from the woods, straight towards him. Straker swore. He’d been caught out in the open. A row of lamps above the vehicle's cab cast a huge beam ahead of it, lighting up each side of the cavern-like swathe as it moved between the trees.
Straker shielded his eyes. He almost felt the light beam wash over him.
How could he have not been spotted?
Then: Shit!
The car's engine note was dropping – a fall-off in revs.
Was it stopping?
They had seen him.
With relief, Straker heard the engine note start to increase again. The car had rounded the bend and was carrying on around the track.
Straker lifted himself off the ground. He had to get on with this. A pen and notepad were pulled from his pocket. Orientating his sketch to the east, he drew the layout of the scene.
Half left, stretching into the dark, where the car had just gone, was the end of the Hermitage Straight. Straker mentally plotted how Sabatino had charged down this – directly towards him. She should have then swept left – left to right, as Straker was looking at it – round the gentle curve, to head down the slight slope – away from him, half right as he looked at it – towards the next turn. Instead, Sabatino had careened on dead straight, leaving the track to land directly at his feet.
With the slowly improving light, Straker could begin to see more detail of the gravel trap on the outside of the bend.
And that was why he was here.
Straker did not want to become a silhouetted shape on the top of the mound. Dropping a short way down the forward slope of the dew-covered grassy bank, he set about recording a variety of angles and distances from there.
Ten minutes on and the sky was properly turning to grey. It gave the area a ghostly feel. Straker was soon ready for his next stage. Turning side on, to prevent his feet slipping on the damp grass, he made his way to the bottom of the slope, towards the gravel trap on the outside of the corner. To get there, he would have to climb through the hole in the fence – the point of impact.
Straker sidled down and reached the wall just to the left of the breach.
There, he had to navigate his way round one end of the ripped wire mesh hanging from one of the uprights. This end of it, like the one on the other side, splayed outwards. Straker had to place his feet carefully, anxious not to disturb anything. When he looked down to do so, though, his heart rate surged.
A cursory glance of the mesh had allowed something to catch his eye.
What had he seen?
He had to double-check to work out what it was.
