The Bloody Meadow

by William Ryan

  ‘Only the crayfish becomes more beautiful with death,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘What was that?’ Slivka asked.

  ‘Nothing. Just a stupid saying.’ He didn’t feel comfortable repeating it and fortunately she didn’t press him. The entry wound was in the nape of the neck, and while there was a revolver in Andreychuk’s hand, it seemed unlikely that he would have shot himself in such a way. This looked like murder to Korolev. He leant forward to look more closely at the gun. A Nagant. Could it be a souvenir of Andreychuk’s fighting days? Korolev had carried a Nagant himself when he’d fought for the tsar, and another when he’d fought for the Red Army in the Civil War. They were still standard issue for the Militia and the army, and Korolev was an exception in that he carried a smaller Walther he’d acquired from a Polish officer back in ’twenty-two – but then there were different rules for detectives. Andreychuk’s weapon looked as though it wasn’t long from the factory, but he didn’t like the barrel one bit. It looked shorter than the army version and, as far as he knew, these short-barreled Nagants were only issued to the Militia or State Security. He pointed it out to Slivka.

  ‘It looks like it could be one of ours,’ she said, peering down at it. ‘Easily checked, though. It will have a serial number and there’ll be a record.’

  ‘Well, let’s see what we can find out about it.’

  It looked as if the dead man had been kneeling when he’d died, and the body had fallen forwards and onto its side. Korolev mimicked holding a pistol behind his head to see if suicide was even remotely possible.

  ‘Don’t do it, Alexei Dmitriyevich. The case isn’t over yet,’ Slivka said in a dry tone. He almost smiled, putting his hands back in his pockets and looking again at the corpse. Snow covered parts of the body, and more had gathered along the dead man’s side where the wind had pushed it.

  ‘Time of death, Slivka, that’s what we’re looking for,’ Korolev said as the border guard captain returned. ‘Comrade Captain, when did it stop snowing? He obviously died before then. And there’s snow on the truck as well.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Before six anyway, it hasn’t snowed since I started on duty. I’ll check with the sentries at the nearest control point.’

  ‘I’d be grateful.’ Korolev glanced across the field towards the church. There were tracks in the snow here and there.

  ‘There were no tracks around the truck when we found it,’ the captain said, as if anticipating his thoughts. ‘They were the first thing I looked for.’

  Korolev nodded and turned to Slivka.

  ‘Stay here with the body until Dr Peskov and the forensics boys arrive. Don’t let Firtov and the Greek start till Dr Peskov has had a good look and, likewise, don’t let Peskov take the body away until they’ve done their work. We’ll need a proper autopsy done in Odessa, but ask him for his preliminary impressions.’

  ‘Of course, Chief.’

  ‘And show Lenskaya’s photograph around – see if any of these border guards recognize her. Or Andreychuk for that matter. Someone must have seen them when they visited last week.’

  Slivka nodded and he put a hand on her arm for a moment by way of thanks.

  ‘Comrade Captain.’ Korolev turned to address the border guard officer. ‘Have you tracking dogs nearby?’

  ‘I can have some here within thirty minutes,’ he said, curiosity narrowing his eyes.

  ‘I’d like to see if they could trace the dead man’s steps from the church. Just to make certain. And to see if he was alone when he arrived, or if he brought his killer with him.’

  ‘We’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘Thank you, Comrade.’

  Korolev took the keys to the car from Slivka and walked back across the field towards the church, wondering what Lomatkin would have to say about Andreychuk’s escape from the station and his death beside the Dnester with a bullet in the back of his neck.

  §

  It didn’t take Korolev long to drive to Krasnogorka, and any concerns he’d had about tracking his quarries down were soon allayed – Lomatkin and Babel’s car was parked beside a border guard checkpoint just before the road entered the town. They looked round as he approached and Korolev was not surprised to detect anger in Lomatkin’s animated reaction. Damned Korolev this, damned Korolev that, he didn’t doubt. They were probably half-frozen by now – come to think of it, he wasn’t that warm himself after walking around graveyards and fields.

