‘Comrade, I’m honestly not trying to fool you.’
‘When I got you to spell her name just then,’ he said, ‘I already knew it! It was a trick. We’ll soon have Norman Doriski in custody. Very soon.’
‘Dora Norman,’ I said.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Think of your ballbag,’ he said. ‘Think about it long and hard. Give your ballbag careful thought. I would, if I were you.’
‘You would?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d think about my ballbag?’
‘The tape recorder isn’t king in here,’ he told me, his eyes going from side to side. ‘I’m king in here.’
‘I had always assumed that the optimum interrogation strategy was nice cop nasty cop,’ I said. ‘Not nice cop confusing cop.’
He opened his eyes very wide at this, but didn’t say anything. Perhaps he couldn’t think of a retort. Instead he pointed his forefinger at my face and gave me a severe look. Then he jabbed his meaty thumb at the tape recorder. The spindle-wheels of the cassette again began turning again. ‘How did you come to be walking with Mr Coyne along Zholtovskovo Street after midnight?’
‘I encountered him quite by chance.’
‘By chance? You didn’t arrange to meet him again?’
‘No. I went to the Pushkin Chess Club, and he happened to be there.’
‘You went to the Pushkin Chess Club?’
‘Yes.’
He turned off the recorder again. ‘Big chess fan, are you?’ he sneered.
‘The club has a social function in addition to the playing of chess.’
‘Ever played chess with your own balls instead of the kings? Eh? Have you? Because I can arrange exactly that sort of game. I’ll cut them off myself with my penknife, and you can use them as the two white kings. Understand?’
He turned the tape recorder on again. I’ll confess I was finding his one-note attempt to intimidate me strangely endearing. ‘There’s only one white king,’ I said. ‘One king per player in a game of chess.’
He jabbed the tape recorder off. ‘I know that!’ he snapped. He poked his thumb at the machine, turned it on, turned it off again, perhaps by accident, turned it on again. ‘Don’t fuck with me, little man. You seem to enjoy being disrespectful to me. Do it once more and I won’t cut your balls off, I’ll fucking rip them off with my own right hand.’
I considered telling him that he was recording this tirade onto his cassette, but elected, after a moment’s consideration, not to. It was his machine, after all. ‘Fair enough,’ I said.
‘OK. We’re going to proceed with the interview in a moment. I’ll ask questions, and you’ll give me the answers I want to hear, OK? No more disrespect, or your balls will no longer be attached to your body.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘Good.’ He pressed the cassette button, turning the machine off. He seemed to believe that he had turned it on.
‘So, comrade. You met Mr Coyne in the Pushkin?’
‘He was there, yes.’
‘And you didn’t expect to see him there?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Why not?’
‘For one thing, I assumed he couldn’t speak Russian.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I suppose I reasoned: if he spoke Russian, why had he needed my services as a translator in the ministry, that afternoon?’
‘Why indeed? So he did speak Russian?’
‘Fluently.’
‘Why, then, had he asked for an interpreter at the ministry?’
‘I’ve no idea, comrade.’
‘You can’t guess?’
‘I suppose he didn’t want the ministry to know the extent of his Russian knowledge. As in a game of poker, one keeps certain cards hidden from the other players.’
‘So he was playing poker?’
‘Metaphorically, yes, I suppose so.’
‘What was he playing, though?’
I thought for a moment. ‘Poker?’ I hazarded.
The thumb jabbed at the tape, switching it, as he thought, off; although in fact he had turned it on. ‘You fucking little shit, you testicular idiot. Don’t fucking backchat me, all right?’
‘No, comrade.’
‘You know what I meant when I asked that question?’
‘The poker question?’
‘No! No!’ He seemed genuinely to be losing his temper. ‘I asked what he was playing at. Answering poker is just, fucking — what’s the word — facetious. It’s glib. If you’re fucking glib, I’ll remove your testicles. Yes?’
‘I understand,’ I said gravely.
‘You haven’t forgotten what I said about your testicles?’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.’
‘Then perhaps,’ he said, ‘we can proceed. Or we’ll be here all fucking night.’ He pushed the switch on the tape recorder again, and the little wheels stopped turning. ‘For the record,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘What was Mr Coyne actually doing in Moscow?’
‘You’re asking my opinion?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s not an opinion.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘All right, all right. Look. Tell me how you came to be walking down Zholtovskovo Street with the deceased.’
‘He said he wanted to have a word with me. About something important.’
‘You were talking Russian?’
‘Mostly. Occasionally we’d swap to English.’
‘And what did he want to talk about? Wait! Wait! Shit, shit, shit.’ Zembla lurched forward and peered at the tape recorder. ‘The little wheels aren’t going round. Is it broken? Piece of shit.’
‘I believe it is turned off.’
Gingerly, Zembla tried the REC button. The spindles began to turn. He switched it off and they stopped. I watched, as realisation kindled in his big face. ‘I’ve been doing it the wrong way round,’ he said. ‘Turning it off during the interview, and turning it on during the… ah, the interruptions.’
‘It looks that way, comrade.’
‘Shit!’ he said, with real panic in his voice. ‘All the stuff about balls is on tape!’ His gaze, when it came up to meet mine, was imploring. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean any of it. All that stuff about cutting off your balls. I would never actually do anything so brutal.’
‘I believe you,’ I said.
‘It was just a strategy! It was just jabber, to get you talking! Really, I’m a gentle-hearted man.’
‘Your gentleness shines through.’
‘The captain is going to be peeved. He won’t like it.’ Fumblingly he pressed the rewind button. ‘Maybe I can just erase the whole thing? Start again? How does one erase these fucking little cassettes anyway?’
‘I’m not an expert with such machines,’ I said.
‘Oh, and shit. Shit and oh. The captain is going to be annoyed.’ This prospect really seemed to alarm him. He stopped the rewind and pressed play. Tinnily his own voice sounded out, fucking little shit, you testicular idiot. Don’t fucking backchat. He jabbed it off. ‘Oh dear. Oh,’ he said. ‘Dear. Oh no.’
‘We can start again,’ I offered.
But Zembla picked the machine up and burlied his way out of the interrogation room, leaving the door open. For a while I simply sat there, looking through the open door at the stretch of corridor outside, and wondering what the likelihood was of my being able simply to walk out of the Militia headquarters. I didn’t move. It recalled to me my strange experience in the restaurant the previous day: staring at a door, thinking about walking through it, but not doing so.