Sidorouk was wearing a pink-and-yellow bandanna. All he needed was a large gold hoop in his ear, Irk thought, and he could have passed for a pirate. “How’s life?” Irk asked.
“How’s death, more like. I prefer it when they bring in gangsters. There’s nothing on children that’s worth stealing.”
“The cops would have beaten you to it anyway. They smear vodka on corpses’ gums to loosen gold teeth, did you know that?”
“Know it? I pioneered it. And you? How’s life with you?”
“Nothing new. Tell me what you’ve found, Syoma.”
“Same as before. Minimum twelve hours in the water, can’t tell a maximum—but that’s your responsibility anyway, you find out when she was last seen alive.” German Kullam could have killed her before Irk had taken him into custody, Irk thought wildly. If that’s how the evidence fell, he didn’t relish telling Lev. “But look—” Sidorouk led Irk over to the examination table and turned Raisa’s head so that the right side of her neck was more visible. Even through crumpled and distended skin, Irk could clearly see what Sidorouk was indicating—a long knife slash.
“That’s what killed her?”
“Almost certainly. It’s the only injury that could have been fatal, and she didn’t drown.”
“So he cut her throat and then dumped her in the river?”
“In essence, yes. But it’s not as simple as that.”
“Why not?”
“Look at the cut. It’s long, but precise. It slices through the jugular but doesn’t sever the trachea. If you’re going to cut someone’s throat to kill them, the simplest way is to pull their head back and carve all the way across—take out their windpipe, stop them breathing. That’s not what happened here. Even after her neck was cut, Raisa could still breathe, at least for a while. She died of blood loss.”
“But you said last time that water makes postmortem wounds bleed as much as antemortem ones; that you can’t tell the difference between the two, in fact.”
“Yes. But she didn’t drown, so she must have been dead when she went under. The only way that wound could have killed her is by sustained hemorrhage.”
“How long would that have taken?”
“Several minutes.”
“And then he dumped her in the river. So he must have been with her while she bled to death. But if he wanted to kill her quickly …?”
“He’d have done it another way.”
“Which means he chose this way deliberately.” A clumsy bashing on the head from some half-wit with hands shaped like a prick, Irk could understand. Even a ragged starfish gunshot to the head. But to hold a child down and cut her throat … that was unusual.
“And this could have happened to Vladimir Kullam too, yes?” Irk said.
“There’s no reason why not.”
“Anything else?”
Sidorouk picked up a pile of Polaroids and handed them to Irk. They were all of Raisa’s corpse, leached even whiter by the flashbulb, before Sidorouk had cut her open to get at her internal organs. The photographer—one of the faceless assistants Irk had never bothered to meet, presumably—had snapped Raisa from what seemed like every conceivable angle. Whichever way you looked at it, Irk thought bitterly, she was still dead.
“There—” Sidorouk was pointing to a shot of Raisa’s chest.
“Where?”
“There.” A mark, an incision, so bloodlessly faint against the skin that Irk wouldn’t have seen it without Sidorouk’s guidance. The cut was curved, a crescent; it looked like the swoosh logo on those counterfeit Nike sports shoes that were so popular in the open-air markets. It was also in roughly the same place as the T-shaped slits they’d found on Vladimir’s body—the slits that were too neat to have been accidental. These marks must mean something, but Irk didn’t have the first idea what.
He looked around the room. Sidorouk couldn’t be faulted for his assiduous assimilation of top-flight equipment. His spectographs were German and his hemo-typers Swedish, all gleaming as though they had just been pulled from their boxes.
“I want the works on this one,” Irk said. “Every test you can run.” He mimicked Denisov’s voice. “There’s no budget on justice.”
“And there’s no justice in my budget, Juku. In case you hadn’t noticed, both commodities are in rather short supply.”
Irk gestured at the electronic showcase. “What about all this?”
“Gifts from foreign police forces, the patronizing shits. The machines are useless without their component parts, and guess what? I’ve got no funds, so I get no parts. They’ve been sitting like that since the day I got them.”
