‘Comrade Asanova, I don’t know why I still have this case,’ he tried again. ‘I don’t want it, I shouldn’t have it. But three poor people were murdered, and all I ask is that you come with me now and see the bodies. Perhaps from the clothes or—’
‘No.’
‘Just prove to yourself that they aren’t your friends. Don’t you at least want to be sure?’
‘I know it’s not them.’
‘Then where are they?’
Irina Asanova said nothing. A black burn marked the tree. She said nothing, but the causeway of truth was still open. Arkady laughed involuntarily, awed by his own stupidity. All the time he’d asked himself what Osborne could have wanted from two Russians, he’d never asked himself what they could have wanted from him.
‘Where do you think they are?’ he asked.
He felt her hold her breath.
‘Kostia and Valerya were running from Siberia,’ Arkady answered himself. ‘That wouldn’t be any problem for a bandit like Kostia, not with his stolen Aeroflot tickets. It’s possible to buy blackmarket working papers and a residency permit here if you can afford it, and Kostia could afford it. But Moscow wasn’t far enough. Kostia wanted to get all the way out. And that’s impossible, except that he died with an American for whom there is no record of reentry into the Soviet Union.’
Irina Asanova stepped backward into the last rays of the sun.
‘In fact,’ Arkady said, ‘that’s the only reason you admit you knew them at all. I know they died in Gorky Park, but you think they’re alive on the other side of the border. You think they got out.’
She had the radiant look of triumph.
Chapter Twelve
Divers kicked up a spinning murk, the winter’s silt. Sealed floodlights were lowered into the water. A hand could be seen, then a fin as the men probed where the underwater effluent pipes of the Maxim Gorky Tannery joined the Moskva.
Above on the embankment road, militiamen with lanterns waved on the occasional early-morning truck. Arkady crossed to an unlit area where William Kirwill sat deep in the shadows in the back of Arkady’s car.
‘I promise nothing,’ Arkady said. ‘You can go back to your hotel if you want, or you can go to your embassy.’
‘I’ll stick around.’ Kirwill’s eyes glinted in the dark.
There was a splash over the embankment as another diver went in. Another floodlight rattled down on a chain, and militiamen pushed loose ice floes away from the wall with poles.
Arkady showed a thick envelope. ‘These are the forensic reports on the three bodies found in Gorky Park,’ he said. Arkady relied on a peculiar familiarity, the heavy-footed profanity of militiamen, the suspicious glare of militia lanterns, the professional environment of investigators anywhere. After an undisturbed day of reasoning, Kirwill should have reached the conclusion that Arkady was not from the KGB – no one from the KGB could be so genuinely ignorant.
‘Let me see.’ Kirwill reached.
‘Who was James Kirwill?’ Arkady asked.
‘My brother.’
Arkady handed over the envelope through the car window; the first trade was completed. No mention of Osborne was in the envelope. If William Kirwill wanted only to help an investigation, he would have delivered the dental chart and X-ray his first day in Moscow. But he’d also brought a weapon, so he was willing to deal only as long as he didn’t know whom to attack. That he didn’t have his gun anymore didn’t matter. He had his hands.
An officer of the River Patrol came over to tell Arkady that the divers were freezing, and that there was no bag to be found on the river bottom. Crossing the road to the wall, Arkady was pulled aside by a sergeant to speak to a young militiaman from the Oktyabrsky precinct whose beat was the quay. The boy remembered a Zhiguli sedan parked on the embankment road one January evening. Maybe February. All he could recall of the driver was a German wearing a lapel pin of a Berlin ‘Leather Ball’ club. ‘Leather Ball’ was Komsomol’s term for youth football. The militiaman knew the driver was German because, being an avid collector of lapel pins, he had offered to buy the man’s and got a heavily accented refusal.
‘Keep looking for another half hour,’ Arkady told the divers, and just ten minutes later they shouted and climbed up the rope ladder over the embankment wall hauling a muck-covered bag leaking water and eels.
The bag was leather with a rope loop. Wearing rubber gloves, Arkady opened it under a floodlight and picked through a mix of ooze, bottles and glasses until he found, pointing up, a gun barrel. He pulled free a large, slim semiautomatic pistol.
