by Child 44
Before leaving the apartment Raisa had taken the list of names, crumpling the paper into her pocket. Leo had hurriedly gathered together the case file. They had no idea how long it would take the State Security to respond to Ivan’s call. They’d opened the front door, running down the stairs before approximating calmness as they walked away. As they’d reached the end of the street they’d glanced back. Agents were entering the building.
No one in Moscow had any reason to believe Leo and Raisa had returned. They wouldn’t be immediate suspects. The officer in charge of the investigation, if the connection even occurred to him, would check with the MGB in Voualsk and discover that they were on a walking holiday. That excuse might hold unless a witness identified a man and a woman entering the apartment building. If that happened then their alibi would come under closer scrutiny. But Leo knew all of these facts were of only the slightest importance. Even if there was no evidence, even if they really had been on a walking holiday, this murder could be used as a pretext to arrest them. The weight of evidence was totally irrelevant.
In their current predicament trying to see his parents was an act of sheer brazenness. But there was no train back to Voualsk until five in the morning, and more to the point, Leo understood this would be his last chance to speak to them. Although he’d been refused contact with them since leaving Moscow and been given no details of their whereabouts, he had acquired the address several weeks ago. Knowing that the State departments tended to operate in autonomy, he’d felt there was a chance that an inquiry to the Department of Housing about Stepan and Anna wouldn’t be automatically flagged up and passed on to the MGB. As a precaution he’d given a false name and tried to make his request seem as though it were official business, asking for a selection of names, including Galina Shaporina. Although all the other names had drawn a blank, he’d managed to locate his parents. Vasili might have been expecting such an attempt; indeed, he might even have given orders for the address to be released. He knew Leo’s weakness in exile would be his parents. If he wanted to catch him violating orders then his parents were the perfect trap. But it seemed unlikely that his parents would be under permanent surveillance for as long as four months. More probable was that the family they were forced to share with were also doubling as informers. He had to reach his parents without the other family seeing or hearing or knowing. His parents’ safety depended upon this secrecy as much as their own. If they were caught, they’d be tied to Ivan’s murder and Leo’s entire family would die, perhaps even before the night was over. Leo was prepared to take the risk. He had to say good-bye.
They’d arrived on Ulitsa Vorontsovskaya. The house in question was an old building, prerevolutionary—the kind that had been sliced into a hundred tiny apartments, partitioned by nothing more than dirty sheets hanging off lengths of rope. There would be no amenities, no running water and no indoor toilets. Leo could see pipes jutting out of the windows to release the smoke from the woodstoves, the cheapest and dirtiest form of heating available. Surveying the property from a safe distance, they waited. Mosquitoes landed on their necks, forcing them to continually slap their skin until their hands were spotted with their own blood. Leo knew no matter how long he stood here there was no way he could ascertain if this was a trap. He’d have to go in. He turned to Raisa. Before he could speak she said:
—I’ll wait here.
Raisa felt ashamed. She’d trusted Ivan; her opinion of him had been based solely on the trappings of his books and papers, his musings on Western culture, his alleged plans to help key dissident writers smuggle their works out to the West. Lies, all of it—how many writers and opponents of the regime had he snared? How many manuscripts had he burned so that they were lost to the world? How many artists and free thinkers had he directed the Chekists to arrest? She’d fallen for him because of his obvious differences from Leo. Those differences had been a disguise. The dissident had been the policeman and the policeman had become the counterrevolutionary. The dissident had betrayed her, the policeman saved her. She could hardly say good-bye to Leo’s parents, side by side with her husband, as though she’d been a loyal, loving wife. Leo took her hand:
—I’d like you to come with me.
The communal door was unlocked. The air inside was hot, stale, and they immediately began to sweat, their clothes clinging to their backs. Upstairs, at apartment 27, the door was locked. Leo had broken into many properties. The older locks were normally more difficult to pick than the modern ones. Using the tip of a switchblade, he unscrewed the plate, revealing the lock mechanism. He inserted the blade but the lock refused to open. He wiped the sweat from his face, stopping for a moment, breathing deeply, closing his eyes. He dried his hands on his trousers, ignoring the mosquitoes—let them have their fill. He opened his eyes. Concentrate. The lock clicked open.
The only light came from the window facing the street. The room stank of sleeping bodies. Leo and Raisa waited by the door, adjusting to the gloom. They could distinguish the outline of three beds: two of the beds contained adult couples. A smaller bed appeared to have three children sleeping in it. In the kitchen area two small children slept on rugs on the floor like dogs under a table. Leo moved toward the sleeping adults. Neither of them were his parents. Had he been given the wrong address? Such incompetence was commonplace. Maybe the wrong address had been given to him deliberately?
Seeing the outline of another door, he moved toward it, the floorboards straining under each step. Raisa was just behind and of much lighter tread. The couple in the nearest bed began to stir. Leo paused, waiting for them to settle down. The couple remained asleep. Leo continued, Raisa following. He reached out, taking hold of the door handle.
