Page 81 of The Half Life of Valery K

‘Thank you,’ he said, and watched her carefully. ‘I can put up with most things, but not your thinking badly of me.’

It took her just a fraction too long to smile.

He let his eyes slip back down to the blood samples. She didn’t believe him; which left the question of why she’d let him into her lab. Still, you couldn’t have everything at once. Whatever her reason, all he had to do was lean into her inclination to think he was harmless, and find a believable way for Pyotr to escape that bank vault of an observation room. Preferably, a sustainable one that he could pull off whenever any new children turned up.

‘Have you seen the paper?’ one of the other researchers said. He had been reading while he waited for a centrifuge to finish. ‘The KGB have raided the asylum. There’s a doctor there drugging patients who used to work at the Lighthouse and wringing them for information, then passing the intelligence on to a foreign embassy.’ He looked up and seemed to realise he hadn’t produced a pious enough opinion about it. ‘The buggers get more and more creative every day, don’t they? Imagine abusing one’s oath as a doctor, it’s inhuman.’

If Valery said nothing, it would seem like he knew too much about it already. ‘That doesn’t sound very likely. How many Lighthouse scientists end up in the asylum anyway? They can’t be awash with them.’

‘Actually,’ the man said seriously, ‘it’s been pretty standard. Make too many doubtful radiation-type noises, chances are you’ll end up there. Konstantin Shenkov from Security only comes along to shoot you now if you’ve done something utterly thick. Talking to journalists, sort of thing. You get a good spell in the asylum as a warning shot these days.’

‘Christ,’ said Valery. He risked a glance at Resovskaya. ‘I’d better watch out, I expect.’

She was observing him in the same quiet, lab-technician way she had when he passed her on the stairs at the Ministry. ‘No. I shouldn’t think Shenkov would let anything happen to you, would he? You’re his little mascot, I think he’s rather used to you.’

‘Jesus, you’re a braver man than me,’ the other researcher remarked. ‘Shenkov said hello to me once in the coffee queue and my knees didn’t stop shaking for a week.’

‘Oh, he’s not all that,’ Resovskaya said, into a filing cabinet. ‘You know he was only sent here because he was caught in bed with a Ukrainian nationalist?’

‘Oof. Whoops,’ the other researcher said, laughing. ‘Was he really? That was silly of him.’

It was the self-satisfied laugh of someone in whom the Lubyanka had never shown an interest, and who still imagined that this was down to virtue and not luck. Valery wondered about spilling some polonium on him.

‘Oh, yes,’ Resovskaya said. Her tired eyes slid twice over Valery. ‘A little prone to silliness, our Shenkov.’

30

Boots at the Door

Snow came down in dervishes that evening, throwing speckle shadows across the carpet of Valery’s flat. The moonlight was stronger than the small lamp and the television inside. He wasn’t watching the television; it was just on the news, for voices. He was marking some graduate papers for Resovskaya. It was nice to mark papers. It was easy, but it required just enough focus for him not to feel the press of the emptiness in the flat. It had crammed itself into the living room and watched him as he crossed to and fro.

Anna was in Chelyabinsk with Tatiana, so Shenkov was at home with the other children. Albert was out and about round the flat, though, and sometimes he left octopus-tracks on the papers, having decided that Valery would pay him more attention and play the marble game if he was sitting on them.

Two in the morning came around, and Valery’s brain went on strike. He switched the television off and watched the picture whumpf inward until it was only a single white point, which lingered for a while before it faded. Then the lamp. He stood in the rectangular patch of moonlight. A great nave of clouds led up to the moon, and the snow glowed a strange blue.

He couldn’t tell if Resovskaya was going to try to get rid of him another way. He had been half-expecting a bang on the door all night. The asylum would have been ideal for her purposes, but if she just wanted him gone now, there was always the red train and the camps. She would have to be confident that Shenkov wouldn’t be able to do anything about it; but Valery couldn’t see why she wouldn’t be confident, because he was pretty confident himself that Shenkov could do damn all there.

Valery turned away from the window, meaning to go outside and walk around to tire himself out properly, but then stopped. There was still a bright line under the door from the hallway, where the lights were never off. Silhouetted there were two dark places.

Boots.

Someone was standing right outside, on the doorstep, not knocking.

He didn’t even think about it. Those kinds of scare tactics only worked if you let them. They didn’t stand up too well in the face of someone who invited the police officer in for a cup of tea and a bun. He pulled the door open, ready to ask cheerfully whether the man took milk and sugar.

There was no man. There were three children.

They were different ages, between about ten and fifteen, bundled up still against the cold. He had clearly caught them in the middle of an awkward shuffle about who was going to knock.

‘Hello,’ he said slowly. ‘Wrong door probably? Who are you looking for?’

The eldest squared himself up anxiously, and pulled off his hat in the way of someone whose mother had drilled it into him to be polite to his elders. ‘Um, I think it is the right door. You’re Comrade Kolkhanov, right? Dad – Dad said you’ve got red hair.’

Valery still couldn’t tell what was going on. ‘I am. Sorry, who’s your dad?’

‘Konstantin Shenkov, comrade. Um, he … he told us we should come here and find you.’

All of them had the tight, hollow look of people who had either been given too much morphine, or who had just seen something horrible.