No, sir.'
Then that's our next job.' He looked at me again and shrugged. You'd better come along. If you're going to find out about the Mafia, you need to study the science of bad news.'
4
We returned to St Petersburg and left Nikolai and Sasha to go in search of the Georgian's nearest friend or relative. Grushko and I drove back to the Griboyedev Canal where, just a few hours earlier, he had pointed out the scene of Raskolnikov's crime. He made no mention of this coincidence although from the expression on his face I had half an idea that he was thinking about it.
The Milyukins' flat was in a dilapidated, pre-Revolutionary building on the opposite side of the canal from the mosaic front of a church that stood a little further north. Grushko parked the Zhiguli, thoughtfully removed the windscreen-wiper blades, which he tossed on to the floor of the car, and then led the way into the backyard. By a cheap, unpainted wooden door was a push-button combination lock; the sequence of numbers was not hard to work out thanks to the forgetful, or possibly mischievous, soul who had scratched it on to the adjacent brickwork.
It's no wonder that there are so many burglaries,' Grushko observed. He pressed the keys and, as he opened the door and mounted the narrow staircase, something scuttled away into the darkness. The steps were quite worn down as in some ancient Egyptian mausoleum and the dirty brown walls were daubed with appropriately primitive sentiments.
We climbed to the fourth floor, collected our breath with a quick cigarette and then rang the antiquated bell-pull. Somewhere the bell tolled as if from a distant church tower and for a moment I had a vision of myself as that hungry, Napoleon-fixated student, preparing to commit one murder in the delusion that a hundred others might be saved. The hunger was easy enough to imagine: since the previous night I hadn't eaten much more than a piece of bread and a slice of cold meat. From the speed of my heartbeat you might have thought I was actually planning to go through with it.
After a minute or so we heard a key turn in the lock and the door opened as far as the sturdy chain would allow. The woman appearing in the gap was in her thirties, fair-haired and good-looking in a clever sort of way and wearing an expression that was worth a whole fistful of worry beads. Grushko flipped open his identity card.
Mrs Milyukin?'
It's about my husband, isn't it?'
Can we come in please?'
She closed the door, drew the chain and opened it once again, ushering us into the cluttered hallway of her communal apartment and then beyond, into the one large room that she and the man in the forest had called their home.
It was about nine square metres of space, with a double-size sofa bed, folded away, a shelving unit occupying one whole wall, a small coffee table, two armchairs and an enormous wardrobe. On the shelves were a large television set, a VCR and lots of books and videotapes, while on the table were the remains of a frugal meal. It was not a bad room by the average standards of Russian accommodation but at that particular moment I wished I could have been anywhere else. Mrs Milyukin folded her arms and braced herself to hear what she already knew in her bones.
I'm afraid I have bad news for you,' Grushko said evenly. Mikhail Mikhailovich Milyukin is dead.'
The dead man's widow, whose name was Nina Romanovna, twitched convulsively and let out a deep sigh, like one who has died herself.
Instinctively I turned away. Drawing back the curtain for a moment I looked out of the window. Across the canal the sun touched the church's highest cupola and turned this golden sphere into an imitation of itself that was almost too bright to look at directly. Probably Grushko could have endured the sight of it without flinching. By then he had already held the widow's bitter eyes for what seemed like an eternity.
Well,' she said finally, that's that.'
Not quite,' said Grushko. I regret to have to tell you that he was murdered. This officer and I have just come from the scene of the crime. There will have to be a formal identification, I'm afraid, but there's no doubt that it's him. And I will have to ask you some questions, Mrs Milyukin. It may seem insensitive obviously you want to be alone right now but the sooner I'm able to establish what were Mikhail Mikhailovich's last movements, the sooner I'll catch whoever is responsible.'
He spoke with a stiff formality as if he were trying to distance himself emotionally from what had happened. The widow nodded stiffly and found a handkerchief in the sleeve of her blue acrylic sweater.
Yes, of course,' she said, wiping her eyes roughly and then blowing her nose. A cigarette seemed to help her to get a grip of herself. She snatched a couple of quick drags and nodded that she was ready.
When did you last see your husband?'
It must have been around seven o'clock last night,' she said unsteadily. He went out somewhere, to see a contact he said, for some article he was preparing.'
Grushko thought of several questions at once.
Did he say who this contact was? Where they were meeting? When he would be back?'
No,' she said and turned away to tap her ash into the bottom half of a matrushka doll. Mikhail never discussed his work with me. He said that it was better that way so that I wouldn't worry about him. Usually I had to read Ogonyok or watch television to find out what he had been up to. Well, I dare say you're both familiar with Mikhail's work. He was always sticking his nose in where it wasn't wanted. He used to say that if the Soviet Union was a can of worms then he was the can-opener. The only trouble was ' She paused and Grushko finished what she had been going to say.
He left a lot of sharp edges.' Grushko shrugged. Yes, I see.' He paused for a moment. Well, I suppose the country's first investigative journalist was bound to make a few enemies.'
Nina Milyukin uttered a bitter, smoky laugh.
A few?' she said with derision. I think you'd better take a look for yourself.'
She went to the wardrobe door and drew the door open. Reaching inside she switched on a light to reveal a tiny office. A bare bulb hung from the top of the wardrobe over a small square desk and a battered old typewriter.
As you can see, we have a very small apartment,' she explained and started to select some box-files from a large recessed set of shelves. The sacrifice you make for living in a place with a bit of character. This was Mikhail's office.'
I was trying to see how the wardrobe seemed larger inside than outside when suddenly I understood the ingenuity of the arrangement. Lacking a back panel the wardrobe had been placed in front of a built-in cupboard that contained the dead man's extensive library. When Nina Milyukin stepped out of the makeshift study bearing several of the box-files I went inside and looked about more carefully.
Some of the books had only recently been made available. Quite a few would have been almost impossible to get hold of at any price. Books printed in English and German occupied a whole shelf of their own. It was the kind of library I had always dreamed of having myself.
On the desk was a Filofax that I opened and looked up the previous day's date, but no entry had been made. I turned a few pages forward. The handwriting was long and girlish. It seemed hardly suitable for a great journalist. Above the desk was a felt-covered pinboard, and on it were some postcards of London and the Pyramids, a membership card of the Felis Cat-Lover's Club and, in pride of place, a photograph of a smiling Milyukin shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher. But it was not this that interested me so much as the photographs of Nina Milyukin, for in one of them she was naked. It had been taken in some other apartment, in a pose more provocative than artistic: wearing only a pair of stockings she stood facing the camera, her hands clasped behind her back, her head lowered almost penitently, as if she had done something of which she was slightly ashamed.