  ‘Captain Korolev, Militia CID.’ He held up his identification card for the border guard sergeant to inspect. ‘You’re detaining those two for me.’

  ‘We are. That Lomatkin fellow has been threatening all sorts, Comrade Captain.’

  ‘We’ll see about that. Have you somewhere I can talk to them?’

  ‘There’s the barracks in town.’

  Korolev considered the offer and then decided to interrogate Lomatkin in the car. It would be quicker.

  ‘I’ll speak to them here,’ he replied. ‘Could you bring Citizen Lomatkin over first? Let me see if I can’t calm him down.’

  When summoned, the journalist approached the car with his bottom lip pouting like a stubborn child’s. Korolev produced his notebook and wet the graphite tip of his pencil with his tongue as Lomatkin settled himself into the passenger seat.

  ‘What the hell is all this about, Korolev? You’re sabotaging vital work – I have to file a piece for Izvestia by this evening and that’s not looking likely now, is it?’

  Korolev wrote the time and date at the top of the open page, allowing his pencil to linger over each letter.

  ‘Well, come on – out with it. Why have you detained us?’

  Korolev did his best to look surprised.

  ‘Why do you think I had you detained? We all have vital work to do, Citizen Lomatkin. And orders to follow.’

  ‘Are you making fun of me? We’re held here with no explanation and then you just happen to drive past? Of course you’re responsible for this.’

  ‘You think I can boss border guards around? A simple Militia captain from Moscow giving that lot orders? It doesn’t work that way, Lomatkin. You should know that. I could ask them, certainly – but would they comply? Difficult to say.’

  The journalist’s petulant look began to be tempered with unease.

  ‘Comrade Ezhov could order them, I expect,’ Korolev added, taking a cigarette from his pocket. ‘They report to him, of course. All of them. This particular platoon, I suppose, would have to go through a few layers of command, but eventually they most certainly do report to Comrade Ezhov. Yes, I expect Comrade Ezhov could order them to do just about anything he wanted them to do, and then it would happen as day follows night. And as we both know, he was very fond of Masha Lenskaya.’

  Korolev struck a match for his cigarette and the flare splashed Lomatkin’s pale face with yellow light. The journalist had the look of a man concentrating very hard.

  ‘What do you want, Korolev?’

  ‘Well, for a start, you might explain why you saw fit to ignore my instructions not to leave the filmset.’

  ‘You never gave me such instructions. You told me not to leave tomorrow for Sebastopol, but this is a short trip. I’d have been back at the house by now if you – if someone – hadn’t delayed things.’

  ‘My instructions were clear, Lomatkin. You’re a suspect and you stay where I tell you to until I say otherwise.’

  It wasn’t the first time Korolev had found his temper bubbling up since he’d got off the plane from Moscow, but this time he felt it boiling over.

  ‘I’m a suspect? But I was in Moscow, Korolev. It simply isn’t possible that I could be responsible for her death.’

  ‘I don’t care if you were on the moon, Lomatkin. You were her lover, you’ve told me you wanted to marry her, you have, let us say, a dubious background and she was sleeping with other men. So maybe you didn’t kill Lenskaya yourself, fair enough – but you could have conspired with someone else to do it, or paid them. I don’t know which,
but I don’t want you skipping over the border before I’ve found out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lomatkin protested. ‘What dubious background? I’m a Party member, Korolev. And you’d do well to remember it.’

  ‘A Party member, is it? I doubt you bring up your cocaine addiction in any Party meetings, do you? And I’m guessing the bosses at Izvestia don’t know about it either.’

  ‘Cocaine?’ Lomatkin’s voice rose to a shrill pitch. ‘I’m not addicted to cocaine. Are you mad?’

  ‘So you just took it from time to time, is that right?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean . . .’ The journalist dragged out each word, but it wasn’t Korolev’s job to be giving Lomatkin time to think.

  ‘What? You’ve forgotten all those games of billiards with those Thief friends of yours? They’ve slipped your memory as well, have they?’ Korolev was filling in a bit of detail but, to judge from Lomatkin’s shocked expression, he wasn’t too far off the mark.

