Polar Star (5 page)

Arkady read the top of the chart: “Patiashvili, Zinaida Petrovna. Born 28/8/61, Tbilisi, G.S.S.R. Height: 1.6m. Weight: 48k. Hair: black (dyed blond). Eyes: brown.” He handed the clipboard to Vainu and started walking around the table. Just as a man who is terrified of heights will concentrate on one rung at a time, Arkady spoke slowly and moved from detail to detail.

“Doctor, will you indicate the elbows are broken. The small amount of bruising suggests they were broken after death and at low body temperature.” He took a deep breath and flexed her legs. “Indicate the same for her knees.”

Slava stepped forward, focused and took another shot, picking angles like a movie director on his first film.

“Are you using color or black-and-white?” Vainu asked.

“Color,” Slava said.

“On the forearms and calves,” Arkady continued, “indicate a pooling of blood, not bruising, probably from the position she was in after death. Indicate the same on the breasts.” On the breasts the blood under the skin looked like a second, liverish pair of areolas. He wasn’t up to this, Arkady thought; he should have refused. “On the left shoulder, left side of the rib cage and hip some faint bruises evenly spaced.” He used a ruler from the lab table. “Ten apparent bruises in all, about five centimeters apart.”

“Could you hold the ruler a little steadier?” Slava complained and took another shot.

“I think our former investigator needs a drink,” Vainu said.

Silently Arkady agreed. The girl’s hands had the feel of cool, soft clay. “No signs of broken nails or any tissue under them. The doctor will take scrapings and examine them under a microscope.”

“A drink or a crutch,” Slava said.

Arkady took a deep pull on the Belomor before he opened Zina’s mouth wide.

“Lips and tongue do not appear bruised or cut.” He closed her mouth and tilted her head to look down her nostrils. He squeezed the bridge of her nose, then pulled the eyelids up from elliptical irises. “Indicate discoloration in the white of the left eye.”

“Meaning what?” Slava asked.

“There are no signs of a direct blow,” Arkady went on. “Possibly shock from a blow on the back of the skull.” He rolled Zina onto her shoulder and pulled brine-stiffened hair from the nape of her neck. The skin there was bruised black. He took the clipboard from Vainu and said, “Cut her.”

The doctor selected a scalpel and, still smoking a cigarette
with a long ash, made a slice the length of the cervical vertebrae. Arkady cradled the head as Vainu probed.

“This is your lucky day,” the doctor said dryly. “Indicate a crushed first vertebra and base of the skull. This must be a little triumph for you.” He glanced at Arkady and then at the saw. “We could bring the brain out to make sure. Or crack the chest and examine the air passages for seawater.”

Slava snapped a picture of the neck and straightened up, swaying a little as he stood.

“No.” Arkady let her head settle on the block and closed her eyes. He rubbed his hands on his jacket and lit another Belomor from the last, sucking fiercely, then sorted through the clothes in the pan. If she had drowned there would have been ruptures in her nose and mouth; there would have been water in her stomach as well as in her lungs, and when she was moved she’d still be seeping like a sponge. Besides, Vladivostok had enough investigators and technicians who’d be happy to carve her up and analyze her down to her atomic elements. The pan held a red plastic shoe of Soviet manufacture, loose blue exercise pants, panties, white cotton blouse with a Hong Kong label and a pin that said, “I
L.A.” An international girl. In a pocket of the pants was some sodden blue pasteboard that had been a pack of Gauloises. Also a playing card, the queen of hearts. A romantic girl, Zina Patiashvili. Also a sturdy Soviet condom. But a practical one too. He looked at her waxy face again, at the scalp already withdrawing from the black roots of her blond hair. The girl was dead, leaving her fantasy life behind. He always became angry at autopsies—at the victims as well as the murderers. Why didn’t some people just shoot themselves in the head the day they were born?

The
Polar Star
was in a turn, trailing after its catcher
boats. Arkady steadied himself unconsciously. Slava braced himself at the table while trying not to touch it.

“Losing your sea legs?” Vainu asked.

The third mate stared back. “I’m fine.”

