He stood directly at Malik’s feet, plump chin against plump chest, staring down, moving his head left to right and right to left, tracing the passage of the hit and run vehicle. Not simply hit and run, he decided. Hit and hit again. Then run. The bloodied outline and tread of the tyres were very obvious in one direction, but there were no brake marks from what must have been the approach. Rigor mortis was already stiffening the body: the man’s arm was thrown out, hand extended in a pointing gesture, and the lips were strained back from the teeth in a seized grimace of agony. Poor bugger, Bogaty thought: like the pathologist said, he’d been through enough already. Bogaty wondered how he’d suffered the earlier, appalling injury.
What would the KGB response be? Not his concern; he guessed there was very little that would be his concern. Still, excuse enough to avoid the nightly tirade from Lydia. Bogaty, who knew himself to be a very positive policeman, recognized that in his private life he was contrastingly ineffectual. One day, he reflected, he would divorce her. One day. Recalling the name of the corpse before him, Bogaty wondered if Vasili Dmitrevich Malik had been married. It would be the KGB’s job to advise any widow. He would have liked to have known what the man’s position had been in the Committee of State Security. Something further not to be his concern. He supposed most investigators would be grateful for such an apparently difficult case shortly to be taken from their hands, but Bogaty wasn’t. He enjoyed detective work, discovering what people did not want to be discovered, and would have liked to find out why a crippled giant of a KGB man had been intentionally run over and killed. Maybe not so difficult to discover: Bogaty’s guess was someone with a grievance. And there were certainly enough people in the Soviet Union with grievances against the KGB: the majority of the population, he guessed.
Bogaty looked sideways, conscious of someone approaching and expecting to see Aliev but instead recognized the uniform of a KGB colonel. Instinctively he straightened and at once, irritated at the gesture of respect, relaxed again. In self introduction, he said: ‘Investigator Bogaty. MVD homicide.’
The man nodded without bothering to reply, gazing down at the body.
‘And you?’ pressed Bogaty.
The colonel turned and for a moment Bogaty imagined the man was not going to identify himself. Then he said: ‘Panchenko. Security. KGB First Chief Directorate.’
‘He must have been important for a colonel to be involved?’
‘It is none of your business,’ rejected Panchenko curtly.
Supercilious shit, thought Bogaty: they were all the same. He said: ‘He was deliberately run down. You can see where the car reversed over him.’ He saw the uniformed man shiver from the cold: the feeling had practically gone from Bogaty’s own hands and feet.
Panchenko said: ‘It will be a KGB investigation.’
‘I anticipated it would be.’
‘What examination has there been?’
‘Pathological, forensic and photographic,’ listed Bogaty.
‘It’s all to be handed over.’
Why was politeness always so difficult for KGB personnel? Bogaty said: ‘It will be.’
‘Immediately.’
‘When it’s available,’ qualified Bogaty. It was hardly independence but it was something, at least.
‘And all your notes.’
‘I haven’t made any,’ said Bogaty.
‘Anything your officers might have.’
‘The motorist who found the body is being interviewed.’
‘I definitely want that.’
‘That’s all there is.’
‘Sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’ Bogaty wasn’t impressed or frightened, even if the man were a KGB colonel.
‘I want everything.’
‘You already said that.’
‘Just so you understand.’
‘He was killed,’ insisted Bogaty.
‘It is no longer your investigation.’
‘You said that, too.’
There was the sound of engines from the end of the street and the blocking vehicle moved to admit an ambulance. Panchenko said to the attendants approaching with their wheeled stretcher: ‘To the First Chief Directorate mortuary, not the civilian militia.’
The rigor-hardened body was easy for the men to manoeuvre on to the stretcher: briefly, for no more than a second, the one rigidly outstretched arm pointed directly at Panchenko, who looked abruptly away, back to Bogaty.
‘Don’t forget the official reports,’ he said.
‘Is it likely I would?’
‘What was your name again?’
To show he was not intimidated, Bogaty spelled it out instead of saying it.
‘I’ll remember it,’ bullied Panchenko.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine why people wanted to run KGB officers down. Trying to end the encounter on his terms and not be dismissed by the man, Bogaty said: ‘If I were you I’d start checking garages before whoever did it has a chance to get his car repaired,’ but it didn’t work because Panchenko had already turned away and was walking back to the entrance to the street, without any farewell. Bugger the man, thought Bogaty: he wouldn’t get the expert reports until he asked for them. And asked for them politely. Still too early to go home to Lydia. Just one drink, in the cafe on Sverdlova. Maybe two.
As always Kazin insisted on caution on unsecured telephones so when Panchenko called the man said, simply: ‘Safe?’
‘I did what you ordered,’ replied the security chief, which was not the arranged reply. But it was necessary for the tape recorder Panchenko had attached to his receiver.
Yuri approached the apartment on the opposite side of 53rd Street so that he could establish from her lighted window directly above the Soviet apartment whether Caroline were home, which she was. He closed the outside door loudly and ascended the stairs slowly, but there was no shout from above. He slammed his apartment door loudly, too, and then stood in the middle of the room feeling stupid, which he decided was appropriate because stupidly was how he was behaving. Positively childlike and juvenile, he told himself. He strained to hear her moving about, but couldn’t. He started towards the uncertain television to watch it with the volume high, but halted determinedly. Time to stop being stupid. He’d come to see her and the way to see her was to call, not stumble about like some immature seventeen-year-old with wet dreams and a romantic crush. He didn’t need to look up the number because he’d checked it before he left the United Nations building.
‘Where have you been!’ she demanded, at once.
‘The job took longer than I expected,’ said Yuri. The excitement in her voice sounded genuine.
‘Are you coming to me or am I coming to you?’
So the button-down man wasn’t with her. Yuri said: ‘Why don’t I come up?’ There might be some indication of his being there.
‘Hurry! I’ve missed you.’
She appeared to have done. She was waiting by the open door when he climbed to the next storey and when he got to her she reached out, pulling him to her, holding her face up to be kissed. When they parted she refused to let him go, clutching his hand and leading him back into the apartment, pushing him into a chair and then settling at his feet.
‘It’s good to see you again,’ he said sincerely.
‘No call!’ she complained. ‘Not even a postcard!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He wasn’t handling it as he intended.
‘I said I missed you. What about you?’
‘How are walking plants?’ he avoided.
‘Still walking,’ she said. ‘And who gives a fuck?’
Yuri looked around the apartment for some sign of occupation apart from Caroline’s but could not see any. It
