‘Now?’
‘I’ll pay you later.’ And to the woman, ‘The key — do you want me to try it to prove my point?’ He studied her eyes as they followed Tumanov to the door. ‘He makes you uncomfortable?’ He could see remembrance of that first occasion: the minutes locked away with Tumanov, mistaking his stupidity for sinister intent, Bogdanov whispering in her ear. Kirov thought that Bogdanov’s hazard at a threat had struck some deep chord in her, but you could never be sure: any woman would react to a threat of rape. It was a suggestion that wouldn’t be made again. Not again, he promised himself.
‘I told the others when they were here,’ she answered his question. ‘Investigator Bakradze and the other one, the detective.’
‘Antipov. What other questions did they have?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘A different department.’
‘Ah!’ She accepted the answer with quiet disbelief. ‘They wanted to know the same things as you. What were my relations with Viktor? Who were his friends?’
‘And you told them you knew nothing — helpfully, of course,’ he added wryly and tried her with a small smile that she resisted. He wondered if she had also distrusted Viktor Gusev. Did that explain why they weren’t lovers? He offered her a confidence.
‘I’ve learned more about Viktor since we last met.’
‘Have you?’
He ignored the rejection, the emotional push. ‘Viktor was betrayed.’
She looked sharply away. He continued patiently. ‘Viktor’s friends sacrificed him. There was an investigation into the illegal trade in antibiotics and the investigators wouldn’t be satisfied until they had an important arrest. So his friends threw Viktor to the wolves to put a stop to the investigation — he was going to be the Total Explanation behind the conspiracy. Why did they pick on Viktor?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Didn’t he tell you? He certainly knew that something was going on because I think he tried to protect himself. He obtained a movie camera and some recording equipment and he took a film of one of his accomplices in a compromising situation. That seems to me like the preparation for blackmail. Was he using blackmail to try to save himself, or have I got it the wrong way round? Was Viktor set up because he was a blackmailer?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know? Don’t know which? That he was betrayed? That he suspected he was at risk? That he was a blackmailer?’
‘I don’t think he was a blackmailer — not in any bad sense.’
There was a good sense?
‘I have the film,’ Kirov told her and he saw Nadia Mazurova’s face freeze with the same appalling look of fear he had seen once before although this time no violence had been offered to her.
Tumanov returned with his purchase. He smiled at the woman as if he could win her over, and flipped the pack across to Kirov, who took a cigarette, lit it slowly and let the match burn down so as to catch her attention again.
‘There is a man in the film,’ he resumed quietly, requesting her understanding. ‘He puzzles me. Who is he? Why did Viktor need to film him? To threaten the man with betrayal in turn if he betrayed Viktor? Even so, why take a film? He could simply denounce his accomplice to the police. He didn’t need evidence — it’s no secret that MVD are not too fussy, and once in their hands it was fairly safe to assume that he would confess. So why the film?’
There was no response. Tumanov edged forward in his chair, intent on some cheap version of Uncle Bog’s style of pressure. Kirov signalled him back. Nadia Mazurova had turned to the younger man in fear, and freed of her attention Kirov could interpret her. Violence was the catalyst to that fear. She knew what was in the film.
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know the answer.’
‘Do you want to hear my solution?’
‘I suppose I must.’
‘I think you must,’ Kirov said. ‘I think that the man in the film used a false identity and that Viktor did not know his real name. I think the man was not supposed to be in Moscow and that the film was the only way he could be proved to have been there. In fact he was a man that Viktor was not supposed to know because their connection could not have been explained. You might say that he wasn’t supposed to exist.’
He watched her. He willed her to answer, the sensation so intense that it seemed to him that it must be tangible to her. Then the door opened and a girl in T-shirt and trousers came into the room. Behind his concentration Kirov heard her loose mules flip-flop across the wooden floor, heard the pages of a magazine turning, the television being switched on, the sagging springs of an old chair sigh as the intruder sat on it. He excluded the distractions, but Nadia Mazurova could not; her attention was stretched and stressed between his gaze and the incidental noise. He could hit her with words like a taut string.
‘Tell me,’ he said. Her eyes said she couldn’t. ‘Tell me,’ he repeated. ‘It’s important. This stranger is also a dangerous man. He beats women, and some day he’ll kill one. You know him, don’t you? You know that he beats women!’
The girl sitting with her magazine cast a lazy glance in Kirov’s direction. Though his tone was low, she had caught the urgent force in his voice. ‘Get her out of here!’ he whispered to Tumanov. The latter got to his feet and sauntered across the room. Kirov returned to Nadia Mazurova. Have I lost her? he wondered. Then: what do I have of her to lose? He delivered up his concern as if he were sacrificing a piece of himself, regardless of whether his concern was authentic: he said, ‘Is it you with him in the film, Nadia?’
She shook her head, masking her face in the tumbling edge of the loose turban.
‘Say it!’
‘It isn’t me.’
‘Again!’ He could hear the brutality in his voice and in the background the giggle of the girl and Tumanov’s amorous encouragements to leave the room.
‘It isn’t me!’ She locked on the words, and now they were staring at each other, the man silent, meditating his next action, the woman trapped in her distress, her face flayed with emotion. Kirov sensed her deep evasiveness and fear. He thought: she has no reason to fear me. And in the next moment he wanted to impress her with his intense dangerousness to her. Then she spoke — a name.
‘Zagranichny.’
‘The man? Zagranichny is the name of the man?’
She nodded.
‘Are you sure?’
Her eyes looked up blankly. She was distancing herself as if recoiling from a series of blows. As he pressed her with further questions she retreated from him behind a veil of difference that resisted his comprehension. Then she asked if he had finished, if she might leave; and he agreed. She stood up and faced him as though inviting some formal parting; but turned and walked away without looking back. Her blouse clung to her and the turban trailed across her shoulders. In his imagination Kirov could see the flesh of her back and the dark plaque of a mole worn as a badge on her shoulder blade exactly as he had seen it in the film.
He felt a profound pity for her, and he hated it.
In the car Tumanov chewed on his gum and spoke in the flippant sentences that suited him. He asked why Kirov had been so easy on the girl; why hadn’t he pulled her in and really given her the business? He genuinely wanted to know.
Uncle Bog was waiting impatiently at the office. He had news of Orlov: the pharmacist was confirmed as posted to the Darvitsky Reserve. ‘It’s a hell of a demotion after working at Kuntsevo for the Kremlin bigwigs. There just has to be a dirty story behind it unless he suddenly turned into an animal lover. By the way, how was the Mazurova?’