There were no windows in this room, no light whatsoever. Leo had to keep the door open in order to see anything. He could make out that there were two beds and barely a gap between them. Not even a dirty sheet partitioned them. One bed contained two children. In the other bed there was an adult couple. He moved closer. These were his parents, sleeping pressed against each other, in a narrow single bed. Leo stood up, returning to Raisa and whispering:
—Shut the door.
Forced to move in total darkness, Leo felt his way along the bed until he was crouched on the floor beside his parents. He listened to them sleep, glad it was dark. He was crying. The room they’d been forced into was smaller than the bathroom of their previous apartment. They had no space of their own and no way of cutting themselves off from this family. They’d been sent here to die in parallel to their son’s intended demise: humiliated.
At exactly the same time he placed a hand over each of their mouths. He could feel them waking, startled. To stop them from calling out he whispered:
—It’s me. Leo. Don’t make a noise.
The tension in their bodies disappeared. He removed his hands from their mouths. He could hear them sitting up. He felt his mother’s hands on his face. Blind, in this darkness, she was touching him. Her fingers stopped moving when they felt his tears. He heard her voice, barely a whisper:
—Leo . . .
His father’s hands joined hers. Leo pressed their hands against his face. He’d sworn to look after them and he’d failed. All he could do was mutter:
—I’m sorry.
His father replied:
—You’ve nothing to apologize for. We would’ve lived like this all of our life had it not been for you.
His mother interrupted, her mind catching up with all the questions she wanted to ask:
—We thought you were dead. We were told you’d both been arrested.
—They lied. We’ve been sent to Voualsk. I was demoted, not imprisoned. I’m now working for the militia. I wrote to you many times, asking the letters be forwarded to you, but they must have been intercepted and destroyed.
The children in the nearby bed stirred, their bedframe creaking. Everyone fell silent. Leo waited until he could hear the children’s deep, slow breathing:
—Raisa is here.
; He guided their hands to her. All four of them held hands. His mother asked:
—The baby?
—No.
Leo added, not wanting to complicate this reunion:
—Miscarriage.
Raisa spoke again, her voice broken with emotion:
—I’m sorry.
—This is not your fault.
Anna added:
—How long are you in Moscow for? Can we meet tomorrow?
—No, we shouldn’t be here at all. If we’re caught we’ll be imprisoned and you will be too. We leave first thing in the morning.
—Shall we come outside so we can talk?
Leo thought about this. There was no way they’d all be able to leave the apartment without waking some of the family:
—We can’t risk waking them. We have to talk here.
No one spoke for a while, four sets of hands clasped together in the darkness. Eventually Leo said:
—I have to get you a better place to live.
—No, Leo. Listen to me. You’ve often behaved as if our love was dependent on the things you could do for us. Even as a child. That is not true. You must concentrate on your lives. We’re old. It doesn’t matter where we live anymore. The only thing that has kept us alive is waiting for some news from you. We must accept that this will be the last time we meet. We mustn’t make futile plans. We must say good-bye while we have the chance. Leo, I love you and I’m proud of you. I wish you could’ve had a better government to serve.
Anna’s voice was now quite calm:
—You have each other, you love each other. You will have a good life, I believe that. Things will be different for you and for your children. Russia will be different. I feel very hopeful.
A fantasy, but she enjoyed believing it, and Leo said nothing to contradict it.
Stepan took hold of Leo’s hand, placing in it an envelope:
—This is a letter I wrote to you many months ago. I never had the chance to give it to you because you were sent away. I didn’t want to post it. Read this when you’re safely on the train. Promise me not to read it earlier. Promise me.
—What is it?
—Your mother and I considered very carefully the contents of this letter. It contains everything we wanted to say to you but were unable to for one reason or another. It contains all the things we should’ve spoken about a long time ago.
—Father . . .
—Take it, Leo, for us.
Leo accepted the letter and in the darkness the four of them hugged for the last time.
6 JULY
LEO APPROACHED THE TRAIN, Raisa beside him. Were there more officers than usual on the platform? Was it possible they were already looking for them? Raisa was walking too fast: he took hold of her hand, briefly, and she slowed. The letter written by his parents had been stashed with the case file attached to his chest. They were almost at their carriage.
They boarded the crowded train. Leo whispered to Raisa:
—Stay here.
She nodded. He entered the cramped toilet, locking the door behind him, dropping the lid to reduce the smell. Taking off his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt, he removed the thin cotton bag he’d stitched to hold the case file. It was soaked with sweat and the ink from the typed documents had made an impression on his skin, writing printed across his chest.
He found the letter, turning it over in his hand. No name on the envelope, it was crumpled, dirty. He wondered how his parents had managed to keep it a secret from the other family, who inevitably would’ve searched through their belongings. One of them must have kept the letter on their person at all times, morning and night.