‘Comrade Investigator?’
Fet had arrived. Arkady hadn’t seen him since Golodkin’s questioning. The detective stood on the periphery of the flood lamps, adjusting his glasses, his eyes fixed myopically on the gun. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked.
Arkady didn’t know what role Fet had in Pasha’s death. All he knew was that he wanted the detective out of the way.
‘Yes,’ Arkady said, ‘get a list of ikons stolen within the last sixteen months.’
‘Ikons stolen in Moscow?’
‘And around Moscow,’ Arkady said, ‘and anywhere in the country this side of the Urals. And then, Detective . . .’
‘Yes?’ Fet edged forward.
‘Then, Detective, any ikons stolen in Siberia,’ Arkady said. ‘You know where Siberia is.’
Arkady watched the detective mope off into the dark; he would be busy for a week, and it was remotely possible the lists might be useful.
The investigator carefully placed the gun in a handkerchief. None of the militiamen, not even the veterans, recognized its make. Arkady gave the River Patrol officer money for brandy for the divers, and carried bag and gun to his car.
He drove Kirwill to a taxi under the Krimsky Bridge. Dawn was breaking. Outside the garage, drivers in shirt sleeves were gutting and reconstructing taxis that were on the point of collapse. Wandering among the cars, entrepreneurs sold stolen parts from over-sized coats.
Kirwill examined the pistol. ‘Good gun. Argentine version of the 7.65-mm. Mannlicher. Big muzzle velocity, accurate, carried eight rounds.’ Mud spurted onto his shirt as he slid a magazine from the grip. Arkady hadn’t noticed when he’d roused him in his hotel room that Kirwill had dressed again as a Russian. ‘Three rounds left.’ He slid the slip back and handed the gun back. ‘Used to be the Argentine service weapon before they went to a different pistol, a Browning. The Mannlichers were sold to gun dealers in the States, so that’s how I know.’
‘The pillows.’ Arkady studied Kirwill’s clothes. ‘I didn’t look in your pillows.’
‘That’s right.’ Kirwill came close to a smile. He handed back the envelope, wiped his fingers and then pulled a card from his shirt pocket. The card had ten ink smudges. A fingerprint card. ‘You missed this, too.’ He shook his head and put the card away even as Arkady started to reach.
‘See, I wouldn’t show you that’ – Kirwill spread his arms, covering the sill of the back window – ‘but I’ve been thinking. Maybe you’re just what you pretend to be, Renko. Maybe we can work something out. You say a detective of yours was shot, and you lost Golodkin, too. You’re going to need all the help you can get.’
‘So?’
‘Your file on Jimmy—’ Kirwill nodded to the folder.
‘Jimmy was what you called him?’
‘Yeah.’ Kirwill shrugged. ‘The forensic work isn’t too bad, but there’s no follow-up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Detective work. It’s called “getting off your ass.” Fifty men questioning anyone who’s been in the park this winter. Asking them once, twice, three times. Stories in the newspapers, and a special police telephone line announced on television.’
‘What wonderful ideas,’ Arkady said. ‘If I’m ever in New York, I’ll use them.’
The blue eyes cooled. ‘If I did identify my brother’s body, what would happen?’
‘It would become a case for State S
ecurity.’
‘The KGB?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What would happen to me?’
‘You’d be detained to give evidence. I could withhold information about our meeting in the park, about your weapon. Your detention wouldn’t be too unpleasant.’
‘Could you make it fun?’ Kirwill asked.
‘Not great fun.’ The unexpected question made Arkady laugh.
‘Then’ – Kirwill lit a cigarette and flipped the match through the window – ‘I think I prefer this arrangement. Just you and me.’
One of the taxi drivers crossed the street to ask whether they had auto parts to buy or sell. Arkady brushed him off.
‘An “arrangement”?’ Arkady asked Kirwill. It was what he’d had in mind, but hearing it from Kirwill the spoken word made him uncomfortable.
