Yellow Blue Tibia (14 page)

The thumb jabbed at the tape, switching it, as he thought, off; although in fact he had turned it on. ‘You fucking little shit, you testicular idiot. Don’t fucking backchat me, all right?’

‘No, comrade.’

‘You
know
what I meant when I asked that question?’

‘The poker question?’

‘No! No!’ He seemed genuinely to be losing his temper. ‘I asked
what he was playing at
. Answering poker is just, fucking - what’s the word -
facetious
. It’s glib. If you’re fucking
glib
, I’ll remove your testicles. Yes?’

‘I understand,’ I said gravely.

‘You haven’t forgotten what I said about your testicles?’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.’

‘Then perhaps,’ he said, ‘we can proceed. Or we’ll be here all fucking night.’ He pushed the switch on the tape recorder again, and the little wheels stopped turning. ‘
For
the record,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘What was Mr Coyne
actually
doing in Moscow?’

‘You’re asking my opinion?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s not an opinion.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘All right, all right. Look. Tell me how you came to be walking down Zholtovskovo Street with the deceased.’

‘He said he wanted to have a word with me. About something important.’

‘You were talking Russian?’

‘Mostly. Occasionally we’d swap to English.’

‘And what did he want to talk about? Wait! Wait! Shit, shit, shit.’ Zembla lurched forward and peered at the tape recorder. ‘The little wheels aren’t going round. Is it broken? Piece of shit.’

‘I believe it is turned off.’

Gingerly, Zembla tried the REC button. The spindles began to turn. He switched it off and they stopped. I watched, as realisation kindled in his big face. ‘I’ve been doing it the wrong way round,’ he said. ‘Turning it
off
during the interview, and turning it
on
during the . . . ah, the interruptions.’

‘It looks that way, comrade.’

‘Shit!’ he said, with real panic in his voice. ‘All the stuff about balls is on tape!’ His gaze, when it came up to meet mine, was imploring. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean any of it. All that stuff about cutting off your balls. I would never
actually
do anything so brutal.’

‘I believe you,’ I said.

‘It was just a strategy! It was just jabber, to get you talking! Really, I’m a gentle-hearted man.’

‘Your gentleness shines through.’

‘The captain is going to be
peeved
. He won’t like it.’ Fumblingly he pressed the rewind button. ‘Maybe I can just erase the whole thing? Start again? How does one erase these fucking little cassettes anyway?’

‘I’m not an expert with such machines,’ I said.

‘Oh, and shit. Shit and oh. The captain is going to be
annoyed
.’ This prospect really seemed to alarm him. He stopped the rewind and pressed play. Tinnily his own voice sounded out,
fucking little shit, you testicular idiot. Don’t fucking backchat
. He jabbed it off. ‘Oh dear. Oh,’ he said. ‘Dear. Oh no.’

‘We can start again,’ I offered.

But Zembla picked the machine up and burlied his way out of the interrogation room, leaving the door open. For a while I simply sat there, looking through the open door at the stretch of corridor outside, and wondering what the likelihood was of my being able simply to walk out of the Militia headquarters. I didn’t move. It recalled to me my strange experience in the restaurant the previous day: staring at a door, thinking about walking through it, but not doing so.

Buzz buzz.

Soon enough, another officer came through, carrying a different cassette tape recorder. This man was older, and wore a more worldly-wise expression. ‘Comrade Skvorecky,’ he said, and if the spirit of a million cigarettes could have been gifted a voice it would have rumbled and creaked exactly as his voice did.

‘Yes, comrade.’

‘Officer Zembla has been called away on urgent police business.’

‘I understand.’

‘My name is Liski.’

‘Officer Liski.’ I nodded.

He settled the machine on the table, turned it on, and reached into his pocket for a packet of Primos. He offered me one, then took one himself. His lighter ticked to life, the flame like a painter’s brush painted fire against the ends of each of the white tubes in turn. We both inhaled at the same time. ‘Now,’ he said. He expelled smoke the colour of a summer sky as he spoke. ‘If you please, tell me about your last encounter with the deceased.’

‘Comrade,’ I said, feeling calmer for the cigarette, ‘do not think me disrespectful, but may I ask: he
is
dead, then?’

