‘Hating people? That doesn’t sound like Viktor.’
‘It was the violence. Viktor was always good to his girls; they couldn’t do enough for him. “Why can’t all men be like Viktor?” They used to say that all the time; it was a sort of joke between them, don’t ask me to explain it. I don’t know why we weren’t all like Viktor; I don’t claim to understand him. Take the art and the writing — Viktor knew nothing about them, but he couldn’t get enough. He took up reading: books, books, he was always asking whether you knew any good books. I think he tried his hand at painting too.’
‘I see,’ Kirov said studiously.
‘Anyway, that’s why he hated Zagranichny.’
‘Viktor knew he was beating up girls.’
‘It wasn’t just the hotels; he attacked a girl at Viktor’s dacha too. Viktor was in tears about lt. We were having a meal at the Aragvi when he told us the story.’
‘Us?’
‘Antipov was there. He went crazy. Viktor, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Don’t attract attention! But Viktor wouldn’t listen because of the girl.’
‘Which one?’
‘He wouldn’t say. He just cried. I think that’s what turned Antipov against him.’
Kirov asked a few more questions about the girl but Bakradze had no more information. ‘Did Viktor provide you with women?’
‘Please, Pyotr Andreevitch, is this relevant?’ Bakradze answered with a sudden stuffiness as though an improper question had been put to the court.
‘I’m trying to identify a girl with a mole — here, on her shoulder.’ Kirov pointed as he remembered from the film of Zagranichny and his victim. Viktor had been watching. He had stood behind the one-way glass and let the camera roll and the tears had streamed down his face, then and again at the Aragvi in front of the prim young lawyer and Antipov who was jaded and annoyed by other people’s emotions. Bakradze understood none of this. He was applying a handkerchief to the cut on his forehead.
‘Zagranichny,’ Kirov remarked casually. ‘What game was Viktor playing?’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Yes you do. Think about it. Zagranichny was a game, a play on words. What does the word mean — Zagranichny?’
Bakradze laughed. It was his most unrestrained gesture so far. ‘You’re crazy!’
Kirov lit a cigarette and let the lighted match spin off into the darkness. ‘If you like,’ he said equably. But he had upset his companion who kept repeating Zagranichny, Zagranichny and finally pronounced, ‘I think you must be wrong.’ Bakradze reassembled himself behind this certainty. His air now was curiously offended: Kirov had broken a rule that said you shouldn’t tell lawyers anything really appalling; their delicacy wouldn’t stand it.
Kirov returned to the matter of Viktor’s death. ‘One last subject,’ he apologised, ‘and we can call it a night. Everybody goes home and no harm done.’
His companion was fidgety. He stared at the stars, the fires, the thick coils of smoke from burning tyres adding to the magic of the night.
‘I’ll help you,’ Kirov volunteered.
Viktor had become disposable, hadn’t he? The investigation into the Ring demanded a sacrifice to appease KGB — not of some token small-fry, but of someone who could be the Total Explanation. And Viktor, so thoroughly implicated that he would inevitably be caught sooner or later, Viktor, who was losing his sense of proportion because of Zagranichny’s inconvenient habits so that he embarrassed the police and the customers at the Aragvi restaurant by bursting into tears, had outlived his usefulness.
‘And I imagine that Sergei approved since Sergei was concerned to protect his precious Zagranichny and Viktor’s behaviour in that direction threatened to be compromising.’
So what had they done? Kirov asked. After all, Viktor was not without power. He had protected himself by buying a large packet of diamonds from Ostrowsky and it was anybody’s guess what he had done with them. And he had filmed and recorded Zagranichny’s violent escapade at his dacha; and even if Viktor himself didn’t know Zagranichny’s real identity, he could be fairly certain that KGB would thank him for the information.
‘You must have offered Viktor a deal,’ he concluded.
Bakradze nodded.
‘What was it?’
‘We told him that, if he co-operated, he would get off with only a couple of years and we would take care of him afterwards.’
‘And he believed you?’
‘He had the diamonds and the film.’
‘But you didn’t intend him to keep them, did you? Once Antipov and his men had Viktor in the cells that would be the end of the story, wouldn’t it? How does it go? One more prisoner dies under interrogation but not before he has said enough to satisfy KGB without naming all his important friends?’
‘Something like that.’ In one of his prissy gestures Bakradze played with his fingers and looked for the moon. He was aggrieved that his pretty, even elegant scheme was so transparent. ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me all these questions. You seem to have all the answers.’
‘Not all the answers,’ Kirov assured him, thinking that there were questions that Bakradze did not even know existed. About Andropov’s death for instance. Or Heltai.
‘Have you heard of Academician I.A. Yakovlevitch?’ he asked.
‘No. Is he important?’
‘Not particularly.’ Kirov had been momentarily struck by the parallel. In their different versions of the Ring, the Kremlin surgeon and the racketeer Viktor Gusev had both been groomed as the sacrifice to provide the Total Explanation that was so urgently needed if life were to continue without the truth intruding. ‘Not particularly — but let’s talk about Viktor’s death,’ he added just when his companion thought the subject had gone away. And even now he couldn’t be certain; Kirov looked on the brink of forgetting everything. ‘Viktor must have had quite a shock when I turned up at his apartment.’
‘We all did.’
‘I imagine so. At all events it’s obvious what went through Viktor’s mind.’
‘Is it?’ Bakradze was genuinely curious.
‘Look at it from Viktor’s point of view. KGB was his insurance policy. If he didn’t like your deal — if he had his suspicions — he knew he could hand over the film to the KGB. If you wouldn’t protect him, then we would — that’s what Viktor thought. Right up to the moment when I interrupted your friendly conversation. And then what was Viktor to think?’ Kirov remembered that moment of panic when Viktor had concluded the KGB was working with MVD and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Suddenly Viktor had his Total Explanation and he saw himself naked before his enemies. And in that same moment of panic Antipov had shot Viktor before the latter could reveal anything. Poor Viktor. No more tears in the Aragvi or anywhere.
They could see the car. Bogdanov was lounging by it, passing out cigarettes to the tramps. Kirov put a hand out to halt his companion and asked as an apparent afterthought, ‘Who was the girl you were with tonight?’
‘She called herself Vera. I’ve never met her before.’
‘Not one of Viktor’s girls?’
‘Maybe — there were so many. Sergei asked her to call me!’
‘Why?’
Bakradze had a pleading look. ‘I want to get out of this business. It’s starting to frighten me.’
‘I understand. But why did Sergei get in touch?’
‘Now that Viktor is dead, he wants to reorganise the network. I told the girl I wasn’t interested. I’ve had enough — that’s the truth, Pyotr Andreevitch! You’ve got to believe me!’
‘OK, I believe you. Keep calm!’ Kirov looked away. He was exhausted with confessions and Bakradze was now an empty husk. What Chestyakov had never mentioned in his lectures was this final taste of disgust when the interrogation was finished and the relationship between interrogator and subject was revealed to be as fraudulent as a brief affair and sometimes as poignant, even if not on this occasion.