Chapter Sixteen
At four in the morning Arkady called Ust-Kut. ‘This is Detective Yakutsky.’
‘This is Chief Investigator Renko in Moscow.’
‘Oh? You finally called at a good time,’ Yakutsky said.
Arkady closed his eyes at the dark of the window. ‘What do sables eat?’ he asked.
‘You called to ask me that? You can’t find a copy of the encyclopedia?’
‘Borodin’s clothes had traces of chicken and fish blood. He was buying chicken and fish every day.’
‘Sables and minks eat chicken and fish. So, if I remember, do people.’
‘Not every day,’ Arkady said. ‘Have there been any thefts of sables in your area?’
‘None, not one.’
‘No unusual incidents at any of the fur collectives?’
‘Nothing unusual. There was a fire in November at a collective at Barguzin, and five or six sables were killed. All the animals, however, were accounted for.’
‘How badly burned were they?’
‘Dead, as I said. It was an appreciable loss, actually, because Barguzins are the most valuable sables of all. There was an inquiry, but no negligence could be proved.’
‘Were autopsies done on the animals to show that they definitely were Barguzin sables and that they actually died from the fire, or exactly when they died?’
‘Investigator, I assure you that only someone in Moscow could have thought of that.’
After hanging up, Arkady quietly dressed and left the apartment, walking to Taganskaya Square before using a public phone. There was still no answer at Misha’s apartment. He called and woke Swan and Andreev, then walked back to his apartment and stood against the bedroom wall watching Irina.
Could he go to the prosecutor general and say that the Moscow town prosecutor was a killer? Two days before May Day? Without evidence? They’d say he was drunk or crazy, and hold him until Iamskoy arrived. Could he go to the KGB? Osborne was a KGB informant. Also, he had the blood of a dead KGB agent on his hands, thanks to Kirwill.
Dawn crept over Irina. She was a pale blue figure on a pale blue sheet, but he felt the languid warmth of her sleep. He watched as if enough concentration would imprint her image on his eyes. Her forehead was shaded by hair that became fine gold as the sun rose.
The world was a mote erratically stirred by her breath. The world was a coward plotting to kill her. He could save her life. He would lose her, yet he could save her life.
When she awoke, he’d made coffee and laid her dress at the foot of her bed.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘I thought you liked having me here.’
‘Tell me about Osborne.’
‘We went through all that, Arkasha.’ Irina sat up, naked. ‘Even if I believed what you said about Osborne, what if I was wrong? If Valerya’s safe someplace, I’d be turning in the man who helped her. If she’s dead, she’s dead. Nothing can change that.’
‘Let’s go.’ Arkady threw her dress at her. ‘You talk too easily about dying. I’ll introduce you to the dead.’
On the way to the lab Irina continually glanced at him. He felt her searching for an explanation of this sudden about-face into an investigator again.
Arkady took her inside the forensic lab with him to collect one sealed evidence bag and one empty one from Colonel Lyudin. Lyudin regarded Irina appreciatively; some sleight of hand and her new scarf had made her Afghan jacket momentarily chic again.
Driving away, she showed her irritation with Arkady’s brusqueness by staring out her side window. This was a typical lovers’ spat, her manner said. A scent insinuated itself into the car. She looked at the sealed and bulky evidence bag beside her. The smell was so vague as to be barely noticed, but it had a ripeness that lingered on the tongue and in the throat. By the time they reached the river, she had opened her window to the cold.
At the Ethnological Institute Arkady led Irina up to Andreev’s studio. Relieved to be out of the car, she made a display of curiosity over the cabinets containing the heads of Tamerlane and Ivan the Terrible while Arkady looked for the anthropologist. But Andreev was gone, as he’d sworn he would be.
Arkady watched Irina across the room of heads.
‘Is this what you brought me to see?’ She tapped the cabinet of Ivan.
‘No. I’d hoped we could meet Professor Andreev. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be here. He’s a fascinating man, you must have heard of him.’
‘No.’
‘They lecture on his work at the Law Faculty,’ Arkady said. ‘You should remember that.’