‘He is.’

‘It all seems,’ I confessed, ‘somehow, unreal.’

‘It is, nevertheless, very real and very serious. An American citizen, found dead on the streets of Moscow, and you the only person in the vicinity. You comprehend why you have been taken into custody?’

When put like this, my situation seemed graver than I had previously realised. ‘I am not responsible for Mr Coyne’s death,’ I said.

‘Why don’t you tell me how it happened?’ said Liski, settling back in his chair. It was obvious that he was a dedicated smoker, both from the deep vertical creases that marked his face, and from the fact that those wrinkles visibly lessened as the tobacco relaxed his muscles.

‘As I was explaining to the previous officer,’ I said, ‘I had met Mr Coyne for the first time that day. Then by chance I encountered him again at the Pushkin Chess Club. At the end of the evening he asked me to walk with him a little way, as he made his way back to his hotel. He said he had an important thing to tell me.’

‘Why you?’

‘Why me?’

‘What I mean is: what was it about
you
that made him want to confide these things?’

‘A good question, comrade. I can’t really answer it.’

‘And what were these things he had to tell you?’

‘They concerned alien life.’

One heavy eyebrow defied gravity. ‘UFOs?’

‘Precisely. Perhaps that is why he wanted to talk to me. There had been some discussion in the Pushkin on this subject. I had been represented as being an expert.’

‘You are an expert on UFOs?’

‘No, I’m really not.’

‘Then why were you so represented?’

‘A long time ago,’ I said, ‘I used to write science fiction stories.’

‘Like Zamiatin?’

‘I met him once, actually,’ I said. ‘Although the stuff I wrote is feeble indeed compared to his genius.’

‘What,’ said Liski, ‘did Mr Coyne want to say to you about UFOs?’

‘He said they were a great danger to the world.’

‘I see. Did he specify this danger?’

‘It had something to do with nuclear power stations.’

‘Any particular power station?’

‘He mentioned one in the Ukraine. He said there was a prophecy concerning this station. In the Bible.’

Liski finished his cigarette. ‘To be clear: he claimed that the Bible contains a prophecy that UFOs will attack Ukrainian nuclear facilities?’

‘When you put it like that, comrade,’ I said, ‘it does sound a little . . . far-fetched.’

‘You’re sure he wasn’t joking?’

‘He seemed very earnest.’

‘He
actually
believed in these UFOs?’

I thought about this. ‘I believe he did.’

‘And do you?’

‘Believe in UFOs?’ I said. ‘No. I don’t. Or—’

‘Or?’

‘I don’t want to be evasive, comrade. Doesn’t it depend on what you mean by UFOs? If you are asking me whether there are actual metallic saucers that have flown here from Sirius to snatch up a long-distance lorry driver outside Yakutsk and rummage around his lower intestine: no, I don’t believe that. But there is a - phenomenon. That can’t be denied. A cultural phenomenon. Many people believe in UFOs. So many that UFOs possess actual cultural significance. We might say that my individual unbelief in God doesn’t wish away the Catholic Church.’

Liski looked enormously uninterested in the particularities of my unbelief. ‘So what happened?’

‘What happened?’

‘After Coyne told you about the imminent UFO attack on Ukraine?’

‘Then,’ I said, trying to get the order of events straight in my head. ‘Then.’ But it had been so strange a sequence that sorting it out in my recollection was harder than you might think. ‘What followed is very strange, comrade. I can’t think you’ll believe it.’

He was motionless in his chair. ‘Try me.’ His voice a purr.

‘First there was a power cut. The streetlights on Zholtovskovo Street all went out.’

‘Just on that street?’

‘Yes. The lights were still lit on the Garden Ring; I could see the glow over the rooftops. And some of the windows in the buildings were still lit. So, yes, just the streetlights. And then - well then somebody turned a spotlight on us.’

‘A spotlight?’

