For Dennisov, he looked good.
‘You can tell me,’ Dennisov said.
‘This isn’t the time.’
‘When is?’ he demanded crossly. ‘For people like us?’
‘Like us?’
‘Broken,’ Dennisov said. ‘Buggered. Running on the wrong voltage. In need of new parts.’ He was reaching for the button when Tom stopped him.
‘You like Sveta?’
Dennisov nodded, something close to anguish in his eyes. Something that made Dennisov glance down and away so that Tom couldn’t see anything more. ‘Yes,’ he said, sounding sad. ‘I like her. But if you and Sveta …’
The truth came easily.
‘There is no me and Sveta.’
They made a strange enough pair coming out of the House of Lions for the militsiya guard by the tape to turn to see what had made the Englishwoman stare. When Sir Edward and Mary Batten climbed from the Jaguar it was to try to intercept Tom before he could reach Anna. They’d left it too late.
Dennisov straightened his jacket and Tom found himself rearranging the collar of the coat he’d borrowed. When the guard put up his hand, Dennisov produced a Party card from his pocket and flicked it open. The man’s salute was an instinctive, unthinking reaction.
‘Is it Alex?’ Anna demanded.
‘Anna. How do you know about the body?’
‘Is it Alex, damn you?’
‘We had a call,’ said Mary Batten, coming up behind her, ‘from a Welsh girl at the university. She was given a message for you. We’re trying to find out who asked her to pass it on. Now, unless you’re being intentionally cruel, is it Alex?’
Tom took a deep breath. ‘So I’m told. I’m really sorry.’
‘I don’t believe you. It can’t be. They wouldn’t …’ Sir Edward stepped around him, scowling as the guard blocked his way. The guard looked to Dennisov for instructions.
‘One only,’ Dennisov said. ‘It’s a crime scene.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Anna said.
‘Anna …’
‘I said I’ll do it.’ She didn’t look at her husband again.
Leaving Dennisov to handle Sir Edward, Tom led her into the park.
KGB officers watched them approach, their gazes suddenly flicking to the House of Lions as one of the heavy doors creaked open and Sveta’s grandfather appeared on the steps. He nodded abruptly to a thin man in a sable coat just outside the entrance to the windbreak and the man nodded back.
‘Is that Marshal Milov?’ Anna asked.
‘Yes,’ Tom said.
Anna’s eyes were ringed, her face hollow. She’d lost weight and new lines had etched themselves into her face. All hope had gone out of her. ‘Edward says we can’t trust you any longer. There’s no proof you haven’t gone rogue.’
When he put his hand on her arm, she jerked away.
‘Let’s get this done,’ Tom said.
This time, when he offered his arm, she took it, gripping his flesh so hard it hurt. Together they walked towards the windbreak hiding the scene from the skaters still laughing and shouting on the ice beyond. A loudspeaker bolted to a nearby tree deafened them with a waltz, soon replaced by something softer.
‘She looked forward to coming here,’ Anna said.
‘Moscow?’ Tom said, surprised.
‘To skate. Alex was good at skating. We used to do it back home.’
Did she realize that she’d already begun talking about her daughter in the past tense?
‘Major Fox,’ Tom told the man in the sable coat. ‘This is Anna Masterton, the British ambassador’s wife. We’re here with …’
‘I know,’ he said. He nodded to Anna. ‘Lady Masterton.’
His English was barely inflected, his suit immaculate. It wasn’t Soviet, unless those at the top of the Party had special tailors to go with their special shops.
‘I was in our embassy in London. A long time ago.’
‘A military attaché?’ Anna asked.
He smiled. ‘How did you guess? I am a general, these days, for my sins.’
She must have known what he was a general of …
‘If you’re ready?’
She’d been ready the entire time they were talking. She would never be ready. She made no answer. The man held back the canvas and Anna walked through, Tom following close behind. She stumbled, caught herself and Tom and the general hastily stepped back, both watching her fight for control.
A marbled body lay in the middle of trampled snow.
‘My God,’ Anna whispered. ‘What have they done?’
‘Frozen her,’ the general replied. ‘Probably bled her first.’
The killers or killer had also shaved her head and eyebrows and body hair before freezing her. She looked as perfect as a statue, her face turned slightly to one side, her upper lip slightly raised, revealing the tiniest sliver of teeth. She looked so young, so innocent, so unbearably naked.
Dropping to his knees, Tom touched her shoulder. Her skin was hard as glass and white as marble. Not caring that a Soviet general was watching him, he made the sign of the cross over her body. The action was too instinctive to be denied.
When he stepped back, Anna took his place, putting out her hand to touch the girl’s cheek. Tears streamed down her face.
‘Why would anyone do this?’
‘Anna …’
Holding up her hand to still him, she climbed to her feet without Tom’s help and turned to the general, casting one last look at the frozen girl.
‘That’s not my daughter.’ Seeing him glance at her tear-streaked face, Anna added, ‘I mean it. But she’s still somebody’s child.’