Vainu smirked. “At least we should remove the viscera,” he told Arkady.

Arkady took the clothes from the pan. They were daubed with fish blood, torn here and there by fish spines, no more than you’d expect from a ride in a net. There might have been an oil smudge on a pants knee. Spreading the blouse, Arkady noticed a different sort of rustiness on the front flap, not a rip but a cut.

He returned to the body. There was maroon discoloration on the limbs, breasts and around the navel. Maybe it wasn’t all blood pooling; maybe he’d been too quick to say that just to get away from her. Sure enough, as he spread the belly from the navel he saw a puncture, a narrow stab wound about two centimeters long. Just what a fisherman’s knife would leave. Everyone on the
Polar Star
had a knife with a white plastic handle and a twenty centimeter double-edged blade for gutting fish or cutting net. Signs throughout the ship advised:
BE READY FOR EMERGENCIES. CARRY YOUR KNIFE AT ALL TIMES
.

Arkady’s was in his locker.

“Let me do that.” Vainu elbowed Arkady aside.

“You found a bump and a scratch,” Slava said. “So what?”

Arkady said, “It’s more than the usual wear and tear, even for a high dive.”

Vainu staggered from the table. Arkady thought he must have opened the wound more because a short length of intestine, purplish-gray and slick, stood out of it. More of it rose with a life of its own, and continued to emerge from the girl’s belly through a bubbling collar of salt water and pearly ooze.

“Slime eel!”

Slime eel or hagfish. By either name, a primitive but
efficient form of life. Sometimes the net brought in a halibut two meters long, a beast that should have weighed a quarter ton and was nothing but a sack of skin and bones and a nest of slime eels. The outside of the fish could be untouched; the eels entered through the mouth or anus and forced their way into the belly. When an eel appeared in the factory the women scattered until the men had hammered it to death with shovels.

The eel’s head, an eyeless stump with fleshy horns and a puckered mouth, whipped from side to side against Zina Patiashvili’s stomach; then the entire eel, as long as an arm, slid seemingly forever out of her, twisted in midair and landed at Vainu’s feet. The doctor stabbed, snapping the scalpel in two against the deck. He kicked, then grabbed another knife from the table. The eel thrashed wildly, rolling across the room. Its main defense was a glutinous, pearly ooze that made it impossible to hold. One eel could fill a bucket with slime; a feeding eel could cover bait in a cocoon of slime that not even a shark would touch. The tip of the knife broke off and flew up, cutting Vainu’s cheek. He tripped, landed on his back and watched the eel squirm toward him.

Arkady stepped into the passage and returned with a fire ax, which he swung, blunt-end down, on the eel. With each blow the eel thrashed, smearing the deck. Arkady lost his balance on the slime, caught himself, turned the hatchet edge down and cut the eel in half. The two halves went on twisting separately until he had chopped each of them in two. The four divided parts twitched in pools of slime and blood.

Vainu staggered to the cabinet, pulled the instruments from the sterilizing jar and poured the alcohol into two glasses for Arkady and himself. Slava Bukovsky was gone. Arkady had a fleeting memory of the third mate bolting for the door a moment after the eel appeared.

“This is my last trip,” Vainu muttered.

“Why didn’t anyone notice she was missing from work?” Arkady asked. “Was she chronically ill?”

“Zina?” Vainu steadied his glass with both hands. “Not her.”

Arkady drained his own glass in a swallow. A little antiseptic, but not bad.

What sort of doctor, he considered, did factory ships generally have? Certainly not one with curiosity about the whole range of physical dysfunction, of deliveries, childhood diseases, geriatrics. On the
Polar Star
there wasn’t even the usual maritime hazard of tropical diseases. Medical duty on the waters of the North Pacific was pretty boring, which was why it drew drunks and medical school graduates assigned against their will. Vainu was neither. He was Estonian, from a Baltic republic where Russians were treated like occupying troops. Not a man with a great deal of sympathy for the crew of the
Polar Star
.

“No problems of dizziness, headaches, fainting? No problems with drugs? You didn’t treat her for anything?”

“You saw her records. Absolutely clean.”

