‘…is death.’ Kirov dropped the currency back into the box. ‘That’s how the quotation goes. No mention of dollars.’
Gusev stretched his legs. Kirov watched him, thinking: a man too relaxed. He had a passing impression of inverted order: racketeer, MVD, KGB — not the way it was supposed to be, but perhaps the idea was just an effect of tiredness. Gusev said, ‘Well? Are you going to get on with it? Arrest me?’ It was the first time he had spoken; he had a soft tenor voice, attractive in its way. Antipov told him sharply to shut up.
‘Do you want me to send you a copy of the report?’ Bakradze enquired in the same co-operative vein. ‘We have our man. The rest is all routine.’ He suggested delicately that Kirov would be free to involve himself in the further prosecution of the matter as much or as little as he wished.
‘I’ll let you know,’ Kirov answered noncommittally. He had lost interest in the lawyer and was watching Gusev and noting the changes. He had an idea that the other man was also conscious of a discrepancy in the atmosphere, something wrong, but maybe not the same thing. Returning to Bakradze, he said, ‘On reflection I’ll come with you now and sit in on the interrogation.’
Kirov expected a reaction, but what he didn’t expect was Gusev’s hand diving to his seat then moving to his mouth and cramming something between his lips. Bogdanov leapt towards him. Antipov was already reaching into his coat and producing his gun. ‘No!’ Kirov shouted and his arm swept up to catch the detective’s arm. But the weapon had fired and Gusev was jerked out of his chair and pitched onto his back.
‘I thought he had a gun,’ Antipov explained dully. He studied his handiwork and replaced the gun in its holster. Gusev lay on the floor with blood leaking over his shirt and Bakradze was backing away because this sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen when lawyers were around. Kirov knelt by the body. He saw an object let fall by Gusev’s limp hand and scooped it up before anyone else could see it.
It was a black velvet bag closed by a drawstring but now lying open. It looked too small to hold anything of importance.
CHAPTER TWO
‘You know Scherbatsky? Works the American desk — sometimes acts as bagman for the Washington Residency when Yatsin wants someone to carry his dirty underwear to Moscow.’
‘No.’ Kirov didn’t know Scherbatsky, but Yatsin was his fat sidekick from his days in America. Nowadays Yatsin was the head of the Washington Residency, worried about his health and his pension and eating macrobiotic food. And Kirov had a colonelcy as a consolation prize for solving the problems of the nuclear plant at Sokolskoye, and made a living investigating petty crooks involved in rackets like the Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring.
‘Scherbatsky? No? Well, the name doesn’t matter.’ Bogdanov drove one-handedly and smoked Gusev’s cigarettes while talking. ‘This Scherbatsky, he’s a cheapskate. He fiddles his expenses, deals in black-market dollars and cheats on his wife. To salve his conscience he decides to buy her a watch. So, on his last trip, he goes through all the cheap jewellers shops in New York. He buys her a fifty-dollar Rolex — get it, a fifty-dollar Rolex?’
‘I understand.’
‘Sure. So, the watch fails. Scherbatsky sends the watch and the guarantee card to Switzerland or wherever they make Rolexes. He tells them to send him a new watch, to Captain Y.S. Scherbatsky, Committee of State Security, number two Dzerzhinsky Square, Moscow. You understand, this is going to impress them.’
‘And?’
‘Rolex reply. Sorry, this is not our watch. Made in Taiwan!’ Bogdanov laughed. ‘Those Chinese will fake anything!’ He let his face fall into tiredness. ‘What the hell, maybe the story is a fake too.’
In the traffic their car failed. Bogdanov blew the horn in case that helped, got out and stared at the tyres. He returned and asked whether Kirov wanted to wait until he could call up a replacement or continue on foot; they were close to Kropotkinskaya metro station.
As they walked, Kirov said, ‘According to Bakradze his office notified us that Gusev was about to be arrested.’
‘Not me,’ Bogdanov answered.
‘Perhaps the message took its time to arrive.’
‘If Bakradze wanted it that way, he could be sure the message took its time. I still say we weren’t intended to be there.’
‘Perhaps. Kirov changed the subject. ‘What time did Gusev wake up?’
‘How should I know?’
‘You went into his bedroom.’
‘OK, so I was testing you. I checked his alarm clock. Are you a mind-reader? The alarm showed six o’clock, and the clock was lying face down as if it had been knocked over when the alarm was switched off. So I say he got up at six. Probably before Antipov sent in the scouts to stake the apartment out, and for certain before Bakradze arrived.’
A crowd was milling around the entrance to the metro station, churning up the snow. Bogdanov searched in his pockets for a coin for the trip. Kirov watched the crowd, but his mind was still on Viktor Gusev, dapper and relaxed, living in a different world from the crowds struggling on the subway trains, another Moscow.
‘He washed, shaved, went into the living room and opened the curtains.’ Meaning what? Kirov tried to slot the facts into his memory of the apartment. Something in the timing troubled him.
‘Are we still talking about friend Viktor?’ Bogdanov asked. ‘One of Antipov’s men could have opened the curtains.’
‘No. Antipov would have closed them — to keep out prying eyes.’
‘Maybe. But so what?’
Kirov tried again to imagine the apartment: Gusev in the white cotton bathrobe found hanging behind the door, Gusev splashing his pampered body with the lotion found in the cabinet next to the woman’s razor (whose was it?); perhaps Viktor had done some exercises, he had a flat-bellied look and suits cut to match. Then the man’s body on the floor, the door open and Antipov yelling to the militiamen to get an ambulance.
‘He was finished in the bathroom by six-fifteen — six-twenty at the latest.’
‘Bakradze arrived at six-thirty.’
‘But the MVD squad must have been there already, they were packing the street like an army review. When Gusev opened the curtains he had to see them.’ Gusev was in his vision again, standing at the window with the street light falling on his lean face, watching with curiosity as the militia gathered on the pavement. There was the oddity. ‘Why didn’t he hide the drugs and the money?’
‘Maybe he did. Maybe Antipov found them. We weren’t there. We don’t know what went on.’ Bogdanov disliked speculation, and instead nurtured a faith in confession — like a priest, Kirov sometimes thought.
‘When we arrived Bakradze and Antipov were the only ones who’d been in the apartment. There was no sign that they’d searched the place, but the boxes were already on the floor. Gusev didn’t try to hide anything.’
‘He knew the game was up.’
‘No.’ Kirov could read Gusev’s studiously relaxed expression and knew the answer, if not the explanation. ‘He didn’t care.’
Back at the office there was a message to see Grishin, but, when he tried, the General was tied up with Radek. Radek was back from smashing the meat wholesale racket in the Ukraine. The gang had been operating for ten years until Radek and his team shook out the local KGB, harassed the Kiev Fraud Squad and broke the operation in six weeks. The story had made its way into Pravda and Radek had even figured in a TV news story for Vremya which was unheard of.
The last time Radek was in Moscow he had suggested that the two of them share some beers in the bar in Stoleshnikov Lane. Radek was overcome with his own success. He drank a few too many and became confiding. ‘What’s going on, Petya, I mean really going on? This push against the black market as if it were something new. For fifteen years we could only attack the fringes, but now — whoosh! — ’ He swung an arm and knocked a bottle off the table. Then he closed up and breathed beer into Kirov’s face. ‘I tell you, before I die, I shall have my picture in the papers. Ace crimebuster Radek!’