No wonder they looked so new; they had never been used. Poor Sidorouk. Imagine being given a Mercedes 600 and not being able to afford the gasoline, or a Bang and Olufsen without any recordings to play on it. “Haven’t you asked Denisov?” Irk said.
“Hah! That miser wouldn’t give you a snowball in winter. Says it’s not his department.”
Irk felt for Sidorouk, but his moans about equipment hardly made him a special case in law enforcement. Irk didn’t have the capacity to run license plate checks or look up suspects on a computer database; Sidorouk couldn’t do DNA testing or genetic fingerprinting. Same boat, different compartments.
“If you get anything,” said Sidorouk, “it’ll be in spite of my apparatus, not because of it.”
“In that case, let me pick your brain. I presume that still works.” Irk paused, trying to pick his words correctly. “This one here, and the one the other day—is there anything about them that might suggest the, er, the involvement of your people?”
“My people? You mean Chechens?” Irk nodded. Sidorouk sighed. “You that stumped for ideas already, Juku? Or perhaps I should be grateful that you held off asking until the second body, no?”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s always like that.”
“No.” Irk weighed up how much he could reasonably tell Sidorouk. “There could be a Chechen connection here—just trust me on that, Syoma. Could be, that’s all. Mafiosi.”
“Don’t look at me. I’ve nothing to do with those guys.”
“You know people.”
“Not Mafiosi.”
“But you know people who know them?”
“And?”
“Just ask around. See what you can find.”
“It won’t do you any good.”
Irk gestured at Raisa’s body. “Nor will finding another like this.”
Lev himself met Irk at the gates of the orphanage. After what had happened with German Kullam, Irk expected to be met with hostility, or at best indifference, but Lev shook his hand warmly.
“I can guess what happened at Petrovka,” he said. “Don’t worry, Investigator, I’m under no illusions about the kind of men Sabirzhan and Denisov are. I asked around about you too. People think highly of you. You’ll have no obstruction here, not from any of my people.”
“Not even Sabirzhan?”
“Especially not Sabirzhan.”
“And the internal investigation?”
“Is no longer his responsibility.”
“I can’t imagine he’s too happy about that.”
“That’s not your problem.”
They walked along freshly scraped paths that sliced between swathes of garden waist-deep in snow. In the summer, Lev said, there would be milky banks of cow parsley, greenhouses bulging with tropical palms and rare orchids, but at this time of year there were only trees buckling under the weight of snow balanced in rhomboids on their branches. One of the limes, a gnarled white patriarch with a lopsided trunk, was the oldest tree in the city, one of the few to have survived the fires of 1812. Beyond the walls, eight lanes of traffic thundered up and down Prospekt Mira.
The orphanage was an old Gothic building in dark red. Lev took Irk around the side and ushered him through a heavy wooden door. Irk found himself in a gymnasium where two teams of children were playing soccer with more enthusiasm than techniqu
e. They rushed around the room in swarms, kicking and pushing at each other, and occasionally the ball would shoot across the faded markings of the floor as though fleeing the mêlée, and off they all set in pursuit again.
“Children are our future, everyone knows that,” Lev said. “Yet many are abandoned and left to fend for themselves. Self-reliance is an excellent trait, but it’s dangerous when foisted on those too young to accept the responsibility. A few orphans rise above this and make something of themselves, but most of them, tragically, succumb to a life of fear and parasitism. Hence this orphanage. I burden the strong with taking care of the weak.”
The ball found its way into the far goal, more by luck than judgment. Irk heard happy cheers and squealed recriminations. Sprawled on the floor beneath wall bars and ropes, the goalkeeper was making a point of blaming every one of his teammates in turn. He’d go far, Irk thought.
“Our country’s being overrun with drug addicts,” Lev said. “Sport is the only means of saving the nation. We’ve taken the most robust of the neglected ones, and we’ll build them up to be the nation’s future superstars. That’s why I’m setting up places like this and encouraging the love of sports—to divert young people away from drugs and perverts who’ll pay them for sex. Those children who come here find it hard but rewarding: three hours’ exercise a day, six days a week. I promise occupation and discipline, in contrast to the shameful neglect meted out by the state orphanages. As is so often the case, Investigator, private enterprise is doing the government’s job.”