Irina shrugged and left the cabinets for the tables of anthropological exhibits, scanning faces that peered with heavy brows and glass eyes. She moved closer. Andreev’s work was magical. Arkady saw Irina’s delight in one apish face comically puckered, and in another one bearing a fierce scowl. At the end of the table was a potter’s wheel and a high stool. Propped on a wire stand on the wheel was a Neanderthal skull half covered with strips of pink plasteline.
‘I see.’ She touched a bare area of the skull. ‘Andreev reconstructs them—’ She snatched her hand back, the words still on her lips.
‘It’s all right.’ Arkady approached her. ‘He left it for us.’
Hanging from Arkady’s hand by a carrying string was a round hatbox of pink enameled pasteboard, the kind of box that had gone out of style sixty years before.
‘I have heard of Andreev.’ Irina wiped her fingers.
As Arkady walked toward her, the hatbox danced in a top-heavy way.
Every Law Faculty student knew of Andreev’s reconstructions of the heads of murder victims. Riding along Gorky Park, the former good student Irina Asanova barely breathed the tainted air of the car. Death seeped from the sealed bag and rattled in the hatbox on the rear seat.
‘Where are we going, Arkasha?’ Irina asked.
‘You’ll see.’ Arkady chose the most prosaic words, the answer to a prisoner.
He offered no explanation or compassion to distract her, no hand to hold, no sympathy. A man doesn’t become chief investigator without a capacity for cruelty, he told himself.
When a whole convoy of waving soldiers passed on the left and Irina’s eyes didn’t deviate from straight ahead, he knew that it was for fear that the smallest slip would bring her eye round to the obscenely colored box. Over a little rough road it jostled. The box would be speaking to Irina, to her it would have a whole biography, enough and more to erupt through the rear of the car.
‘Just wait,’ he told her, taking a corner. The box shifted and Irina’s hands jerked as if on a string.
Red May Day banners stretched across a ball-bearing plant, a tractor plant, an electric plant, a textile plant. On the banners were golden profiles, golden laurels, golden slogans. From the stacks rose steel-colored smoke. She must know now where she was being taken, he thought.
Southeast through the Lyublinsky District, no words said, an hour’s worth of traveling through larger factories thinning to smaller ones, to the prefabricated gray of workers’ flats, to old homes razed for development, to a country field mazed by surveyors’ strings, bumping over mud heaves, past the end of the autobus line, still in the expanded city limits but beyond it to another world of low houses little more than cabins, swaying picket fences and tethered goats, wash in the arms of women dressed in sweaters and boots, a church of plaster, a one-legged man doffing his hat, brown cows crossing the road, a backyard chopping block and ax, and slowly over ruts, a house set off by itself in a yard of broken sunflower stalks, two dirty windows in front showing filthy curtains, paint curling on a carved eave – behind the house an outhouse and a metal shed.
He let her out of the car and gathered the bags and hatbox from the rear seat. At the door of the house he pulled three key rings from one of the bags, the key rings that had been found in the leather bag in the river. On each key ring one key was similar.
‘Seems logical, doesn’t it?’ he asked Irina.
&nbs
p; The key fit. The door stuck, and Arkady hit it with his hip, releasing an odor of mildew as it swung open. Before going inside, he put on a pair of rubber gloves and hit a light switch. Electricity was still connected to a single bulb above a round table. The house had the stench of a trap and was cold, as if it had stored winter. Irina stood in the middle of the floor shivering.
There was only one room to the house, with four triple-paned windows all shuttered and locked. Horse-hair quilts in two sleeping compartments. A coal stove on an apron of ashes. Three chairs of different styles around the table. A cabinet with moldy cheese and a milk bottle long since opened by ice. On the walls, one photo of Brando and many of ikons torn from books. Under a drop cloth in a corner, paint cans, bottles of bole and varnish, rags, a cushioned pad, flat brushes, punches and brushes. Arkady pulled back the sheet from a closet to expose to the light two men’s suits, one medium and one large, three cheap dresses the same small size and, on the floor, a jumble of shoes.
