Chapter 11
Tram No.40 clattered slowly along Partisan Street. Outside the Palace of Justice, a life-sized cut-out of Femida, dispassionate goddess of law, was propped up against a wall like an advertising board. Heavily made-up, she had brass scales in one hand and a broad sword in the other, her eyes blindfolded.
There'd been news about Vazgen. A contact in records had traced his girlfriend to a block of flats on Karl Liebknecht Street, just over the railway track, so perhaps he was still in town. Osip had asked for a squad car to pick him up in, but Bobrovski had refused. The girlfriend, it turned out, had worked in Mila’s salon, though Osip couldn't remember whether he'd seen her there or not.
Arkady was to meet him at the Italian cemetery, and they'd take his car from there—it was safer to arrive together, in case Vazgen put up a fight. The investigator scanned the courtyard beside the tram stop for his promised back-up team, but there was no one about. He decided to carry on to the terminus anyway.
In the municipal park, the grass was sparse and wizened, the ground baked hard by a brazen sun. Maybe the captain was right: this wasn’t his job. What had got into him? Osip loosened his tie and wiped the sweat from his hairline, and his jaws clamped together involuntarily, pulsing the muscles in his cheek. Winding around the terminus, which was looped like a lasso, the tram came to a stop and its doors squeaked open. In the shadows of a narrow side alley, between a breeze-block shelter and the huge, pale-green cinema, Arkady was puffing a cigarette, shifting his weight from one foot to another. The cinema, themed like a roman temple, now mostly showed soft-porn, shoddy horrors, Bollywood imports. Someone had graffitied glasses and an imperial beard to the face of a girl in a mini-skirt looking saucily back over her shoulder out of a tatty poster on the wall, a few wisps of pubic hair along the knickerline. Emerging into sunlight, Arkasha shielded his eyes. The two men stopped on the patchy tarmac and bear-hugged. Since the incident at his flat three days before, Arkasha’s appearance was transformed, his face re-energised, again uncannily youthful, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"And your people, where are they?" asked Arkady.
"Just us, I’m afraid," said Osip. “Where’s your car?”
"No car," said Arkady, giggling nervously. From an inside jacket pocket, the sleeves of which he’d rolled up to the elbows because of the heat, Arkasha pulled out a hefty steel spanner and said: “I brought this, though.”
By the time they reached the footbridge over the bunched tangle of railway tracks up to a coking plant, Arkady had again withdrawn into the privacy of a cigarette. In silence they ascended the wooden stairs, and Osip considered briefly what it was like to be Shapiro, forever making unpalatable compromises with men like Kulyeba, whose gift was simply that they lacked the capacity to be ashamed; scurrying this way and that through the cracks in life’s skirting boards, past traps, like a rat. Kulyeba had “eased” Shapiro out of the steel plant after he’d fronted it for him as a favour, and at some personal risk. He’d probably made some money, though, and at least he’d survived. Others hadn’t been so lucky (two metals traders who’d tried to set up on their own had been shot). Yet Arkady retained a likeable lightness, almost an innocence, that was hard to define.
Tram No.40 clattered slowly along Partisan Street. Outside the Palace of Justice, a life-sized cut-out of Femida, dispassionate goddess of law, was propped up against a wall like an advertising board. Heavily made-up, she had brass scales in one hand and a broad sword in the other, her eyes blindfolded.
There'd been news about Vazgen. A contact in records had traced his girlfriend to a block of flats on Karl Liebknecht Street, just over the railway track, so perhaps he was still in town. Osip had asked for a squad car to pick him up in, but Bobrovski had refused. The girlfriend, it turned out, had worked in Mila’s salon, though Osip couldn't remember whether he'd seen her there or not.
Arkady was to meet him at the Italian cemetery, and they'd take his car from there—it was safer to arrive together, in case Vazgen put up a fight. The investigator scanned the courtyard beside the tram stop for his promised back-up team, but there was no one about. He decided to carry on to the terminus anyway.