A whistle cut through the hubbub: full time. Irk looked around to see who’d blown it; as far as he’d been able to make out, the only adults there were himself and Lev. When the whistle sounded again, Irk saw the referee and realized instantly how he’d missed him before. He had a man’s face, thin dark hair giving on to long sideburns and shoulders packed with muscle, but he was no bigger than his charges because, from the thighs down, he simply didn’t exist.
“That’s Rodion,” Lev said. “That’s who I want you to meet.”
“Well done, everyone,” Rodion shouted. “Good game. Tea’s in fifteen minutes. I want you all showered and changed by then.” He ruffled the hair of the nearest child. “Great goal, Kesha. Go on now, quick, quick—first ones to the washrooms get the hot water.”
The children left in a rush. Rodion gathered up some books in a wide piece of cloth and hung it like a sling around his neck, then made his way over to Irk and Lev, moving fluently on his hands as he swiveled his torso from side to side. Irk thought of monkeys swinging through the trees. Close up, Irk saw that Rodion was no beauty. Fleshy bags drooped beneath his small eyes and an elongated Adam’s apple dangled like a pouch under his chin, suffusing his face with repulsion and sensuality.
“Rodion Khruminsch here runs the orphanage,” Lev said. “Juku Irk, investigator with the prosecutor’s office.” Rodion extended a hand and gripped Irk’s with more force than was strictly necessary. “You haven’t told the kids about Raisa yet?”
Rodion shook his head. “Going to do it at tea; everyone will be there then.”
“Good. That’ll give you time to talk to the investigator. I’d like your mother there too.”
“His mother?” Irk said.
“Svetlana—she’s headmistress of the school here. And Rodya’s wife Galya is my secretary. Red October’s a family, Investigator.”
Lev excused himself; he had to get back to the distillery. Irk followed Rodion out of the gymnasium and into a matrix of corridors through which children ran shrieking until Rodion good-naturedly scolded them. He moved fast on his hands; Irk could barely keep up.
Svetlana was in the kitchen. She clasped Irk by his upper arms; her grip pulsed with fervor, as if she believed he could somehow deliver Raisa back to life. Her nose was large and seemed distorted, and when she smiled she exposed teeth that looked too long for her mouth. Her hair was shiny and black, like wet paint. It needed a sign, Irk thought, such as those advising people not to sit on freshly painted benches.
When Irk looked closer, he saw she’d been crying.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Svetlana said. “These kids are very precious, and this whole thing’s rather hard. Rodya feels it too, but he’s a man, he won’t show it.”
Irk sat down at the table and took off his coat and gloves. “I wanted to work organized crime, you know,” he said. “I went to homicide because there was more chance of doing something good; everyone’s too afraid of the gangsters. And look where I end up.”
“Gangsters!” Svetlana snorted. “For you, maybe. For me, seeing what they do here, they’re as honorable and decent as anyone else in this country. The real gangsters are the politicians and bureaucrats, the state criminals, who enrich themselves without helping children or the elderly.”
Irk had been trying to make conversation and put them at their ease. Another partial success, he thought. “But have you ever thought about where the money for this place comes from? I could tell you things that would turn your stomach.”
“Ach!” Svetlana hawked deep in her throat. “Who cares where the money comes from, as long as it’s put to good use?”
“OK, OK.” He held up a pacifying hand; this argument wasn’t what he wanted at all. “Let’s agree to disagree, and get on with it. What kind of procedures do you have here, to keep track of absenteeism?”
“It’s not as easy as you think.” Rodion’s voice crackled with hostility. “Some of these kids are more or less wild; you can’t just—”
“Rodya, he wasn’t accusing you of anything.” Svetlana put her hand over her son’s, and her touch seemed to mellow him. Irk was grateful for her intervention. “Look, Investigator, there’s no point keeping the kids here against their will; they come and go as they please. Those are Lev’s direct instructions.”
