Man on the Inside

1

Brontë shines his torch through broken glass, and the light ripples out across an unfinished concrete room. There's graffiti and dust that might be decades old, but no sign of anything new. No furniture, no papers, no burnt-out cigarettes or broken beer bottles. Nothing left behind.

"Are we sure this is the right address?" Brontë doesn't want to question Nimm too much. He's tired, and when he's tired, everything hurts. Nimm is running her fingers over the twisted metal bars sticking out of the concrete wall. She looks down over the street below; it's late night on a Thursday, and Brontë's vision isn't exactly great, but he can see the roughhousing outside the bars, groups of guys having slightly-too-loud conversations, a shady figure leaning up against a pole and smoking something. Most people he can see are minding their own business, but it's inner-city Melbourne- they're unlikely to find anyone willing to answer two cops' questions about who they might've seen coming in and out of this building.

Nimm sighs. She looks over her shoulder at him. "Did you think he'd still be here, Neil?"

Brontë finds it a little odd when she refers to him by his first name, although she insists on always doing it. He doesn't do it back, partially because you're not supposed to, and partially because she doesn't exactly look like a Susan. She's never asked him not to call her by her surname. "Obviously not. I'm just- I know I shouldn't have expected to find anything. I was just hoping we'd at least find a reason to be here."

"We're lucky we got any tip at all." Nimm turns around, her gaze narrowing as she examines the room. It's hardly a room, with half the wall fallen out, nothing but structure- it's an open-air concrete floor with accent graffiti walls. It hardly seems like a space where anything they were looking for could take place. If they were looking for a drug dealer, this tip might make sense. But they're not. "What else do we have on him?"

"You ever think about that for more than a moment?" Brontë asks, and Nimm looks at him sideways. She walks slowly away from the window, like she's measuring her steps. "This guy. This is the Volkov that we get- the elusive shadow who has none of the hallmarks of the rest of the family? It's not just the nature of his crimes, it's the fact that he's untraceable."

"Are you saying he's not a Volkov?" Nimm raises her brow at him, hand on her hip.

"I'm not saying that. It could be a name he's picked up for the reputation, but I doubt it, considering that's not the reputation he seems to want. I'm just saying he's different from the rest of them." Brontë heads back to the shoddy ladder, leading down to the car park, that backs out onto a side alley. This is certainly a secluded location. "I'm not claiming anything about him. I'm just expressing amazement."

"Amazement?" Nimm's voice is hard to read. She has this quality in her voice that Brontë attributes to smoking for years, although the height of her voice seems like she's trying to hide it. She covers her face with her elbow, and coughs deep- she often tries to hide that, too. "Can you elaborate?"

"Don't act like it's weird to say that." Brontë spins around, shining his flashlight over this empty space, like some evidence will randomly jump out at him. Like Artemy Volkov himself will just be hiding in some corner of this room, for him to finally find. "I don't have to agree with him, or- or to think we're wrong to be trying to catch him, to say it's impressive, okay? Single-handedly running basically the whole counterfeiting business in the state, and being a shadow at the same time, means there's some kind of genius back there. I bet they're missing him up there in Sydney."

"The cops, or the Volkovs?" Nimm asks, and Brontë laughs. "No, I see what you- hey."

Brontë turns, and Nimm's on her knees, triumphantly lifting something up from the dust. The back of it was a dark grey, and when it was face-down, it had blended almost perfectly into the concrete- but as she shines her torch on it, the light cuts through, and Brontë can see that there's words on the other side. The other side is the first page of a passport.