by William Ryan
“I puh-put cotton wool in her chuh-cheeks, I think it works wuh-wuh-well.”
Gueginov looked down at the corpse with a pleased expression. The girl’s hair was still wet from where Chestnova had washed it clean.
“She was good looking, the girl,” Korolev said, as much to himself as the others.
“Yuh-yes. Do you think we should huh-have the eye open or closed? I’ll tuh-take her in puh-profile obviously.”
Gueginov opened the girl’s eyelid with his thumb and looked to Korolev for approval. Korolev shook his head, disconcerted by the dead girl’s gaze.
“Yuh-yes. I think, you’re ruh-right.” Gueginov said and shut the eye once more. Then, satisfied with the positioning of the girl’s head and the arrangement of her features, Gueginov picked up the camera and the flash lit up the room twice. Chestnova let the head fall back onto the table and the jaw fell open revealing the white teeth and the butchered mouth.
“Notice anything about the teeth, Comrade?” Chestnova asked, picking up the loose head and tilting it toward him once again.
“It looks like he broke a few,” Korolev said, then looked again. “They’re exceptionally white.”
“Indeed, which may be something to note in itself, but see these fillings? Amalgam. Well, Comrade, the Ministry of Health hasn’t permitted our dentists to use amalgam fillings for the last ten years at least. And these fillings weren’t done that long ago.”
“So the fillings were done outside the Soviet Union?”
“Perhaps the girl is a foreigner . . .”
“Huh-her clothes.” Gueginov’s voice came from the corner where he was holding up her skirt. “They look fuh-foreign to me. No luh-labels, but they feel like cuh-capitalist cluh-clothes. Perhaps she was a suh-saboteur? Fuh-fell out with her fellows and look what happened to her.”
Korolev ran the fabric through his fingers. It felt wondrously soft.
“Perhaps, or she could have worked abroad in an embassy or with a trade delegation. And, of course, there are plenty of foreigners in Moscow these days. Volunteers, industrial specialists, Comintern employees and so on. We may be able to match her teeth to dental records if she’s listed as a missing person. We’ll look into it. Thank you—an excellent observation.”
Dr. Chestnova smiled proudly, although perhaps a little lopsidedly. Korolev wondered how much medical spirit the two of them had drunk while he’d been out of the room.
“I always do my duty,” she said, reaching for a saw from the tray of instruments that stood beside the operating table. “And now I shall look into the brain.”
Korolev felt his jaw clench. He took a quick look at his watch and gave a curt nod to the others.
“Please call me if there are any further developments. I have to get back to Petrovka.”
He decided to ignore the muffled giggle that followed him from the room.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was past nine o’clock when Korolev finished combining his notes on the autopsy and the crime scene into a report for General Popov. While the autopsy had thrown up some interesting possibilities, not least that the dead woman was a foreigner, the forensic investigation team had come up with very little, as Semionov had predicted. There were fingerprints all over the room, but the fingermarks that were bloody had all turned out either to have been made by gloves, probably leather, or had belonged to the dead woman. They’d begin fingerprinting the Komsomol members who frequented the church in the morning, but the head of the forensic team thought it unlikely that they would come up with anything useful, especially as they had taken several hundred impressions from the sacristy alone. Korolev cursed under his breath as he finished writing and then began to read from the beginning for mistakes.
He took his time, considering the available facts from every angle. As he read, he began to form in his mind a very loose picture of the murderer and, indeed, of the victim. Nothing substantial, just feelings and impressions, but he’d been an investigator long enough to know intuition should never be ignored. Even though it was hard for him to be definite, he was beginning to think the killing showed an element of forethought that was unusual. For a start, the murderer’s wearing of gloves and the lack of any forensic data indicated a care and detachment not present in the violent sexual murders he’d investigated previously. Usually the murderer was caught up in the fever of the moment and therefore careless. He might try to clear up evidence afterward, but by that stage he was in a state of elation, fear or shock, and his efforts were affected accordingly. This fellow seemed to be different. Yes, there was blood, gore and lots of unpleasant detail, but there was very little evidence. He’d been careful and, as if to confirm Korolev’s supposition, there were no signs of rape. There was torture, clearly, but the use of electricity, the way the body parts had been arranged and the deliberate nature of the injuries made him wonder whether the mutilations hadn’t some significance outside the violent act itself. He was even beginning to suspect that the mutilations might be a smokescreen and that the murder might have a motive beyond the obvious.
