Sheremetev helped Vladimir change into his pyjamas, prompting him each time he forgot what he was doing, nodding each time the old man looked at him for confirmation. Sheremetev felt Vladimir’s vulnerability and need for him as acutely as ever. But yesterday he had listened to him for the first time – really listened to him – and had heard, out of Vladimir’s own mouth, a confession of unmitigated abuse and corruption, without even the faintest hint of contrition to relieve it. He had asked the questions Goroviev had wanted to ask and received the answers he least wanted to hear.
How could he continue to stay at the dacha to look after this man? But with Vladimir looking at him like that, how could he leave?
Vladimir climbed into bed. Sheremetev gave him his medications.
‘Goodnight, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ he said.
Vladimir said nothing, as always, but lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.
Sheremetev turned off his light. He withstood the temptation to go to the cabinet in Vladimir’s dressing room where so many more watches lay waiting. He needed to think. He retreated to his own room and lay down, conscious of the wads of money under his mattress, imagining that he could feel them through the springs.
His phone rang. It was Oleg. He wanted to know if Sheremetev had been to the watch shop.
Sheremetev hesitated. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘How’s Pasha?’
‘Okay. When are you going to the shop?’
‘I couldn’t get away today. Tomorrow, I hope.’
‘Do you really think you’ll get something for the watch?’
‘I don’t know, Oleg. I’ll have to see. Listen, I have to go.’
‘Kolya, what’s going on?’
‘Nothing. I’ll try to go there tomorrow.’ Sheremetev put the phone down before Oleg could ask any more questions.
He rested back on his pillow and closed his eyes. Already he had under the mattress more money than he would ever have imagined one could get for a watch before Dr Rospov had enlightened him. He felt bad when he thought about the young lady in the watch shop, and how he had made her pay him so much that she wouldn’t make any money for herself. But still it wasn’t enough. Certainly, if he took the money he had got for the watch, and added to it what he had in the bank, and perhaps a little more from Oleg, they would have ten thousand for the prosecutor – but would the prosecutor really suddenly agree to drop his price? Might not the unexpected offer of ten thousand merely encourage him to hold out for more, and to make Pasha’s life even harder until it was delivered? And in the meantime, how many more watches were there in Vladimir’s cabinet? Hundreds! Enough to fully quench the greed of the prosecutor.
Sheremetev felt the fear he had always felt when faced with the prospect of wrongdoing, fear that everyone else around him seemed to be able to ignore. Somewhere, he thought, there must exist an inventory of Vladimir’s watches and one day, someone would check it. And if things were missing, who would they blame?
But other people had access to the dressing room. The maids, for instance, who were always taking things. After all, just a few days ago one of them had been dismissed for theft even though her real crime was sleeping with Stepanin. Surely it would be assumed that the maids had done it.
But would he then allow the maids to be sent to jail for a crime that he had committed? On the other hand, they had committed plenty of crimes, according to Stepanin, so what difference would it make if they were punished for something they hadn’t done rather than something they had?
No, he couldn’t imagine himself standing by and allowing that to happen. But then he could never have imagined himself stealing and selling a watch – and he had done it!
Maybe there wasn’t an inventory. No, there must be one, he thought.
Even if there was an inventory, would anyone worry about one missing watch when the other three hundred were in place? For all anyone knew, Vladimir himself might have taken it and before long it would turn up behind a cushion or in a sock drawer. It was natural that at any given moment one might be missing. More than one, however, and people might start to wonder.
But what if it was only a few more, say three or four? Would anyone really care? But he needed three hundred thousand dollars for Pasha, and three or four watches wouldn’t be enough. Besides, what would he say to Oleg? That he had sold one watch for so many hundreds of thousands of dollars?
He stopped. ‘Kolya,’ he said to himself, ‘what are you talking about? Stealing watches, one after the other? Is that what you’ve become? A common thief?’
But it was in a just cause. What right did the prosecutor have to demand three hundred thousand dollars to free Pasha from a charge that should never have been brought? What was that but common thievery, even if it was perpetrated by a man in a suit?
Sheremetev felt ill with fear and uncertainty and self-loathing. He touched gingerly at the laceration on his face. Even now, four days after Vladimir had injured him, it was still tender.
He wondered what Karinka would say. She had never, not once, in all the months she had been dying, ever asked him to take bribes. He wished she had. He wished she had made him confront himself as Nina had done.
But watches, more watches… Stealing them…
It was hunger that finally interrupted his thoughts. He looked in on Vladimir, who was sleeping peacefully, took the monitor and went downstairs. He was later than usual. He knocked on the kitchen door and one of the potwashers opened it.
‘Can I have something to eat?’ he asked.
The potwasher yelled over his shoulder: ‘Nikolai Ilyich wants something to eat.’
Sheremetev sat at the dining table. Stepanin came out with a couple of dishes and put them in front of him. Then he sat as well. Sheremetev felt like telling him to go away – the last thing he wanted now was to have to listen to Stepanin whining about his endless feud with Barkovskaya.
In front of him was a dish of fried potatoes with egg and a kind of stew that appeared to contain aubergines and salami in sour cream.
Sheremetev looked questioningly at the cook.
‘I’m not using that bitch’s meat. Into the pit it goes with the chickens.’
Sheremetev didn’t think that was going to work for very long. The security boys might have tolerated the disappearance of poultry from their diet, but meat was another matter. ‘What are you going to cook with, Vitya? Air?’
‘I can’t let her do this.’
‘Vitya,’ said Sheremetev wearily, ‘she’s going to win. She’s the one who pays the bills. You can’t beat that. How many arms and legs do you want to break? How many of your suppliers do you want to have firebombed? Talk to her and see if she’ll come to an arrangement.’
‘It’s too late for that.’
‘What does that mean?’
Stepanin didn’t reply.
Sheremetev shook his head in exasperation and began to eat.
‘How is it?’ asked Stepanin after a while.
Sheremetev shrugged. ‘Better than it looks.’
Stepanin couldn’t hold back a grin. He explained enthusiastically how he had created the potato dish, a new twist on a classic. Sheremetev’s irritation with him evaporated. The truth was, he was a good cook, and he wanted people to enjoy his food, and what else can one ask of a cook? Even these two dishes, that he had concocted, it seemed, out of spite for Barkovskaya, were tasty. And in the end, was he really such a bad man? Was it so terrible, what he wanted, to set up his own restaurant in Moscow? Russian fusion, minimalist décor – was it such an abominable dream? And everything had been going so well for him. True, he had been skimming a little off the top – or a lot off the top, if what he had told Sheremetev about his astronomical savings was true – but who didn’t? Only him, Sheremetev.