by William Ryan
Korolev felt his stomach plummet to the toes of his boots, where it stayed for the rest of the conversation, stayed while he watched Lomatkin placed in the back of a police van bound for Odessa and stayed there throughout the journey back to Angelinivka. The village was still deserted, the only difference being that the skeletal dog had now passed on to a heavenly hunting ground and his body was being picked over by two quarrelling crows. Korolev pulled the car over just past the church and got out.
Slivka was waiting for him beside the border guard truck – he’d been gone for nearly three hours, but she’d waited for him. She looked up from her notebook as he approached and nodded. The body had gone and he supposed that meant they had a date with Dr Peskov in the School of Anatomy.
‘Any news?’ Korolev said, offering her one of his three remaining cigarettes.
‘A couple of things, Chief,’ Slivka said, cupping her hands around the match he lit for her. ‘Firtov has more fingerprints from the station. They don’t belong to the Militamen, Andreychuk or Lomatkin. Or us, for that matter. They’re working on identifying them. At this stage they think it’s one individual.’
‘They could belong to anyone, of course.’
‘They’ve fingerprinted most of the villagers for the Lenskaya matter and Firtov says the Greek will crack it, if anyone can. He seemed confident. And that’s not all – Firtov said the Greek was making progress on the partial fingerprint, the one on the bracket from which the girl was found hanging.’
‘What does he mean by “progress”?’
‘As of this morning, the Greek had limited the possible matches to six people, and Firtov reckons he’ll have narrowed it down still further by now.’
Korolev felt a stab of irritation.
‘Narrowed? What’s this narrowing in aid of? Why can’t he just tell us who’s on this list of his now? We’re detectives, not judges. If they give us the names we can do some narrowing of our own. What’s the point of keeping quiet about it?’
‘He wants to be sure – there isn’t much of a print, he says, and the Greek takes his time. But the important news is they’re sure the fingerprint doesn’t belong to Andreychuk and it doesn’t belong to Shymko either.’
Korolev hesitated, more curious than ever about this damned fingerprint. Andreychuk and Shymko had been the ones who’d cut the girl down and if the fingerprint wasn’t theirs, who did it belong to? He’d have some names out of the Greek before the day was out – even if the fellow couldn’t speak and didn’t want to tell him.
‘What did Firtov make of Andreychuk?’ he asked, swallowing his frustration along with a lungful of smoke.
‘Same as us – murder. He took the gun back to Odessa, as well as Andreychuk’s truck.’
‘I see. And Peskov?’
‘The same. Gunshot wound to the back of the head. Death instantaneous.’
Slivka pointed at where the snow had been cleared away to reveal a spray of frozen gore.
‘He was pretty confident that Andreychuk was kneeling when he was killed, but he said he’d have a better idea once he’d examined him at the School of Anatomy.’
Korolev grunted, not relishing the thought of another autopsy – if he never had to attend one again he’d die a happy man.
‘Anything else?’
‘The captain had his dogs running round here for a while, but they came up with nothing. But he checked with the nearest roadblock – the snow stopped falling at around two in the morning.’
Korolev considered the new information. ‘Did you get a chance to call your mother?’ he asked eventually.
Slivka looked pointedly around her at the desolate landscape.
‘All right,’ he said, his tone resigned. ‘Let’s go and see what Peskov has to tell us about Andreychuk.’
As they walked across the field towards the car, Korolev was tempted to light up his last cigarette but, after a moment of consideration, he decided to save it for after the autopsy. The thing about morgues, autopsies and the like was that the smell got inside you: inside your nostrils, inside your mouth, in amongst the very fabric of your clothing. That cigarette would go some way to burning away some of that heavy scent of chemicals and death, and remind him he was alive after all.
§
That was the thing about working outside Moscow, Korolev decided as he stood on the pavement, feeling as though his body had been beaten with an axe handle. After a couple of days of being battered by bad suspensions and rotten roads, you were pretty much finished. He stretched gently, ignoring Slivka’s smirk, deciding the woman must have the constitution of a bear. Here he was, half-dead from the bruising he’d got from all their hithering and thithering and bumping and battering, and there she was, looking as fresh as an early summer rose.
