by William Ryan
When the colonel put it like that, of course, everything became clearer for Korolev—he took a deep breath.
“I’m always ready to do my duty, Comrade Colonel, as I said.”
“Good.”
“And the evidence we gathered?”
“Will be made available to you. This will be an ordinary investigation, to all intents and purposes, but without involving the procurator’s office. You’ll have the same team assigned to you as before, along with Lieutenant Dubinkin, who works for me. He’ll assist you and your colleagues in getting hold of any information that might otherwise prove difficult to obtain. You shouldn’t have any problems, however—as you’ve seen, this investigation and your involvement have been authorized at the highest levels. Comrade Ezhov remembers you, you’ll be pleased to hear, and retains a high opinion of you.”
Korolev nodded, not at all pleased that the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs was even aware of his existence. Something in his expression must have amused Rodinov because the brief smile that crossed his face appeared genuine enough.
“So high an opinion,” Rodinov went on, “that he even wondered whether your temporary assignment to the NKVD shouldn’t be made permanent.”
Korolev’s immediate reaction must have shown because Rodinov laughed.
“Don’t worry, Korolev. I can think of few people less suited to the kind of work we generally do. And that’s not to speak ill of you. No, Korolev, you’re an excellent Militia detective—it’s just we’re specialists in our field; and you don’t use a hammer to cut wood, or a saw to hammer nails—that’s all there is to it.”
Korolev did his best to keep his relief to himself.
“Very good,” Rodinov said, picking up a piece of paper from the desk. “Dubinkin will meet you at Shtange’s apartment at eight o’clock. This is the address. I’ll expect daily reports. You may go.”
Korolev stood and walked toward the door. He was just about to open it when the colonel interrupted him.
“Korolev, just so you’re aware—those weren’t my department’s men who came for you this evening. And they weren’t my orders either. I think you’ve met Colonel Zaitsev—it seems he wanted to meet you again. Luckily for you, I took the matter over before he did.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Korolev was able to persuade the garage at Petrovka to send a car to the Militia post across the square and occupied himself during the time it took to arrive by calling Yasimov. His old friend looked grim-faced when he pulled up outside his building not fifteen minutes later.
“This better be important—I’ve had half the kommunalka threatening to kill me over you disturbing their sleep with your phone call,” Yasimov said, opening the car door. His eyes widened when he saw the state Korolev was in.
“A long story,” Korolev said, “and not all of which I can tell you.”
But he told him what he could—and the fact that Yuri was alone somewhere out near Babel’s summer house and how he was back on the Azarov case. Yasimov didn’t ask any questions, only nodded.
“We’ll find him—don’t worry.”
* * *
Korolev drove as if the devil himself were snapping at the rear bumper of the Packard. He threw the heavy car round one corner so hard that its chassis rose onto two wheels, teetering for a moment on the point of turning over before it crashed back down.
“Lyoshka,” Yasimov said. “We’ll never get there if we’re dead.”
Korolev took his point and slowed to a more reasonable speed—but even so, he barely lifted his foot from the accelerator the whole journey. By the time he’d reached Peredelkino he was drenched in sweat from the heat of the engine and the effort of bullying the car to do his will. But he at least retained enough good sense to coast down the slope toward the dacha, rolling to a silent stop about fifty meters away.
By now the darkness had given way to a shadowy half-light. Not the slightest breeze moved through the silent trees but the birds must already be stretching themselves in their nests to greet the day. Korolev and Yasimov walked along the gravel drive that led toward the house, their footsteps the only sound, and Korolev hoped his hunch that Yuri would have stayed close to the house—at least until dawn—was right. After all, this was the only spot he knew apart from the river. They moved as quietly as they could, but they must have been making more noise than he thought, because a white face appeared at the caretaker’s window. Not long afterward, Lipski opened the door to his small house, looking at Korolev with sympathy.
“They let you go?”
“They really did just want to talk to me.”
Lipski’s glance took in Korolev’s battered face but he said nothing.
“I see.” Lipski ran fingers through his thick beard. “I’ve kept an eye out but there’s been no sign of him—I’m sorry.”
* * *
They searched the woods, calling Yuri’s name, until the sun came up and it was time for Korolev to leave.
“Mitya,” Korolev said to his friend, “I have to go—if he’s still in the locality, my guess is he’ll try to take a train to Moscow.”
“I’d better get down to the station, then.”
“If he manages to get that far, he’ll try and make his way to Bolshoi Nikolo-Vorobinsky—can you call Valentina Nikolayevna? Just in case. Tell her what’s happened and ask her to make sure people keep an eye out for him?”
Yasimov nodded, then put a hand on Korolev’s arm.
“Don’t worry, brother. We’ll find him for you—see if we don’t.”
But Korolev couldn’t shake the fear he felt for his son, despite the reassurance Yasimov offered him
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The building Shtange had lived in was familiar to Korolev. It overlooked Chistye Prudy—a small green area with a pond on the Boulevard Ring that wasn’t far—about a mile or so—from Bolshoi Nikolo-Vorobinsky. It was the decoration on the apartment building’s external walls that made it a landmark for Muscovites, however. Strange abstract animals and weird elongated plants twisted and turned up its white walls—carved in relief and highlighted with black paint. It reassured him, for some reason—a familiar location was always a good starting point for an investigation.
