“All the skulls were shattered to varying degrees, particularly around the point of entry,” said Novikov.
“What about fragments in the grave?” demanded Olga.
From the pause and looks that passed between the local pathologist and Aleksandr Kurshin, Charlie guessed no proper search had been made.
Kurshin said, “I was not able to recover any.”
“Has the scene been secured?”
Ryabov looked to his homicide chief and quickly said, “You did put people there like I told you, didn’t you?”
“It’s intact,” said Kurshin, although unconvincingly.
Charlie said, “What about shell casings in or around the grave?”
Kurshin shifted awkwardly. “I did not recover any.”
To Denebin, Charlie said, “The bullets in the kidney bowls are reasonably intact. I’d say they’re nine-millimeter?”
“I think so,” agreed the forensic scientist. “Easy enough to establish.”
Going back to Novikov, Charlie said, “Have you weighed the bullets?”
Everyone frowned at Charlie in varying degrees. Novikov said, “They’re just bullets. They’ll be standard weight.”
“I’d like to know precisely,” said Charlie, surprised Lestov looked confused. That’s what too much sex does for you, my son, Charlie thought.
Miriam Bell actually reached out to turn over the hand of the man designated to be American. “Was there any fingernail debris?”
“Some grave dirt that I guess was forced beneath them when he pitched forward after being shot.”
“The nails are manicured,” said Miriam, almost to herself. “You’ve washed the hands. Did you take photographs before doing that?”
Instead of answering, the pathologist shuffled through the pictures on the contents table and offered her two prints.
Miriam studied them, before offering them sideways to Charlie, who at once gestured for Lestov to look ahead of him. Before he could do so, Lestov felt the dead hand Miriam had turned and said, “It’s soft, not blistered. He didn’t dig his own grave.”
“Neither did the other two,” came in Novikov quickly. “Their hands are unmarked.”
Their hands would literally have been raw if they had even been made to try digging through concrete-hard ground, acknowledged Charlie. Which had been the point of his conversation in the car with the local pathologist. He was sure he knew how the grave had been created and wondered if they’d worked it out.
“The wrist bruising is very definitely linear,” said Denebin, taking the hand from the other Russian. “Handcuffs, obviously.”
“Were they still handcuffed?” demanded Miriam.
“No,” said Kurshin.
“Why take them off?” wondered Miriam.
Charlie was sure he knew. Aloud he said, “And there were insects in the tracheae of all three?”
Novikov pointed to the microscope slides on the exhibition table. “There.”
“I want to carry out a second autopsy,” announced Olga Erzin. “Where can I change?”
For a moment Novikov looked nonplussed. “There’s a toilet along the corridor,” he managed, at last.
Sighing, the woman stomped off. At the order from Novikov the two Yakut attendants wheeled the trolley holding the corpse of the woman to the central examination table. Charlie stayed close to the uniforms, their contents and the photographs, although not at that moment making any too-obvious effort to study anything. The clothing, all heavily bloodstained around the collar, was beginning to smell as well as go moldy. Olga swept back into the room in a trousered medical tunic like a barge in full sail. Charlie waited expectantly for her to insist the room be cleared, but she didn’t. Lev Denebin appeared uncertain which group to join, those at the exhibit tables or Olga and Novikov at the autopsy slab. After a moment’s indecision the forensic scientist came to where Charlie stood, his back now to the second dissection of the female corpse.
Beside him Miriam said, “Bizarre!”
Charlie didn’t think so at all, but he said, “Certainly a strange situation.” He reached out, then stopped. He said to Kurshin, “Every hard surface has been checked for fingerprints?”
“I couldn’t find anything,” said the local detective, apologetically.
“I doubt there would have been, in the conditions,” said Denebin.
Without any discussion they divided according to nationality, Charlie by the table holding the English uniform, Miriam to the American and Denebin and Lestov going to where the clothing of the believed Russian woman was laid out.
Charlie carefully separated the coin from the paper and war-script money, feeling the surge of satisfaction at his immediate find. In predecimalization coin there were four pennies, four half crowns and two florins. Protected as they had been in a trouser-pocket, none were affected from being buried for so long. The brightest was a half crown, dated 1944. The earliest date, 1939, was on a florin. There was another possible time frame indicator—and a very positive direction to follow—from the inscription in the case containing six Camel cigarettes: “S.N. A First. 1932. From a proud father.” Caught by the thought, Charlie turned to the corpse just as the attendants were moving it, momentarily halting them while he examined each hand. The mark where a signet ring had been was very obvious on the little finger of the left.
There was no inscription on the watch case. It didn’t have a date register, either, although an unspecified day of an unspecified month would have been a difficult clue. It was difficult, too, to surmise anything from the stopping time of 12:43. Experimentally he tried winding it, but the button was jammed: if it had run on after the assassination, it would only have been for less than twenty-four hours. Its significance was that it had still been on the man’s wrist, Charlie decided.