‘Yes,’ Arkady read the thought on Irina’s face, ‘it’s like being in someone’s grave. It always is.’
Three old-fashioned naval footlockers stood against the wall. Arkady unlocked them, using a different key from each ring. The first one had underwear, socks, Bibles and other religious contraband; the second, underwear, a corked vial of gold dust, condoms, an old Nagant revolver and shells; the third, a woman’s underwear, glass jewelry, a foreign perfume, douche, scissors, brushes, lipstick, hairpins, a jar, an almost featureless bisque doll, and photographs of Valerya Davidova, mostly with Kostia Borodin and one of her with a full-bearded old man.
‘Her father, right?’ He picked up the picture for Irina to see. She said nothing. He closed the lockers. ‘Kostia must have really scared the neighbors while he was around here. Imagine them not breaking in here all this time.’ The sleeping compartments caught his eye. ‘Kostia must have been a difficult man, and to have to live with another man as well? This is how we live, though, so . . . Why don’t you stop me, Irina? Tell me what they were doing here for Osborne.’
‘I think you already know,’ she said in a whisper.
‘That’s speculation. There has to be a witness. Someone has to tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘But you will.’ Arkady put the hatbox and the evidence bags on the table. ‘We will help each other, and we will solve a couple of mysteries. I want to know what Valerya and Borodin were doing here for Osborne, and you want to know where Valerya is right now. Soon it will all come clear.’
He moved one chair away, leaving two by the table. He looked around the room. It was so desperately shoddy, so little more than a carton turned on its end, packed with three lives, a thin sheet for privacy’s sake, entrepreneurs blowing on their hands to stay warm.
The dim bulb yellowed Irina and hollowed her cheeks. He saw himself through her eyes, a gaunt man with wild black hair and feverishly sharp features looming over a pink box. He looked deeper into the reflection of this ridiculous man, this puppet man of Iamskoy’s, as Irina had seen him so accurately from the start. Yet he could save her from Iamskoy and Osborne – and even from herself, if his nerve didn’t fail.
‘So’ – Arkady slapped his hands – ‘it is Gorky Park at dusk. It is snowing. The pretty fur sorter Valerya, Kostia the Siberian bandit and the American boy Kirwill are skating with the furrier Osborne when they leave the path and make their way fifty meters to a clearing to have something to eat and drink. Here they stand. Kostia here’ – Arkady indicated the chair at one side of the table. ‘The Kirwill boy here’ – he indicated the other chair – ‘and Valerya in the middle’ – he laid his hand by the box. ‘You, Irina, stand here’ – he brought her closer to the table – ‘you are Osborne.’
‘No, please,’ Irina asked.
‘Simply for purposes of explanation,’ Arkady said. ‘I can’t manage the snow or the vodka, so bear with me. Try to imagine the atmosphere, the gaiety. Three of these people believed a whole new life was about to begin – freedom for two of them, fame for the third. This was no mere skating party, it was a celebration! Was this when you – Osborne, that is – were going to give them their instructions on how to escape? Very likely. Only you know that in seconds they will be dead.’
‘I—’
‘You don’t care about any religious chests; anyone could have gotten them for you – Golodkin, for example. If that was all these three people had done for you, a little ikon-faking and smuggling, you would have let them live. Let them talk, let them walk right straight into the office of the KGB with accusations and pictures to prove them; your friends there would have laughed them back into the street. But this other thing, not the chest but what they really did for you, these three people must never talk about – not in Moscow, not anywhere.’
‘You mustn’t do this to me,’ Irina said.
