Vodka

by Boris Starling

  “Divorced?” German nodded. “Alla’s your second wife?” Irk glanced at the date of birth again: April 12, 1961, the day Gagarin had become a starman. That made German thirty. If Vladimir was born twelve years ago; German must have married young and divorced early.

  German shook his head. “My first. Only Alla.”

  Irk shouldn’t have been surprised. Unable to afford to move, couples often had no choice but to live together long after their divorce, sometimes continuing to share the same room and even the same bed. If either German or Alla resented their circumstances, they hadn’t shown it, at least not in front of Irk.

  “You get used to it, Investigator,” German said. “Just make do with what you’ve got. I don’t give anyone any problems. You want to see troublemakers, go and talk to the three alkies who steal food from the kitchen and invite bums up there for all-night vodka parties. When that happens, the rest of us can’t sleep.”

  The government was talking about building cheap one-bedroom apartments to replace these beehives of communal living, but with more than a quarter of a million families to be rehoused, the program would take years to complete.

  “The walls are so thin that you can hear what people are saying even when they’re talking quietly,” German continued. “It’s so depressing. No one can do anything without everyone else discussing it. We’re meant to live as a big family, but it doesn’t work like that, even when we try. Last Christmas we tried to put aside our differences and pulled pieces of furniture into the corridor to make a long banquet table, but the ceiling was leaking too badly. We all ended up sitting in our rooms and sulking.”

  Twenty-five people in one house, with one kitchen and one bathroom between them. The Bolshevik planners had seen this as an innovation that would forge bonds between residents, an exciting experiment in socialist living. Innovation, experiment—words for scientists, Irk thought, not for human beings.

  Sabirzhan was in Irk’s office again.

  “Perhaps I should give you all my work and go home for the day,” Irk said.

  “Are you making progress with German Kullam?”

  “Didn’t you hear what Denis Denisovich said?”

  Sabirzhan held up his hands. “We got off on the wrong foot, you and I, and for that I apologize. The truth is this: I think German Kullam is guilty.”

  “He doesn’t look like a Chechen to me. Nor some kind of political kingmaker.”

  “I know, I know. But I spoke to him yesterday…”

  “They told me.”

  “… and he wasn’t convincing, let’s put it that way. So I got to thinking; what if it is as simple as that? Take out the Chechens and the politics. Take out our national desire to complicate everything. What if German did kill his son, and all the rest is coincidence?”

  Irk considered this for a moment. “A domestic incident, could have happened anywhere … Less embarrassing for Red October, that’s for sure.”

  Sabirzhan smiled and clapped his hands. “I knew you’d see, Juku.”

  “What about Lev?”

  “I thought it would be better presented to him as a fait accompli.”

  “He doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “He has enough things to worry about.”

  “I’m not going to stitch German up, I want you to know that. If we charge him, it will be because he’s guilty, not because you want him to be guilty.”

  Sabirzhan looked offended. “Investigator, please. We’re not in the dark ages now.”

  Irk asked German about Vladimir until he ran out of questions. What happened the night he had disappeared, who his friends were, who his teachers were, where his stamping grounds were—everything he could think of. Some of the questions he’d already asked back at the apartment, others he repeated three or four times here.

  German’s diatribe on communal living was, in retrospect, proving something of a soliloquy. His answers had the consistency and creativity of a metronome: yes, no, don’t know. At one point Irk even asked if Vladimir had really been his son, more to shock German into a reaction than anything else. German had said yes without surprise or offense, the same way he’d say yes to someone who asked him whether he’d like bread with his soup.

  “Why don’t you just drop it all on the table?” Irk said. He needed to sound angrier, more exasperated. If he couldn’t convince himself, there was no way German would fall for it. “Go through your memory like your mother searched your head for lice. You’ll feel a lot better. Come on, German. You’re like a virgin after seven abortions. All this posing the innocent doesn’t wash with me. I know details can get hazy in the emotion of the moment. I’ll remind you of what happened, and you let me know when you remember, yes? After all, I’m only telling you things you already know.”

