Ivan advanced towards me, grinning, and said something which Sasha translated as, ‘Breelliant! He congratulates you very much.’

‘Your guys did it.’ I gestured round. ‘They were first class. Ochen khorosho.’

Ivan accepted the praise with a nod and turned his attention to the bodies. Almost at once he gave an exclamation and began to talk at speed into a mobile phone.

‘It is Keet – the Whale,’ Sasha translated, pointing at the corpse of a huge man with close-cropped grey hair that lay on its back almost under the table. As he was speaking, Ivan bent down and unceremoniously ripped open the perforated, blood-stained shirt to reveal a foot-long tattoo of a whale’s head and open jaws, tilted upwards towards the man’s left shoulder. From the half-open mouth the feet of a human being were protruding. By a horrible fluke one round had gone in almost exactly through the whale’s eye, leaving a bloody hole.

With a jerk on one arm Ivan rolled the body over and kicked the shirt up round its head. There, between the shoulder blades, was a tattooed portrait of Stalin.

‘Old Uncle Joe didn’t save that bugger, did he?’ Whinger was staring at the effigy, fascinated. Then, as he surveyed the scene, he added, ‘I like the delicate way they handle things round here, I must say.’

Ivan brought out a pocket knife, slipped the blade inside one leg of Whale’s trousers, at the ankle, and slit the grey material open to half-way up the thigh. Then he pointed contemptuously and gave a short laugh.

‘He has stars on the knees,’ Sasha translated. ‘Like I told you. The sign he would never kneel.’

It seemed that all the villains bar one were known to Ivan. By any standards it was a terrific coup for the security forces: five godfathers at one hit, plus four bodyguards and a haul of incriminating papers. Nor was that all. The two most fancy briefcases – crocodile leather by Gucci, no less – were closed with gold combination locks. Ivan picked one up, laid it on the table and started trying to open it. Frustrated, he called to Igor, who produced a small jemmy.

‘Hey, wait!’ I said, thinking of Toad and Pavarotti. ‘That thing’s worth a few grand. One of our guys will open it without wrecking it.’

But Ivan wasn’t in a mood to wait, and in a few seconds he’d burst both locks. When he lifted the lid, everybody who could see gave a gasp, because the case was packed solid with fifty-dollar bills done up in little paper sleeves holding bunches of twenty notes: a thousand bucks a throw.

When you see cash in that kind of quantity, you realise how little space it takes up: I could have put ten grand in my hip pocket, no bother.