A baby-faced uniform was standing in front of the building, his summer jacket too tight for him and not as white as it should be. As Korolev approached, he noticed the boy’s gaze kept shifting as if he wasn’t sure what to do with himself or where to look. One moment, he was staring at the ground, then he was peering into the holster that hung from his belt to check his revolver was still there, then he was examining each of his boots in turn, then rubbing them against the back of his trousers to try and make them look as though they remembered what it felt like to be polished. Yet for all his looking, the boy didn’t spot Korolev until he was within a few feet of him—which didn’t say much for his abilities as a guard. When he finally noticed his visitor, the boy’s eyes widened in a mixture of alarm and suspicion and his hand reached toward the holster.
“Korolev—from Petrovka,” Korolev said, holding out his identification card. The boy took it with relief. This, at last, was something the fellow felt comfortable with—Korolev would be surprised if the boy had come top of his class when it came to examining papers.
“Captain Korolev?” he said, reading from the card and then looking up at him, doubt twisting his mouth. Korolev hadn’t had time to change his clothes or clean himself up. Not that there would have been much he could have done about his face anyway.
“I walked into a door,” Korolev said. “It’s me, all right. It’s who you are I’d like to know.”
“Militiaman Kuznetsky, Comrade Captain” the boy said, straightening to attention. “My apologies—it’s just you look…”
“I know what I look like, believe me—I don’t feel much better. So what are you doing here?”
“I was guarding the apartment inside, Comrade Captain, but when they came this morning they told me to wait down here.�
�� He looked up at the apartment building. “I suppose I’m guarding the whole place now.”
“They?”
“You know, Comrade Captain. Them. They were here yesterday as well. And the day before that.”
“I see,” Korolev said. “When did they arrive today?”
Kuznetsky looked at his watch.
“Twenty minutes ago. There are two of our people in there as well. Two forensics men—they came about ten minutes ago—with all their bags and things.”
“What about the body?”
“The doctor took it away the day before yesterday. Not long after it was found.”
“I see,” Korolev said, looking up at the facade once again. “Which doctor would that have been?”
“A lady doctor, Comrade Captain—I didn’t catch her name. She was a well-proportioned lady, not to be disrespectful.”
That would be Chestnova.
“Did you see the body before it was moved?”
“Oh yes, Comrade Captain. I was one of those that found him. His blood went through to the ceiling of the flat below, you see, and they didn’t like the look of the stain it made and called us out.”
“Us?”
“Sergeant Bukov and me. From the station. We broke the door in and there he was—like a pin cushion without the pins. I didn’t know a fellow had that much blood inside him.”
“He was stabbed then?”
“Stabbed? About a hundred times, he was stabbed.”
“So who’s been handling the investigation since?”
Kuznetsky glanced down at his boots, as if they might offer him some assistance in handling a question he clearly didn’t want to answer.
“Them,” he said once again. “Well, only one of them now. It was a different lot before. He’s upstairs. The new one, that is.”
Korolev nodded, guessing that this must be Dubinkin. “I suppose I’d better go and see him then.”
Kuznetsky looked sympathetic.
“He’s up on the second floor—you’ll find it easy enough. I’d best stay here and guard the building.” Then, remembering who he was talking to, he added, “Comrade Captain.”
“Do that, Kuznetsky. But first call Sergeant Bukov and tell him I want to see him. The Militia will be taking a more active role in the investigation from now on—and I’ll need his, and your, assistance.”
Korolev patted the boy on the shoulder as he passed.
He was just about to enter the building when he heard his name being called and turned to find Slivka holding her watch to her ear.
“I’m not late, am I? Damned thing. It’s telling the time all right, just not the right time.”
Her glance took in the state of him and she came to a sudden halt.
“What the hell happened to you, Chief?”
“A misunderstanding—I had some visitors last night. They got the wrong end of the stick.”
“It looks like they beat you with it all the same. Why would someone come to your house in the middle of the night? Were they drunk?”
“No,” Korolev said. “You know the sort of night-time visitor—they come unannounced.”
“Oh. That sort,” Slivka said and ran a hand back through her hair, a gesture that pulled the skin on her forehead tight, but didn’t quite obscure her worried frown. “And you’re here? Not somewhere else? They let you go.”
“They wanted to talk to me about the Azarov case,” Korolev said.
“I’d an idea there might be something more to this.” Slivka looked up at the building and sighed. “The chief just told me to meet you here.”
“When did he call you?”
“About two in the morning. No gentlemen visitors, though.”
“Be thankful—they also managed to frighten Yuri enough that he’s running around the woods somewhere out near Babel’s place. Yasimov’s trying to find him.”
Slivka took this in, shaking her head in disbelief. “He’ll find him though. Yasimov’s like a bloodhound.”
“I hope so. Anyway, here we are—back on the Azarov case.”
Slivka blinked twice then extracted a solitary papirosa from one pocket and a solitary match from the other. She whipped the match down the wall of the building and lit the cigarette.
