The Bloody Meadow

by William Ryan

  Korolev believed him, despite himself.

  ‘And the border guards, they have nothing to say about this?’

  ‘Everyone has to eat,’ the Thief replied in a flat tone. ‘But there are things we don’t get involved with, not unless we want to have Chekists and Militia swarming all over us like flies round a honey pot, and we don’t. And a shipment of German guns will bring those kind swarming soon enough, you can be sure of it.’

  Korolev’s attention was entirely focused now, and Stalin himself could have been looking in on them from the steps and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  ‘German guns? The Germans asked you to bring in guns?’

  ‘Nobody asked me, but that’s not the point. The men who did the asking asked people who are under my roof, for family and business reasons, and so when they decided to apply some pressure, it became something I had to deal with. As for who’s behind it? I’d be guessing at the answer, and so would you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d both be right if it turned out he’d got a toothbrush moustache, a schoolboy’s parting in his hair and a way with crowds.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Korolev said, believing it.

  ‘Believe what you want but these are tough men, and well organized, and they thought they could get what they wanted by force. But they must never have heard of the ways of Moldovanka is all I can say. Someone got kidnapped, then someone got killed, then another person got killed and I wouldn’t take bets someone else again won’t get killed soon enough.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing of this.’

  ‘It’s in no one’s interest for this to come to the attention of the Organs of State Security. I’m telling you because I think you may be of use to us, and we may be of use to you.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Well, when some of this was going on, a man told a story. Why he decided to tell the story, you don’t want to know.’ Kolya’s face was grim, and Korolev deduced from it that the storyteller hadn’t spoken voluntarily. ‘But it was a good story, about how someone, a girl – now a dead girl – was bringing information down to Odessa from the capital of this Soviet land of ours, and how that information was as good as gold to whoever was providing these Prussian pea-shooters. In fact that information was paying for these German armaments more or less.’

  Korolev felt his stomach turn. If Lenskaya had been shipping information down to Odessa, he’d a suspicion he knew where it might have come from. And if it did come from Ezhov – and if Ezhov didn’t know – well, then Korolev didn’t want to be the one to tell him.

  ‘I see from your face you’re working it out. I always said you were smart enough.’

  ‘The devil,’ Korolev said quietly.

  ‘But who knows how this thing worked? Because something went wrong with the arrangement, and while our little songbird didn’t know the reason why, he was given the job of rubbing out the girl – except it was him who got rubbed out first. By us, as it happens. That didn’t change things for the girl, of course, but you know that already. And then you showed up, hot from Moscow, in an aeroplane no less.’

  Korolev tried to make sense of it all – did that mean the girl was part of this bunch of Ukrainian terrorists or not? Had she been killed because she was a traitor or because she wasn’t? And what, if any of this, could he tell Rodinov? Kolya’s bright eyes watched him as if following his every thought.

  ‘The way I see it, Korolev, both of us have an interest in finding out who’s behind this little caper and putting a stop to them.’

  ‘I do, but you?’

  ‘I have a reputation, Korolev, and you don’t think I’d just stand back and let these people damage it, now do you? Why else do you think I’m down here with my best men? It’s too cold for the swimming.’

  ‘But why do you need me? It sounds like you’re doing all right, so far.’ It wasn’t that Korolev was objecting but he knew it was against the Thieves’ code to talk to the Militia.

  ‘We’ve hit them as hard as they’ve hit us, true, but we know these people are bringing in these guns some other way, and once that happens things won’t be so easy. Much less easy if these fools are successful. This is a weed needs pulling up by the root and it seems to me that if we work together we’ve more chance of doing the job properly, once and for all.’

  ‘Give me names and every one of them will be in a Chekist cell by lunchtime.’

  Kolya shook his head.

  ‘Think about it, Korolev. If the information was coming from where you and I might dare to think it might have been coming from, or even if it looks like it was coming from that person – well, who would be the ones who’d end up in the cells? Think about it very carefully.’