Damn the young, he thought to himself as he nodded to her to lead the way around the side of the university to where the School of Anatomy was situated.
As it happened, Peskov already had Andreychuk’s body naked on the stainless-steel autopsy table and, if Korolev wasn’t wrong, the external examination completed. Peskov, in apron, white gown, surgical cap and gloves, turned his attention away from a tray of medical instruments to greet them, frowning with some concern as he examined Korolev.
‘Ah, Captain Korolev, you look quite pale. Are you in good health?’
‘I was fine until I walked in here,’ Korolev said, the words slipping out before he could catch hold of them.
He smiled an apology and took a step forward to look at the grey body on the table, struck by the pelt of white hair that covered much of Andreychuk’s chest. The dead often looked surprisingly calm and Andreychuk was no exception – his skin smooth now that gravity was pulling it tight.
‘You’ve been quick – getting him prepared, that is,’ Korolev said after a moment, hoping to make amends for his earlier remark.
‘I understood it was a matter of urgency.’ Peskov smiled at him. ‘You look anxious, Comrade Korolev.’
He was anxious – he had a Chekist colonel flying down in less than twenty-four hours; he wanted to get across the city to Bebel Street and find out who was on the Greek’s list of possibilities for the partial fingerprint; and then he had to give Lomatkin a thorough grilling. And if that wasn’t enough, he had Kolya’s gunrunners on his mind. Yet here he was, about to see a human being cut open from head to toe, all so that he could be told that the fellow had been shot in the head.
‘I’ll be straight with you, Doctor,’ Korolev said. ‘The investigation has produced a number of leads which need to be followed up as soon as possible. So, while I know it’s not the way you probably like to do things, I have to ask you – what do you think? Are you going to be able to tell me anything I don’t already know?’
Peskov considered the question, running a finger along the dead man’s arm. Korolev wondered whether he was checking the muscles for rigor mortis or whether it was an inadvertent action – the type of thing a man who works with dead bodies would think perfectly normal – even though it set Korolev’s teeth on edge.
‘At this stage,’ Peskov said, nodding, ‘I can tell you that the bullet wound entered from extremely close range – two to three centimetres away judging from the burn marks.’
He looked up at Korolev, who nodded his agreement.
‘Time of death,’ Peskov said. ‘Last night, late, or very early this morning. It’s a guess, based on a number of factors. You see these marks that look like bruising?’ Peskov pointed to a patch of discoloration on the skin. Korolev had been in enough autopsies to know what he was talking about.
‘Hypostasis?’
‘Very good,’ Peskov said. Then, seeing Slivka’s puzzled expression as she looked up from her note-taking, he explained. ‘The blood follows the natural laws of gravity, Sergeant. What you’re seeing isn’t bruising but the dead man’s blood accumulating in the part of his body which was closest to the ground when we found it. It doesn’t generally manifest itself for at least eight hours. It was present when
I examined him by the river, so that tells us he’d been dead for at least that long. On top of that, look at his eyes.’
Peskov placed a gloved finger against an eyeball. It gave under the pressure like the softest of jelly and Korolev felt his stomach twist, but he managed to nod his interest, not trusting himself to speak.
‘If I were to put my finger in Captain Korolev’s eye, there would be elasticity,’ Peskov said, and Korolev thought there might also be an uppercut that would lift the doctor a foot or so into the air.
‘But here we have flaccidity, and that normally occurs only after approximately twelve hours. Sometimes as long as eighteen. On top of which rigor mortis has not quite set in, although the first signs are visible at the back of the neck and lower jaw. It might seem delayed, based on the other indicators, but the dead man is old, is quite muscular and the temperature was below freezing point last night. All of these factors would have impeded the process.’
‘He was last seen at about six in the evening out at the College,’ said Slivka looking up from her notebook. ‘And it seems clear he was shot in Angelinivka from the blood spatters.’
