Punishment of a hunter, p.17
Punishment of a Hunter, page 17
Zaitsev didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“I am interrogating Comrade Firsov in the context of a criminal case,” he reminded the hunchback. “OGPU…”
At the sound of a voice, Firsov’s head jerked, but he didn’t turn.
“If you want to talk—talk. Don’t like it—the door’s there,” said the hunchback, and he licked his flaky lips. He walked to the desk and sat down, pulling the chair in close. Zaitsev stood behind Firsov. There were no more chairs.
Zaitsev walked around Firsov, who slowly raised his chin. Zaitsev was dumbfounded. Firsov had a fresh abrasion on his face. His nose was smashed. His lip too. Firsov sat, carefully holding up his own body. Like a man whose insides were bruised. With the one eye that wasn’t swollen, he looked at Zaitsev. There was a flicker of recognition. His burst lips quivered.
“Comrade Firsov,” Zaitsev began.
“Citizen. Citizen Firsov,” the hunchback corrected him.
“I want to talk to you about Oliver Newton. Remember him? Bear in mind that this is an official conversation. It’s called a witness testimony.”
Firsov was silent. Zaitsev saw his gaze gradually come into focus, harden.
“Why are you not saying anything?” interrupted the hunchback.
Firsov cleared his throat.
“I killed Oliver Newton,” he snapped.
The hunchback’s eyes darted back and forth. For a second, he and Zaitsev looked at each other. Each, it seemed, was as amazed as the other.
“I killed Oliver Newton! That’s right!” Firsov tried to scream, but all that emerged from his throat was a croak. “Out of jealousy. I’ve signed everything. I’ll sign it again. I killed him!”
The hunchback slowly began to pour a glass of water from the pitcher.
“Citizen Firsov,” Zaitsev began patiently.
“You don’t believe me? It was me! I did it!”
“Tell me how you killed him. All your actions, in order.”
“It was me! First him! Then her! Then him! All of them!”
The hunchback quickly splashed the water from the glass into Firsov’s face. His screaming broke off.
“They can still shoot you, you son of a bitch. There’s a whole folder on your sabotage and vermin activity,” Aprelsky remarked calmly. “The comrade from the police is interviewing you. Don’t play your games here.” He nodded to Zaitsev. “Carry on, comrade.”
“No,” Zaitsev interrupted him firmly. “We’ll continue this conversation at CID.”
IV
Comrade Aprelsky absolutely did not like that idea. One call to Kopteltsev. A quarter of an hour’s wait. And then Comrade Aprelsky received word directly from Smolny about what level of assistance they expected him to provide the Criminal Investigation Department.
Comrade Aprelsky’s ears were crimson by the time he hung up.
The arrival of the witness from Shpalernaya at Gorokhovaya alarmed everyone at CID. Or rather, not witness but now suspect.
Firsov himself sat upright on a chair and looked straight ahead with determined eyes. In them, Zaitsev again saw that purpose, that composure, that strength of mind that he noticed in him at their first meeting. These qualities seemed to return to Firsov with every sip of the hot tea he had been given before the interrogation. The tip of his nose turned red; a translucent drop began to collect on it; Firsov wiped it away with his sleeve. He straightened up again.
Kopteltsev wanted to be present at the interrogation. It was a breakthrough in the case—everyone saw that. Zaitsev could still feel the cold wall between himself and the team. But now, for the first time, warm trickles were breaking through. As if the wall were starting to thaw. Yes, they were still wary of him, keeping a distance like you might from a rabid dog. But the dog had come back with prey in its teeth—they couldn’t deny that.
If not friendship, he had at least regained some respect.
Firsov gave his name, his year of birth. You could hear the rustle of pencil on paper—Serafimov was taking notes. Demov had a cigarette in his mouth, which he hadn’t yet lit. Samoilov looked on from under his brow. Kopteltsev looked as though he had nothing to do with it. Firsov responded to them all with a cold and crisp stare. Zaitsev didn’t like this look one bit.
“I killed Newton. What is there to talk about?”
“We’ll get to that,” muttered Zaitsev. He took a sheet of paper from the file. “When and how did you meet Citizen Newton?”
