‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘I’m not,’ Arkady said. ‘It was a performance of baboon abuse.’
‘Then you weren’t supposed to notice the man with the whip – that’s why he was in a sailor suit.’ Andreev grinned. ‘Anyway, dear Renko, what’s your discomfort at a circus compared to mine? I barely get to my seat before children start crawling over their parents to get at me. To them a dwarf must be part of the show. I should tell you that I do not appreciate children under the best of circumstances.’
‘Then you must hate the circus.’
‘I love it. Dwarfs, giants, fat men, people with blue hair and red noses, or green hair and purple noses. You don’t know what a relief it can be to escape normality. I do wish I had a little vodka here now. Anyway, that’s where you will benefit from me, Investigator. The previous director of this institute was a good man, round and jolly and very normal. Like all normal artists, his reconstructions tended to resemble himself. Not at the start, but it crept in. Each face he did was a little rounder, even a little jollier. There was a cabinet of cavemen and murder victims here, and a happier, better-fed lot you never saw. A normal person always sees himself in others, you know. Always. I see more clearly.’ Andreev winked. ‘Trust the freak’s eyes.’
As he slept the phone rang. The caller was Detective Yakutsky, who asked first what the time was in Moscow.
‘Late,’ Arkady muttered. Calls between Moscow and Siberia, it seemed to him, always began with a ritual establishment of the time difference.
‘I’m on the morning shift here,’ Yakutsky said. ‘I have a little more information on Valerya Davidova.’
‘You might want to hold on to it. I think someone else will be handling this case in a couple of days.’
‘I have a lead for you.’ After a silence, Yakutsky added, ‘We’re very interested in this case in Ust-Kut.’
‘Okay,’ Arkady answered, so as not to let down the boys in Ust-Kut. ‘What is it?’
‘The Davidova girl had a very good friend who moved from Irkutsk to Moscow. She’s there at the university. Her name’s Irina Asanova. If Valerya Davidova showed up in Moscow, she would have gone to the Asanova girl.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ll call as soon as anything else turns up,’ Detective Yakutsky promised.
‘Anytime,’ Arkady said and hung up.
He had to pity Irina Asanova. He remembered Pribluda breaking the frozen dress on the corpse in Gorky Park. And the Asanova girl was beautiful. Anyway, it wasn’t his concern. He closed his eyes.
When the phone rang again he fumbled for it in the dark, expecting Yakutsky with more useless information. He found the receiver, lay back and grunted.
‘I’ve picked up the Russian habit of calling late,’ John Osborne said.
Arkady was awake. His eyes were open, and with the clarity only an involuntary waker has, he saw all the dark details around him: the cartons of tapes, the ominous crossing of chair legs, a shadow folded in a corner of the room, the airline poster on the wall totally legible.
‘I haven’t disturbed you, have I?’ Osborne asked.
‘No.’
‘We were just getting into an interesting conversation at the bathhouse, and I was afraid we might not bump into each other again before I left Moscow. Is ten tomorrow convenient for you, Investigator? On the quay outside the Trade Council?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wonderful. See you there.’ Osborne hung up.
Arkady could think of no reason for Osborne to show up at the quay tomorrow. He could think of no reason to be there himself.
Chapter Eleven
The first real dew of the year had turned into a damp shroud along the Shevchenko Quay. Waiting across the road from the U.S.–U.S.S.R. Trade and Economic Council, Arkady could see Russian secretaries in the staff offices and American businessmen and a Pepsi-Cola machine in the members’ room. He coughed up smoke.
It was still Arkady’s case. Iamskoy had called first thing in the morning to say it was interesting that an American who once studied in Moscow should have some similar physical characteristics to a body found in Gorky Park, and that the investigator should not hesitate to pursue any evidence that could establish such a link, although the investigator must not approach foreign nationals and, from this point on, would receive no more tapes or transcripts from the KGB.
