Филип Керр - Dead Meat

I put the piece of cheese I had bought for her in the fridge and helped myself to some breakfast. There was some chocolate so I took that too. Then, having found my head gasket waiting for me on the dining table, I put on my overalls, collected my tools and went down to the locked compound where I had left my car. It wasn’t a complicated job and I had it fixed within a couple of hours. By eleven I had washed and was on the road.

I’ll admit it was not a very professional thing that I did. Especially for an investigator. Detectives have more leeway in these matters. For example, a detective is allowed to have an informer, but an investigator is not. But when you’ve sent several hours on the M10 from Moscow — a journey of over 500 kilometres — you’re not always thinking straight. That’s half of my excuse anyway. The other half? I expect I was feeling sorry for myself.

So there I was, coming along Nevsky at just around three o’clock that same afternoon when I saw her.

Nina Milyukin was standing at a tram stop in front of the House of Books, reputedly the largest bookshop in the city. In pre-Revolutionary days the building had belonged to the Singer Sewing-Machine Company, but it might just as well have belonged to them still for all the books they sold in there now. The line for the tram was enormous and I didn’t think she would be getting on one for a while. She looked as sad as ever, her arms folded in front of her in that way women have when they’re waiting for something that isn’t going to arrive. But she was just as beautiful as I remembered. She was wearing a light black and white print dress with a wide lacy collar and in her hand was an empty shopping bag.

I pulled up next to the line, leaned across the passenger seat and wound down the car window.

‘Nina Romanovna,’ I called to her.

At first she did not recognise me, but then slowly she came forward.

‘Can I offer you a lift somewhere?’

She seemed inclined to refuse, but straightening up she took another look at the number of people who were waiting for a tram. The day was a hot one and even the shortest tram journey was likely to prove uncomfortable. For a moment the car window framed the swell of her belly against the thin material of her dress, and I thought of that photograph on Mikhail Milyukin’s pinboard. Not much of a sex life when you think about it, but at the time it seemed better than nothing.

‘I don’t think I’ll be going your way,’ she said leaning in the car window again. ‘I’m going to the television centre to pick up some of my husband’s things.’

‘Then hop in.’

‘Well, if you’re sure it’s no trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ I said, although it was considerably out of my way, ‘no trouble at all.’

When she got in I pulled out into a space in the traffic and headed west.

‘You’ll have to direct me when we get across the Neva,’ I told her. ‘I’m still not all that familiar with the streets here.’

She smiled politely and nodded.

‘Is this your car?’ she asked after a moment or two.

‘Yes. I’ve just driven it up from Moscow.’

‘It’s nice.’

‘It belonged to my father,’ I explained. ‘When it goes, it goes very well, but the spares are a problem. And the tyres are very worn. I wouldn’t like to drive it in winter.’

‘I’d say that’s when you need a car most.’

‘My wife used to think the same.’

‘And now she agrees with you?’ She sounded surprised.

‘Now it really doesn’t matter what she thinks. She’s living with my daughter’s music teacher. Or rather, he’s living with her.’

Nina laughed, the first time that I had ever heard her amused by something.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, stifling it with the back of her hand. ‘It’s not funny.’

‘There’s a funny side to it. She’s only interested in his money.’

‘Now you really are joking,’ she said. ‘Teachers don’t make money.’

‘Music teachers do,’ I insisted. ‘Especially when they’ve studied at a top piano school. Around 25,000 roubles a month, some of them. Anyway, my wife thinks he’s one of those.’

‘And he isn’t?’

‘No.’

She laughed. ‘Twenty-five thousand,’ she said. ‘That’s more than a surgeon.’

‘It’s more than a government minister. What you have to bear in mind is that most families will make any amount of sacrifices for their children. Especially when it comes to music. Especially when the teacher tells the parents that their child is gifted.’

‘And your daughter? Is she gifted?’

I laughed. ‘My daughter is as tone deaf as her mother. He just told us she was gifted in order to justify the tuition fees. You can’t say he’s not trying hard to make as much as the best of them.’

We went past the Hermitage and across the Palace Bridge on to the eastern point of Vasilyostrovsky Island, with the two red Rostral columns to our right, before crossing the river once more. In front of the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress some of the city’s more zealous sun-worshippers were trying to catch the afternoon rays. They stood flat against the grey granite, as if held there by gravitational force, their bodies almost colourless from many months of wearing winter clothing.

‘You’re not at all like that other policeman,’ she said. ‘Colonel Grushko. He’s made of stone, that one.’

‘Grushko’s all right,’ I told her. ‘But he takes this investigation very seriously.’

‘I don’t think he likes me very much.’

‘That’s nonsense. Why on earth should he dislike you?’

She shrugged and was apparently unwilling to offer a reason.

‘Grushko gets impatient,’ I added. ‘He wants to know everything right away. He can’t seem to understand that you might need a little more time before you can talk about Mikhail Mikhailovich. But he means well. I’m sure of it.’

‘It won’t bring Mikhail back,’ she said, the sadness returning to her face. ‘So what good is it if he does mean well?’ She sighed and looked out of the window. ‘Even if you do catch the men who killed him, it won’t make any difference. “I think I can summon up words, as pristine as those in your song, but if I don’t, I won’t give a damn, I don’t care if I’m wrong.”’

Nina glanced over at me, her face reddening a little with embarrassment.

‘You’re going to think me such a fraud, quoting poetry at you like this,’ she said, smiling gently. ‘I’m always doing it. I did it with your Colonel Grushko when he told me... I don’t think he cared very much for it. Still, I was quite surprised at him knowing Pasternak like that.’

‘Grushko’s not the only cop who can quote poetry,’ I said.

‘Yes, but with him it’s done with a reason. I’m only guessing, mind, but he strikes me as the kind of person who would read a poem in order to learn something — something that might help him to understand a man’s soul for example — and not for its own sake. In other words he does it like a policeman — to gain an insight into a man’s soul.’

‘I think you’re being a bit unfair,’ I said. ‘You make Grushko sound rather terrifying.’

‘Oh, but he is,’ she insisted. ‘He terrifies me, anyway. He’s like one of those people who used to work for the NKVD. Ruthless, single-minded and utterly dedicated to what they do. No room for shades of meaning. Just black and white. Right and wrong.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ I said. ‘He’s a democrat. He was one of the first men in the Central Board to come out against the Party.’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t speaking politically. I was talking about the Man. And I don’t know that being one of the first men in your department to come out against the Party counts for very much anyway. Except to say that he must be more dangerous than I thought.’