Buzz buzz.
Soon enough, another officer came through, carrying a different cassette tape recorder. This man was older, and wore a more worldly-wise expression. ‘Comrade Skvorecky,’ he said, and if the spirit of a million cigarettes could have been gifted a voice it would have rumbled and creaked exactly as his voice did.
‘Yes, comrade.’
‘Officer Zembla has been called away on urgent police business.’
‘I understand.’
‘My name is Liski.’
‘Officer Liski.’ I nodded.
He settled the machine on the table, turned it on, and reached into his pocket for a packet of Primos. He offered me one, then took one himself. His lighter ticked to life, the flame like a painter’s brush painted fire against the ends of each of the white tubes in turn. We both inhaled at the same time. ‘Now,’ he said. He expelled smoke the colour of a summer sky as he spoke. ‘If you please, tell me about your last encounter with the deceased.’
‘Comrade,’ I said, feeling calmer for the cigarette, ‘do not think me disrespectful, but may I ask: he is dead, then?’
‘He is.’
‘It all seems,’ I confessed, ‘somehow, unreal.’
‘It is, nevertheless, very real and very serious. An American citizen, found dead on the streets of Moscow, and you the only person in the vicinity. You comprehend why you have been taken into custody?’
When put like this, my situation seemed graver than I had previously realised. ‘I am not responsible for Mr Coyne’s death,’ I said.
‘Why don’t you tell me how it happened?’ said Liski, settling back in his chair. It was obvious that he was a dedicated smoker, both from the deep vertical creases that marked his face, and from the fact that those wrinkles visibly lessened as the tobacco relaxed his muscles.
‘As I was explaining to the previous officer,’ I said, ‘I had met Mr Coyne for the first time that day. Then by chance I encountered him again at the Pushkin Chess Club. At the end of the evening he asked me to walk with him a little way, as he made his way back to his hotel. He said he had an important thing to tell me.’
‘Why you?’
‘Why me?’
‘What I mean is: what was it about you that made him want to confide these things?’
‘A good question, comrade. I can’t really answer it.’
‘And what were these things he had to tell you?’
‘They concerned alien life.’
One heavy eyebrow defied gravity. ‘UFOs?’
‘Precisely. Perhaps that is why he wanted to talk to me. There had been some discussion in the Pushkin on this subject. I had been represented as being an expert.’
‘You are an expert on UFOs?’
‘No, I’m really not.’
‘Then why were you so represented?’
‘A long time ago,’ I said, ‘I used to write science fiction stories.’
‘Like Zamiatin?’
‘I met him once, actually,’ I said. ‘Although the stuff I wrote is feeble indeed compared to his genius.’
‘What,’ said Liski, ‘did Mr Coyne want to say to you about UFOs?’
‘He said they were a great danger to the world.’
‘I see. Did he specify this danger?’
‘It had something to do with nuclear power stations.’
‘Any particular power station?’
‘He mentioned one in the Ukraine. He said there was a prophecy concerning this station. In the Bible.’
Liski finished his cigarette. ‘To be clear: he claimed that the Bible contains a prophecy that UFOs will attack Ukrainian nuclear facilities?’
‘When you put it like that, comrade,’ I said, ‘it does sound a little… far-fetched.’
‘You’re sure he wasn’t joking?’
‘He seemed very earnest.’
‘He actually believed in these UFOs?’
I thought about this. ‘I believe he did.’
‘And do you?’
‘Believe in UFOs?’ I said. ‘No. I don’t. Or—’
‘Or?’
‘I don’t want to be evasive, comrade. Doesn’t it depend on what you mean by UFOs? If you are asking me whether there are actual metallic saucers that have flown here from Sirius to snatch up a long-distance lorry driver outside Yakutsk and rummage around his lower intestine: no, I don’t believe that. But there is a — phenomenon. That can’t be denied. A cultural phenomenon. Many people believe in UFOs. So many that UFOs possess actual cultural significance. We might say that my individual unbelief in God doesn’t wish away the Catholic Church.’
Liski looked enormously uninterested in the particularities of my unbelief. ‘So what happened?’
‘What happened?’
‘After Coyne told you about the imminent UFO attack on Ukraine?’
‘Then,’ I said, trying to get the order of events straight in my head. ‘Then.’ But it had been so strange a sequence that sorting it out in my recollection was harder than you might think. ‘What followed is very strange, comrade. I can’t think you’ll believe it.’
He was motionless in his chair. ‘Try me.’ His voice a purr.
‘First there was a power cut. The streetlights on Zholtovskovo Street all went out.’
‘Just on that street?’
‘Yes. The lights were still lit on the Garden Ring; I could see the glow over the rooftops. And some of the windows in the buildings were still lit. So, yes, just the streetlights. And then — well then somebody turned a spotlight on us.’
‘A spotlight?’
‘Like in a theatre. Or a prison camp.’ I stumbled over this latter phrase, with an unpleasant sensation in my spine that I shouldn’t have made that particular comparison. It was dawning on me, I think, that my chances of being released from criminal captivity were very small. An American had been killed, and I was the only individual at the scene. ‘It was,’ I said, resolving to tell the police the truth, howsoever strange it might be, ‘shining straight down upon us, from directly above. It must have been a very powerful bulb, because the light was blinding.’
‘Could you see who was shining this light?’
‘I couldn’t see anything apart from the light.’
‘Was it mounted on the roof? Was somebody leaning out of a window with it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I see. And then.’
I paused. ‘What happened next was that Coyne flew up in the air.’
This didn’t seem to faze Officer Liski. ‘Straight up, was it?’
‘Actually, yes. He flew upwards, and tipped upside down. I knew he was upside down because he grabbed hold of my shoulder.’
‘He was in mid-air, and he grabbed your shoulder?’
‘Exactly; and his face was about on a level with mine. Except that his face was upside down.’
‘Unusual.’
‘Very. Might I have another cigarette?’
Carefully, with the reverence of a true believer, Liski retrieved two more white cylinders from the packet and lit them both. He passed one to me. ‘Carry on.’
‘It sounds incredible, I know, but somebody must have snagged Mr Coyne with a rope. A rope around his ankle, I think, and they were trying to haul him upwards. He grabbed my shoulder, and that interrupted his upward progress for a moment, but then they yanked harder and he disappeared up into the light.’
‘You saw him?’
‘I suppose my eyes,’ I said, ‘were becoming accustomed to the brightness. I looked up and saw him, weightless as it were.’