"Smith, Martin Cruz - Polar Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

'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 pin ups 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. There was a scowling photo of Mick Jagger.

'That was Zina's.' Natasha Chaikovskaya pointed to Jagger.

The other cabinmates were 'Madame' Malzeva, the oldest worker from Arkady's factory line, and a little Uzbek girl named Dynama in honour of the electrifiнcation of Uzbekistan. Her family had done the innocent girl no favour, 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 cheekнbones. Her hair was done up in two ponytails that looked like black wings.

For such a sombre 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 shotputter with the soul of Carmen.

'Zina was a good girl, a popular girl, the life of the ship,' Madame Malzeva said. As if holding court in her parlour, she wore a tasselled shawl and darned a sateen pillow with stitched waves and the invitation 'Visit Odessa'. 'Wherever there was laughter, there was our Zina.'

'Zina was nice to me,' Dynka said. 'She'd come down to the laundry and bring me a sandwich.' Like most Uzbeks, she couldn't pronounce 'zch'; she just dropped it.

'She was an honest Soviet worker who will be badly missed.' Natasha was a Party member with the Party member's ability to sound like a tape recording.

'Those are valuable testimonials,' Slava said.

A top bunk was stripped. In a cardboard box designed for holding thirty kilos of frozen fish were clothes, shoes, stereo and cassettes, hair rollers and brushes, grey noteнbook, a snapshot of Zina in her bathing suit, another of her and Dynka, and an East Indian jewellery box covered with coloured cloth and bits of mirror. Over the bunk a framed panel screwed into the bulkhead gave the occuнpant's assignment in case of emergency. Zina's post was the fire brigade in the galley.

Arkady could tell immediately who the other bunks were occupied by. An older woman always had a lower, in this case one lined with pillows from other ports Ц Sochi, Tripoli, Tangiers Ц so that Madame Malzeva could repose on a soft atlas. Natasha's bunk held a selection of pamphlets like 'Understanding the Consequences of Social Democratic Deviationism' and 'Towards a Cleaner Complexion'. Perhaps one led to the other; that would be a propaganda breakthrough. On Dynka's upper bunk was a toy camel. More than men did, they had made a real home out of their cabin, enough for him to feel like an intruder.

'What interests us,' Arkady said, 'is how Zina's disapнpearance went unnoticed. You shared this cabin with her. How could you not notice that she was gone for a day and a night?'

'She was such an active girl,' Malzeva said. 'And we have different shifts. You know, Arkasha, we work at night. She worked during the day. Sometimes days would pass without our seeing Zina. It's hard to believe we will never see her again.'

'You must be upset.' Arkady had seen Madame Malzeva cry in war movies when the Germans got shot. Everyone else would be screaming, 'Take that, you fuckнing Fritz!' but Malzeva would be sobbing into her babushka.

'She borrowed my shower cap and never returned it.' The old woman raised dry eyes.

'It would be good to gather testimonials from her other mates,' Slava suggested.

'What about her enemies?' Arkady asked. 'Would anyone want to hurt her?'

'No!' the three women said as a chorus.

'There's no call for such a question,' Slava warned.

'Forget I asked. And what else was Zina's?' Arkady scanned the photo montage on the closet door.

'Her nephew.' Dynka's finger went tentatively to a snapshot of a dark-haired boy holding a bunch of grapes as big as figs.

'Her actress.' Natasha pointed to a picture of Melina Mercouri looking pouty and wreathed in cigarette smoke. Had Zina seen herself as a sultry Greek?

'Any boyfriend?' Arkady asked.

The three women looked at each other as if they were consulting; then Natasha answered, 'Not any one man especially that we were aware of.'