Well, Arkady thought, Osborne had approached him, not the other way around. The ‘friend of the Soviet Union’ must not have liked learning that he was the subject of an investigator’s visit to the Ministry of Foreign Trade. How to get his conversation with Osborne around to his particular trade and travels, Arkady wasn’t sure; in fact, he doubted that Osborne would appear at all.
Half an hour after the agreed time a Chaika limousine coasted to a stop in front of the Trade Council. John Osborne emerged from the building, said a few words to the limousine driver, and then strode across the road toward the investigator. He wore a suede overcoat. Set on his silver hair was a black sable hat that must have cost more than Arkady earned in a year. Gold links rather than buttons held his shirt cuffs together. On Osborne such extraordinary clothes were matter-of-fact, as subservient as skin to an enormous and totally foreign self-confidence. He had the power of not being out of place himself, but of making everything around him seem inappropriate and shabby. He and Arkady stood together for a moment, then the businessman gathered the investigator by the arm and began walking at a hurried pace along the quay in the direction of the Kremlin. The limousine followed.
Osborne began talking before Arkady could say anything. ‘I hope you don’t mind the rush, but I have to make a reception at the Trade Ministry, and I know you wouldn’t want me to keep anyone waiting. Do you know the Minister of Foreign Trade? You seem to know everyone, and you pop up in the most unexpected places. Do you know anything about money?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Let me tell you about money. Fur and gold are the oldest Russian items of value. They’re the oldest Russian items of foreign exchange, tribute to khans and Caesars. Of course, Russia pays tribute to no one anymore. Now, there are two fur auctions a year, in January and July, at the Fur Palace in Leningrad. About one hundred buyers attend, about ten of them from the United States. Some buyers are principals, some are brokers; the principals buy furs for themselves and the brokers buy for others. I am a broker and a principal because I buy for others but also have my own salons in the United States and Europe. The major furs at the auctions are mink, marten, fox, fitch, Persian lamb and sable. In general, American brokers don’t bid on minks because Russian minks are prohibited in the United States – an unfortunate holdover from the Cold War. Because of my European outlets, I bid on all furs, but the only fur most American buyers are really interested in is sable. We arrive ten days before the auction to inspect the pelts. When I buy minks, for example, I look carefully at fifty mink pelts from a particular collective. Those fifty pelts will give me the worth of a “string” of a thousand pelts from that collective. Since there are eight million mink pelts harvested in the Soviet Union in a year, the “string” system is a necessity.
‘Sables are a different matter. Less than one hundred thousand export-quality sables are harvested in a year. There are no “strings.” Each sable has to be examined individually for color and richness. If the pelt is harvested one week early, thickness is missing; one week late and the gloss is gone. The bidding is in dollars simply as a standard of exchange. I buy about half a million dollars’ worth of sable at each auction.’
Arkady didn’t know what to say. This was not a conversation; it was a rambling monologue. He discovered himself being lectured to and ignored at the same time.
‘As a business associate and friend of long standing, I’ve been honored by invitations to different Soviet facilities besides the Fur Palace. Last year, I flew to Irkutsk to tour the Fur Center there. My visit to Moscow now is of a business nature. Each spring the Trade Ministry here contacts a few buyers
and negotiates a discount sale of its leftover furs. I always enjoy my visits to Moscow because of the wide variety of Russian people I’ve come to know. Not only my close friends in the ministries, but also artists of the dance and film people. Now, a chief investigator of Homicide. I regret not being able to stay over until May Day, but I will be leaving the night before for New York.’
Osborne opened a gold case, removed and lit a cigarette without breaking stride. Arkady realized that the monologue had not rambled. It had come directly to the point. Every item about Osborne’s activities was being volunteered and dispensed with in a fashion that put Arkady in the role of the lowest government flunky. The effect was no mere appearance. Within minutes, offhand, Osborne had fully demonstrated his superiority. There wasn’t a question left in the investigator’s head, except those so accusatory that they couldn’t be asked.
‘How are they killed?’ Arkady asked.
‘Who?’ Osborne stopped with no more interest on his face than if Arkady had remarked on the weather.
‘Sables.’
