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.
“Well, here we are. I would offer you tea and something to eat but the cupboard seems to be bare.”
“Not everyone who is shot in the head gets a second chance. You should be appreciative of that. Remember your headaches?”
The medical term was “thunderclap headache,” a sudden howl in the black of the night that was the marker of a bleeding brain. Arkady remembered.
Dr. Korsakova said, “Exercising caution, there might be nothing to be alarmed about. Are you paying attention?”
“I’m glued. You told me not to worry, that probably nothing would happen.”
She stood to slide out the films and rearranged Arkady’s desk so that his lamp lay on its back and faced upward. “You don’t mind?”
“Not a bit.”
“Six months ago.” She held an X-ray above the light and then a second X-ray over the first. “A week ago.”
The X-rays merged into a single luminous skull, similar in every detail except for a white speck circled in each plate.
“Something has. .”
“Moved,” Dr. Korsakova said. “We never know when such a particle will stop or move or in what direction. Shrapnel emerges from war veterans after fifty years. We do know that violence doesn’t help. Did you consider that when you joined the demonstration for Tatiana Petrovna?”
“It was a public gathering.”
“It was a demonstration, and for you it could have been fatal. Who knows what direction this particle may take? Right now pieces are aimed at the frontal lobe. You may experience confusion, nausea, personality changes.”
“I could live with that. Who knows, it may be for the better.” He opened desk drawers rapid-fire until he found an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes.
Dr. Korsakova, at once, was on her feet. “You’re going to smoke too?”
“While I can, like a chimney.”
6
When Arkady and Anya sat down for breakfast, the bread was fresh, the coffee was hot and she wanted to know why he was spoiling a perfectly good morning by going to meet Maxim Dal at a church of all places.
“Hoping for a confession? And after, are the two of you going to sit down with a comforter and a pot of tea and reminisce about being clubbed by the riot police?”
“No, that’s what vodka is for. The church was Maxim’s idea. Besides, he might know something about Tatiana’s death that would help us.”
“Exactly what are you after? What is the case?”
“Tatiana’s body is missing. I’m looking for it.”
“A senior investigator searching closets at the morgue? Do you know how pathetic that sounds?”
Arkady’s cell phone rang.
“Who is that?”
“Zhenya.” He looked at the phone and turned it off. He had to gird himself for a conversation with the most truculent boy on earth, so he stalled as usual. Between Anya and Zhenya, he didn’t think he could fight on two fronts at the same time.
Anya asked, “Are there any witnesses besides the girl with the cats? As I remember the buildings around Tatiana’s apartment were empty.”
“Nearly. You never know when someone will turn up, but you have to knock on doors. I don’t have enough men to do that and even if I did. .”
