“Would English be better?” asked Olga, who was fluent in that as well as French and Spanish.
“No. I understand. Is he … how …?”
“Hurt, falling from the platform.”
The woman stopped eating. “What …?”
“Why did he do it?” asked Olga, her tone abruptly sharp.
“I don’t know … didn’t know …”
“What about the gun?”
“No! Believe me. I never saw it. Didn’t know.”
“He lives with you?”
“Most of the time.”
“You must know about the gun then?”
“He never had it at home … brought it home.”
“So where did he get it … keep it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he have anywhere else to live?”
“He stayed away sometimes … quite a lot, I suppose … I never knew where …” She tried individually picking up the cake crumbs that had fallen on to her greasy skirt.
“Don’t do that! Concentrate on what I am asking!” ordered Olga, sharply again, and the other woman stopped at once.
“Sorry … I am …”
“You must know where he stayed when he wasn’t at home?”
“I didn’t!”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“He told me it was none of my business. He was always telling me that.”
“Does he have a wife? A girlfriend?”
Vera Bendall shook her head. “He’s not comfortable with women.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Frightened … doesn’t know how …”
“Does he like boys?”
“Not like that … not how you’re saying …”
“What about friends?”
“I don’t know.”
Olga poured more tea and pushed the cakes towards the woman. “Vera, you promised to help me. Tell me everything. Would you rather talk to the man who questioned you first …?”
“No. Please no,” broke in the woman.
“Then you have to help me, Vera. Do you understand what he’s done?”
“Yes.” The voice was a whisper.
“He shot the president.”
“I saw, on television. What will happen …?”
“He’ll have to be punished.”
“Yes.”
Olga pushed the cakes further towards the other woman. “Let’s think about you.”
“Me?”
“What’s going to happen to you, Vera? You’re not Russian. You live here by permission …”
The woman nodded, dumbly.
“You get a State pension because of what your husband did?”
The shoulders started to heave again.
“I can only help you if you help me. Prove to me you weren’t involved.”
“
“So who are his friends?”
“He’s never told me … no one ever came …”
“But he did
“He went out.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You asked him?” accused Olga.
“He wouldn’t tell me. Said none of it was my business. Just his.” There was a pause. “Is he badly hurt?”
“Is he political?” demanded Olga.
Vera Bendall shook her head, refusing to answer.
“I could take your apartment away. And your pension. Have you expelled, sent back to England.”
“He wasn’t right!”
Olga needed to pause. “How-what-wasn’t he right?”
The woman hesitated, uncertain. “He hates Russia. Everything.”
“Was he political?” Olga repeated.
“He read a lot of books when he was younger … books about England.”
“Did he go to meetings?”
“He went out. I told you …”
“And he stayed away?”
“Yes.”
“Often?”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t what you told me earlier?”
Her lips quivered. “I’m sorry … I’m confused.”
They were deviating, Olga realized. “I don’t understand what you mean by saying he wasn’t right?”
“He was in the army, had to be, of course. Went to Afghanistan in the beginning but they wouldn’t let him stay. He had to leave. Sometimes he gets very angry.”
“You mean he’s mad?” demanded Olga, intentionally brutal. It wasn’t such a personally advantageous case if Bendall was mentally ill.
“He loses his temper very easily. Particularly when he drinks.”
“Does he see a doctor? Take medication?”
“He told me he was seeing a doctor recently. Not a medical doctor.”
“Who!”
“I don’t remember a name. I don’t think he told me.”
“Does he drink a lot?”
“Yes.”
“Every day? Every night?”
“I suppose so.”
“Peter, your husband, worked for the KGB when he came to Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“Doing what?”
“He lectured for some years, in a scientific institute. In the last few years he used to read reports … English scientific magazines. Give an opinion about them.”
“From an office in those latter years? Or from your apartment?”
“Both. Mostly from an office near GUM but sometimes from the apartment.”
“So KGB people came to the apartment sometimes?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did George ever meet them?”
“He would have been there when they came.”
“How did George get on with his father?”