‘Injections. It’s painless.’ Osborne began walking again, a little less quickly. Mist clung on his sable hat. ‘You take a professional interest in everything, Investigator?’
‘But sables are so fascinating. How do you trap them?’
‘They can be smoked out of their dens. Or treed by huskies that are trained for sable hunting; then all the surrounding trees are cut down and nets are spread.’
‘Sables hunt like minks?’
‘Sables hunt minks. There is nothing faster on snow. Siberia is paradise for them.’
Arkady stopped and bent three matches before getting one of his Primas lit. A smile announced to Osborne that all the investigator aspired to was amusing chatter.
‘Leningrad,’ Arkady sighed, ‘such a beautiful city. The Venice of the North, I hear it’s called.’
‘Some people call it that.’
‘What I want to know is why Leningrad has all the great poets. I don’t mean Yevtushenko or Voznesensky, I mean great poets like Akhmatova and Mandelstam. You know the poetry of Mandelstam?’
‘I know he’s out of favor with the Party.’
‘Ah, but he’s dead, and that improves his political position wonderfully,’ Arkady said. ‘Anyway, look at our Moskva River. Broken up like a concrete street. Then take Mandelstam’s Neva River “heavy as a jellyfish.” That says so much in a phrase.’
‘You may not be aware’ – Osborne glanced at his watch – ‘that almost no one in the West reads Mandelstam. He’s too Russian. He doesn’t translate.’
‘My very point! Too Russian. It can be a fault.’
‘That’s your point?’
‘Like those bodies we found in Gorky Park you asked me about. Three people shot down with brilliant efficiency and with a Western automatic? It doesn’t translate into Russian at all, does it?’
Sometimes a wind catches a parade banner and the face painted on the banner, with no change in expression, shivers. In Osborne’s eyes Arkady saw such a tremor, an excitement.
‘You must have noticed some difference between a man like yourself, Mr Osborne, and a man like me. My ways of thinking are so dull, so proletarian, that it’s a privilege to meet anyone so sophisticated. You can imagine my difficulty in trying to fathom why a Westerner would bother killing three Russians. This isn’t war or espionage. Let me confess that I’m unequipped. Usually I find a body. The scene of the crime is a mess – blood everywhere, fingerprints, probably the murder weapon as well. A child with a strong stomach could do such work as well as I. The motives? Adultery, a drunken rage, the loan of a few rubles, maybe one woman killing another over a missing chicken. The communal kitchen is, I have to say, a hotbed of passion. Frankly, if I had the mind to be an ideologist or run a ministry or know the difference between one piece of fur and another, that’s what I’d be doing, wouldn’t I? So all sympathy should go to a plodding investigator who comes across a crime of executive planning, daring operation and, unless I’m very mistaken, wit.’
‘Wit?’ Osborne was interested.
‘Yes. Remember what Lenin said. “The working class is not separated from the old bourgeois society by a Chinese Wall. And when the Revolution occurs, it will not happen that when a given individual dies, the dead man will bury himself. When the old society dies, it will be impossible to sew its corpse in a shroud and put it in a tomb. It will putrefy among us, this corpse will oppress and contaminate us.” Consider, then, a bourgeois businessman who can execute two Soviet workers and leave them in the heart of Moscow, and tell me he is not a character of great wit.’
‘Two, you say? I thought you found three in the park.’
‘Three. You know Moscow well, Mr Osborne? You enjoy your visits?’
They were walking again, leaving dark footprints on the stones. Despite the hour, drivers had turned on headlights. Ahead, a sour yellow haze clung to a bridge.
‘And you are enjoying yourself in Moscow?’ Arkady repeated.
‘Investigator, during my tour of Siberia I was welcomed by a village mayor who showed me the most modern structure in town. It had sixteen toilets, two urinals and a single sink. It was the communal excretory. There the village leaders gather with their pants down and shit while they make their important decisions.’ Osborne paused. ‘Of course, Moscow is much larger.’
‘Mr Osborne’ – Arkady stopped short – ‘excuse me. Did I say something to annoy you?’
