She took a sip of vodka. ‘To see what story you’d produce if it came to a police investigation. Also how you’d be with genuine Chukchees … You were very lucky.’
‘You also.’
She nodded, looking into her glass.
‘You planned to kill me before we left here, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your story in the church, about Khodyan, Ponomarenko — were you given all that or did you make it up?’
‘I made it up.’
‘Glib. As well as lucky. All right, put a drop more in here … So where is Khodyan?’
‘I don’t know.’ He poured into her glass, and into his own. ‘I don’t know where his papers came from, either. But the background came from Ponomarenko.’
‘Ponomarenko is in Batumi?’
‘Maybe. He’s somewhere. They have evidence against him of drug-dealing — a capital offence, a long term at the least. He’s under control.’
‘Why Ponomarenko?’
‘It happened to be Ponomarenko. Many drivers go to the Black Sea for the summer. Ponomarenko was not lucky.’
‘What did he have to do — provide his apartment, all the details of his life here?’
‘That, yes.’
‘Including his relations with Lydia Yakovlevna?’
‘No. Those I found out for myself.’
‘Did you also find out she had gonorrhoea?’
He drank, poker-faced.
‘Eighteen months ago,’ she said, ‘I had to send that girl to Tchersky hospital. She had concealed her condition, and it had become serious. I couldn’t have you going into hospital again. Every mark on your body is detailed there. Which is why I examined you. Stay away from the girl. She’s promiscuous.’
The vodka had brought faint colour to her cheeks, and the eyes gleamed more brightly now.
Again he made no comment.
‘So what plans have you for getting to Tcherny Vodi?’
‘Obviously the Evenks — first a visit to the collective, and then the herds. They have a headman there, Innokenty. He chooses the people to go to Tcherny Vodi. A stinking head comes down and makes out the passes for them.’
She stared at him. ‘Passes, stinking heads, Innokenty … Did you know all this before you came?’
‘No. I discovered it here.’
‘And this is why you wanted a letter to the collective?’
He smiled faintly. ‘I also discovered,’ he said, ‘that I didn’t need it. They take their pelts there from Panarovka. I would have gone with them.’
‘You were going again to Panarovka?’
‘For your funeral.’
Her mouth dropped open, and something flickered momentarily behind her eyes.
She drank some vodka.
‘Well,’ she said presently. ‘You don’t need that plan. I go out to the herds, every six or eight weeks. In a helicopter. You’ll come with me.’
‘Is this Rogachev’s idea?’
‘No. Mine. It’s true you’ll need the cooperation of the Evenks. Which I see from your performance you have a good chance of getting.’ She finished her drink quickly. ‘He hasn’t told me any detailed plan yet.’
‘Does he know I’m here now?’
‘Yes. He knows.’
‘When did you see him?’
Her thin smile showed for a moment.
‘The last time? I should think — thirty years ago.’
Thirty years ago, she said, Rogachev had stayed in this house. He had been a fellow prisoner with her father years before in the camp at Panarovka. When it had closed down he had gone back to Moscow, while her father had remained here. Panarovka couldn’t be lived in at that time — the Chukchees were still dismantling the camp and turning it into houses — and her father had made this place his surgery. Her mother had come up from Leningrad, and here she herself had been born.
At the time Nizhniye Kresty (Tchersky’s old name) had been very rough, very primitive; detested, abominated, by her mother. Many released prisoners were still roaming, a proper medical service not yet established, nowhere for visitors to stay. And Rogachev had travelled up on a visit, in connection with some scientific mission, and had stayed with his old friend Dr Komarov.
‘And soon became my adored friend! There I was, a little girl of six, without any friends, and this delightful man — I remember he insisted they take me along when they paid a visit once to Panarovka, to have a look at it again, see how it was getting on. It was very old, much older than the bigger camps along the Kolyma. Old from Tsarist days — old, old, with its church. Is this too complicated for you?’ she said, at his thoughtful expression.
He was pouring himself more vodka, and the thoughtfulness arose from his growing awareness that Medical Officer Komarova was getting drunk.
‘No. I’m following,’ he said.
‘Then pour me one, too.’
‘Tatiana Petrovna, there are important —’
‘Tanya will do.’
‘Important matters here. Is it wise for you to drink so early?’
‘It isn’t wise. But is it every day one faces one’s murderer? And discusses the subsequent funeral. My God — in cold blood!’
‘You aren’t facing your murderer. There was no murder.’
‘Through my presence of mind! And your Russian has improved. Who are you?’
‘Tatiana — Tanya. Questions will be asked about me later. Isn’t it better that you don’t have the answers?’
‘All right.’ She drank a little, watching him. Her eyes were now very bright, the flush in her cheeks accentuating the pallor. She lit herself a cigarette and sat back with it in her mouth. She looked different again — longer, lankier, the injured foot stretched out on a stool, the drawn-back hair no longer unremarkable but now severely elegant.
He looked away from her, around the dark room.
‘You think this a strange place for me to live?’
‘Perhaps I would have expected a modern apartment.’
‘I married into a modern apartment.’
‘It didn’t suit you?’ he said, after a pause.
‘Neither the apartment nor the little swine I married. A cardiologist, from the hospital. Now making his fortune in Moscow. Private clinics, rich crooks. His speciality was the heart but he had no heart. Far less a soul,’ she added, nodding. ‘No children, thank God. Do you have children?’
‘No … You were speaking of your own childhood.’
‘Correct. Well then, Rogachev stayed here three months, to my great delight — a playful man, good with children — and I was desolate when he left.’
‘Did he come in connection with the research station?’
She shook her head. ‘He couldn’t have known anything about it then. Nobody did. It was thought to be some kind of weather place. No, he had some low-temperature experiments going on, he went out with the trappers. Then he’d come back and we would play. He was full of little games. I was Tanya-Panya, and he Misha-Bisha — our secret names.’
‘Misha-Bisha?’ Rogachev’s name was Efraim — Efraim Moisevich.
‘Misha the bear. He was a burly man. Just funny names. He gave people names.’
‘Yes.’ He remembered them. ‘Then what?’ he said.
‘Then he went away. And later so did we, to Panarovka. My father retained this house; he was helping them set up the medical service here … Anyway, there I was at Panarovka, apart from school and medical studies. And later I became a paramedic — all leading us to the point.’ She took a sip of vodka. ‘Which was when I became medical officer of this district a couple of years ago, and he asked me to help him — Rogachev did.’
‘You said you’d never seen him again.’