“Then how is it that no one was surprised by the absence of this able-bodied worker?”

“Renko, I have the impression you are the only man on board who didn’t know Zina.”

Arkady nodded. He was getting that impression, too.

“Don’t forget your ax,” Vainu said as Arkady started for the door.

“I’d like you to examine the body for signs of sexual activity. Get her fingerprints and enough blood for typing. I’m afraid you’ll have to clean out the abdomen.”

“What if …?” The doctor stared at the eel.

“Right,” Arkady said. “Keep the ax.”

Slava Bukovsky was bent over the rail outside. Arkady stood beside him as if they were taking the air. On the trawl deck mounds of yellow sole waited to be shovelled
down the chute to the factory. An American nylon net was strung between two booms, and a net needle—a shuttle with a split tip—hung from an ongoing repair. Arkady wondered if it was the net Zina had come up in. Slava studied the sea.

Sometimes fog acted like oil on water. The surface was dead calm, black, a few gulls hovering over a trawler he could make out only because American boats were so bright, like fishing lures. This one was red and white, with a crew in yellow slickers. It swung in and out behind the
Polar Star
’s stern, the factory ship’s rusty hull looming forty feet above the trawler. Of course, the Americans went out only for weeks at a time, whereas the
Polar Star
was out for half a year. The American boat was a toy in the water; the
Polar Star
was a world unto itself.

“That doesn’t usually happen at autopsies,” Arkady said softly.

Slava wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Why would anyone stab her if she was already dead?”

“The stomach has bacteria. The puncture was to let the gases out, to keep her from floating. I can carry on alone for a while; why don’t you catch up when you feel better?”

Slava stiffened up from the rail and folded his handkerchief. “I’m still in charge. We will do everything like a normal investigation.”

Arkady shrugged. “In a normal homicide investigation, when you find the body you go over the ground with a magnifying glass and metal detectors. Look around you. Is there any particular wave you want to examine?”

“Stop saying ‘homicide.’ That’s rumor-mongering.”

“Not with those wounds.”

“It could have been the propeller,” Slava said.

“If someone hit her over the head with it.”

“There were no signs of a struggle—you said so yourself. It’s your attitude that is the greatest problem. I’m
not going to let your antisocial posturing compromise me.”

“Comrade Bukovsky, I’m just a worker off the factory line. You are an emblem of the radiant Soviet future. How can I compromise you?”

“Don’t play the worker with me. Volovoi told me about you. You made a big mess back in Moscow. Captain Marchuk was crazy to let you off the line.”

“Why did he?” Arkady was genuinely curious.

“I don’t know.” Slava seemed as confused as Arkady.

Zina Patiashvili’s cabin was the same as Arkady’s in space and layout, four people living in what could pass for a fairly comfortable decompression chamber: four bunks, table and bench, closet and sink. The atmosphere itself was different. Instead of male sweat, the air contained a powerful mix of competing perfumes. Rather than Gury’s pinups and Obidin’s icon, the closet door was decorated with Cuban postcards, sappy International Women’s Day greeting cards, snapshots of children in Pioneer scarves, magazine pictures of movie stars and musicians. There was a smiling picture of the roly-poly Soviet rock star Stas Namin, a scowling photo of Mick Jagger.

“That was Zina’s.” Natasha Chaikovskaya pointed to Jagger.

The other cabin mates were “Madame” Malzeva, the oldest worker from Arkady’s factory line, and a little Uzbek girl named Dynama in honor of the electrification of Uzbekistan. Her family had done the innocent girl no favor, because in more sophisticated parts of the Soviet Union a “dynama” is a flirt who wines and dines on a man’s money, then goes to the rest room and disappears. Mercifully, her friends called her Dynka. Her black eyes balanced anxiously on enormous cheekbones. Her hair was done up in two ponytails that looked like black wings.

For such a somber occasion Natasha had eschewed lipstick, compromising with a tall haircomb. Behind her back she was called Chaika, for the broad-shouldered limousine of that name. She could have smothered Stas Namin with one squeeze; Jagger wouldn’t have had a chance. She was a shot-putter with the soul of Carmen.