‘Lavrenti Beria.’
And Beria, said Uncle Kolya, would never tell a lie.
‘Do you want to hear about my researches into hospital deaths?’ asked Bogdanov for the second time.
‘Tell me.’
‘One case, maybe, at the Botkin Hospital. A girl aged thirteen. Burst appendix. Peritonitis. Maybe complicated by the antibiotics used — no one will say. Frightened of responsibility. It’s the way it goes.’
‘Who supplied them?’
‘Would you believe the father? The hospital said, “Thank you very much,” and didn’t ask any questions, and who can blame them?’
‘What’s the father’s name?’
‘Kliment Vasilyevitch Ostrowsky — Party member, respectable but no big-shot.’
‘Has he any connection with Viktor Gusev?’
‘Nothing in the regular way of business. But…’
‘What?’
‘He works in the jewellery trade.’
The lane ran out in a wide patch of beaten ground shaded by trees and studded with shallow pools of frost-hazed water. Footpaths ran off on either side into the hollow cover of the wood.
‘Viktor liked his seclusion,’ Bogdanov commented as he got out of the car and beat his arms against his chest to fight off the chill here in the shadows. ‘Are you sure that Scherbatsky was giving you a straight story about this dacha?’ Kirov paced the length of the clearing and examined the paths. The first ran through a maze of brambles and thickets towards a wooden shack a hundred metres off into the trees. The second had been cleared to the width of a truck and the ruts infilled. It headed for a good-sized cottage with a shingled roof and a collection of sheds and outhouses. He checked the sketch map that Scherbatsky had drawn and took that direction.
The house was of good construction: gleaming paintwork and at least a half-dozen rooms. A patch of grass lay in front, faded from its struggle with the trees, and in the middle was a barbecue pit deep in white ash that still smelled sour and woody in the close air. There was even a tennis court; the net hung limply and the surface was covered in a drift of leaves.
They examined the outhouses, pushing open the unlatched doors. The first was an old earth privy dating from some earlier building; it was out of use and stacked with tools. The second held a supply of vegetables, earthed-up, straw-covered or hanging in bunches from the roof; a smell of onions, apples and mushrooms and a trace of creosote. The third contained a generator; power cables ran off to the house and an oil tank stood outside resting on a brick foundation. Next to it was a well with an electric pump. Bogdanov proposed they check the house.
The windows had been fitted with winter panes. They were clean and unbroken and reflected the grey sky and the thin silver fingers of the birches. The door had a mortice lock, which yielded easily to Bogdanov’s keys. Inside the place showed signs of a break-in.
The two men stood in the doorway. The immediate view was of upturned furniture and displaced ornaments and carried the air of violation that comes when images of stability are disturbed, so that for a moment they hesitated until Bogdanov said, ‘He took care of his comforts,’ and suggested that they get down to business. Then he walked into the room, in turn banging the doors that ran from it, and the disorder became an aspect of normality. ‘There’s nobody here,’ he reported and slipped his gun back into his belt.
Kirov looked the room over. Pine walls, carved beams, concealed lighting, too many mirrors. A feeling of method in the chaos. He saw that nothing had been broken.
Bogdanov made the same point, picking up a porcelain vase and replacing it. He pushed a finger into the debris inside an ashtray and opened a cigarette box. ‘Whoever it was took his time. The smokes are gone.’ He opened a cabinet and rummaged among the liquor. ‘No full bottles.’
Kirov directed his attention at a pile of books and magazines. The books were mostly classics, new editions in bright bindings; Viktor hadn’t possessed them long. The periodicals were also about books, back numbers of Literaturnaya Gazeta and Molodiya Gvardiya, and a flick through them showed marginal notes written in a fine hand. It was necessary to suppose that Viktor Gusev had spent his weekends here reading through the quiet evenings, perhaps in the company of Nadia Mazurova. As an image it was more inexplicable than the diamonds spilled from Gusev’s guts.
‘What do you think they were looking for?’ Bogdanov turned over a chair and exposed the burlap covering of the underside. It had been neatly slashed with a razor. He turned over another and found the same. The scatter-cushions had received similar treatment. Kirov picked one up; the stuffing had been searched but largely replaced, only a few traces lying about the floor. The question came of itself: why such care when the fact of the break-in and search was undisguised? A woman’s tidiness? Or an attempt after violation to restore the inviolate, which was essentially a male illusion? There was an absence of malice, and its effect was disturbing.
Between them they slowly covered this first room, marking what had been disturbed and what not. Some things, like books, had been moved to uncover what lay behind them but otherwise left intact. Others, the soft furnishings in particular, had been thoroughly taken apart. The selection suggested an object of a certain size, small enough to be hidden but not such that it might have been cut, folded or pasted to the inside of a book. Not a document. Nor the diamonds, which could have been secreted anywhere and would have required the demolition of the whole place.
They moved to the next room which proved to be the bathroom. It appeared intact, but here too the delicacy of the search left its fine traces. Kirov remembered Gusev’s taste for body oils and lotions, but found only a few dregs in the assembled bottles.
‘What do you think?’ Bogdanov asked. ‘Found what they were looking for or just helping themselves to souvenirs?’ He eyed the bidet. ‘Fancy piece of plumbing — what’s it for? Joke — joke — I’ll check the next room.’
Adjacent to the bathroom was a bedroom. The furnishings continued to betray Gusev’s uncertain sense of style. A dressing table in the heavy Tsarist manner. Some mildly pornographic lithographs. Bed sheets of oyster-coloured silk (was it possible to buy such things?) By the bedside an open book lay on the floor — The Brothers Karamazov. Kirov saw Viktor Gusev struggling with his unexpected wealth and the culture which his new acquaintances had brought to him, and striving to change himself into something else, probably unsure what that something else might be. This however was supposition. The facts were a mere collection of objects bought by a black marketeer and open to any number of constructions. Kirov discounted his analysis and focused on the careful attentions which the searchers had given to the room. He found the electronic bug in the table light.
Bogdanov returned from the kitchen with a spoon and some bottled redcurrants. ‘The power’s off. The stuff in the freezer has gone bad.’ He levered the lid off the bottle and asked casually, ‘What do anchovies taste like?’
‘Salty.’
‘Are they good?’
‘Not on their own. Did you find anything?’
Bogdanov dipped into his pocket and produced a small object which he threw onto the nearest table. Kirov held out the bug he had found in the bedroom. The other man nodded.
‘Adequate but not the latest equipment. Viktor must have installed these himself — suspicious bugger. I wonder where he got them from? Where is his recording machine, have you found it?’
‘No.’
Bogdanov wiped the berry juice from his lips. It left a scarlet stain like a bruise across his cheek. He glanced about the room then tested another door. It was locked. He tried it with his keys and, when that failed, kicked at it until the door-jamb splintered. ‘After you,’ he said.