Martin Smith - Tatiana

“We’ll need more, I agree.”

“More?”

“We should talk to all Tatiana’s colleagues and friends to understand her state of mind. Also, she was investigating a death in Kaliningrad. She had a dozen battles going on.”

“Arkady-”

“And she seems to have held up an expensive real estate development.”

“Arkady, I hate to say this, but the case is closed. The investigation is over. Not only that, it does look like suicide. She came home alone, locked the door, and jumped off the balcony. Alone. She trusted no one, and under the circumstances, that made a lot of sense. It’s as if the whole city was out to get her. They drove her to it.”

“She entrusted her apartment key to her neighbor.”

“Unfortunately, a mental case. It’s time for you to get back on your feet, but on a real homicide. Without a body there is no case. We’ll start slowly with aggravated assault and work our way up. Or, on a personal level, why not find out who stomped you? I made some calls about the demonstration while you were lazing about in bed.”

“And?”

“Half the people you say were in the demonstration deny that they were ever there. The only two who really support the accusation are Anya and Obolensky, but that sells magazines, doesn’t it?”

“What about Maxim Dal? He rescued us.”

“Gone to ground. To hear anyone but Anya, Obolensky and you, there was no demonstration. It’s like that old adage about a tree falling in the forest; if nobody hears it, was there a sound?”

“What if it falls on you?”

• • •

As they slogged up the six stories to Svetlana’s apartment, Victor wheezed and said, “You know, I really missed you while you were laid up. Now I’m not so sure.”

Taped to Tatiana’s door was a receipt for the “occupant” from the Curonian Renaissance Corporation for the contents of the apartment, which could be retrieved within a month upon payment of a storage fee. After thirty days, the contents would be disposed of.

The door opened at a touch.

Tatiana’s apartment had been swept clean. Furniture, electronics, even carpets had been removed. Books, photographs, music were gone. Every footfall echoed in rooms that were pools of late-afternoon light and motes in motion.

“A Renaissance Corporation? That sounds nice,” Arkady said. “I think of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bernini.”

Victor said, “I think of the Borgias. So, we’ve got no witness, no corpse and now no scene of the crime.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll tell you what we do have.” Victor sniffed the air as they stepped back into the hall. “Cats.”

There were five cats in Svetlana’s apartment. They hadn’t been fed or had their box changed for at least a day, and they swarmed around Victor while he poured milk into a saucer. Victor, oddly enough, was a cat person. An admirer not of fluffy Persian cats or exotic Siamese, but of feral survivors of the street. Did they eat songbirds? Let them. Victor’s favorite birds were crows.

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.”