“He told me it was hard but rewarding. I’d have thought he’d take a much tougher line.”
“Did you spend twenty years in the gulag, Investigator? No? Then don’t talk to me about the rights and wrongs of locking people up. Like I said, there’s no point keeping anyone here against their will. We take a roll call every other day, as much for catering and administrative arrangements as anything else. Raisa wasn’t here last night, or on Thursday; she was here on Tuesday. To be honest, we wouldn’t have thought any more of it had it not been for Rodya.”
“I overheard two of Raisa’s friends talking in the corridor, wondering why she’d left,” he explained. “She’d come and gone a couple of times over the past year or so, but she seemed happier these last few weeks than ever before. That’s why they were surprised she’d gone, I guess.” He made a moue; for the first time, his face softened. “Little did they know, poor things.”
Irk looked at the clock on the wall behind Svetlana. Each time the minute hand moved forward, it first jerked slightly backward, as if gathering itself for the leap. It was like Russia itself, Irk thought, where progress is never made without a retrograde step before and after. “What about security?” he asked.
“There are always a couple of guys from the 21st Century here,” Rodion said. “But this is a big place; there’s only so much they can do. Besides, which kid would have the courage to come in off the street or go back out there if the place was crawling with muscle?”
“Even after Vladimir was found, and Lev was worried about the Chechens?”
“That was Thursday, no? Raisa was already gone by then.”
“And the Chechens?”
“Around here? None that I’ve seen. Mother?”
Svetlana shook her head, and then, almost as an afterthought: “Tell you what, Investigator, why don’t you come over to our place for dinner tonight so we can talk about it some more?”
“Our place?”
“Of course—Rodya’s, mine, and Galya’s.” Rodion lived with his mother. No wonder he looked so miserable. Irk began to protest, but Svetlana cut him off. “You’re too thin, look at you. You need feeding up. You play the cuckoo, I be
t.” Playing the cuckoo means to live alone; the phrase comes from the cuckoo’s habit of slipping her eggs into other birds’ nests for hatching.
“Yes.” Irk felt like a naughty schoolboy being reprimanded.
“And I bet there’s no food in the house.”
“Again, yes.”
“I know your type too well—you’re one of those men who think they can manage without women. Come, Svetlana will feed you.” She tilted her head as though to see him better; he was a good eight inches taller than her. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Keres?”
Paul Keres had been a chess grandmaster. Dead since 1975, but still just about the most famous Estonian in the former Soviet Union. Irk nodded. “Frequently.”
“Good.” She gave him the address. “Seven-thirty, OK? Don’t be late. You stand me up and I’ll come around and eat you.”
The Khruminsches lived in an apartment on Preobrazenskaya, out in the eastern suburbs. Svetlana kissed Irk on both cheeks, took his elbow and steered him between walls covered in strips of adhesive brown plastic patterned with unconvincing wood-grain finish. Her forearms were massive, like a man’s; in the stale light, the dark hairs on them crawled like centipedes.
Rodion and Galina were in the kitchen; Rodion sitting at the table, Galina jumping to her feet and greeting Irk with smiles and tinkling laughter. What was someone like her, so sultry and alluring, doing with someone as ugly as Rodion? thought Irk. And then he remembered the ease and warmth with which Rodion dealt with the orphans, and chided himself for his shallowness.
Svetlana guided Irk to a chair, shooing away the cat sitting there. Irk saw a flash of blue as the cat leapt to the floor and ran between them. Blue? A black cat running between two people was supposed to be bad luck, but…
“Blue, of course.” Svetlana dismissed Irk’s question as though it were the stupidest she’d ever heard. “No, it’s not a genetic mutation. Lyonya’s a pure-bred Archangel blue; very rare, very classy. The first recorded blue belonged to Peter the Great, did you know that? We moved here with them. A cat should always be the first creature to cross the threshold of a new home. All seven came in before us, so they should have given us seven times the luck. Hah! Tell that to poor Raisa. But they’ve all won prizes. Look—”
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