The train began to move, leaving Moscow. He’d kept his promise. He was now allowed to read it. He waited until they’d left the station before opening the envelope and unfolding the letter. It was his father’s handwriting:
Leo, neither your mother nor I have any regrets. We love you. We always expected there would come a day when we’d talk to you about this matter. To our surprise that day never came. We thought you would raise it when you were ready. But you never did, you’ve always acted as though it never happened. Perhaps it was easier to teach yourself to forget? This is why we said nothing. We thought this was your way of dealing with the past. We were afraid that you’d blanked it out and that bringing it up again would only cause hurt and pain. In short, we were happy together and we didn’t want to ruin that. That was cowardly of us.
I say once again both I and your mother love you very much, and neither of us have any regrets.
Leo—
Leo stopped reading, turning his head away. Yes, he remembered what had happened. He knew what the letter would go on to say. And yes, he’d spent his whole life trying to forget. He folded the letter before carefully ripping it into small pieces. He stood up, opening the small window, throwing the fragments out. Caught in the wind the uneven squares of paper rose up into the air and disappeared out of view.
SOUTHEASTERN ROSTOV OBLAST
SIXTEEN KILOMETERS NORTH OF ROSTOV-ON-DON
SAME DAY
NESTEROV HAD SPENT HIS LAST DAY in the oblast visiting the town of Gukovo. He was now on the elektrichka, traveling back toward Rostov. Though the newspapers made no mention of these crimes, the incidents of murdered children had entered the public domain in the form of whispers and rumor. So far the militia in their closed localities had refused to see each murder as anything other than an isolated occurrence. But people outside of the militia, unburdened by any theory regarding the nature of crime, had begun to thread together these deaths. Unofficial explanations had begun to circulate. Nesterov had heard it stated that there was a wild beast murdering children in the forests around Shakhty. Different places had conjured different beasts, and supernatural explanations of one kind or another were being repeated all across the oblast. He’d heard a fearful mother claim the beast was part man, part animal, a child brought up by bears who now hated all normal children, making them its food source. One village had been sure it was a vengeful forest spirit, the inhabitants performing elaborate ceremonies in an attempt to mollify this demon.
The people living in the Rostov oblast had no idea that there were similar crimes hundreds of kilometers away. They believed this was their blight, an evil that plagued them. In a way Nesterov agreed with them. There was no doubt in his mind that he was in the heartland of these crimes. The concentration of murders was far higher here than anywhere else. While he had no inclination to believe the supernatural explanations, he was in part seduced by the most persuasive and widespread of the theories, the notion that Nazi soldiers had been left behind as Hitler’s final act of revenge: soldiers whose last orders were to murder Russia’s children. These Nazi soldiers had been trained in the Russian way of life, blending in, while systematically murdering children according to a predetermined ritual. It would explain the scale of the murders, the geographical scope, the savagery, but also the absence of any sexual interference. There wasn’t one killer but many, perhaps as many as ten or twelve, each acting independently, traveling to towns and killing indiscriminately. This theory had developed such momentum that some local militia, who’d paradoxically claimed to have solved all the crimes, began questioning any men who could speak German.
Nesterov stood up, stretching his legs. He’d been on the elektrichka for three hours. It was slow and uncomfortable and he wasn’t used to sitting still for so long. He walked the length of the carriage, opening the window, watching the lights of the city approach. Having heard about the murder of a boy named Petya living on a collective farm near Gukovo, he’d traveled there this morning. Without too much difficulty he’d found the parents of the boy concerned. Though he’d given a false name he’d truthfully explained that he was working on an investigation involving the similar murders of a number of children. The boy’s parents had been staunch advocates of the Nazi soldier theory, explaining that the Germans might even have been helped by traitorous Ukrainians, assisting them to integrate into soci
ety before murdering at random. The boy’s father had shown Nesterov Petya’s book of stamps which the couple kept in its wooden box under their bed, a shrine to their dead son. Neither of them could look at the stamps without crying. Both parents had been refused access to their boy’s body. But they’d heard what had been done to him. He’d been savaged as if by an animal, dirt thrust in his mouth as if to spite them further. The father, who’d fought in the Great Patriotic War, knew that the Nazi soldiers were given drugs to ensure they were vicious, amoral, and merciless. He was sure that these killers were the products of some such Nazi-created drug. Maybe they’d been made addicted to children’s blood, without which they’d die. How else could these men commit such crimes? Nesterov had no words of consolation except a promise that the culprit would be caught.
The elektrichka arrived at Rostov. Nesterov disembarked, confident only that he’d found the center of these crimes. Having once been a member of the militia in Rostov before being transferred to Voualsk four years ago, he’d had little difficulty gathering information. According to his most recent count fifty-seven children had been killed in what he considered to be comparable circumstances. A high portion of those murders had taken place in this oblast. Was it possible that across the entire western half of the country Nazi infiltrators had been left behind? An enormous stretch of land had been occupied by the Wehrmacht. He himself had fought in the Ukraine and encountered firsthand the rape and murder by the retreating army. Deciding not to commit himself to one theory or another, he pushed these explanations to one side. Leo’s mission in Moscow would be crucial to bring some kind of professionalism to the speculation of the killer’s identity. Nesterov had been tasked with the accumulation of facts regarding the killer’s location.