In the municipal park, the grass was sparse and wizened, the ground baked hard by a brazen sun. Maybe the captain was right: this wasn’t his job. What had got into him? Osip loosened his tie and wiped the sweat from his hairline, and his jaws clamped together involuntarily, pulsing the muscles in his cheek. Winding around the terminus, which was looped like a lasso, the tram came to a stop and its doors squeaked open. In the shadows of a narrow side alley, between a breeze-block shelter and the huge, pale-green cinema, Arkady was puffing a cigarette, shifting his weight from one foot to another. The cinema, themed like a roman temple, now mostly showed soft-porn, shoddy horrors, Bollywood imports. Someone had graffitied glasses and an imperial beard to the face of a girl in a mini-skirt looking saucily back over her shoulder out of a tatty poster on the wall, a few wisps of pubic hair along the knickerline. Emerging into sunlight, Arkasha shielded his eyes. The two men stopped on the patchy tarmac and bear-hugged. Since the incident at his flat three days before, Arkasha’s appearance was transformed, his face re-energised, again uncannily youthful, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"And your people, where are they?" asked Arkady.
"Just us, I’m afraid," said Osip. “Where’s your car?”
"No car," said Arkady, giggling nervously. From an inside jacket pocket, the sleeves of which he’d rolled up to the elbows because of the heat, Arkasha pulled out a hefty steel spanner and said: “I brought this, though.”
By the time they reached the footbridge over the bunched tangle of railway tracks up to a coking plant, Arkady had again withdrawn into the privacy of a cigarette. In silence they ascended the wooden stairs, and Osip considered briefly what it was like to be Shapiro, forever making unpalatable compromises with men like Kulyeba, whose gift was simply that they lacked the capacity to be ashamed; scurrying this way and that through the cracks in life’s skirting boards, past traps, like a rat. Kulyeba had “eased” Shapiro out of the steel plant after he’d fronted it for him as a favour, and at some personal risk. He’d probably made some money, though, and at least he’d survived. Others hadn’t been so lucky (two metals traders who’d tried to set up on their own had been shot). Yet Arkady retained a likeable lightness, almost an innocence, that was hard to define.
Down on the track, through the bridge’s iron safety grills, Galkin could see a gang of railway workers, berry brown and stripped to the waist, resetting short sections of rail in the blistering heat. Involuntarily, he rubbed the prominent scar on the right side of his forehead where a suspect has once caught him with a broken bottle.
On the opposite platform, the two men trudged towards a gravel path that ran parallel to a pockmarked road, back in the direction they'd come from, their earlier buoyant spirits now seeming to evaporate through the pores of their skin. What were they doing there? And what the hell were they going to do when they arrived at Vazgen’s hotel? He imagined taking Vazgen by surprise in a body tackle, a sharp twinge of anxiety assailed the officer: he'd like to avoid violence, if he could, but perhaps it wasn't possible.
On the opposite platform, the two men trudged towards a gravel path that ran parallel to a pockmarked road, back in the direction they'd come from, their earlier buoyant spirits now seeming to evaporate through the pores of their skin. What were they doing there? And what the hell were they going to do when they arrived at Vazgen’s hotel? He imagined taking Vazgen by surprise in a body tackle, a sharp twinge of anxiety assailed the officer: he'd like to avoid violence, if he could, but perhaps it wasn't possible.
The girlfriend’s apartment block was at the far end of Karl Liebknecht Street. A short distance from the entrance, the two men came to a halt. Osip looked the tall building up and down, as if to assess the size of the task ahead. The building was 12 stories high and ultra-slim, like the component on a circuit-board. On its roof, ringed by a simple balustrade, was what looked like some large-scale communications equipment. By the dusty steps’ entrance, emaciated birch trees stood guard, stooping like so many bony Don Quixotes, lances raised. Osip's consciousness quivered, itching for a smoke, and Arkady shifted from foot to foot. Absorption in the task ahead deadened an awareness of the surrounding urban noise.