“I don’t know,” Firsov answered irritably. “I don’t remember when.”
“How do you not remember?” Samoilov interrupted.
“I just don’t. I didn’t attach any importance to it. ‘When?’ I don’t remember. He arrived at the factory. He got to work. Or rather, he was put to work. Then I met him. It’s all documented. In the personnel department. Why would I need to remember?”
Zaitsev saw that Demov had taken the cigarette out of his mouth and was playing with it in his fingers. He was observing Firsov attentively. Zaitsev looked probingly at the old investigator: he was obviously absorbed in his train of thought. A penny for your thoughts—a familiar, long-forgotten English voice from the past suddenly echoed loudly in Zaitsev’s head. He looked away from Demov, forcing himself to turn his attention back to Firsov.
“So perhaps you don’t remember the women?” Kopteltsev couldn’t resist butting in.
Zaitsev wanted to smash the ashtray down on his head. To shove this piece of paper in his mouth.
Too late. That much was clear.
Firsov understood, too. Zaitsev could practically see the engineer’s experienced mind quickly calculating the new scenario.
Firsov nodded.
“I don’t remember. I killed the women, but don’t remember how. It’s all a haze, like smoke. Like fog.”
It was like a wave rippled through the room.
Something stabbed Zaitsev inside.
“I killed them. That’s all there is to say.”
“Right,” said Kopteltsev, stretching out the syllable. His big puffy face was sweaty.
In the blink of an eye, Firsov had gone from being a suspect to being the accused.
The interrogation proceeded according to the protocol. Kopteltsev had by now seized control and was leading, asking the questions. Firsov answered. The pencil rustled.
Firsov talked, and talked, and talked, rounding off his elaborate digressions and reining them into structures fenced in by commas, dashes, colons and semicolons, giving everyone in the room the feeling that their heads were being filled with sand.
“Can you be more specific, Citizen Firsov?” Kopteltsev couldn’t help but ask.
Firsov raised his dark eyes to look at him. He nodded.
And again the mass of words flowed like concrete.
He spoke eagerly and at length, but all the while Zaitsev had the feeling that Firsov was weaving a net of elegant words while slipping like an eel between the holes.
Zaitsev stared intently at Demov. He was silent, fiddling with the cigarette. Firsov talked about his relationship with the American Communist, about Newton’s escapades, his visits to prostitutes, and about a drunken quarrel, but with every word Zaitsev had an increasingly strong sense that everything that was happening was somehow irreparably wrong. The more Firsov said, the deeper he propelled himself into this bloody affair, the less Zaitsev believed him. And the more enthusiastically Kopteltsev nodded along.
“But why? Why?” he demanded, interrupting Firsov impatiently.
“He, this black man of yours, tried to attack me. Sexually.”
Time seemed to freeze in the room. Even the smoke seemed to stop rising from the cigarette butts in the ashtray.
“In what sense?” Kopteltsev broke the silence.
“In the deviant sense,” Firsov said clearly and distinctly, looking directly at the CID chief.
Demov’s cigarette crumbled in his fingers.
“You want more specific detail on that, too?” Firsov asked.
Kopteltsev grunted. “That won’t be necessary.”
V
Firsov was taken to a cell. The shorthand notes were sent to be typed up.
From the very moment that Firsov mentioned “prostitutes”, Zaitsev knew exactly, not through instinct but for a fact, that the suspect was lying. It looked like Firsov wanted to be arrested by Leningrad CID at all costs. But why?
Kopteltsev and Demov were talking quietly at the table. Zaitsev didn’t come any closer.
“He’s trying to protect someone. As clear as day,” he heard Demov say. He couldn’t make out Kopteltsev’s reply.
“We can’t arrest him,” Zaitsev couldn’t help but say.
Kopteltsev suddenly looked past him.
“It’s all bullshit.”
“Lying to pin a few murders on himself? An interesting theory,” Kopteltsev answered coldly.
“He’s just fucking around with us. Playing for time.”
“Let’s say he is. Playing for time. For what?”
“We can’t arrest him,” repeated Zaitsev.
