“You find it necessary to interrogate me in my home,” Samsonov said, not backing away from the open door to let Rostnikov in.
“If you prefer, we can go to the People’s Hall or to the house in which I am staying,” said Rostnikov.
“Let him in,” came a woman’s voice from within the house.
Samsonov shuddered, played with his sleeves again, ignoring the cold that must be cutting through his body, and then stepped back to let Rostnikov in.
When the door was closed behind him the chill of the outside lingered.
“You may keep your coat on,” said Samsonov. “I would like this visit to be as brief as possible.”
“As you wish,” said Rostnikov. “Though I would prefer to sit. I have a leg which gives me some trouble from time to time.”
The house was identical in structure to Galich’s but the atmosphere was a world away. The wooden floor was covered by two rugs, one very large and oriental. The furnishings were upholstered and modern, the kind Rostnikov had seen in the Moscow apartments of Party officials and successful criminals. On the walls were paintings, very modern paintings with no subject and no object.
“You are surprised?” Samsonov said leaning back against the wall and folding his arms.
“At your inhospitality or the furnishings?” Rostnikov asked.
“I owe you no hospitality,” Samsonov said. “You have exiled me, taken me and my family away from my practice, my research, driven me out of my country. If you had not driven me to this corner of hell, my daughter would be alive. My daughter is dead and you people have done nothing. What hospitality do I owe you?”
“I did not exile you. I did not drive you out. I am not responsible for what happened to your daughter,” said Rostnikov softly. “I am not the government. I am an inspector looking for the killer of a deputy Commissar and I am a man who has a son and feels deeply for a man who has lost his daughter. Do you have a picture of your little girl?”
“What has that to do with your investigation?” asked a woman who emerged from the darkness beyond the stairs.
Rostnikov turned to her. She was dark, slender, quite beautiful. Ludmilla Samsonov wore a red and black close-fitting knit dress that would have been stylish even on Kalinin Prospekt.
“It has nothing to do with the investigation,” replied Rostnikov unable to take his eyes from the lovely pale woman. “My son is grown. He’s a soldier stationed in Afghanistan. Each day my wife and I hold our breath in fear.”
“You have a picture of your son?” Ludmilla Samsonov asked, stepping even closer.
Rostnikov had expected the illusion of beauty to drop away in the light, but the woman looked even better as she drew closer. He wondered what she would look like smiling and knew that he would never know. He reached under his coat, removed his battered wallet and took out a photograph of Josef and Sarah. The photo was three years old but Josef had not changed much. Sarah, however, looked quite different.
Ludmilla Samsonov reached out to take the picture and her cool fingers touched Rostnikov’s.
She examined the photograph and held it out to her husband who turned away, gave Rostnikov a cold stare and then looked down at the picture. His face betrayed nothing. The woman handed back the photograph which Rostnikov put away carefully.
Samsonov shared a look with his wife and pointed to a desk by the front window. Rostnikov walked to the desk and picked up the framed picture which rested on it. The girl in the picture was smiling at him.
“Beautiful,” said Rostnikov.
A single sob escaped the woman behind him and he put down the photograph and turned back slowly to give her time to recover. She was standing closer to her husband now but they were not touching. Rostnikov sensed a terrible tension between the two.
“You perform perfectly, Inspector …” Samsonov began.
“Rostnikov. May I sit?”
“Sit,” said Samsonov tersely.
Rostnikov moved to the nearest straight-backed chair and sat with relief.
“An old injury?” Samsonov said referring to Rostnikov’s leg.
“A very old injury,” agreed Porfiry Petrovich.
“And it still causes you pain?” asked Samsonov, his tone changing to one of professional curiosity.
“From time to time, mostly discomfort.”
Ludmilla Samsonov turned and left the room as quietly as she had entered it.
“Leg dysfunctions used to be my speciality before I began my research,” said Samsonov not moving from the wall. “Especially war wounds. I treated quite a few soldiers who had been in Afghanistan.”
“This is a war wound,” said Rostnikov.
“May I look?” asked Samsonov.
“If you wish,” said Rostnikov sitting back.
Samsonov moved from the wall with confidence and knelt on one knee before the policeman.
“I have had very little opportunity to practice here,” said Samsonov, his fingers running the length of Rostnikov’s left leg. “And no opportunity for research. Remarkable muscle tone. You must be a very determined man. In most people this leg would have atrophied.”
“We endure,” Rostnikov said as Samsonov stood.
“Whether we like it or not,” agreed Samsonov. “Do you take any medication?”
“No,” said Rostnikov.
“I can give you the name of an American muscle relaxant which should help you if you can get it. You take one a day for the rest of your life. I assume that since you are a policeman you have connections for such things.”
“Perhaps,” said Rostnikov.
“I may have a bottle of the medicine among my things. I’ll see if I can find it. I can also give you a set of exercises that should ease the pain and make walking easier,” said Samsonov moving to a chair. “Are you interested?”
“Very much.”
“I’ll ask Ludmilla to type them up and get them to you before you leave.”
“And now?” asked Rostnikov.
“And now,” said Samsonov, as his wife came back into the room carrying a tray with three matching cups and a plate of small pastries.