“Wait by the double doors,” said the investigator. “If you hear shooting, make yourself scarce. But if he runs out, see if you can’t trip him up.”
“Wait by the double doors,” said the investigator. “If you hear shooting, make yourself scarce. But if he runs out, see if you can’t trip him up.”
He waited in a chilly hallway which had walls the colour of eggshell as the narrow lift descended with the sound of nails scraping down a blackboard; at ground level, its dented metal doors opened stiffly. On the eighth floor, Galkin stepped out into a dim corridor. On the concrete floor ahead of him was a dead rat, lying on its side, peacefully, as if in sleep, two paws tucked up sweetly under its jaws. Shivering in disgust, but stepped over it carefully, as if not wishing to wake it. Osip thought about Femida, with her scales held out before her, boldly—but at least she was armed. When he knocked on a red door, twice, it was open. Down a fusty hallway a stoop-shouldered, stocky young man in his 20s was sitting on the side of a bed, motionless, puffy-eyed. He had jug ears and a skinhead, and his red paisley shirt was unbuttoned, half-tucked into his belted black jeans. A lit cigarette was jutting cockily from the side of his mouth. Behind him on the unmade bed could just be made out the figure of a half-naked girl stretched out, comatose.
“The militia have the place surrounded,” said Galkin theatrically, raising his voice. “You'd better come quietly.”
But the young man didn't stir. Perhaps he was weighing up his options. Perhaps one of the gnarled threads of smoke curling up from his dangling fag had stung him in the eye at the critical moment, inhibiting his ability to respond. Supposing that he was just stoned, however, the officer advanced down the hall, which smelled of tooth-decay or of sweet bad breath, where his attempt to handcuff the suspect met little resistance.
Back out on the towerblock steps, Arkady inserted the spanner back in an inside jacket pocket irritably: having gone to the trouble of psyching himself up, he seemed put out to learn that it was all over without much fuss.
“Thanks for your help,” said Galkin, "I can take it from here". Then he prodded the suspect back in the direction of the little wooden bridge and the tram.
"Want to meet up later for a drink at the Alligator Club?” said Arkady. Galkin said he'd be there in a couple of hours.
The tram back across town was full of Saturday shoppers heading for the busy central market. The conductress, as he paid their fares, gave Galkin and his charge a look half-suspicious, half-puzzled, but she kept stum. Galkin stared out of the window at the forest of tall chimneys of the steel plant, densely packed, each spouting a wind-sock of black smoke. Vita probably wasn't up yet. On the kitchen table at home, he’d left her a gift-wrapped package of the crimson shoes she'd wanted and a note wishing her all the best on her 35th.
“The militia have the place surrounded,” said Galkin theatrically, raising his voice. “You'd better come quietly.”
But the young man didn't stir. Perhaps he was weighing up his options. Perhaps one of the gnarled threads of smoke curling up from his dangling fag had stung him in the eye at the critical moment, inhibiting his ability to respond. Supposing that he was just stoned, however, the officer advanced down the hall, which smelled of tooth-decay or of sweet bad breath, where his attempt to handcuff the suspect met little resistance.
Back out on the towerblock steps, Arkady inserted the spanner back in an inside jacket pocket irritably: having gone to the trouble of psyching himself up, he seemed put out to learn that it was all over without much fuss.
“Thanks for your help,” said Galkin, "I can take it from here". Then he prodded the suspect back in the direction of the little wooden bridge and the tram.
"Want to meet up later for a drink at the Alligator Club?” said Arkady. Galkin said he'd be there in a couple of hours.
The tram back across town was full of Saturday shoppers heading for the busy central market. The conductress, as he paid their fares, gave Galkin and his charge a look half-suspicious, half-puzzled, but she kept stum. Galkin stared out of the window at the forest of tall chimneys of the steel plant, densely packed, each spouting a wind-sock of black smoke. Vita probably wasn't up yet. On the kitchen table at home, he’d left her a gift-wrapped package of the crimson shoes she'd wanted and a note wishing her all the best on her 35th.
No comments:
Post a Comment