  ‘Those are gross exaggerations – as a journalist sometimes I have to—’ But Korolev held up a hand to stop him.

  ‘Don’t waste your breath, Citizen Lomatkin. For a start, I don’t have time to be writing down your worthless excuses and, second, I’m investigating a murder – no – two murders now. Believe me, if you irritate me by not cooperating fully, I’ll make sure what I know is passed on to people who take an interest in these things.’

  ‘Two murders?’

  ‘Your friend, Andreychuk. He’s lying on his front with a bullet in the back of his neck not ten kilometres from here.’

  ‘Andreychuk’s dead?’

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  ‘I . . .’ began Lomatkin, ‘I heard he’d escaped – but for him to be dead . . .’

  ‘You know nothing about his death either, of course.’

  ‘No, of course not. What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m suggesting I’ll see about that. And I’ll take my time seeing. You’re under arrest.’

  Lomatkin’s face paled. ‘For what?’

  ‘For letting Andreychuk out of his cell, that’s what. And then conspiring with someone to have a bullet placed in his skull.’

  Lomatkin fell silent. He looked at Korolev, speechless, and Korolev wondered whether he was in shock at the uncovering of his crime, or just bewildered at the predicament he found himself in.

  ‘Letting him out of his cell?’ the journalist eventually repeated.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘What makes you think—’ Lomatkin began, and Korolev took his hand and turned it palm upwards. He tapped each fingertip one by one.

  ‘Little. Fingers. Leave. Little. Prints. And these little fingers left prints all over Andreychuk’s cell door. Now, seeing as I’ve just left Andreychuk’s body not so very far from here with a bullet hole in his head, and seeing as I’m now sitting here with you and the same little fingers that smudged up that cell door, I’m wondering is that just a coincidence or something else? To put it bluntly, I’d like you to do some explaining.’

  ‘About the fingerprints?’ Lomatkin asked, his eyes now round with terror.

  ‘Yes, about the damned fingerprints, about the way you decided to drive over here to a place where Andreychuk ended up dead. While we’re at it, we’ll have a little talk about the morphine we found in Lenskaya’s stomach and whether that might have some connection with the cocaine you enjoy so much.’

  Lomatkin took a deep breath, as if he were trying to gather his courage, to calm himself.

  ‘I can explain,’ he said.

  Korolev folded his arms and settled himself into the seat.

  ‘Explain, then.’

  Lomatkin took another deep breath.

  ‘The truth is I went to the station yesterday. I went to visit Andreychuk. I wanted an explanation from him, to understand something about Masha’s death.’

  He paused, sighing.

  ‘Anyway, when I arrived the door to the station was open so I just walked in. There was no one there, Korolev. No Andreychuk, no Militia, nobody. The cell is right there, and it was open as well. I also called upstairs just in case, but the whole place was empty. I looked inside the cell, I must have touched the bars or the wood when I did, but Korolev – he was already gone. And when I got back to the house and I heard he’d escaped, I kept my mouth shut. That was stupid, I see that now, but I swear I had nothing to do with his escape.’

  ‘What kind of a fool do you take me for?’

  ‘It’s what happened, Korolev. God help me, it’s what happened. I wanted to ask him about Masha, what he knew, why it had happened. That’s all.’

  Korolev considered the journalist’s story and took his time doing it. Lomatkin looked back at him unblinkingly – if he was lying, he wasn’t bad at it. And he must be lying.

  ‘And what time did this all happen?’

  ‘About six o’clock.’

  ‘About? You need to be more specific than that, Lomatkin.’

  ‘Just before six, then. I’m not sure exactly, I didn’t look at my watch. It could have been a quarter of an hour before. Now that I think of it, I’m sure of it. About a quarter to six, that’s when I arrived.’

  Korolev considered the timing, almost allowing himself to entertain the possibility that Lomatkin might be the victim of extraordinary bad luck, but then he remembered he wasn’t there to witness miracles, but to uncover the truth. And the fellow would know the timings just as well if he’d let the caretaker out as if he’d stumbled upon the escape after it had taken place.

  ‘You say you saw no one, not even in the village?’