  They were almost at the bottom, and the port was now no longer visible past the city’s train station, from which large numbers of people were emerging. The funicular juddered to a halt at its small lower platform, where a crowd was waiting to board.

  ‘The morphine, Kolya,’ Korolev said, before he’d even thought about it. ‘The girl was drugged.’

  Kolya looked at him sharply, then nodded. ‘I’ll look into it. Listen, Korolev, be careful – for some reason beyond fathoming our fates seem tied together on this. Your partner’s from good stock and she’ll watch your back well enough. And whatever’s going on – the dead girl is the key. I’ll be in touch.’

  And, with that, he was gone, stepping forward into a group of red-faced sailors, jolly with alcohol, and walking quickly off.

  Chapter Twelve

  KOROLEV followed Kolya for a few paces, then stood watching his retreating figure, pushed his hat back, rubbed the scar on his cheek, and tried to make sense of it all. Had Kolya really suggested that Lenskaya had been a spy? And who the hell were these Ukrainian counter-revolutionaries? Not for the first time since the Chekist’s knock on the door did he wish he was back in Moscow investigating a nice straightforward homicide. A crime, a motive and a killer – now that’s what a murder should be. Spies and gun-smuggling and faked suicides and angry NKVD men and damned aeroplanes and what sounded like a full-scale gang war, albeit quietly done, well, he’d happily leave all of that to some other detective. Or the angry NKVD men – even better.

  He looked at his watch and saw that, on top of everything else, it was a good forty minutes since he’d left Slivka. And what was it that Kolya had said about Slivka being of good stock? What the hell had he meant by that? Korolev glanced up at the steps – there were a lot of them, but they’d be quicker than the funicular. He sighed and started up them two at a time, his mind racing.

  The first thing he did was remind himself that, short of a miraculous intervention, there was no obvious way out. He looked up at the sky half-hopefully, but there was no sign of a saint coming to sweep him away in a fiery chariot, more was the pity. Anyway, these people were traitors, so it was his duty to track them down and that was that.

  It would be dangerous, that much was certain, and the danger wasn’t only from the counter-revolutionaries. If the People’s Commissar of State Security, the man supposed to be defending the State from such things, had been having an affair with someone who was slipping secrets to the enemy, then the investigation was a time bomb waiting to blow up in Korolev’s face. Particularly if she’d been borrowing the secrets from the said People’s Commissar. Duty or not, it would be wise to follow Kolya’s advice and keep quiet, for the moment anyway. He took a deep breath as he reached yet another platform – he was already struggling and he wasn’t even a quarter of the way up the damned stairs. Anyway, Korolev reasoned to himself as he began to climb again, what had he got to tell? A second-hand story from a Thief who’d never repeat it, even if Korolev managed to produce him for questioning. Which was unlikely. He was practically doing his duty by keeping his mouth shut.

  Halfway now, and his legs burnt with effort. There were hills in Moscow, it was true. The Sparrow Hills, or the Lenin Hills as they were known now, were definitely hills by any standards, but that didn’t mean he went
running up them every day. He’d become unfit – too much sitting in cars and at his desk. When he got back to Moscow, he’d get back into training. If he got back to Moscow, of course. He sighed. To look at the investigation from another point of view, though – why had he been sent down in the first place? Rodinov must think something was up, clearly, but wasn’t quite sure what it was. After all, if they knew about Lenskaya and wanted to cover it up, it would have been better to have had the local uniforms declare it a suicide and leave it at that. Korolev wasn’t the greatest detective in the world, but it hadn’t taken too long to work out he was dealing with a murder. Maybe they really did want to find out the truth about the girl’s death.