‘Like in a theatre. Or a prison camp.’ I stumbled over this latter phrase, with an unpleasant sensation in my spine that I shouldn’t have made that particular comparison. It was dawning on me, I think, that my chances of being released from criminal captivity were very small. An American had been killed, and I was the only individual at the scene. ‘It was,’ I said, resolving to tell the police the truth, howsoever strange it might be, ‘shining straight down upon us, from directly above. It must have been a very powerful bulb, because the light was blinding.’

‘Could you see who was shining this light?’

‘I couldn’t see anything apart from the light.’

‘Was it mounted on the roof? Was somebody leaning out of a window with it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I see. And then.’

I paused. ‘What happened next was that Coyne flew up in the air.’

This didn’t seem to faze Officer Liski. ‘Straight up, was it?’

‘Actually, yes. He flew upwards, and tipped upside down. I knew he was upside down because he grabbed hold of my shoulder.’

‘He was in mid-air, and he grabbed your shoulder?’

‘Exactly; and his face was about on a level with mine. Except that his face was upside down.’

‘Unusual.’

‘Very. Might I have another cigarette?’

Carefully, with the reverence of a true believer, Liski retrieved two more white cylinders from the packet and lit them both. He passed one to me. ‘Carry on.’

‘It sounds incredible, I know, but somebody must have snagged Mr Coyne with a rope. A rope around his ankle, I think, and they were trying to haul him upwards. He grabbed my shoulder, and that interrupted his upward progress for a moment, but then they yanked harder and he disappeared up into the light.’

‘You saw him?’

‘I suppose my eyes,’ I said, ‘were becoming accustomed to the brightness. I looked up and saw him, weightless as it were.’

‘As it were? Or actually?’

‘He was actually dangling from a rope. But I could not see the rope from my perspective. He hung there for a moment, and then he fell back down. I assume it was the fall that killed him.’

‘So whoever was holding him up let go of the rope?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Do you think he let go by accident? Or was this a deliberate attempt to kill him?’

‘I couldn’t say, comrade. But he came down, and the rope came down with him.’

At this, Liski sat forward. ‘You saw this rope? You examined it?’

‘My primary concern,’ I said, ‘was attending to Mr Coyne, to see if he was hurt. But I suppose I did notice the rope, yes.’

‘Can you describe it?’

‘It was rope,’ I said. ‘It was a pale colour. It may, actually,’ I added, trying to pull the memory out of my brain, ‘have been a steel cable. It may have had a silver colour. Colour was hard to judge. It was warm and smooth to the touch.’

‘You touched it?’

‘Yes. It was warm and soft, but it didn’t feel like rope. Perhaps a synthetic cable? I’m surprised you’re so interested in the rope.’

‘No rope was found at the scene,’ he told me.

I thought about this. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Indeed. There’s no indication on the ankles of the deceased that he had been suspended from a rope in mid-air. No rope burn or marks on his legs. And no rope was found.’

‘I would assume, therefore,’ I said, ‘that the rope must have been retrieved.’

‘You said it fell down on top of Coyne?’

I thought about it. ‘I think it did,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Did you see somebody come out onto the street and retrieve the rope?’

‘No.’

‘Militia officers were at the scene very quickly. They found no rope.’

‘I can’t explain why you didn’t find the rope.’

Liski looked at me. ‘You checked Coyne’s body yourself?’

‘He was still alive,’ I said. ‘It was all so startling, so unexpected, that I half thought it was all an elaborate practical joke. He was still breathing, although I noticed very quickly that blood was seeping out from under his body.’

‘His neck was broken in the fall,’ said Liski. ‘He landed on his left arm. His wristwatch was metal, and it cut through the flesh into his ribs. But it was the breaking of his neck that killed him.’

‘I see.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘He did. He—This is the strangest thing. He told me to respond.’

‘To respond? To respond to what?’

‘I didn’t know. I assumed, in the moment, that he wanted a response to the acrobatic display he’d just put on. Applause, for instance. He told me I’d better respond, or else.’

‘Or else what?’

‘Just or else.’

‘Was he,’ Liski asked, ‘speaking Russian, or was he speaking English?’

I cast my mind back, but on this subject it was a perfect blank. ‘I don’t remember. I’m sorry comrade, I honestly don’t. The two of us had been speaking Russian, and then switching to English, and back to Russian. His last words might have been either.’