  Sabirzhan and Denisov were chatting away like old friends when Irk walked in. Yesterday’s animosity was gone. It was amazing, Irk thought sardonically, what communality of purpose could do for human relations. He sat down without looking at either of them.

  “He didn’t do it,” Irk said. “German Kullam didn’t kill his son.”

  “Just because he didn’t confess?” Denisov snorted. “Of course he did it. You only have to look at him to know that.”

  Sabirzhan was nodding slowly, as though Irk would soon see the truth so evident to other, wiser men. They’re in this together, Irk realized. Before Sabirzhan had visited Irk, he must have been to see Denisov and impressed on him their mutual interest in convicting German. This was how it was in Russia; for Irk, truth and justice were too often mutually exclusive commodities.

  “He didn’t do it.” Irk realized he was beginning to sound like German himself: didn’t do it, didn’t do it. “The boy was dead when he went in the water. German doesn’t live too far from the river, but he hasn’t got a car.”

  “So?”

  “So how could he get Vladimir’s body down to the Moscow without anyone seeing?”

  “Maybe they went for a walk on the bank and he bopped him on the head there. We hold Kullam until he stops playing silly buggers. I want him here, isolated and shitting himself.” Denisov peered at him. “You didn’t offer him a lawyer, did you?”

  “No. But he’s entitled to one.”

  “What, because the devil’s spawn said so? Don’t make me laugh.” The previous year Gorbachev had extended a defendant’s right to a lawyer to the moment he was arrested rather than from the moment he was charged. Denisov had flatly refused to recognize this; as far as he was concerned, anything that had come from Gorbachev was an edict of Beelzebub, and should therefore be disobeyed as a moral imperative. Denisov ran the prosecutor’s office on strictly Soviet lines: suspects could be held without charge for three days, and for another week after that if the prosecutor believed they had enough evidence to prepare a case. When these ten days were up, they had either to charge the suspect or release him.

  “That’s what the law says.”

  “The law doesn’t know what it says from one day to the next.”

  “Besides, it’s not as if these draconian conditions help. Our clear-up rate is still woeful, Denis Denisovich, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Just imagine how much worse it would be without them.”

  Denisov took over the questioning himself. He drew the line at inviting Sabirzhan to help.

  “We’ve spoken to your wife, German. She says you’ve been drinking more and more lately, and when you get drunk you get angry, and when you get angry you take it out on her too. But I suppose you think that’s the lot of a Moscow wife—cook up, shut up, get beaten up. Don’t you?”

  Irk wondered how much Denisov was speaking from personal experience.

  “You want to see what real violence is, German?” Denisov continued. “Have you ever got a good kicking from the police? They’re scientists at it, my friend, they’re artists. They know where to hit you, and they don’t leave traces. They’ll take your arms and legs and swing you high up in the air before dropping you on the floor, fla
t on your ass, again and again and again. You know what happens after that? The next day, you’ll be spitting blood. Two days after that, your kidneys will pack up and you’ll die. Still want to try and prove that you’re not a camel?”

  German’s eyes seemed to fill half his face. Irk couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone look so scared.

  “Denis Denisovich,” Irk said, “can I have a word? Outside?”

  In the corridor—he thought briefly of his cigarette break while Sidorouk chopped up Vladimir Kullam inside the autopsy room—Irk said, “It’s not him, I’m certain of it. And any beating we give him is nothing compared to what they’d do to him in jail, you know that.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t know that. He’s going to spill the beans any moment, Juku. Get in there and take his confession. That’s an order. If you won’t, I’ll find someone who will. Don’t play the hero; there’s no room for Sakharovs here, comrade.”

  “I hate being called ‘comrade.’”

  “I know.”

  Three springs ago, Irk had been a link in the million-strong human chain that had stretched all the way through the Baltics, from Tallinn to Vilnius via Riga. Irk had fought against the Soviet Union while it was still there. Denisov was fighting for it now that it was gone.