“We absolutely can,” said Demov. “There’s a confession right there.”
Firsov had signed the transcript of the interrogation without reading it.
“But there’s no evidence backing up—”
“There’s none to the contrary.”
That was true. They simply didn’t have any evidence. No fingerprints, no hair, no envelopes with addresses, no notes. Nothing. Only this heap of words piled up by Firsov.
Zaitsev wanted to tell them that Firsov had in fact learnt about the “prostitutes” at Yelagin from him, Zaitsev. During their first conversation in the office, at the factory.
But he didn’t.
VI
It was raining as if to say, “Do you think I’m going to stop? I’m not stopping.” The damp air from the Neva cut right through you. The rain made the light from the street lamps seem shaggy.
Zaitsev walked without knowing where he was going. He paid no attention to the rain drenching him through. It dripped from his cap. Mentally, he tried to compose his upcoming conversation with Uglov. Uglov expected him to move to Moscow. And Zaitsev knew that he didn’t have the answer Uglov wanted to hear. He kept thinking about life in Moscow as a black abyss that Uglov seemed determined to fill with trivialities: ham and boots, new clothes and cars, theatre tickets, caviar from Eliseevsky and food boxes from the OGPU supplier, even the room of his choice (when no one else in Moscow got to choose where they lived). And now he was trying to shoehorn a wife into it. But Uglov was slipping into the abyss all the same, and that was the only reason he was trying to grab hold of his hand—Zaitsev’s hand. But Zaitsev now realized that he couldn’t help him. More likely, Uglov himself would drag him down.
And what about this Comrade Aprelsky? What an odd name… As if they weren’t allowed to have normal human names there. Or maybe they could—and that was the most disturbing thing about it.
Zaitsev didn’t know what he would tell Uglov, or how. All he knew was that no matter how difficult things were here, he would never move to Moscow—he would never get a transfer to OGPU. He rehearsed the various ways he could respond: by being frank, straight to the point, or veiled, deprecatory, critical, apologetic?
Firsov was lying. During interrogations, almost everyone lies. They’re trying to protect someone. Themselves, for example. Trying to avert suspicion. Trying to say less than they know.
But Firsov didn’t know anything. He wasn’t protecting anyone and he wasn’t averting anything.
He had been badly beaten there. He could hardly breathe from his broken ribs. He had been holding out his sprained fingers, trying not to touch anything. He had had teeth knocked out. Zaitsev should know what happens there. Only Zaitsev had used to think that that was just him, that his circumstances had been exceptional. Now he was seeing it with Firsov. There, at Shpalernaya, the lump of flesh sitting before Zaitsev was so utterly different from Firsov, the director of Russian Diesel, the former Firsov, who had been elegant, arrogant and invulnerable.
This new Firsov was ready to do anything just to get out of that OGPU cell, even if just for a while. Better to be locked away pending trial for murder. Just for a break. After the interrogations at OGPU, it would be a relief to be downgraded to a “mere” homicide suspect.
What had Comrade Aprelsky been muttering about there? Vermin, saboteur?
The idea that Firsov was to blame for saboteur activity like espionage as well as for murdering Newton struck Zaitsev as being utterly implausible. He even stopped in his tracks.
What was Firsov guilty of? Was it really just his family background and his Berlin diploma? The way he spoke and the quality of his suits?
What was Zaitsev supposed to do?
If they locked up an innocent person, then Comrade Kirov might praise them for their speed, efficiency and precision. And the killer would remain at large.
But what could he do about it?
He suddenly realized he had walked to the wrong place. He suddenly noticed the rain, the wind and the cold, all cutting through to the bone. Alla lived in completely the opposite direction.
Chapter 10
I
Zaitsev vaguely remembered the beginning of winter. The city was smothered with snow, and the very next day it seemed that it had always been that way and always would be. He vaguely remembered how they had seen in the New Year: a pinkish stain of spilt wine on a tablecloth, a mosaic of a salad, a wheezing gramophone and a lamp draped over with a shawl to make it cosier.