“I’d like you to tell me about your contacts with Commissar Rutkin,” said Rostnikov, accepting a steaming cup of tea offered by Ludmilla Samsonov. She placed the tray on an inlaid table to Rostnikov’s left.
“He was a fool,” Samsonov said, the anger returning to his voice. “They sent a fool. It took the death of a fool for them to send you to find out what happened to our Karla.”
“I’m going to tell you something,” said Rostnikov, putting down the tea and leaning forward. “I want you to hear me out, not interrupt me till I am finished.”
“Say it,” Samsonov said impatiently.
“I have told you that I have not been sent here to investigate your daughter’s death.”
Samsonov clenched his fists and closed his eyes. He looked for an instant as if he were going to cry out. His wife touched his shoulder and Samsonov laughed.
“You’re only here to look for the one who killed that fool,” he said. “God.”
“I asked you to hear me out without interruption,” said Rostnikov.
“And I never agreed,” said Samsonov.
“Let him finish,” said the woman.
“Why bother?” asked Samsonov.
“Let him finish,” she repeated quietly looking at Rostnikov.
“I think it possible, probably even likely, that the two deaths are related,” he said carefully. “I have been told that someone else will be sent to investigate your daughter’s death, but I do not see how I can conduct the investigation of Commissar Rutkin’s murder without knowing something about what happened to your daughter. Do you understand?”
Samsonov cocked his head to one side and examined Rostnikov.
“You have been ordered away from Karla’s death but you intend to pursue it anyway,” Samsonov said.
In answer, Rostnikov reached for one of the pastries which he plunked into his mouth.
“Very good,” he said.
“I made them myself,” said the woman. “I do a great deal of baking since … I do a great deal of baking. How can we help you?”
“A few questions. A few answers,” Rostnikov said resisting the urge to reach for more pastries. He looked at Samsonov. “You are the only doctor for several hundred miles. I assume you examined Commissar Rutkin’s body.”
Samsonov bit his lower lip, took a deep breath and clasped his hands in his lap.
“I would think you had the pathologist’s report,” Samsonov said. His wife reached over to touch him again.
“Yes, of course,” said Rostnikov, “but you were first, possibly you saw, noted something that they might later miss and, as you know, each pathologist is different, searches in his or her own way. You understand.”
“Yes,” said Samsonov with a pained grin. “You don’t trust them. Good. Neither do I. My daughter died of trauma. Rutkin made it clear that he thought she fell from the rock near the river. Her bones, her body … She was hurled from the rock. She was murdered and I told him as I tell you, if the murderer is not identified I shall carry the story with me into the West. It is too late to stop us from leaving. The world already knows I am leaving.”
Rostnikov took a small sip of the tea, a very small one. Soon he would need a washroom, but he did not want to stop. He would have to be more careful, more precise with his questions. He had not wanted the man to conjecture about the death of his daughter. His questions had clearly been about the dead Commissar.
“I understand you discovered the body of Commissar Rutkin,” he said.
Samsonov looked at his wife and nodded his head to confirm the policeman’s understanding.
“Tell me about it,” Rostnikov said.
“Tell you about it,” Samsonov said, shaking his head and touching his hair as if he suddenly felt unkempt. “I got up early, before the plow. I wanted to be there when Rutkin arrived to conduct his hearing, present his findings. I wanted him to face me. I knew that he planned to find that Karla had died of an accidental fall. I did not intend to let him get by with that.”
“So,” Rostnikov prompted to get the man back to the subject, “you got up early.”
“Early, yes. I was out by six, possibly a bit earlier. I didn’t see the body till I was almost at the door to the People’s Hall.”
“So you heard nothing? Saw nothing?” asked Rostnikov.
“No shouts. No screams. No whimpers. No regrets,” said Samsonov looking up at Rostnikov.
“How long had he been dead when you found him? Could you tell?”
“Minutes. The temperature was 40 below and the blood had not yet frozen,” said Samsonov. “Cause of death appeared to be a puncture wound through his left eye and into his brain and a second about two centimeters across just above the shoulder blade, barely into the neck. It appeared to be deep and, judging from the hemorrhaging into the eyes and mouth, I think it penetrated the carotid artery and cut through the esophagus. I am not a pathologist. I did not get an opportunity to examine the body very closely, but this all seemed obvious.”
“So the killer knew what he was doing, how to kill?” asked Rostnikov. “I mean in your opinion.”
“Who knows?” sighed Samsonov reaching for a cup of tea, picking it up, changing his mind and putting it back down again. “It could have been luck. I’ve seen accidental trauma, a fall, a car crash that caused incisions that looked as if they had been done by a skilled surgeon.”
“Do you think someone caught him unaware?”
“Impossible,” said Samsonov. “He was in the square, the open square. The snow hadn’t been plowed. Get out there some morning. You can hear the slightest change in the wind. He was running away from whoever got him. You could see the footprints in the snow. I told that fool Famfanoff. I tell you.”
“So, if Commissar Rutkin saw someone coming at him with a weapon, he had time to call for help.”
“Probably,” Samsonov agreed.