‘It looks like her?’
‘She,’ Anna said crossly. ‘She looks like her.’
‘You’re sure it’s not your daughter?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
But you weren’t, Tom thought.
For a moment, right at the beginning, you weren’t sure at all.
And for all he’d worked at remembering Alex on his ride down, he hadn’t known it wasn’t her. ‘How alike are they?’ Tom asked. Alex’s mother took a moment to compose herself, and even then her bottom lip trembled and she rocked backwards and forwards, apparently unable to answer.
‘Anna?’
‘The mouth is right. The cheekbones. The nose too.’ She looked at the girl and shrugged sadly. ‘The body type, obviously enough. I don’t know about the eyes.’
Ice white, they stared blindly at the hard, grey sky.
The general said, ‘I would imagine those match too.’
‘But she has an old cut on her ankle and Alex doesn’t. And her wrists …’ Anna fell silent and Tom knew what she wasn’t saying. There were no scars on this girl’s wrists.
‘Why shave her head?’ Anna demanded.
The general answered before Tom could.
‘Because that way you had to look harder. It took you longer to be certain. Even then, perhaps for a second, you weren’t entirely sure. Her nakedness is to shock. The shaved head is to disquiet you.’ When he looked up and stepped back, Tom realized the commissar had come to join them.
‘To disquiet us all,’ the commissar said.
There was a fury in his eyes, a darkness that had been there when Tom described finding the dead children in the derelict house.
Tom trusted the commissar as much as he trusted any of the Soviets. But he wondered what wasn’t being said, and whether he trusted the commissar too much.
Whether he should trust him at all.
33
Autopsy
The Central Forensic Laboratory was a modern masterpiece of chrome, concrete and glass designed by one of the Soviet Union’s most impressive architects. So Tom was told. Since the post-mortem was scheduled to take place at a red-brick morgue just south of the river, he’d have to take that on trust. From the look of the place, Tom imagined it must have been there since tsarist days. The marble slabs with gutters for body fluids in the autopsy room suggested he was righ
t.
‘You’re here to observe,’ the woman who led him there said severely.
‘The marshal has already explained that.’
He was to use ‘marshal’ in public. The old man had already explained that ‘commissar’ was fine for family use and between friends, but to avoid upsetting strangers Tom should use his official title. ‘Marshal’ would do. They’d know who Tom was talking about. There weren’t that many of them left.
The young woman with the spectacles, stern face and pristine white coat looked at Tom, her face unreadable.
‘The marshal?’ she asked finally.
He nodded.
‘If you would just excuse me …’
She vanished, leaving Tom in a poorly lit room with two empty marble slabs and a third with a body covered by a sheet, under a vaulted ceiling supporting a bank of strip lights that had yet to be turned on. Saws and chisels, pliers and small hammers arranged on a metal rack looked as if they belonged in a carpenter’s workshop. When the young woman returned, she looked flustered.
‘You’re not a doctor?’
‘No,’ Tom admitted, ‘I’m not.’
‘But it was your embassy who wanted you here?’
‘The embassy approved the plan. It was the marshal who suggested that the embassy might like someone to attend.’
This wasn’t even close to true. Sveta’s grandfather wanted him there. He wanted a report on everything Tom heard or observed. He’d be getting his own report later. He was interested in how they’d compare. Also, Tom imagined, his attendance was punishment for having doubted the competence of Soviet pathologists. The commissar had said that it might be a good idea if he saw one in action for himself. Unfortunately, presumably for very different reasons, Sir Edward had agreed.
‘I was scheduled to perform the autopsy.’
‘There’s a problem?’
‘I’m a qualified forensic pathologist.’ She glanced away, slightly embarrassed. ‘Newly qualified. My chief is lecturing at the university this morning. He won’t be here until noon. I’m afraid we’ll have to reschedule.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be fine.’ When the young woman looked doubtful, Tom repeated it. ‘Really,’ he added. ‘I think we need to start.’ He could hardly tell her that if she delayed he might not turn up at all next time. He’d almost stopped at Dennisov’s for a vodka on his way, only changing his mind when he realized that if he had one drink he’d want another and be even less likely to go.
Shrugging, the woman removed the lid of a reel-to-reel tape recorder, plugged it in at the wall and slotted a microphone’s jack into place, pressing record and giving the date. She stopped the machine, rewound the tape, hit play and they both listened to her say, ‘1986, January …’ And then that day’s date.
She gave them that way round.
Then she checked a large clock on the wall, hit record again and gave the time, their location and her name. She asked Tom to give his, and he did. Her manner, which had been uncertain, firmed as she turned on the overhead lights and lifted the sheet covering the body. Tom couldn’t help it; he leaned forward and touched the girl’s face.
The young pathologist frowned.
‘I’m sorry. She was hard as marble last time I saw her.’
‘You were at the crime scene?’