  “We can’t keep German inside for a crime he didn’t commit,” Irk said.

  “Why ever not?”

  It was a genuine question, Irk realized with surprise. Whyever not indeed? Stalin had killed millions for crimes they hadn’t committed.

  20

  Saturday, January 11, 1992

  They had put German in a cell overnight and left him there; no food, no water, no company. When Irk returned at dawn, German was sitting up on the flat bench that doubled as a bed. His eyes were dull with fatigue and his hands shaking with apprehension. Self-loathing grabbed at Irk; he knew that German wouldn’t have slept much, if at all.

  “I’ve bad news for you, German. If you don’t confess, Denis Denisovich wants to charge Alla as an accomplice to murder. He’s within his rights to do so. Neither you nor your wife notified the police that Vladimir was missing.”

  When a man was falling, crumbling, collapsing, it didn’t matter how hard the final kick was, but how carefully it was placed. What was left of German’s resistance flew from him like a startled pigeon. “Where do you want me to start?” he asked.

  A confession is the only evidence that counts in Russia; it’s the end to which every Russian policeman works. This suits investigators, as it’s not unknown for those who bring cases that end in acquittals to lose their jobs.

  Confession is seen as the cry of the guilty soul, overwhelmed by the urge to unburden itself. Many Russians believe that a defendant who doesn’t confess cannot be punished. Why else did Stalin insist that the victims of his purges must undergo show trials, where they acknowledged conspiracies that never existed? If an admission contradicts the facts, then the facts are wrong; if the facts are wrong, they should be changed.

  Irk felt contaminated, polluted. German’s confession was signed and sealed; he’d agreed enthusiastically with everything Irk had reminded him that he’d done and, as the hours had rolled on and he’d gradually become more confident, he’d even started to add some embellishments of his own.

  “Excellent,” said Denisov. “The case is orderly again. Disorderliness makes me feel ill.”

  The only ailments Denisov was in danger of suffering, thought Irk, were a brown nose and a numb ass. “Disorderly,” the all-purpose Soviet negative, was Denisov’s favorite word. A driving violation was disorderly, a factory failing to meet its quotas was disorderly, prostitutes were disorderly, a dead child plucked from filthy waters was disorderly. Denisov hated disorder. Even his name, Denis Denisovich Denisov, made no concessions to disarray.

  “A first-class display of law enforcement,” said Sabirzhan. “We at the Lubyanka could have done it no better, and that’s the highest praise. I thank you both as sincerely as I know how. Lev will be very pleased when I tell him.” He gestured at Denisov’s phone. “May I?”

  Irk felt a childish pang of resentment: Sabirzhan hadn’t asked before using his phone.

  As far as Lev was concerned, Saturday was just another business day, so he didn’t find it unusual or rude that Gusman Kabish, director of the Kazan distillery in the city of that name, should be calling him. Not rude, that was, until he heard what Kabish had to say.

  “I’m afraid we’re canceling our agreement with you, effective immediately. We’re getting our water from Baikal instead.”

  Red October and Kazan had for three years enjoyed a mutually beneficial deal. The quality of top-line vodkas was dependent, among other things, on the wheat and water used in their manufacture. Wheat in Tatarstan, the semiautonomous republic five hundred miles east of Moscow of which Kazan was the capital, was the best and most cost effective in all Russia. Kabish had more than he could use, so he sent the surplus to Red October. In return, Lev sent Kabish water from the reservoirs Red October maintained up near the Mytishchi springs; the water here was soft and free from calcium, which was perfect for vodka. This was the way all industry had worked in the Soviet Union. Central planning’s inefficiency meant that every factory suffered shortages, and the easiest way around this was not to fight the planners but to find another factory, which had what you needed. You would then pay, barter or trade with them in secret.

  In business terms at least, Kabish’s decision made no sense. Baikal was much farther from Kazan than Moscow was, and the water there wasn’t as good as that from Mytishchi.