But he couldn’t say precisely how it was that he had been taken off the Yelagin Island homicide investigation. Subtly but firmly dropped from the case. He had barged his way back in once or twice, but he couldn’t be bothered a third time. Sometimes the team retired to Kopteltsev’s office and then Zaitsev knew: they were discussing the Yelagin case. Judging by the fact that they still slammed the door shut in his face, the case was ongoing. Strange. Had Comrade Firsov kept to his vivid account, his colourful version of events? Had he come up with any more names?
Zaitsev responded to call-outs. To crammed communal apartments in the centre and workers’ barracks on the outskirts. He inhaled the damp smell of dog on the police bus when they brought Ace of Clubs with them. He usually dozed on the way, his hands tucked under his armpits, while the others all snapped at each other. He interrogated suspects, inspected crime scenes. He blinked whenever Demov accidentally caught him with the magnesium flash. He picked up empty bottles with a handkerchief over his fingers (they were an indispensable part of almost every Leningrad murder). He wrote up transcripts and reports.
And now there was Alla. Where it was going and what their “relationship” was were two questions Zaitsev didn’t really ask himself. They both had a tacit understanding that they wouldn’t follow the generally accepted code: sign the marriage register, move in together, buy a sprung mattress, then… Zaitsev didn’t even think about the “then”, and Alla didn’t say anything. They both scurried between their rooms—his and hers. Alla never complained about him working late; she was busy herself at the theatre in the evenings, working until her back ached, shifting piles of costumes, ironing, hemming, putting them away.
When they finally had a moment together, the apartment would already be full of nocturnal silence. And it would seem not only that they were alone in the room, but that they had the entire apartment to themselves. They would sit by the stove and watch the coal fire, where they baked potatoes. Alla would roll the hot potatoes out of the silvery grey ashes with a fork. They ate their supper sitting on the floor. Zaitsev preferred to think that both of them were content. Pasha also silently accepted the new order of things. Or rather, she acted as though there were no Alla. And Alla only once asked who Pasha was. Zaitsev replied, “Pasha, a neighbour.” That was the end of the matter. Alla had no burning desire to pick up Zaitsev’s life by two corners and give it a good shake. And Zaitsev was secretly grateful to her for that.
So they drifted on, led by the stream. Winter was already beginning to thaw at the edges, the snow was getting greyer day by day. It was getting warmer and damper. The wind blew through every nook and cranny of the city.
There had been a murder on the Petrograd Side.
Zaitsev joined his colleagues on the bus to the crime scene. When the bus drove up to the bridge, it suddenly started to snow: large, bulky snowflakes. The sky seemed suddenly to drop lower, drawn to the earth by soggy ropes.
“Look at the palace OGPU are building themselves,” said the driver, nodding with his chin as they stopped at the junction. Zaitsev turned to look. Through the veil of snow, he could just make out the gigantic construction site on Volodarsky Prospekt, which the locals still called Liteyny. Zaitsev wanted to respond, to say… He turned around and saw that everyone’s faces had glazed over, shut off. Only Ace of Clubs looked up in response to the movement and looked Zaitsev in the eye. Zaitsev didn’t say anything and went back to looking out of the window.
On the bridge, it looked like earth and sky had both collapsed and the bus was bumping along through a greyish, flickering space, where neither up nor down existed. A tram passed like a dark ghost. The Leningrad February was up to its old tricks.
In the damp blizzard, Zaitsev couldn’t see where they were going or where they had turned. Finally, the bus stopped; the engine cut out. Ace of Clubs jumped up and had a joyful stretch after a jolty ride lying on the floor. The dog pulled on its leash. Serafimov and Samoilov jumped out, the snow slurping under their feet. Demov messed about getting through the door with all his equipment. Zaitsev was last to get off.
Involuntarily he glanced at the expressive sculptures that framed the top corners of the house’s front porch. Petrograd Side had been a fashionable district before the Revolution. Here, as in the city centre, Zaitsev was always struck by the contrast between the shapely elegance of the pre-revolutionary houses and the life that lurked behind their grand but dilapidated facades: the impoverished, cramped, fetid post-revolutionary life, crammed in with all the noise and cooking smells of the communal flat.