  ‘The village was deserted. I saw one of the Militia near the house, but apart from him, no one.’

  That would be Gradov, who’d seen Lomatkin as well.

  ‘You didn’t see anyone driving past? The truck Andreychuk drove, or Sergeant Gradov in the Militia car, perhaps?’

  ‘I didn’t walk back along the road. There’s a path through the trees.’

  It occurred to Korolev that if he looked at the situation from a different point of view, an interesting question presented itself. How had Lomatkin known the station would be open, or rather that the key would be hidden under a brick around the corner and the uniforms away? Helping Andreychuk to escape would have required some local knowledge which the journalist probably didn’t have and a large dose of luck – or assistance. And then there was also the fact that Lomatkin couldn’t have put the bullet in the back of Andreychuk’s head because he’d been back at the College when the caretaker had died, at least if the snow was anything to go by. But why shouldn’t there have been two of them involved? Clearly someone else had killed the caretaker and perhaps that person had been the one with the local knowledge. And that person had probably also killed Lenskaya.

  ‘Who are you working with, Lomatkin? And why did you need to free Andreychuk in the first place? That’s what I’d like to find out. Did he know enough to point the finger at you for Lenskaya?’

  ‘I’d nothing to do with Masha’s death, Korolev, and nothing to do with Andreychuk’s escape. And I know nothing about the murders either – I swear on my mother’s grave, I know nothing about anything.’

  Korolev looked at the journalist and wondered whether his mother was even dead. He wound down the window and beckoned the border guards over.

  ‘Comrades, can you hold this man for me for a little while? He’s under arrest.’

  He heard Lomatkin let out a low moan which he ignored, instead leaning across him to open the passenger door as the border guards came round.

  ‘You’ll be seeing the inside of a cell again before the day is out, Citizen Lomatkin,’ Korolev said, irritation as much as anger adding a gravelly growl to his voice. ‘Only there won’t be anyone coming along to let you out.’

  ‘But this is a mistake, Korolev,’ Lomatkin said, his eyes black in his white face.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  The border guards stood beside the car, either side of Loma
tkin’s door, waiting. The journalist glanced out at them, then back to Korolev, looking like a man who’d been handed a death sentence, and stepped out of the car. As the guards led him away, Korolev lit up a cigarette, thinking that there was something about smoking that kept a man sane in this job of his, then got out and walked over to the other car, where Babel waited.

  ‘Alexei,’ the writer said as Korolev opened the driver’s door. ‘You got my message? I thought it best to hitch a ride in case he was making a bolt for it. Did I do the right thing?’

  Korolev shrugged. ‘You did the right thing. We found his fingerprint on Andreychuk’s cell door, so it looks like he had something to do with his escape. But what made you suspect him?’

  ‘The morphine. I remembered what you said about the morphine and then I recalled Lomatkin had a past with such things. When he said he was going off towards Krasnogorka I thought I’d better go too.’

  Korolev examined the glowing end of his cigarette, trying to work out whether there was enough tobacco left for another go at it. He decided there was and felt the heat on his lips and his fingers as he inhaled.

  ‘Have you arrested him?’

  Korolev looked at Lomatkin, a lonely figure as he walked towards the town between the two border guards, and sighed.

  ‘Yes.’

  Chapter Twenty

  A QUICK CALL from the local Militia station to Colonel Marchuk in Odessa and a secure cell in the Bebel Street headquarters was set aside for Lomatkin. It wouldn’t be ideal having him locked up so far away from the College, but at least he would be there when Korolev went looking for him. The arrangements made, Korolev called Colonel Rodinov and brought him up to date on Andreychuk’s death and Lomatkin’s arrest.

  ‘I see,’ Rodinov said finally, when Korolev had finished speaking. There was a long pause and Korolev began to wonder if the strange whirring of machinery coming down the line wasn’t the sound of the Chekist’s brain turning over.

  ‘I’m concerned by these developments, Korolev,’ the colonel said eventually. ‘It seems to me it would be better if I were nearby. I’ll fly down tomorrow. We need a resolution to this business, Korolev. And soon.’