Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel (Arkady Renko Novels) (5 page)

“A battle?” Arkady thought that was a little exaggerated.

One wall of Obolensky’s office was covered with citations from news organizations and schools of journalism around the world. Two photographs were of Obolensky and Tatiana Petrovna accepting awards. A leather sofa was worn flat. A dead ficus haunted a corner. Obolensky’s desk was half hidden by a computer and manuscripts and books that overflowed the shelves. All in all, pretty much the professional disorder that Arkady expected in an editor’s office.

“What happened after Anya and I left?” he asked. “Did you get your cameras and cell phones back?”

“After the captain confiscated all the film and memory cards. The captain had his fun. He advised us not to make an issue of the beating because then they would really dish it out. ‘Dish it out’? What does that mean? What’s left after murder? For the meantime he cited us for unlawful assembly and libeling the office of the president. Not a word about the attack on us. I’m responsible for my people. I don’t want their blood on my hands.”

“Did you lodge a complaint with a prosecutor?”

“What would be the point? Prosecutors, investigators, militia, they’re all thieves, present company excepted.” Only two glasses of vodka, and Obolensky was becoming emotional. “Renko, you and I know that our demonstration was about more than Tatiana. It was about all journalists who have been attacked. There’s a pattern. A journalist is murdered; an unlikely suspect is arrested, tried and found not guilty. And that’s the end of it, except we get the message. Soon there will be no news but their news. They say
it’s better than a free press, it’s a free but ‘responsible’ press.” He poured a sloppy glass and raised it high. “So the nation moves on, blindfolded.”

“What about Tatiana?”

“Tatiana was fearless. Independent. In other words, I couldn’t stop her. She did what she wanted. She went to America once for a big humanitarian prize, and all she could talk about when she came back was bumper stickers. She said if she had a car, she’d have a sticker that said, ‘So Much Corruption, So Little Time.’ I think she knew her time was up. Why else would she live in a building next to skinheads?”

“Did they ever attack her?”

“No.”

“Is it possible they respected her?”

“Why not? They’re monsters but they’re still human. She was always for the underdog.” Obolensky hunched closer. “The official line is that Tatiana jumped and there will be no investigation. So, what are you doing? The war is over.”

Arkady said, “People don’t know about the demonstration.”

“And they won’t. The television news that night showed Putin petting a tiger cub and Medvedev arranging flowers. Anyway, Tatiana is missing again.”

“Again?”

“First she was in the wrong drawer.” Obolensky refilled the glasses. To the brim. “Now she’s totally disappeared.”

“What do you mean?”

“They can’t find her. They say they’ve looked everywhere. They’re just twisting our dicks. Apparently, the authorities are concerned that wherever our Tatiana is buried will become some sort of shrine. They’re juggling her until they come up with an answer.”

“Why not cremate her?”

“Maybe they have, who knows? But you’re supposed to ask the family first.”

“Did she have any family?”

“A sister in Kaliningrad that no one can locate. I tried. I went to Kaliningrad myself and knocked on her door, because if the sister doesn’t claim her or they hide Tatiana long enough, she might end up in a grave for the unclaimed. A double disappearance.”

“Was she secretive by nature?”

“She had a personal life. She would disappear for a week at a time and never say where she’d been. An unpredictable lady. I think it was her unpredictability that kept her alive. And she never revealed her sources, but we were watching the news and saw this body wash up on the beach in Kaliningrad. She insisted on going to the scene.”

“What was his name?”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

“How did she know him?”

“According to Tatiana, they met at a book event in Zurich. He was interpreting for one of the other authors. Of course, once he knew who she was, he tried to impress her and let her know that he had inside information about criminal activities in Moscow and Kaliningrad. The police didn’t even make a pretense of an investigation of his death. They just hauled him off. It was local kids that found his notebook in the sea grass. The little ghouls sold it to Tatiana. Five hundred rubles for a notebook of puzzles. Only the joke’s on us. It’s completely useless.” Obolensky unlocked a desk drawer and took out a reporter’s spiral notebook.

“What is it?”

“Tatiana said they were the interpreter’s notes.”

“Notes about what?”