‘The snow is falling,’ Arkady went on. ‘Their faces are a little red with vodka. They trust you; you’d already brought in this American dupe Kirwill, yes? By the time the first bottle of vodka is gone, they love you. You’re their savior from the West. Many smiles and toasts. Hear the music from the skating paths? Tchaikovsky! Ah, we need another bottle. Mr Osborne, you are a generous man, you’ve brought a leather bag full of vodka and brandy and all sorts of treats. You lift the bag high as if you are sorting around inside with your hand and bring out . . . another bottle. Go first yourself; pretend to take a real swig. Kostia is next and he more than matches you, if I know him. Valerya is a little giddy now, and it’s not easy to take the bottle when she has bread in one hand and cheese in the other. Besides, she’s thinking about where she’ll be in a week or so, what kind of clothes she’ll be wearing, how warm it will be. No more Siberia there – heaven, instead. Kirwill is already unsteady on his skates, he has that weak leg, but he’s thinking too about his return home, the vindication of all his saintly efforts. No wonder the vodka goes so fast.
‘Another bottle? Why not? The snow is falling harder, the music is louder. You lift your bag and sort through it, feel the bottle, feel the grip of your gun. Push the safety off. Kostia is the thirstiest, turn to him and give this famous bandit a smile.’
Arkady kicked the chair so that it slammed onto its back on the floor. Irina blinked and rocked slightly in surprise.
‘Very good,’ Arkady continued. ‘An automatic doesn’t make as much noise as a revolver, and the sound is muffled by the leather bag, the snow and the music from loudspeakers. There’s probably no obvious sign of blood at first. Valerya and the Kirwill boy don’t really understand why Kostia is down on the ground. You’re all friends. You came to save them, not to hurt them. Turn to the American boy. Keep the bag up to his chest.’
A tear crossed the mark on her cheek.
‘No expression now,’ Arkady said.
He kicked the second chair to the floor. ‘It’s so simple. Only Valerya is left. She looks down at her dead Kostia, at the dead American, but she makes no move to run, to call out, to protest. You understand her so well. Without Kostia she’s as good as dead; you’ll be putting her out of her misery. A life can change that quickly. You’ll be doing her a favor.’ Arkady ripped open the evidence bag. An oily redolence filled the air as he pulled free a cheap, dark dress stained by dirt and blood and bearing a hole over the left breast. Irina looked to the open closet and back; he knew she recognized the dress. ‘Bring the gun as close as you want; Valerya will wait, she welcomes the bullet. Bring the gun closer to her heart. Such a waste of beauty, you think’ – Arkady let the dress fall across the table – ‘such a waste of beauty. Dead, all three. No one is coming, the music still plays, snow will soon cover the bodies.’
Irina was shaking.
‘They may be dead,’ Arkady said, ‘but you still have work. Gather all the imported food, the bottles, the papers from the bodies. Take the chance of firing two more times, because the American has some foreign dental work. You give Kostia a shot in the same place so that maybe the dumb militia will think they were c
oups de grace. Still, they can be identified. They have fingerprints. Simple. Some heavy shears, the kind used for cutting up chicken, and snip, snip at each finger joint. But what to do about the faces? Hope they decompose? But they’ll freeze; they’ll be whiter than snow, but otherwise exactly the same. Smear jam on their faces so that the little animals of the park will eat them off? No, the squirrels are tucked away for the winter, and there aren’t enough dogs in Moscow. But the furrier has an answer because he has a special skill. He skins them: he lifts a whole face like a little pink pelt right off each head – Kostia’s, the Kirwill boy’s and, last and most delicate, Valerya’s. What a special moment. How many furriers have ever done that! He scoops out their eyes, and then he’s done. The scraps go into the bag. Three lives erased and doubly erased. Enough! You go to your hotel, to your plane, to that separate world you came from. Everything seems perfect.’
Arkady shaped the dress on the table, folding one long sleeve over the other, draping its skirt over the table’s edge. ‘There is only one person you can think of who can connect you to the three bodies in Gorky Park. She won’t tell, though, because she is Valerya’s best friend and she wants Valerya to be in New York or Rome or California. That fantasy is the most important thing in her life. She can get through each stupid, dangerous, oppressively boring day here if she can just believe that Valerya has escaped. The idea that Valerya is drawing a free breath somewhere else is all that keeps this friend from dying of claustrophobia. You could try to kill her yourself and she still wouldn’t talk. You really do know your Russians.’