Эдвард Докс - Pravda ['Self Help' in the UK]

Isabella forced herself to relax her forehead.

“She smoked all her life. It happens, Is. It happens all the time.”

“Yes… yes, I know.” Isabella tipped tonic into what remained of her vodka. “Actually, I’ve been thinking the same.”

“You have?”

“Yes… I mean, not specifically cancer. But I’ve been thinking that she might have been ill.” And now Isabella saw what she had been looking for: a chance to take those last few steps. “It would explain something that she wrote in her last letter. She said that I should make sure that I visited her here, in Petersburg, before I… before I visited Dad.”

Her brother was silent.

Isabella asked, “Do you think he’s going to come?”

“Who, Dad?” As if she meant anyone else.

“Yes—Dad.”

But Gabriel, either too tired or past caring or vodka-quelled, surprised her again by speaking in a flat and emotionless voice. “He’s only been back here once since they got married. And that was to sell Grandpa Max s house and plunder all his stuff. He hates this place.”

“Yeah, you’re right… But this is slightly different, isn’t it? It’s not like they re divorced.”

“Is, Dad doesn’t give a fuck about Mum.” She watched him put out his cigarette. “All he will care about is recouping the money we made him give her. They haven’t spoken properly for ten years.”

Isabella wanted to ask her brother how he knew this. But she guessed that he didn’t, that it was a belief, a quasi-religious assertion. Gabriel loathed their father as much as he loved their mother, and to such an extent that he could not countenance the fact that the two of them had ever got on at all. Their marriage was opaque to him—an abomination he refused to consider. And now was not the time to dispute this or indeed any of the hundred credos of their family lore.

“Are you bothered about his paying for things?”

“Let him pay. Even if he is trying to make us feel guilty. It doesn’t matter. The result is that Mum gets buried where she wanted to and has a decent funeral.”

“Do you think he’ll try and get in touch?”

“Not with me.”

She felt the challenge behind this and automatically rose to it. “Well, he’s hardly going to call me direct either, is he? The last few times I saw him, I took good care to tell him he was a bastard and a failure.”

“He won’t come. He won’t try to get in touch. he’ll just do everything through his brand-new puppet at the consulate.”

“That’s not fair. Julian is a decent bloke.”

“Maybe.” Gabriel finished his drink. “Why did you ask about all that autopsy shit?”

She was caught out by the question but knew she had to tell the truth—and immediately, because even in his current state, her brother wouldn’t miss the hesitation. Sometimes the speed and accuracy with which he read people reminded her of… her father.

“I had this mad idea Dad killed her.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Jesus, Is. You are more fucked up than I am.”

But this was her other suspicion.

There was no point in locking the door. The cardboard they had tacked over the gaping wound in the wall would fool no one. In any case, there was nothing left to steal. So he pulled it shut and made his way into the darkness of the unlit stairwell.

Once on the street, he paused and looked around for a moment, as if assessing the fighting weight and shape of the night. He set off at a slow jog, following the same route they had taken two nights previously on the way to the gig—through the gap in the railings and into the cemetery. His muscles felt loose and limber and he moved with the ease of fitness, listening to the fall of his own step, the rasp of his own breathing. Above the swaying trees, a gibbous moon seemed to follow him, slipping from cloud to cloud.

On the far side of the cemetery, he saw a group of figures gathered by the gate on the corner of Maly Prospekt. He slowed. Ordinarily he would have taken the most direct route and run straight at them, through them, beyond them. But tonight he did not want any distraction. So he ducked left, soundlessly crossing first one grave, then another, careful with his footing on the wet stones, until he came to the small parallel path. Here the trunks were thick and the way was darker and he had to slow for fear of low twigs and thorns scratching at his face, unwilling (from lifelong habit) to use his hands as protection. Dogs were barking somewhere, discordant, out of time.

He climbed the railings and emerged onto the roadside opposite the canning factory. In the shadow of an overhanging pine, he paused a moment to check that the envelope had not slipped out of his pocket. He was an anonymous figure dressed in dark colors: Henry’s V-neck pullover over gray T-shirt, his old tracksuit bottoms, his boots, and his playing shoes around his neck. The money was still there.

He went on through the mostly dead Vasilevsky streets, stray cats all that he saw, until he reached the river. Then he slowed his jog to a brisk walk and crossed the Neva on the Leytanta Bridge, the river as black tonight as liquid obsidian.

Entering the central district, he stiffened a little, continuing at a more casual pace, ready to appear drunk should a car slow or show undue interest. Soon enough he was sloping along the banks of the Kryukova Canal by the pitchy water of New Holland—a derelict place, unvisited by all but small-time criminals, addicts, and the gangs of homeless insane. Though he kept his head down and his gaze on the pavement in front of him, he was listening, his meticulous ear primed for the slowing note of an engine or the fall of another step. He knew well that it was in these dead hours, when Petersburg slipped off its creamy European robes and revealed itself a mean and swarthy peasant once more, that the real business of Russian life got done. Boy and man, he had seen it: the black Mercedes rolling down the half-lit street, the tinny police car idling, smear-faced street girls slipping like sylphs along the railings of the canals, and the drugged and the drunk always watching from their darkened doorways, glassy-eyed and desperate, crawling back and forth between heaven and hell, one scabby knee at a time. And all of it dangerous. He glanced up.

A figure had appeared on the pavement ahead.

“Arkady.”

“Oleg.”

They did not shake hands but, after a moment’s mutual assessment, fell swiftly into step, walking side by side in the direction of the Mariinsky Theatre. The other was a man of average height but on the brink of irreversible obesity, balding, with a puffy, pastry-fond face, small eyes, and the fastidious manner of the superfluous employee.

“You’ve not changed, Arkasha.”

“You’ve lost your hair and you are fatter.”

They spoke in the most familiar Russian.

“I was married. There is nothing to do but eat and talk about food. You have the money?”

“You should do some exercise,” Arkady said. “Or you will die even faster. Yes, I have the money. Not here, though. Do you have what you need?”

“Yes.” Oleg raised the hand that was carrying a dark sports bag a fraction. “But you know, I can’t do the security gate. I told you that.”

“You did.”

Oleg was already regretting that he had agreed to meet his old school friend again—and fuck the money. He had forgotten: like nobody else he had ever met, Arkady Alexandrovitch made him immediately nervous, made him feel as if everything he said or did was somehow a low-down lie. They had shared bunks in the final two years, which was as close to close as anyone came back at the orphanage. Arkady was somebody that most of the others left alone, even the ugliest of the bastards—someone you couldn’t change, reason or fight with, someone who would always go crazier faster. And Oleg had felt privileged to be one of the few that Arkady spoke to about anything. Then they’d been phartsovschiks together in the 1990s for a while, trading small-time contraband on the black market, Arkady bringing him the stuff to sell from God knew where and no questions asked. That had been a frantic time. And even now, years later, there was something flattering about Arkady’s asking for help. Plus the money. Okay, not fuck the money. The money was good. But the inescapable truth was that he, Oleg, had not actually picked a single lock in five years. And somehow he sensed that Arkady knew this. Still, if it came to it, he could just give the banknotes back. Arkady wouldn’t kill him, and he could live with five more minutes of the other’s scorn. There was curiosity too: what was it all about? Arkady Alexandrovitch was no common thief.