He rubbed his eyes as he finished and looked at his watch. It had been a full day and it was time he made his way home. He smiled at the thought. His cousin’s partitioned room had been tiny with only enough space for a bed for Mikhail and a mattress on the floor for Korolev, their clothes hanging from nails on the wall. They’d listened at night to their neighbors whispered squabbles and even quieter lovemaking, whispering in turn to each other as they passed a bottle backward and forward. At least in the new apartment there would be space, far above the norm for the Moscow district, and a degree of privacy that most citizens only saw in films, and foreign films at that. He felt like pinching himself.
Zhenia would have liked it, he thought. His ex-wife had given up their old room in the Presnaya district a year or so after the divorce and returned to her people in Zagorsk. She’d never much liked Moscow, but as one of the first Soviet-educated female engineers, the capital had offered her opportunities for advancement, as well as the excitement of being at the center of a Revolution that was transforming history itself. Indeed, she’d been a poster girl for the new revolutionary society and why she’d chosen Korolev, when half the men in Moscow had been after her, had been a mystery to him. After three years of marriage it had been to her as well. It hadn’t helped that he’d been an investigator, of course not, but then she’d worked even longer hours. They’d met in bed like strangers sometimes, and from one of those encounters Yuri had been conceived. The thought of Yuri saddened him; he hadn’t seen the boy for six months. She had a new man now, a doctor, and it worried him. How long would it be before Yuri started calling the stranger “Papa?” Would he even remember Korolev the next time they met?
Korolev put the handwritten pages in order, wrote a request for four copies, then took out his hat from the bottom drawer of the desk in preparation for the walk home. Zagorsk was just too damned far away—but he’d make the trip in the spring, no matter what.
On the way out he stopped on the first floor and knocked at a wooden window, which guarded the all-female typing pool as though it were an Ottoman harem. A moment passed before the panel slid back and a tired female face peered out at him. He couldn’t remember seeing her before and he watched her examine his epaulettes, noticing the slight stiffening of posture that they brought.
“Yes, Captain? Something urgent?”
“A report for the general. He needs it for tomorrow morning. Four copies altogether.”
“Four copies.” The woman flicked back her gray-streaked brown hair from her eyes as she examined the papers. The gesture was almost sensuous. “Captain Korolev,” she read. “That’s you?”
“Yes.”
“Eight o’clock in the morning?”
“Thank you.” He thought he saw the ghost of a smile lighten her features. “One thing, though. It’s not one for an inexperienced typist. It’s a murder, a young woman—not very pleasant. Probably best to give it to someone who’s been
here a bit longer.”
She took a quick look at the first page, raised her eyebrows and nodded her head gravely in agreement, then smiled before sliding the panel shut.
He walked home, keeping to the main thoroughfares and maintaining a good pace. There were the usual queues outside the late-night shops and tired groups of workers, covered from head to toe in grime, were making their way back to their hostels, passing their replacements, only a little cleaner, heading in the opposite direction. There were students, hands bunching threadbare coats around their throats, and, even this close to the Kremlin, beggars with the dead eyes of the starving. There were more of them recently—despite it being a criminal offense with a five-year ticket attached. Yet, for all the people, there was not much noise. The rumble of a truck passing drowned out what little conversation there was. It was as if the citizens suspected they were being listened to, and Korolev suspected they might have a point.