“But no one heard him call,” said Rostnikov. “The report says …”
“The square itself is a small, silent canyon, but if the wind is blowing toward the river, you would have to be right in the square to hear someone yell,” said Samsonov. “What’s the difference? I knocked at the door of the People’s Hall and Mirasnikov helped me bring the body inside before it froze.”
“How long did it take for him to answer your knock?”
“I don’t know. Not long. Almost immediately.”
“Was he dressed?”
“Dressed? Yes,” said Samsonov with irritation. “He was dressed, but …”
“If Commissar Rutkin shouted in the square, would someone inside the People’s Hall hear it?” Rostnikov continued.
“Probably. Who knows? If you mean Mirasnikov, he is an old man. So is his wife. I don’t know what they can hear and can’t hear.”
Rostnikov said, “I see,” and with an effort he tried to disguise, stood up. He was still wearing his coat and felt perspiration under his arms. He was reluctant to pass too close to Ludmilla Samsonov as he moved toward the door.
“That is all?” asked Samsonov.
“For now,” said Rostnikov.
“But what about Karla? You have my warning,” said Samsonov.
“A foot at a time,” said Rostnikov, buttoning his coat. “A foot at a time and patience. Someone once said that you can get to town faster after a storm by walking around the fallen trees and rocks than by following a straight path and climbing over them.”
“Someone once said …?” Ludmilla said, reaching out to take Rostnikov’s hand.
“I think it was Gogol,” Rostnikov admitted.
“Do your best, Inspector,” she said.
Rostnikov could smell her cleanliness and his own sweat.
“You will hear from me,” he said, including Samsonov in his parting comment, but Samsonov was still sitting, his hands clasped, his face turned away.
“I will remind him about the medicine and the exercises for your leg,” she said quietly as she opened the door.
“Spasee’bo,” said Rostnikov.
Rostnikov resisted the impulse to turn back and look at Ludmilla Samsonov as he went down the wooden steps and onto the plowed path.
Questions, questions. Porfiry Petrovich needed some space and time for thinking but he decided to make one more visit before going back to his room.
SEVEN
SASHA TKACH WOKE UP SUDDENLY with the empty feeling that he was late for work. He looked around the living room at the baby’s crib, at his sleeping wife, at the dull winter sunlight coming through the window and for an instant he could not remember if he was an ice cream vendor or a policeman. He had to reach over and touch Maya to restore reality.
She stirred and rolled toward him, her dark, straight hair in disarray over her closed eyes, and laid her right arm over his bare stomach. Sasha wanted to pull her to him but he didn’t want to waken her. He lay back looking at the ceiling, listening to the sound of his mother’s snoring in the bedroom, even though the door to the bedroom was closed.
Lydia had been given the bedroom because a better sense of partial privacy was possible with the assumption that at night the living room/dining room/kitchen was the territory of Sasha, Maya, and the baby while the bedroom belonged to Lydia. Neutral time was spent in Sasha and Maya’s space but Lydia knew that she was to retreat to the bedroom about an hour after dinner which, in any case, was close to her bedtime. None of this had ever been openly discussed. It had been arrived at through trial and error, argument and near argument, compromise and conflict. It had been arrived at in the Tkach household as in hundreds of thousands of households in cities throughout the Soviet Union in much the same way.
“I don’t sleep for hours after I go to my room,” Lydia had once confided to her son as if it were a secret to be kept from his wife. In fact, Sasha and Maya could tell from Lydia’s snoring that she was in bed and asleep almost every night within half an hou
r of going to her room.
Sasha turned his head toward the window and considered getting up.
“You are awake,” Maya whispered in his ear.
“Yes,” he answered. “I have to get to work in a little while. I’m selling ice cream today.”
“I love ice cream,” she said in her Ukrainian accent which always sent a thrill through him.
“Bring the baby today to the Yamarka at the Economic Exhibition. You can see the bears in the zoo having fun and me dressed like a fool and I can watch the two of you eat.”
She smiled. Her teeth were white. She pulled him down and kissed him. Her tongue played with his lower lip.
“My mother will be getting up in a few minutes,” he whispered. “And the baby …”
“I don’t care,” said Maya touching his stomach and reaching down into his pajama bottoms.
Sasha wanted to tell her that they should wait till that night, that he was in a hurry, but his body responded and he felt that he owed her the demonstration of love which he felt. He hoped they could stay under the blanket in case Lydia burst into the room. He hoped they could make love quietly. He hoped, but he didn’t expect it. He reached for his wife’s hands and moved them to where they felt best.
After they had made love with no interruption except a movement by Pulcharia in the crib, Sasha kissed Maya who clung to him not wanting to let him go.
“I hear her,” he whispered looking up at the bedroom door.
“When we get the new apartment in North Zmailova,” she said, “we get the bedroom with the baby and Lydia gets the small room off the living room.”
“I remember,” he said, disengaging her arms and kissing her on her warm, exposed shoulder.
“And remember you said you would call the housing registry to see why they haven’t called us,” Maya said as he stood up and reached for his underwear.
“I’ll call today,” he promised. “Are you going to come with the baby?”
“Yes,” she said. “It sounds like fun.”
A Cold Red Sunrise Page 9