‘You couldn’t annoy me. It occurs to me that I might be taking you away from your investigation.’
‘Not at all, please.’ Arkady touched the suede of Osborne’s arm and resumed their stroll. ‘If anything, you’re a help. If I could, for one minute, think not as a Russian but as a business genius, my troubles would be over.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Wouldn’t it take a genius to find something worth killing Russians for? That’s not flattery, that’s admiration. Furs? No, he could buy them from you. Gold? How would he carry it out? He had enough trouble disposing of the bag.’
‘What bag?’
Arkady slapped his hands together explosively. ‘The deed is done. Both men and the girl dead. The killer shovels food, bottles, gun into a leather bag torn by the shots. He skates through the park. It’s snowing, growing dark. Out of the park, he must put his ice skates in the bag and, hopefully without being noticed, get rid of it. Not in the park and not in a wastebasket because in either case the bag would be found and, at least in Moscow, reported. The river?’
‘The river has been frozen all winter.’
‘Absolutely true. Yet even with the bag magically gone, he must return to this side of the river.’
‘The Krimsky Bridge.’ Osborne gestured in the direction they were going.
‘Without attracting the notice of any suspicious babushka or militiaman? People are so nosy.’
‘Taxi.’
‘No, very chancy for foreigners. A friend waiting on the quay road in a car; that’s obvious enough even to me.’
‘Then why wasn’t the accomplice in on the murder?’
‘Him?’ Arkady laughed. ‘Never! We are talking about seduction and charm. The accomplice couldn’t lure flies to pudding.’ Arkady turned grave. ‘Seriously, the first man, the killer, thought this all out very carefully.’
‘Someone saw him with the bag?’
The river edged sideways into drizzle. Osborne was concerned about a witness; that could be returned to.
‘Insignificant. What I want to know,’ Arkady said, ‘is the reason. Why? I don’t mean an object – say, an ikon. I mean, why would an intelligent man, successful and wealthier probably than anyone in the Soviet Union, why would he murder for more? If I could understand the man, I could understand the crime. Tell me, could I understand him?’
Osborne was seamless. Arkady felt himself scratching at an unmarred and slippery surface. Suede, sable, skin, eyes, they were all the same, all . . . money. That was a word the investigator ha
d never used in this context before. In the abstract, in thieves’ fantasy, yes. But never had he come into physical contact with money. For that was what Osborne was, a man magically dripping money from his every pore. Understand a man like this?
‘I would suppose not,’ Osborne answered.
‘Sex?’ Arkady asked. ‘A lonely stranger meets a beautiful girl and takes her to his hotel room. The floor ladies will look the other way for the right foreigner. The man and girl start meeting regularly. Suddenly at the end she demands money and produces a rough-looking husband. She’s a regular extortionist.’
‘No.’
‘There’s a flaw?’
‘In perspective. To Westerners, Russians are an ugly race.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘In general, women here have no more appeal than cows. That’s why your Russian writers make such a fuss about their heroines’ eyes, their veiled looks and alluring glances, because no other physical aspect invites description.’ Osborne expanded. ‘It’s your long winters. What could be warmer than a heavy woman with hairy legs? The men are slimmer, but even uglier. Since good looks have been bred out, the only sexual triggers left are thick necks and heavy brows, like bulls.’
Arkady thought he could have been hearing a description of troglodytes.
‘From your name, you have a Ukrainian background yourself, don’t you?’ Osborne added.
‘Yes. Well, we’ll put sex aside—’
‘That seems wise.’
‘—which leaves us a crime without a motive,’ Arkady frowned.
Turning as slowly as a door, Osborne regarded him. ‘Astonishing. You are full of surprises. Are you serious?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘A triple killing purely for a whim?’
‘Yes.’
‘Incredible. I mean’ – Osborne became full of life – ‘literally not to be believed, not from an investigator of your training. From another kind of man, not from you.’ Osborne took a deep breath. ‘Let’s say such an event happened, a totally random murder without witnesses, what would be your chances of finding the murderer?’