He closely examined the keys, the Parker pen and the tie pin before going to the photographs before the actual clothing, wanting a sequence. The agony-rigored face was dirt-smeared but clearly recognizable, particularly in comparison against the second facial set, which, from the background, had been taken in this examination room just prior to the first postmortem. Fair-haired, not clipped militarily short, a high-cheekboned, aristocratic face badly swollen by insect bites moments before he died. And agony, too: maybe disbelieving surprise. Which didn’t square with the handcuff marks. Charlie put that impression on hold, moving through the photographs, getting the confirmation of something else within the first three frames. He looked around, seeing Kurshin with the group by the Russian woman.
“Can you help me?” he asked. Everyone at the other two tables immediately looked at him.
Miriam said, “Found something?”
Too anxious, Charlie thought: so she was having difficulty. “I don’t know yet.”
Pointing to the photograph he held, Charlie called to Novikov, “That’s how you found them in the grave? You hadn’t touched them?”
“That’s how they were, exactly,” the man called back.
Charlie said, “They’re not properly dressed, are they? Look. The fly to the Englishman’s trousers is wrongly buttoned. And two jacket buttons are undone, as well as the shirt.”
He was able to see the American, too. “The shirt buttons are unfastened here, too … ?”
“They’d been stripped of all official ID,” said Novikov. “No dog tags: no military identification at all.”
Charlie turned to the blood-clotted uniform, immediately seeing that there was no regiment designation on the brass buttons but that the shoulder insignia was that of a lieutenant. As casually as he was able, Charlie gently opened the jacket. Where the maker’s name and customer details should have been was an empty, cotton-framed rectangle where it had been torn out: the cloth had actually been ripped, more so at the top where the initial cut, probably with a knife, was clean.
Charlie went immediately but still attempting casualness to the trousers, briefly pausing to locate the mud marks on the knees where the man had been forced to kneel to be
executed, which Charlie had known anyway from the downward trajectory of the wound that Novikov had already spelled out. The tailor’s duplicate label, upon which the owner’s name and measurements would have been recorded, had been yanked off even more roughly than from the jacket, a scrap of the label still remaining. There was sufficient to make out what looked like a half C, which was all Charlie thought he needed. He became even more confident when he found in the record of Novikov’s earlier autopsy the precise list of the dead man’s measurements.
Charlie double-checked his examination to fill in the time, not wanting the others to guess what he considered quick and unexpected success. He even ventured to the adjoining table, where Miriam was still frowning over the displayed contents.
She looked up at his approach and said, “You think we’re ever going to be able to make sense of this?”
“Not from what I’ve seen so far,” lied Charlie, who was sure he could identify the dead Englishman, just as he knew that the murder had been committed certainly with the knowledge of some people within the NKVD, the wartime forerunner of the KGB, although he guessed for a reason far removed from Yakutsk.
His more startling conviction—one he knew was going to cause an upheaval of seismic proportions—was that another Englishman had in some way been involved in the killing, which totally justified his keeping to an absolute minimum what he’d so far worked out. Until he discovered much more, he’d even have to keep the English involvement from Natalia.
“Who?” queried Irena.
“Cartright. Richard Cartright. I’m a friend of Saul Freeman’s. Just arrived in Moscow and trying to make some friends here.”
“You at the American embassy?”
“No. The British.”
Irena smiled to herself. “What have you got in mind?”
“A drink? Dinner, maybe?”
“Sounds fun.”
10
The mortuary and the militia headquarters were part of the same gradually sinking administration complex: some of the corridors along which they silently followed the heavy-footed military commissioner noticeably inclined and even more steeply declined like the decks of a wallowing ship. The crepe-soled grip of the Hush Puppies helped and briefly Charlie’s hammer-toed feet were at peace.
Charlie was more than content with the day so far. No one else seemed to be. Charlie was happy about that, too. The most dissatisfied was Olga Erzin and the Russian forensic scientist, the woman because she’d been unable substantially to improve on the first autopsy findings, Lev Denebin because in the woman’s determination to find something the postmortems had occupied the entire day. Now it was almost six in the evening, too late to go out to the grave, which Denebin had pressed for since midday, to the visible annoyance of Yuri Ryabov, who’d refused to alter his prearranged schedule.
There was no clue to its normal use in the sag-windowed room into which Ryabov led them. It was starkly bare except for a communal table against which the precise number of chairs were already arranged, with a separate table and chair for the solemnly waiting secretary. Charlie dismissed his predictable committee claustrophobia, for once, rarely, benefiting by being part of a group. During the protracted time it had taken Olga Erzin to complete her examinations, Charlie had openly studied the clothing and the pocket contents of both Russian and American victims, maneuvering the opportunity by inviting the others to do the same with the belongings of the Englishman, confident they’d miss a lot of what was significant to him. It was important now to discover precisely what they had learned. Even more important was finding out if there was something he’d missed.
So for the moment Ryabov’s tight orchestration was not to his disadvantage; in fact, it was even more to his advantage than anyone else’s, Charlie hoped. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that he had enough. But that wasn’t sufficient. It never was. Charlie wanted it all, each and every time.
