“It’s all right,” the man said. “Perhaps the inspector would like some tea or coffee.”
“Coffee would be fine,” said Rostnikov, wondering if a cup of coffee constituted the first step in a bribe.
The woman disappeared through another door, and the man backed up to let Rostnikov enter the room.
In the doorway, Sergei Malenko had simply seemed a middle-size, middle-shaped man, but inside the surprisingly large room, he reminded Rostnikov of a small actor playing a businessman. Malenko was about sixty, with bushy grey-black hair and a determined, furrowed brow. It was a hard face, one that had suffered and worked, not the soft image of the black market capitalist that had flourished in Russian movies and posters during the two decades after the war. This did not surprise Rostnikov. What little he had been able to gather on Malenko told him that the man had begun humbly enough-a farmer’s son and a farmer himself, who had gone to work in a tubing factory when he was thirty-five and made himself an expert on tubular metal construction. He used this expertise to move up in the factory at the same time as he moved up in party circles by applying himself diligently to political organization. Sergei Malenko was a clever man and not a weak one.
The room was very much the man, with well-polished, heavy wooden furniture, dark brown walls and rug, a fireplace already crackling with burning logs in spite of the fact that the house obviously had another heat source. On the walls were painted portraits of Lenin and figures unknown to Rostnikov.
“I’m sorry to be a bit abrupt, Inspector,” Malenko said, sitting in a dark couch and indicating to Rostnikov that he should sit across from him in a matching couch, “but I do have to get to my work.”
“I understand fully,” said Rostnikov with an apologetic smile as he seated himself, letting his leg remain out where it would not stiffen.
“This is about Ilyusha,” said the man, looking directly at Rostnikov, his hands folded before him. Malenko’s suit was similar to Rostnikov’s, but there were subtle differences. Malenko’s was much newer, and he wore a light green sweater of some particularly soft material.
“It is about your son,” Rostnikov confirmed.
“I imagine he is-” and it was Malenko’s turn to be interrupted by his wife, who pushed open the door and moved forward quickly with a tray containing two steaming cups of coffee.
“You want sugar and milk?” Malenko asked, taking some himself.
Rostnikov declined. He assumed the coffee would be good and he had good coffee so infrequently that he wanted it to be very hot and its taste very distinct.
“You have some questions about Ilyusha?” Malenko asked after his wife had withdrawn from the room, closing the door behind her.
The coffee was good and very hot and very strong. It burned the roof of Rostnikov’s mouth, and he wished he had asked for some milk.
“My first question is perhaps a bit tactless,” he said. “If so, please forgive me.” He put up his hands and shrugged in apology. “I’m a policeman and spend much of my time asking crude questions to enemies of the state and not to respected men of production. It strikes me as curious that a policeman comes to your house, that you know it concerns your son, and that you are not upon me with curiosity demanding to know if he is all right, what he has done. Instead you calmly drink your coffee and worry about getting to work.”
“The question is tactless,” agreed Malenko, “but reasonable. I have had little contact with my son for many years, perhaps four or five. We were never close. I think he took up with those dissenters, those social disrupters in reaction to me. And I suppose you are here to tell me that he has gotten into some trouble because of these stupid activities of his.”
“In a sense,” said Rostnikov. “Then, I take it, if your son were in trouble, it is not likely he would come to you for help.”
Sergei Malenko began to laugh. He laughed so hard that the cup in his hand began to shake, and he just reached the dark mahogany table just in time to set it down. His hair tumbled over, and he began to choke on his laughter.
“You’ll have to pardon me,” he said trying to pull himself out of his reaction, “but the very idea of Ilya coming to me for anything is laughable don’t you see?”
“Not in the least,” said Rostnikov sipping his own coffee.
“I have a new life, a new wife, a small daughter. Ilya is not part of that life. He spent seven years making my existence miserable, causing me trouble. He lived here and went to school. He was terrible in school. He got into trouble. Drinking, girls, gambling. He more than embarrassed me. He very nearly ruined me, and you know what? I think that is what he wanted to do. I finally threw him out. That is when he became a political dissident. I am the last person he would come to for help and the last person who would help him. You understand?”
“We want him because we have good reason to believe he murdered someone,” said Rostnikov softly.
Sergei Malenko’s face went white.
“No. That could ruin me,” he said almost to himself.
“It won’t do him much good either,” added Rostnikov.
Malenko looked up sharply.
“You either fancy yourself a wit or are foolish,” Malenko said between his teeth. “In either case, I suggest you tread softly, Inspector. Whom is he supposed to have murdered?”
“So far,” sighed Rostnikov, “his wife, Aleksander Granovsky, and a cab driver.”
The information struck Malenko like the blow of a tire iron. He sank back heavily and looked suddenly much older than his years.
“Is it possible,” he said so softly that Rostnikov could barely hear him, “that he would go so far to ruin me?”
“It is possible,” said Rostnikov, finishing his coffee. “It is also possible that his actions have little or nothing to do with you.”
“Then why did he do this?” demanded Malenko, his hair falling over his brow as he reached forward to pound on the table.
“I thought you might have some idea,” Rostnikov tried, “but I gather you have not, or the only one you have is of no great use to us. Did you know your son’s wife?”
“I met her once,” whispered Malenko, “on the street with him. She was a pretty girl who wanted to be friendly, but Ilya made a sarcastic comment and led her away.”
“Comment?” tried Rostnikov shifting his leg weight.
“Personal, political,” said Malenko. “Not relevant.”
“Perhaps-”
“Not relevant,” insisted Malenko, and Rostnikov nodded his agreement, though he could guess the content of the brief meeting between father and son on the street.
“You have no idea of where he could be, who he could go to?”
“None,” said Malenko. “We were never close. He no longer has the friends he had when he lived here. And before here we lived on a small farm beyond Kurkino. It has had two owners since.”
“I see,” said Rostnikov, rising slowly. “Then I believe that is all. Your first wife, Ilya’s mother. She died?”
“No,” said Malenko. His mind was elsewhere, planning his protection from his son’s reputation, but he answered, “We were divorced three years ago.”
“I see,” said Rostnikov. “And where can I find her?”
“It will do you no good to find her,” said Malenko, brushing his hair back with a broad brown hand. “She is in the Vilna Rehabilitation Institute.”
“Perhaps I can see her there,” said Rostnikov.
“You can see her if you insist,” said Malenko, guiding the policeman to the hall and toward the door, “but she will provide you no information. She is quite mad. She hears and sees no one but whoever might exist within her head.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rostnikov.
“There is reason to be,” Malenko said, opening the front door. Over his shoulder Rostnikov could see the second Mrs. Malenko looking apprehensively at them from what must have been the kitchen door. “Your records will show that she attained this ultimate escape after she murdered our infant son, Ilyusha’s brother, for no reason that anyone ever discovered.”