“You tell me. Tatiana kept it secret. It was going to be the capper of her career. She was headed for sainthood. Instead, here comes the Kremlin’s smear campaign. She was a subverter of youth, an agent of the West, a wanton woman. They throw mud at you even as they kill you; that’s the way they work.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“ ‘They’ are those persons in the Kremlin who determine whether a journalist is digging too deep or reaching too high. The persons who like to say that only a coffin corrects a hunchback.”

“Where is Tatiana’s dog?”

“Polo? With Maxim, the last I heard. Renko, why is it you still sound like an investigator?”

“Habit.” Arkady looked idly around the office. A cactus on the windowsill looked shriveled and defeated. “What happened to Tatiana’s manuscript?”

“It disappeared. She was going to give me a rough draft the day she died. All I have is this notebook.”

“May I see?”

Obolensky laughed. “Take a look.”

Arkady turned to the first page. Second, third, and his confusion only grew. It was drawings. It was arrows, boxes, teardrops, fish, a cat and more, as if someone had poured out the contents of a typographer’s box and tossed in gnostic symbols, dollar signs, stick figures and, most improbably, “Natalya Goncharova,” the name of the unfaithful wife for whom the poet Pushkin lost his life.

“What does it mean?” Arkady asked.

“Who knows?” Obolensky took back the notebook and returned it to the drawer. “Sorry, I’m saving it for the writer I’ve assigned to do a follow-up article on Tatiana.”

“After the attack on the demonstration I thought you stopped making waves.”

“We did, we did. Nonetheless, we have a reporter who’s eager to try. How can I deny her?”

“Who?”

“Anya. It’s her big chance, don’t you think?”

•  •  •

Arkady’s car was just out of the repair shop, and now that he had it back, he was as edgy as a parent. Every vehicle was within a millimeter of another’s skin. Other drivers made no eye contact and gave no quarter.

Victor gloated. “It’s like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, but in slow motion. It’s good to see your car again. A bit macho for my taste, if you know what I mean.”

“I can only guess.”

“The problem is the precinct commander says that since Tatiana Petrovna’s death was clearly a suicide, there is no basis for further investigation. That means no depositions, no subpoenas and no lawyers. The body’s disappeared. The commander has turned me down. So we have overfulfilled our quota of nothing. Where are we going?”

“To see our witness.”

“The neighbor? Svetlana?”

“I told you, she heard screams.”

“Okay, let’s say you have approval for an investigation—which you don’t, but never mind—did she actually see anything? Was she under the influence of any drugs? Could she swear to the time? Was she with a customer? This is some witness.”

“We’ll need more, I agree.”

“More?”

“We should talk to all Tatiana’s colleagues and friends to understand her state of mind. Also, she was investigating a death in Kaliningrad. She had a dozen battles going on.”

“Arkady—”

“And she seems to have held up an expensive real estate development.”

“Arkady, I hate to say this, but the case is closed. The investigation is over. Not only that, it does look like suicide. She came home alone, locked the door, and jumped off the balcony. Alone. She trusted no one, and under the circumstances, that made a lot of sense. It’s as if the whole city was out to get her. They drove her to it.”

“She entrusted her apartment key to her neighbor.”

“Unfortunately, a mental case. It’s time for you to get back on your feet, but on a real homicide. Without a body there is no case. We’ll start slowly with aggravated assault and work our way up. Or, on a personal level, why not find out who stomped you? I made some calls about the demonstration while you were lazing about in bed.”

“And?”

“Half the people you say were in the demonstration deny that they were ever there. The only two who really support the accusation are Anya and Obolensky, but that sells magazines, doesn’t it?”

“What about Maxim Dal? He rescued us.”

“Gone to ground. To hear anyone but Anya, Obolensky and you, there was no demonstration. It’s like that old adage about a tree falling in the forest; if nobody hears it, was there a sound?”

“What if it falls on you?”

•  •  •

As they slogged up the six stories to Svetlana’s apartment, Victor wheezed and said, “You know, I really missed you while you were laid up. Now I’m not so sure.”

Taped to Tatiana’s door was a receipt for the “occupant” from the Curonian Renaissance Corporation for the contents of the apartment, which could be retrieved within a month upon payment of a storage fee. After thirty days, the contents would be disposed of.

The door opened at a touch.

