Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel (Arkady Renko Novels) by Smith Martin Cruz

Author:Smith, Martin Cruz [Smith, Martin Cruz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2013-11-12T06:00:00+00:00

18

The cottage of Ludmila Petrovna had, perhaps, been a carriage house before the war. Although bricks had half disintegrated to rust-colored sand and tape crisscrossed the windows, the house preserved a faint imprint of Koenigsberg style in a neighborhood of grim architecture and small shops selling CDs and cut-rate travel. Arkady and Maxim opened the gate to a vegetable garden where sunflowers peered over the wall, fat tomatoes drooped from wooden stakes and eggplants lay fat and lazy on the ground.

When Ludmila didn’t answer her doorbell, Maxim tossed pebbles up against a window. Arkady saw no lights inside but the window creaked open and a woman hung a cage with a canary. She wore a scarf babushka style, gardening gloves and wraparound dark glasses, and she teased the bird for fluffing up in the cold.

“Always complaining, always looking for sympathy. Just like our old friend Maxim. Always the center of attention.”

“Hello, Ludmila,” Maxim said.

“And with a disreputable friend,” she added when Arkady introduced himself.

“I’m sorry about your sister.”

“Then I’m sure you have some scheme to make money out of her death. You and Obolensky, so ready to make her a martyr.”

“Did you identify Tatiana Petrovna’s body?” Arkady asked.

“From a photograph. There was no use going to Moscow.”

Maxim said, “Ludmila is sensitive to light. It makes traveling difficult.”

“Didn’t you want to identify her body?”

“The picture was enough.”

“Weren’t you concerned with what happened to her body?”

“Frankly, I’m more concerned about my body.”

“Did you ask to have her cremated?”

A minute before the rain had almost stopped; now it was drumming. Arkady heard the bustle of the market beyond the garden wall as racks were pulled under cover. Anyone else would have invited Arkady and Maxim in.

“Poor Juliet is getting wet.” She stroked the canary under its beak. “They don’t sing, you know, after they’ve lost their mate.”

“You don’t remember whether you asked to have your own sister cremated?”

“I have my own life to live.”

A circumspect one between the vegetables and the bird, Arkady thought.

“What other animals do you have?”

“Well, we can’t have any cats. That would make Juliet too nervous.” She pulled in the cage.

Arkady asked, “Didn’t Tatiana have a dog?”

“Yes, a nasty little thing. You know what my favorite pets are? Vegetables.” She closed the window, only to reopen it a second later. “Don’t steal any either,” she added, and shut the window for good.

“Sorry,” said Maxim. “Like I told you, Ludmila is hard.”

Arkady lingered between tomato plants. He had counted on Ludmila Petrovna’s outrage or, at least, curiosity about the death and ill handling of her sister.

“You can catch the evening flight to Moscow,” Maxim said. “Too bad you came all this way for nothing. What’s that?”

Arkady waved him over, and the two of them stood over a small dog turd that was liquefying in the rain. Headlines raced through his mind. SHIT BRIGADE CALLED OUT. TURD DISCOVERED IN VEGETABLE GARDEN. EVIDENCE LOST IN DOWNPOUR.

It was not nothing, but laughably close.

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