  There were still two more flights of steps to go and he wasn’t entirely sure he’d make it. Despite his exhaustion, however, it seemed clear to him that he must investigate the case to the best of his ability, and as if he’d never had a conversation with Kolya. He’d put the evidence together, sift it, weigh it and come to conclusions, same as he always did. And if something came up that backed Kolya’s story or the Thief contacted him again – well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. He reached the top, his lungs raw, his heart thudding in his ears and his legs screaming their surrender. To recover some sort of dignity he turned and looked down at the harbour. A breakwater curved around the bay towards a white and red lighthouse. It was a busy scene, with small boats cutting in and out between the larger vessels, with bustle on the portside and trucks coming and going, but the sea itself was calm and the sun was beginning to break through the cloud once again. And somewhere down there, in one of those ships perhaps, there might well be a stash of German weaponry. Damn it, he was in trouble this time.

  §

  The Bebel Street Militia station was a substantial building, four storeys high and a good fifty metres wide. It wasn’t a new construction, looking as if it had been built at the end of the previous century, but its forensic department seemed well equipped, with a filing cabinet that contained the fingerprint cards of all the known criminals in the area, photographic equipment, microscopes, plaster casts of shoeprints and tyre-tracks, weighing scales, a small library of reference manuals and an assortment of odds and ends that Firtov had picked up along the way in the hope or expectation that they might come in useful in due course. Firtov gave Korolev and Slivka a guided tour before they got down to business.

  ‘It wasn’t an easy crime scene,’ the tall forensics man said. ‘As I told you, it’s more than likely that someone cleaned the place pretty carefully. We did find a few human hairs, but from their colour it seems likely that they belong to the girl, and even if they don’t – who’s to say how they got there? Not exactly a bloody fingerprint on an axe handle, if you know what I mean. Anyway, the Greek is looking into it.’

  He nodded over to Papadopoulos, who was sitting bent over a microscope.

  ‘From what we know so far, it seems nearly everyone had good reason to be in Lenskaya’s office or the dining room at some stage or another,’ Korolev said.

  ‘Yes,’ Firtov replied, ‘I thought as much.’ His moustache hung heavy over his mouth so it seemed as if his voice came from behind whiskery curtains. His eyebrows were nearly as thick, but his gaze was sharp and Korolev was confident the fellow knew what he was up to. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though,’ Firtov continued, ‘I’ve been working in Odessa since ’twenty-one, and the only people who clean up this well after themselves are of the professional ilk. As in they have tattoos or they have identity cards.’

  ‘Professional?’

  ‘If it isn’t a Militiaman or someone from one of the other Organs, and I’m presuming it isn’t, then I’d say it’s a Thief. And an experienced one at that.’

  Korolev put his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and sighed. It could also be a well-trained foreign agent, of course.

  ‘Still, we might have had a bit of luck in the dining room,’ Firtov said, holding up a photograph. ‘Seeing as it’s a public area we weren’t too hopeful – but still, the Greek found a half-print on the bracket. Just enough to be sure that it isn’t Andreychuk’s or Shymko’s – we took their prints last night, seeing as they were the ones that cut her down. Nor does the print match the girl’s. So whoever it does belong to should be worth having a conversation with at least.’

  Korolev leant in closer. There wasn’t much of it – maybe the top third of a digit, but more than that it was difficult to say.

  ‘Anything you can tell from it at the moment?’ he asked, squinting at the image once again.

  ‘Not really – my educated guess would be it’s a male finger. From its position on the bracket, it might be from a left hand. We’re going back out today to fingerprint all the potential owners. I can’t guarantee we’ll definitely be able to match it, but we should be able to narrow things down for you.’

  ‘Excellent – anything else?’

  ‘Perhaps if we’d got to the scene while the body was still in place . . .’

  Korolev nodded his understanding.

  ‘Did you look in her bedroom?’

  ‘Yes, and we found quite a few prints there, but seeing as there were three other girls sharing it, I don’t think they’ll be much use.’

  ‘Did Slivka tell you about the stomach contents? How she was drugged?’