Turning a corner, Korolev saw two men with the strange pigeon walk that marked them out as belonging to the caste of Thieves. They recognized him for what he was as well, but showed no obvious reaction, except that one made a comment to the other as they walked by. Of all the people he’d passed they were the only ones who seemed relaxed. The Party believed in the principle of re-education for criminals, and so hooligans and bandits were receiving political lectures rather than lengthy sentences. What was more, Korolev, as a policeman, suspected the only real education the Thieves received in the Zone, as the camp and prison system was known, was from other Thieves. And the leniency to professional criminals meant Soviet cities weren’t as safe as they should be.
It was a different story for political prisoners, of course—they were punished to the full extent of the law.
Still, the streets seemed quiet tonight, perhaps because it was cold, certainly below freezing point. He looked up at the dark sky lurking above the street lights and wondered if it would snow. He turned the corner of the Lubianka and, as usual, scanned the street ahead for trouble. It was more out of habit than from a perception of risk—after all, any sane criminal would stay well clear of the NKVD headquarters—so he was surprised when he saw black cars pulled up outside the Dzherzhinskaya Metro station and a crowd that swirled and jostled with excitement.
As he approached, the several hundred people seemingly laying siege to the station entrance appeared all the stranger. Perhaps it was a terrorist attack or an accident. He quickened his pace and patted his holster, checking the gun was secured in case there was rough stuff ahead, but the crowd seemed in a good mood, even cheering, as they surged forward and backward. A line of Chekists and Red Army soldiers, faces pale under the street lights, had joined elbows to hold the ever-growing number of citizens away from a convoy of black cars that was parked in front of the large illuminated M marking the station entrance. The line looked as though it would be brushed aside at any moment, but, despite the number of people, and Korolev estimated there were now close to a thousand souls waving thin hands and red handkerchiefs, he had the sense that the situation was under control.
The shouting slackened for a moment as the gleaming door of one of the limousines opened and a familiar face, pitted by smallpox and bedecked with a thick mustache, emerged, black eyes taking everything in. It was a powerful gaze, as sure of itself as a champion boxer’s, and Korolev felt his own hand rising in salute. He joined in the growl of approval, which built into a roar that sent the hairs on the back of his neck shivering as his fist clenched above his head.
“Stalin! Stalin! Stalin!” the crowd cheered and Korolev bellowed along with them. Bulky Chekists gathered round the General Secretary, but they seemed small beside him, as though the world had to adjust to his scale because he clearly wasn’t that tall, maybe five foot three. It must be the presence of the man, Korolev thought, and then found himself shouting Stalin’s name again as the great man smiled at the crowd, his mustache curling upward. He touched his arm stiffly to his military cap in acknowledgment, but only as if to say, “You aren’t cheering me, you’re cheering my position in the Party, and I accept the adulation on that basis alone.”
One of his bodyguards leaned to whisper in Stalin’s ear and the General Secretary nodded in agreement, then smiled at the crowd once again before disappearing into the Metro station. Other men stepped out of the cars now: Ezhov, Molotov, Budyonny with his cavalryman’s twirling mustache, Ordzhonikidze, Mikoyan. It seemed as though half the Politburo had decided to take the Metro home. They smiled blearily from behind the collars of their greatcoats and leather jackets and followed Stalin inside. Some of them seemed a little unsteady on their feet, as though they’d been drinking. Their waves and salutes were friendly also, similarly dismissive of the adulation: “We’re all workers for the Revolution together, Comrades, no need to make a fuss.” And when the last of them had disappeared inside the crowd wanted to follow them, but the Chekists held firm and exhorted them to be patient, to give the leaders some room.
“Stand back, Citizens!” a man with a loudhailer instructed and the crowd reluctantly complied, stepping back as the Chekist cordon advanced. Now that Stalin had gone, they turned to each other and discussed what they’d seen—enthusiastic, like children. Korolev skirted the crowd, hearing snatches of conversation as he moved past.
“He wasn’t tall, was he? But strong—like an ox.”
“Did you see his pipe? I smoke a pipe myself. I wonder what brand he uses?”