‘An understanding – mutual assistance,’ Kirwill said. ‘Now, it seems to me that the big guy, Kostia, went down first, right? Jimmy would be second. With his bum leg, I’m surprised he was even skating. Last, the Davidova girl. What I don’t get is the shots in the head, unless the murderer knew about Jimmy’s root canal and knew it would be different from Russian dental work. Now, you don’t suspect any dentists, do you, Renko? Or’ – he produced his half-smile – ‘any foreigners?’
‘Anything else?’ Arkady asked in a flat voice, though it had taken him days to work out the root-canal answer.
‘Okay. The gesso on the clothes. Ikons, right? That’s why you sent that guy off for a list. By the way, that’s the guy I tailed back to the KGB. Maybe you’re not a scab for them, but he is.’
‘We’re thinking along the same lines.’
‘Good. Now, give me my shield back.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Renko, you’re holding back on me.’
‘Mr Kirwill, we are holding back on each other. We’re just one step ahead of outright lying, remember. Since neither of us knows when the other is going to turn on him, we’ll just have to do this step by step. Don’t worry, you’ll get your police shield back before you go home.’
‘Detective shield,’ Kirwill corrected him again, ‘and don’t kid yourself, I don’t need it. If it makes you feel better, keep it for a day or two. In the meantime, you understand the expression “sucks”? Because that’s what your legwork on this case does, not to mention that you’ve done zero so far on the ikon angle. I think it would be better if we worked apart and only meet to exchange information. Look, you’ll only come out ahead that way. Give me some numbers where I can reach you.’
Arkady wrote out the phone numbers of his office and the room at the Ukraina. Kirwill stuffed them in his shirt pocket.
‘The girl was pretty, huh? The one killed with Jimmy?’
‘I think so, but why do you? Your brother was big with the ladies?’
‘No. Jimmy was a professional ascetic. He didn’t touch women, but he liked to be near them and he was very choosy.’
‘Explain.’
‘Madonnas, Renko. You know what they are.’
‘I don’t believe I understand.’
‘Well, don’t push.’ Kirwill opened his door. ‘I’m just starting to believe that you’re for real at all.’
Arkady watched Kirwill cross the street and move among the taxi drivers, plowing in with a confident haphazardness. At an open hood, he leaned over and offered a judgment. In a second he’ll be handing out cigarettes, Arkady thought. Kirwill did, and the drivers gathered around.
Arkady’s intent was to use Kirwill. The American, clearly, had something else in mind.
After dropping the bag and gun off with Lyudin, Arkady went on to the Central Telephone and Telegraph Office to order the pay phones around the address of Irina Asanova monitored. It was not unusual for someone like her not to have a phone of her own; people waited years for the privilege. What interested Arkady were other examples of penury: her secondhand clothes and boots, cardboard cigarettes. Mosfilm was full of women paid the same wages but stylishly dressed for attendance at the parties the Film-Makers Union gave for foreign guests, where the civilized appreciation of a bottle of French perfume or a wash-and-wear skirt was routine. Irina Asanova must have been invited; instead, she scrimped for kopeks. He admired her.
Colonel Lyudin was introducing Arkady to the dried and examined debris of the bag found in the river when the lab phone rang. An assistant answered it and handed it to Arkady saying, ‘Comrade Renko.’
‘Let me call you back later,’ Arkady told Zoya.
‘We have to talk now.’ Her voice was strident.
Arkady gestured for Lyudin to continue. ‘The leather bag is of Polish manufacture,’ the forensic expert began.
‘Arkady?’ Zoya asked.
‘A leather rope through the metal eyes around the top of the bag’ – Lyudin demonstrated – ‘so that it can be carried by hand or from the shoulder. Very sporty, and only for purchase to the general public in Moscow and Leningrad. Here’ – he pointed with a sharpened pencil – ‘a single hole at the bottom corner of the bag, the hole enlarged by more than one shot. There are traces of gunpowder around the hole, and the leather of the bag matches the leather fragments found on slug GP1.’
The bullet that killed Kostia Borodin. Arkady nodded encouragement.
‘I’m filing for a petition of divorce at City Court,’ Zoya said. ‘The cost is one hundred rubles. I expect you to pay half. After all, I did leave you the apartment.’ She paused for a reply. ‘Are you there?’
‘Yes,’ Arkady answered sideways to the phone.