‘What are you asking?’ Peskov said.
‘We’re looking for the time of death. The village was searched last night at about eleven and the truck wasn’t there. The snow on his body indicates he was shot before two a.m. Can you narrow it down any further?’ She looked to Korolev for approval, which he gave with a slow inclination of his head.
‘Not at this stage,’ Peskov answered. ‘And, in any event, it’s difficult to be specific about these things. Every corpse is different – I’ll take the temperature of his organs, of course, but that won’t tell me anything that you don’t already know – my examination would agree with a time of death between eleven p.m. and two in the morning. I think I have one good piece of news, though.’
Peskov leant forward and turned the dead man’s left forearm so that it was more easily visible for Slivka, pointing to a small round hole in the skin. Korolev had noticed the wound earlier and been confused by it.
‘There’s no sign of an exit wound, so if I’m not mistaken we may be able to retrieve the bullet. It might give Firtov something to work with.’
Peskov glanced up for a reaction and whatever look was on Korolev’s face, it seemed to be enough for the doctor to set to work, opening the wound wide with a swift stroke of his scalpel. Korolev forced himself to look as Peskov began digging and twisting into the dead man’s flesh and moments later held up a small metallic nugget that had once been the business end of a bullet.
‘I’ll be able to tell you more about internal trajectory later on, but at a guess there was some deflection within the skull and when the bullet came out it lodged in his arm, luckily enough up against the radius. Take it to Firtov, see what he makes of it.’
§
The bullet chinked in a glass jar in Korolev’s pocket as he and Slivka walked up the steps that led to Pasteur Street.
‘Well, Chief,’ Slivka asked, looking over at him, ‘what did you make of that?’
Korolev grimaced.
‘It’s a strange one. Someone helps him get out of his cell and then, likely as not, helps him to make it all the way to the Romanian border as well. And having done all that, this same person, or one of their allies, shoots him and leaves him for us to find. And even though he had a gun in his hand, his killer managed to shoot him in the back of the head. He must have had a reason for it being in his hand – some sort of threat, but he was facing the other way. And where did his gun come from?’
‘The barrel on it worries me,’ Slivka said. ‘I’d swear it was a Militia weapon. Or . . .’ She stopped mid-sentence and Korolev had an idea he knew why. If it was an NKVD weapon, the only Chekist involved in the case and close to hand was Mushkin.
The drive to Bebel Street took less than five minutes, and all the way the questions they both had about the gun were a tangible presence in the car. Asking the questions seemed to risk turning suspicion into a fact, so they kept quiet and, in Korolev’s case, tried to think about more pleasant matters, which yet again turned out to be the memory of Valentina’s hand on his chest.
§
When they arrived, Firtov seemed to share their unease. He nodded towards the Nagant, sitting on a wooden desk in front of him. Firtov was wearing a dirty apron to protect his clothes and white fingerprinting dust covered the gun from end to end.
‘I traced the serial number,’ he said, a dour expression making his cavalryman’s moustache seem less ebullient than usual.
‘Well?’ Korolev said, bracing himself.
‘It was issued to Sergeant Gradov in October 1935.’
‘Gradov?’ Korolev felt a flood of relief. ‘That fool not only left a prisoner unguarded, but provided him with a gun as well?’
‘Perhaps,’ Firtov said cautiously. ‘He was disciplined for its loss last year – in June. It was stolen from the station, or so he claimed, but the investigation at the time led nowhere. He was lucky to keep his stripes and if Major Mushkin hadn’t interceded on his behalf he’d certainly have lost them. Or worse.’
‘Mushkin?’
‘I spoke to the man who led the investigation – he wanted to throw the book at Gradov, but Mushkin went right to the top and Gradov got away with it. For losing his weapon, no less.’
‘So it’s possible Andreychuk could have been the one who stole it?’ Slivka interjected, perhaps a fraction too forcefully.
‘He must have got hold of it somehow,’ Firtov said.