Tatiana’s apartment had been swept clean. Furniture, electronics, even carpets had been removed. Books, photographs, music were gone. Every footfall echoed in rooms that were pools of late-afternoon light and motes in motion.

“A Renaissance Corporation? That sounds nice,” Arkady said. “I think of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bernini.”

Victor said, “I think of the Borgias. So, we’ve got no witness, no corpse and now no scene of the crime.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll tell you what we do have.” Victor sniffed the air as they stepped back into the hall. “Cats.”

There were five cats in Svetlana’s apartment. They hadn’t been fed or had their box changed for at least a day, and they swarmed around Victor while he poured milk into a saucer. Victor, oddly enough, was a cat person. An admirer not of fluffy Persian cats or exotic Siamese, but of feral survivors of the street. Did they eat songbirds? Let them. Victor’s favorite birds were crows.

Svetlana was gone. As Arkady remembered, she more camped in the apartment than lived in it. It wouldn’t have taken her more than ten minutes to stuff all her personal possessions into a suitcase. The cats mewed and purred around the bowl, dots of milk on their whiskers.

There had been six cats on his first visit. Snowflake, Svetlana’s favorite, was gone. It occurred to Arkady that a woman who took her pet hadn’t been grabbed. She was on the run.

“Let me remind you,” Victor said, “that even if the walls were splattered with blood, you have no authority to do anything, not until the prosecutor has assigned the case to you. You haven’t seen him for weeks.”

“Well, I’ve neglected him,” Arkady admitted.

•  •  •

Since Arkady did not play golf, he didn’t know how many swings a player was allowed to knock a ball off a tee. Prosecutor Zurin’s swings only became more erratic with each effort.

“You don’t have to stand there like a vulture, Renko. I was doing perfectly well before you showed up.”

“Isn’t that the way it goes?”

So this was the prosecutor’s famous golf club. The operation was simple, an open cage and pads of artificial grass between a car dealership and a paintball course. The range was illuminated and signs marked distance from the tee: “100 meters,” “150,” “200.” For Zurin they might as well have said, “Mars,” “Saturn,” “Jupiter.” The problem was he looked like a real golfer: tall, tan and silver haired. Just like he looked like a real prosecutor.

“Have you tried paintball?” Arkady asked.

“Get to the point. What do you want?”

“I wanted to inform you that I’m back on duty.”

“You’ve got one more week on medical leave.”

“I’ve rested enough. I tried to reach you by phone. I left messages.”

Zurin glanced in the direction of Victor and the Niva. “You could come by the office and pick up your mail, but I have no
case for you to work on. Everyone else is on a team. I can’t break up teams. There’s really nothing for you to do at the moment.”

“I’ll find something.”

“Like what?”

“A dead body from the morgue. They seem to have misplaced her.”

“Homicide?”

“Suicide,” Arkady assured him.

He could see Zurin turn the news over in his mind, unsure whether this was a windfall or a trap.

“You know, when you get involved in radical demonstrations and street brawls, it reflects on the entire office. We are hostages to you. Your colleagues are fed up with the melodrama of your life. Finding the body of a suicide isn’t going to make any difference, is it? Dead is dead.” The prosecutor’s attention wavered as the tee beckoned. Half a pail of balls to go. “If you want to chase a dead body, go ahead. It’s your style, a totally pointless gesture. But, please, at least sign in at the office as if you work there.”

•  •  •

Only bad things happen when you go to the office, Arkady thought. He had been Pluto, a lump of ice in outer space, content in his obscurity. One step into his office, however, and he encountered the full force of gravity. Memos, notes and reminders were stacked on his desk and Dr. Korsakova was waiting in an armchair with X-ray films on her lap.

“What a pleasure,” Arkady said.

“A surprise too, I’m sure. Apparently, you’re a phantom or you have been avoiding me.”

“Never.”

He wanted to offer her tea but his electric teapot was missing.
Korsakova had treated Arkady for a gunshot wound, a bullet to the brain that should have killed him and would have if the round had not been a relic degraded by time. Instead of plowing a causeway through Arkady’s head, bits had lodged between the skull and the covering of the brain, and caused bleeding enough to justify drilling drain holes and lifting the lid of his head. Ever since, she had taken a proprietary interest in his health.