  ‘Yes, we had a think about that, didn’t we, Greek?’

  Papadopoulos looked over and nodded.

  ‘There was no sign that she was an addict, was there? So Nadezhda Andreyevna said.’ Firtov looked towards Slivka. ‘Maybe whoever gave it to her might be, though – we’ll keep an eye out when we’re taking the prints.’

  Korolev thanked the two forensics men and then followed Slivka from the room.

  ‘Papadopoulos,’ Korolev said, as they walked out through the arch that led to the street. ‘A Greek name, I believe.’

  ‘Plenty of Greeks here in Odessa,’ Slivka replied. ‘Turks and Armenians, Arabs, Kurds, Poles. Even a few French and Italians from the old days. But the Greek is famous.’

  Korolev opened the car door and looked over at her. ‘Why?’

  ‘The Greek can’t speak. He can understand you, he can read and write, but he’s never spoken a word.’

  §

  The drive back to the Orlov House passed quickly, and they didn’t talk much. Korolev suspected that Slivka, like himself, was going over the little they knew and trying to make sense of it. As they turned off to enter the Agricultural College’s grounds, Korolev found himself asking one of the questions that had been nagging at him.

  ‘Count Kolya? How does he know you?’

  ‘Kolya,’ she repeated, smiling wryly as she brought the car to a halt at the side of the driveway. ‘We’re related, that’s all.’

  ‘Related? You’re related to Kolya the Thief?’ He’d guessed their paths had crossed professionally at some stage, but to be blood relatives?

  ‘No family is without an ugly member, as the saying goes. Although as far as my people are concerned, I’m the wallflower. That’s the way things go sometimes.’

  ‘So that’s why your mother doesn’t approve of the Militia?’

  ‘Not exactly – things aren’t always straightforward in a place like Odessa. One hand often washes the other. We share a set of grandparents, but my father was a Party member from before the Revolution, and my mother as well. In the Civil War, and before it, they and my mother’s family were often on the same side. My father died in ’twenty-one and since then things are different, as you know. But I know my duty, you don’t need to worry about that.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’

  He considered her – young, intelligent and brave as well, he was sure. On top of which, Kolya had as good as told him she was to be trusted, which he was surprised to discover meant something to him.

  ‘I saw Mishka outside the university,’ Slivka said after a pause.

  Korolev nodded.

  ‘Well, I’ve asked the question before, Chief, and I don’t thin
k you gave me a straight answer.’

  ‘Stop beating about the bush, Slivka. Let’s get to the nut of the matter.’

  ‘Well, what’s a Moscow detective doing out here in the middle of the steppe? A detective who happens to know Kolya the Thief, so an unusual detective, I’d say – but good at his job, I’ve observed. Colonel Marchuk warned me to be careful – that the case smelt and that having Mushkin involved made it smell even worse. He told me to keep an eye on you as well, but it seems to me we’ll be better off if we’re open with each other.’

  Korolev put his hand in his pocket, found his packet of cigarettes and handed one to Slivka.

  ‘I can’t tell you everything, Slivka, but I’ll tell you what Kolya told me. And why I don’t think we can do anything about it, except keep the information at the back of our minds.’

  And so Korolev told her what Kolya had told him. He even went so far as to tell her who had sent him.

  ‘Spit on it,’ she said eventually. ‘My mother was right all along. Who’d have thought it?’

  ‘Between the hammer and the anvil, that’s where we are, Sergeant Slivka.’

  ‘Well, I chose to join the Militia and if you’re afraid of bears, you shouldn’t go picking berries, now should you?’

  He gave her a long look. Eventually he nodded his agreement.

  ‘Well, Slivka, we can only do our duty. Come on, let’s see how the uniforms got on this morning.’ And Slivka put the car into gear and drove the last hundred or so metres to the stable block beside the Orlov House, that remnant of a bygone age with its view over a frozen lake and its ghosts – old and more recent.