Lyudin enumerated the items on a table. ‘Three key rings, a similar key on each ring. A cigarette lighter. One empty bottle of Extra vodka. One half-empty bottle of Martell cognac. Two Spartak ice skates, size extra large. A broken jar of French strawberry preserves. Not imported, I might add; it must have been bought abroad.’
‘No cheese, bread, sausage?’
‘Fish and eels have been in and out of that bag for months, Investigator, please. There are traces of animal fats indicating other food. Also, traces of human tissue.’
‘Arkady, you have to come down right now,’ Zoya said. ‘It will look better and we can have a closed session with the judge. I’ve already talked to her.’
‘I’m busy,’ Arkady said into the phone, and asked Lyudin, ‘Fingerprints?’
‘You didn’t honestly expect any, Investigator.’
‘Now,’ Zoya insisted, ‘or you’ll be sorry.’
Arkady put a hand over the phone. ‘Excuse me, Colonel. Give me a minute.’
His watch held up for elaborate scrutiny, Lyudin moved away from the table with a coterie of lab assistants. Arkady turned his back to them and whispered, ‘Just what grounds are you petitioning on? I beat you? I drink?’
‘To begin with’ – he heard her throat tighten – ‘incompatibility. I have witnesses. Natasha and Dr Schmidt.’
‘What about . . .’ He couldn’t get his thoughts together. ‘What about your Party standing?’
‘Ivan—’
‘Ivan?’
‘Dr Schmidt says I will not be adversely affected.’
‘Thank heaven for that. How incompatible are we supposed to be?’
‘That depends,’ Zoya said. ‘You’ll be sorry if we have to go to public court.’
‘I’m already sorry. Sorry for what else?’
‘Your remarks,’ she said softly.
‘What remarks?’
‘Your remarks, your whole attitude. Everything you say about the Party.’
Arkady stared at the receiver. Trying for a mental image of Zoya, he came up with the poster of the Pioneer with the hair as gold as corn. Then a blank wall. The ransacked apartment. Dead scenes, as if their marriage had been picked clean over the years by invisible, voracious animals. But that was thinking like Lyudin, and there was really nothing at all to grasp; the images were already becoming mixed, and he was talking to a void. Analyses of political, emotional and ironic natures all died in that void
where one talked to one’s soon-to-be-former wife.
‘I’m sure your future will not be adversely affected,’ he said. ‘I just need until May. A few more days.’ He hung up.
Lyudin clapped his hands. ‘Back to work. The gun must come out of an acid bath before ballistics can fire a test round. However, I can tell you this much now, Investigator. Our munitions experts are strongly of the opinion that the gun is a Mannlicher, and of the same caliber as the gun that fired the fatal bullets in Gorky Park. By tomorrow I will be able to tell you the exact model. In the meantime we will do more than is humanly possible. Investigator Renko, are you listening?’
Going by Novokuznetskaya to check on any calls from Kirwill, Arkady got caught in an ideological meeting. They took place infrequently enough, and usually only involved one man reading aloud from the front page of Pravda while everyone else leafed through sports magazines. But this time it was a real production; the first-floor interrogation room was filled with district investigators facing Chuchin and a doctor from the Serbsky Institute.
‘Soviet psychiatry is on the threshold of a major breakthrough, a major statement on the entire basis of mental illness,’ the doctor was saying. ‘For too long, the organs of health and justice have worked separately in an uncoordinated fashion. Today, I am happy to say, this situation is nearly at an end.’ He paused to place a lozenge in his mouth and sort his papers on the table. ‘It is the finding of the institute that criminals suffer from a psychological disturbance we term pathoheterodoxy. There is theoretical as well as clinical backing for this discovery. In an unjust society a man may violate laws for valid social or economic reasons. In a just society there are no valid reasons except mental illness. Recognizing this fact protects the violator as well as the society whose law he attacks. It affords the violator an opportunity to be quarantined until his illness can be expertly treated. Therefore you see how vital it is that investigators have their own psychological consciousness raised so that they may detect those subtle signs of the pathoheterodox before he, the deviant, has a chance to violate the law. It is our duty to spare society from injury and to save a sick man from the consequences of his acts.’