Korolev maneuvered past them, feeling the same pride as his fellow Muscovites at the leadership’s decision to come out among them.
He was nearly clear when he felt his elbow taken in a strong grip and he turned to find himself facing Staff Colonel Gregorin.
“Captain Korolev, are you only going home now? Working late on the investigation, were you?” Gregorin pulled a cigarette case out of his uniform’s breast pocket; at some stage it had received a large dent and it opened stiffly. Gregorin saw his interest and closed the lid to tap his finger in the middle of the circular mark.
“A bullet. It saved my life—now it’s my good-luck charm. If it weren’t for the case, there would only have been a dead Corporal Gregorin rather than a live Staff Colonel Gregorin. I consider it a useful reminder of the arbitrariness of fate. And doctors tell us smoking weakens the chest . . .”
Gregorin chuckled at the well-worn joke and Korolev responded with an awkward smile. The colonel had taken him by surprise and he took the offered cigarette happily, relieved to have something to do with his hands. He reached into his pocket for the matches he habitually carried, but Gregorin stopped him, cracking open a lighter and moving the two of them away from the crowd.
“Comrade Stalin decided to visit the Metro on a whim. He’s seen it in construction, and was at the opening, of course, but he wanted to experience it like an ordinary citizen. A spontaneous thought, so we were all called out at a moment’s notice to provide security. A great responsibility.”
He pointed to a black car parked on the street about thirty meters further along the street, “Can I give you a lift home? It will save you the walk.”
Korolev nodded, feeling he should participate in the conversation, but finding himself at a loss for words.
“Good. Bolshoi Nikolo-Vorobinsky, isn’t it? Oh don’t look so alarmed, it’s my business to know about those who interest me, whether for professional or personal reasons. It’s a good building—you’ll like your neighbors. Babel lives upstairs. Do you know him? The writer? If not, you should make it your business to do so—a citizen has a duty to be cultured these days.”
“I know of him, yes,” Korolev managed to say, recalling the writer’s all-too-vivid descriptions of the war against the Poles.
“I can introduce you, if you’d like. He may be useful to you. In fact, I’ll make it a point to do so. He’ll enjoy you, two veterans of the war in Poland—I can see you gossiping away like old women. Maybe he’ll write about you. Who knows?”
“What could a man like Comrade Bab
el see in a humble Militia investigator like me, Colonel? And, for that matter, what is your interest?”
Gregorin opened the driver’s door of a black Emka and Korolev saw humor flash in his dark brown eyes. The colonel’s authority hung easily about him and his thick black hair, swarthy skin and strong features made Korolev wonder if he might be a Georgian, like Stalin, although there was no clear accent when he spoke. He carried himself like an athlete. Not a wide or tall man, but he looked as though he could handle himself.
“You underestimate yourself, Comrade,” Gregorin said, when Korolev was sitting in the car. “I didn’t choose you to lecture tomorrow for no reason—you get results. It will do our students no harm to learn a thing or two from such an effective investigator. And General Popov recommended you—he thinks highly of your abilities.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” Korolev said.
“So, tell me. How’s the case going? Making any progress?”
“It’s in its early stages. We haven’t much to go on just yet, but there are some indications. I’ve written up an initial report—I’ll bring it along tomorrow morning.”
“Good. As it happens, it’s a fortuitous coincidence that you’re working on this case.”
“Why, Colonel?”
“Because the higher echelons have asked me to provide a State Security oversight.”
Sitting back in to the driver’s seat, the colonel exhaled a perfect smoke ring, which hung round and still for a moment before gradually disintegrating. Gregorin observed the smoke ring with satisfaction.
“But why? The case has no political element, does it?” Korolev was mystified as to why the NKVD would be interested in a simple murder, albeit a nasty one. But then he remembered the possibility that the girl was a foreigner. He answered his own question in a whisper.
“Oh—but it does have a political element. The dead girl. She has foreign fillings, and her clothes . . .”