“The Azarov case,” she said, in a voice that announced to the world that her fate was a dark and gloomy one.
“Another of the professor’s colleagues managed to get himself killed. We’re to handle both investigations—and we’re going to be working directly for State Security.”
“Well,” Slivka said, her mouth trailing smoke, “life isn’t just a walk across a field. And if it is, it should be known that sometimes there’s mud to wade through.”
She nodded, as if that were all that needed to be said. Korolev found a reluctant smile tugging at his mouth as they entered the building. Things couldn’t be that bad if he had Slivka watching his back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They followed the doorman’s directions up the stairwell and Korolev had the sense that the building was holding its collective breath—terrified by what had happened. Certainly there was no sound except the echo of their footsteps on the stairs.
When they reached the second-floor landing, yellow light spilled out of an open doorway along with the murmur of conversation. In case there was any doubt they were in the right place, someone had helpfully marked out the shape of a body on the carpet just inside the apartment’s hallway. Korolev couldn’t help but notice that the white tape they’d used had been placed directly onto a wide spread of crusted blood. He wasn’t surprised it had gone through to the floor below. There was a lot of it.
“Hello,” Korolev called as he carefully stepped over the outline, looking around as he did so at the splattered walls. To judge from one long arc of blood in particular, it seemed whoever had killed the doctor had managed to sever one of his arteries.
“Come in,” called a voice Korolev didn’t recognize, and he followed it to its source—a large sitting room painted wheat-field yellow. Most of one wall was taken up by a fitted sideboard with shelves that climbed to the ceiling—shelves that were empty except for a solitary vase of wilting flowers. There was a large circular table with four wooden chairs around it, a daybed upholstered in deep-red velvet and scattered with silk cushions of various sizes and colors, and a pair of leather armchairs that had seen better days—none of them recent. But despite the furniture the place felt empty. Hollow, even. As if no one lived here. Which, he supposed, was now the case.
The two forensics men, Levschinsky and Ushakov, were standing in the center of the room with their arms folded, bags and equipment at their feet, looking gray against the bright walls. Around them the carpet was marked with brown streaks and what looked like footprints—blood brought into the apartment by the killer? Or by Militiamen and Chekists who hadn’t been conscious of the need to protect a crime scene? Korolev nodded to his two colleagues and turned his attention to the man in the NKVD uniform standing beside the window. Dubinkin, he presumed.
“It’s Korolev, isn’t it?” The Chekist broke the paper tube off a papirosa and put the short tobacco-filled end into a silver holder. “And this must be Sergeant Slivka. You’ll both know these comrades, I presume.”
He waved a hand in the direction of the others and Korolev nodded. A good-looking fellow, he supposed—a narrow face, despite the extra weight he was carrying around his midriff, and clean-shaven, with smoothed-back dark-brown hair that made him look like some jazz musician from the Empire Restaurant. Dubinkin beckoned him toward the window and gestured down at the bustling traffic of a busy Moscow morning.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
It was said in a friendly way, but Korolev couldn’t help but wonder what the hell the question meant. But what was a man supposed to do? Disagree with a Chekist?
“A very fine day, Comrade Lieutenant,” he said, looking down at a column of white-shirted children marching behind a female teacher, their red Pioneer
scarves bunched round their throats—a reminder that Yuri was still missing. He felt his hands clenching into fists, thinking he’d better things to be doing than looking out of damned windows to amuse Chekists.
“But what about your son, Korolev?” Dubinkin asked, and Korolev wondered, not for the first time in recent days, whether his thoughts were written on his forehead. “Any news of him?”
“He’s still missing.”
Korolev sensed the other Militiamen’s eyes on his and he avoided them. Instead he looked down at the children as they were packed onto a tram; thinking how hot it would be for them in there on a day like this. Yuri’s age, too. He stopped himself. There was no point in worrying about Yuri—Yasimov would find him—he was sure of it. He caught Slivka’s concerned look and took a deep breath, then let it out, feeling some of his anger go with it.
“It seems to be a good-sized apartment,” Korolev said, deciding that moving the conversation away from his missing son would be wise.
“The State looks after such valued contributors to the cause of Soviet science. There are two other rooms and a small kitchen. One of the rooms is used as a study and the other as a bedroom.”
Korolev turned to the forensics men. “Have you had a look around?”
“A quick look,” Ushakov said. “I might be able to do something with the blood in the hallway—we’ve taken samples. We might even be able to give you a rough time of death based on how long it took the blood to go through to the ceiling below.”
Ushakov nodded down at the carpet.
“As you can see, there are footprints all over the place and just by looking at them I can tell you they belong to at least three or four different people, one of them possibly female. But as we can’t compare them to footwear worn by the previous investigators”—Ushakov looked at Dubinkin—“it probably makes trying to track them down and match them up a wild-goose chase. One thing though—there’s a lot of dried blood in and around the kitchen sink, so it’s possible the killer tried to clean themselves there. To judge from all the blood on the walls in the hallway, I’d say the likelihood is they were covered in the stuff. Anyway, we’ll do our best to make something of it.”