“I hope we’ve learned from our first day’s work—made progress …” opened the police chief, from the very positively chosen head of the table. He looked challengingly at Lev Denebin, who sat, totally withdrawn, doodling on a pad, refusing to take any part in the meeting. Ryabov shifted his attention, going encouragingly toward the Russian pathologist. “And that work has been largely yours, I think?”
Quickly Charlie said, “I was very impressed by the detail of the original examinations, by Dr. Novikov. I’d certainly like to hear what additionally Dr. Erzin discovered.”
The Russian medical examiner fixed him with the cast-in-stone look that Charlie expected and didn’t care about. With what Charlie judged to be attempted—and doomed-to-failure—avoidance, the woman said, “I have to subject all the organs to appropriate scientific examination, which hasn’t yet been properly done …”
Charlie snatched an opportunity he hadn’t anticipated. “Which you will, over the coming days?”
Imagining an escape, the woman said, “It will be necessary to take everything back to Moscow for total analysis.” She smiled triumphantly.
“What about your preliminary findings?” pressed Charlie, smiling not at the woman but at the tightly attentive Vitali Novikov.
The woman’s triumph faltered. “Comparatively straightforward,” she conceded. “I believe, however, that there were burn markings to the skull fragments I extracted: that the gun was placed directly against the backs of their heads.”
Which I could have told you, thought Charlie. He said, “The preservation of the bodies is remarkable, though, isn’t it?” No one was opposing his taking over the meeting and Charlie was glad, needing to be the ringmaster. They probably expected him to disclose something in his apparent eagerness. Hope in vain, he thought.
“Yes?” agreed the woman, although questioningly.
“So you were able to secure fingerprints, despite the fact that they died so long ago?”
“Yes,” said the woman, again. The reluctance was obvious.
“And you also took photographs of the faces not distorted by rigor?” Charlie had much earlier realized that the fogging of some of Novikov’s earlier scene-of-crime pictures was caused by insects blocking the camera lens, not bad development. It was all going remarkably well, he decided. He could have written the script himself. In fact, he realized, at that moment that was virtually what he was doing.
“You saw me do it,” said the woman, impatiently.
“So we have made progress!” declared Charlie, using the police chief’s expression. “You will be able to let my American colleague and I have fingerprints and photographs—as they were when they died—of people we have to identify. That’s wonderful.”
Olga Erzin didn’t immediately reply, aware not just of what she’d been trapped into conceding but that she now had no way to avoid surrendering both. Tight-lipped, she said, “Yes.”
Charlie continued to smile, apparently grateful, in reality anticipating the coup de grace. “As notes are being taken of this meeting—which I know are going to be made as available as the fingerprints and the photographs—I think it should also be made clear that the previous examination by Dr. Novikov was totally thorough and complete, wouldn’t you say that, Dr. Erzin?”
“That is so,” conceded the verbally straitjacketed doctor.
Charlie said, “I’d like my appreciation to be recorded as being expressed on behalf of the British government.”
Novikov beamed and Charlie relaxed, satisfied. As asshole-crawling went, this had gone on long enough. He hoped he’d encouraged the local doctor beyond what the man had so far been willing to talk about.
“I think what primarily has to be established is whether, in your opinion, the male bodies are those of British and American nationals,” said Kurshin.
“I’m sure they are,” said Charlie.
“So am I,” agreed Miriam.
“Is there sufficient to identify them?” demanded Lestov, at once.
“It’s far too early to give any opinion on that,” refused Charlie.
“T
here’s more personally identifying material on the Englishman,” insisted Miriam.
Not bad, acknowledged Charlie; not enough to put him under any pressure, though. He said, “We’ve certainly got the initials of a name, from the inscription on the cigarette case. But that just gives us one very small needle in a huge haystack. There has been an obvious attempt to remove any identification, ripping out names from the uniforms and taking all the dog tags.” He waited for the challenge, although he hadn’t seen anyone examine the English victim’s inside trousers band.
“Why, I wonder, were any belongings left at all?” asked Ryabov.
If you genuinely do wonder, you shouldn’t be chief of police, thought Charlie. Instead of spelling out the significance—that their being left proved a motive other than personal robbery, an element of premeditation, and that the killings had nothing whatsoever to do with the Yakatskaya gulags, to whose prisoners the articles would have represented a fortune—Charlie said, “Panic, perhaps. They took the obvious identification, snapped neckties and hurriedly redressed the bodies, anxious to get away from the scene …” He was conscious of Miriam Bell looking curiously at him. “What do you think?”
“That could be the reason?” replied the American, although without conviction. “What’s the inscription mean in the cigarette case? What’s a ‘First’?”
Another good try, conceded Charlie. “A high college pass.”
“So you’ve a direction?” she persisted.
Shit, thought Charlie. “It could be from a hundred schools: more than a hundred,” he lied. “And have been gained anywhen over a period as long as twelve years, if we accept the top age estimate of thirty-five. It’s a search we’ll have to make, of course. But I’m not hopeful.” He wasn’t volunteering, but he wasn’t learning, either. Which was significant enough in itself, proving how determined everyone was not to share the smallest scrap.
“Why would an American officer carry a magnifying glass and tweezers?” asked Lestov.
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