  Look below the surface, Lev told himself. In Russia, that’s where the truth is to be found.

  Tatarstan is nominally Muslim, as is Chechnya. Though the two republics are thousands of miles apart, Chechens and Tatars see themselves as brothers, united by the prejudice of the Russian infidel. It was an open secret that the Chechen Mafia was expanding into Kazan.

  “Karkadann’s got to you, hasn’t he?” Lev said, and slammed the receiver down without waiting for an answer. The phone rang again instantly; Lev snatched the receiver back from the cradle and yelled into it. “Yes?”

  “It’s Tengiz. I’m down at Petrovka, and I’m very pleased to tell you that German Kullam has just confessed to Vova’s murder.”

  Lev’s size and fury seemed to fill Denisov’s office.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? That confession’s a load of shit, and you know it. I will not have one of my employees fitted up because you lot are too bone idle or chickenshit scared to look for the real culprit. You release German right now and put his file in the incinerator.”

  “German confessed of his own free will,” Sabirzhan said, “and—”

  “Don’t give me that shit, Tengiz. And please, don’t insult my intelligence. What are you doing down here in the first place, when you know who the real culprits are? Are you afraid of the Chechens? If you are, just say so, and I’ll get a real man to do the job.”

  “I’m not afraid of anyone. I came here to—”

  “Then stop bullying someone like German, who can’t answer back.” Lev turned to Irk. “When we spoke on the phone a couple of days ago, Investigator, we talked like adults, didn’t we? You seemed a decent enough man, and I’m not usually wrong about people—you can’t afford to be, not in my line of work. Perhaps you’ve been forced into this against your will…”

  “I must take my share of the blame,” said Denisov. Irk started; he’d never known Denisov to admit to any share of any fault, ever. “I suspected that German was innocent—he simply didn’t seem the type, and when you’ve been a copper for as long as I have, you get a sense of these things—but Juku had no doubt, and I let his zeal persuade me. I should have trusted my instincts.”

  There was not a trace in Denisov’s face to suggest that he was being anything other than deadly serious. Irk actually felt his jaw drop open. Even Stalin might have blanched at such a blatant rewriting of history. Might have.


  “Me too,” said Sabirzhan. “As you know, Lev, I tried to persuade the investigator to drop the case, on the grounds that it was not his jurisdiction. But he wouldn’t listen.”

  Irk looked at Denisov and Sabirzhan, and neither man flinched. Go on, their stares seemed to say, go on, we dare you to tell Lev what really happened. And of course Irk wouldn’t tell, because it would be his word against theirs, one of them his superior and the other Lev’s deputy. Why on earth would Lev believe him?

  “You all know the system,” Lev said. “Either you do as I ask, or I’ll take the matter higher, and you know how high I can go. I’m sure you don’t want to cave in, Denis Denisovich, but it’s that or a transfer to Zigansk. I’m sure you’ll make the right choice.”

  German Kullam was released from custody half an hour later.

  21

  Sunday, January 12, 1992

  The school Vladimir Kullam had attended was on the same site as an orphanage. Red October ran the school and the 21st Century Association the orphanage, though in practice both institutions reported to Lev himself. Raisa Rustanova hadn’t been seen at the orphanage for four days. It was lunchtime when her body was pulled from the Moscow River at more or less the same spot where Vladimir Kullam had been found.

  The skin on Raisa’s corpse was swollen and wrinkled, especially on the palms. Irk was put in mind of a washerwoman, and perhaps in time this little girl would have grown up to be exactly that, a plump babushka with grandchildren darting between her knees. Instead, she was lying naked and dead on the bank of the Moscow, a few hundred yards upstream of the giant al fresco swimming pool that was open year round and where in winter countless heads bobbed like white balls above a cloud of mist. Irk thought of the lido as a giant baptismal font to wash away Moscow’s sins. At one time it had been the biggest pool in the world; he felt it was no longer large enough to cleanse the city’s evil.