It would be helpful, Korolev thought, if they could find another stage in the Nagant’s journey from Gradov’s possession to Andreychuk’s cold hand – but that Andreychuk had taken the gun was the most logical explanation. In fact, he was almost grateful to Sergeant Gradov; at least the gun didn’t come cursed with a State Security background – apart from, of course, Mushkin’s intervention on the sergeant’s behalf.
‘How about fingerprints?’ he asked, after a brief pause to offer a prayer to the Virgin for that small mercy.
‘On the gun? Yes, and they belong to the dead man. That’s what the Greek thinks anyway, but he’s checking them once more. Speaking of fingerprints, we have a shortlist for that partial on the wall bracket.’
‘So I heard,’ Korolev said, doing his best to keep his anticipation under some kind of control.
‘Three names. Antonova, she’s a cook in the canteen; one of the cameramen, Belinsky; and a more interesting one – that Frenchman, Les Pins.’
‘Antonova was in the crowd scenes that evening,’ Slivka said. ‘And Belinsky was filming them. It’s possible Belinsky helped take the girl down, but I don’t remember anything about that from the interview notes.’
‘And Monsieur Les Pins?’ Korolev said, knowing the answer. They’d never properly questioned him and now his fingerprint had shown up on the bracket from which the dead woman was hung. ‘He told us he was down at the night shoot, but it’s never been confirmed, has it?’
‘No,’ Slivka agreed. ‘Of course, up until now it’s been hands off for the Frenchman.’
‘It was. It may not be any more. On top of this, there are some inconsistencies as to his whereabouts at the time of Andreychuk’s escape. He said he was in his room, but Comrade Mushkina says he was with her, walking near the village. I think we need to have a chat with the fellow, don’t you, Sergeant?’
‘I’ll call the Militia station. See if we can locate him. Do you want me to drive out there?’
‘No, I’ve a feeling we should stay in Odessa today,’ Korolev said, thinking about gunrunners and Slivka’s mother. ‘Ask them to bring him into Odessa, if it’s convenient for our honoured French guest. If it isn’t, well, we’ll deal with that eventuality when it comes to pass. And order Gradov to report here directly – he seems a careless sort of a fellow with regard to poor Andreychuk, doesn’t he? Leaving his key for him to escape and losing his gun for him to shoot himself with.’
‘I’ll see to
it, Chief.’
‘And call your mother, Slivka.’
She nodded her agreement, giving Firtov a put-upon shrug of her shoulders. The forensics man turned towards Korolev with a look of puzzled respect.
‘You’ve tamed that one,’ he said as the door slammed shut behind Slivka. ‘If anyone had asked her to call her mother a week ago, they’d have been walking bow-legged till September.’
‘I believe in encouraging youngsters to have respect for their elders.’ Korolev spoke with a grave expression. ‘You’ll call me if you come up with anything else?’
‘Count on it,’ the cavalryman said.
Korolev turned to leave, but then he stopped, hearing the chink of the bullet in his pocket. He pulled out the glass container and showed it to Firtov.
‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘It’s the slug that made the hole in Andreychuk’s head. The doctor pulled it out of the dead man’s arm.’
Firtov took the jar from Korolev, examined it for a moment, his face impassive, then placed it on his desk. The dented bullet seemed to have a dark presence, despite the glare of the electric light. He pulled across a set of weighing scales and decanted the bullet into one of the brass baskets, before adding and subtracting various tiny weights.
‘Not from a Nagant. Most likely a nine-millimetre. We’ll have a look at it, anyway, me and the Greek, and see what we make of it under a microscope.’
‘I’d be grateful. Tell Slivka I’ve gone down to check in on our journalist friend – maybe a little time in a cold cell has warmed up his memory.’
Chapter Twenty-One
LOMATKIN was sitting in his shirtsleeves, beltless and bootless, his open collar revealing the top of a grey vest. Korolev felt a pang of sympathy for the bewildered-looking man – after all, he himself had sat in a not dissimilar cell not too many months past, an experience he wouldn’t wish to have again.
Korolev sat down, and they looked at each other for a long moment, hands tucked into their armpits, each a mirror image of the other.