‘With the marshal.’
The woman nodded, as if his being here was perhaps beginning to make sense. ‘It would be best if you didn’t touch her again.’
Becca’s body had been broken when she went on the table, Tom reminded himself. She hadn’t looked like this. So perfect. So unbroken she could be a statue or simply asleep. Frozen for ever between adulthood and childhood.
Lovers, ambition, marriage, children. A whole life unlived.
‘Are you sure you want to watch this?’
He was shaking. His whole body was trembling.
‘Unfortunately, I have no choice.’
‘In that case … Adolescent female. Height: 5, 4. Weight: 110 pounds. Age: 14 to 16, older if malnourished, younger if well fed …’ The pathologist’s sour expression said she thought that unlikely. ‘No birthmarks, scars or tattoos. That’s unusual,’ she told Tom. ‘Girls found dead like this usually have one of the last two, often both.’
‘What does that suggest?’
‘She wasn’t a delinquent.’
‘Has she been identified?’
‘The Soviet Union is huge. Children go missing. Sometimes they go missing in one republic and their bodies are found in another. Communication between police departments can be slow and sometimes complicated.’
Tom guessed that meant no, and the pathologist didn’t expect her to be.
Turning her attention to the body, she said, ‘Her head has been shaved, her pubis and underarms also. There will be no hairs from the body for testing.’ Picking up an inkpad, she took prints from each finger in turn, sliding the filled cardboard slip into an envelope.
‘They’ll be checked against the files,’ she said.
Then she picked up an old-fashioned magnifying glass and crouching close, slowly examined every inch of the girl’s face, neck and shoulders and arms, breasts, stomach and abdomen, her thighs and lower legs, and finally her feet.
When that was done, she examined her legs, buttocks, back and shoulders, her neck and skull, before turning her on to her front again. ‘No gunshot wounds, no stab wounds, no bruising, no fibres, nothing under her fingernails, virtually no signs of decomposition, one puncture wound consistent with a thick-gauge needle in the crook of her left arm …’
Tom remembered at the last minute not to touch.
‘She’s been bled,’ said the pathologist, while Tom examined the area. ‘You can see from her colour she’s been bled. Also, no lividity.’ She indicated an area along her bottom, torso and shoulders. ‘Blood would be settling here.’
Bending the dead girl’s knees and separating her legs, she examined her genital area, scowling as she straightened up.
‘She was a virgin.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Do you want to check for yourself?’
Tom stepped back and dipped his head in apology.
‘Nothing in the vagina.’ With a resigned look, the young pathologist turned the dead girl over. ‘Nothing in the anus either. Sphincter presents no evidence of stretching. Muscle tone normal. I’ll do the swabs later. Commencing X-rays …’
Sliding on a body-length lead-lined apron, she suggested Tom might want to leave while she did this. When she let him back in, she was holding a Practika 35mm with a flashgun mounted on top. ‘I’ve taken the photographs as well. I can have a spare set printed if you like?’
‘The marshal has seen the body. I doubt he wants to see it again.’
‘What about your ambassador?’
I don’t believe you. It can’t be. They wouldn’t …
Who wouldn’t, Sir Edward?
‘He has a stepdaughter of this age. I doubt he wants to see them either.’
‘Let me know if either of them changes their mind. Usually, at this point, I’d take blood samples to check for alcohol or drugs.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure that’ll be possible. My instinct is she was bled almost dry. So we’ll need to take our sample directly from the heart … Are you sure you want to watch this?’
Tom wasn’t, but he would all the same.
‘Your choice.’ Picking up a scalpel, the pathologist sliced from one shoulder round the underside of the dead girl’s breasts to her chest bone, repeating the manoeuvre on the other side, before cutting down to her pubis.
‘Now we fold this back to see if her ribs are broken.’
They weren’t. She talked to the tape recorder as she worked, telling it what she was doing and what she could see.
‘Removing the ribcage.’
Taking what looked like secateurs, she snipped each rib in turn, grunting with exertion by the last of them. The front of the ribcage lifted away.
‘The lungs show no dam
age. I’m going to try to extract blood directly from the heart.’ Fitting a long needle to a syringe, she did so, smiling slightly as the glass cylinder filled. ‘Blood sample taken. Heart looks healthy.’
What had looked to Tom like a sleeping girl when the sheet was first pulled back – too young to be there, too beautiful to have anything bad happen to her, as if either of those things made any difference – slowly became less and less human as the pathologist methodically removed the trachea, cut out the heart, did the same to the lungs, then removed and weighed her large and small intestines, liver, kidneys and spleen. Each was inspected for damage, each had a sample taken, each was weighed, each was described as healthy.
The pathologist took urine from the bladder before removing it. She checked the girl’s ovaries, fallopian tubes and uterus before removing those in turn. She cut the bladder’s connection to the urethra, as she’d cut the rectum’s connection to the anus. The contents of the girl’s stomach were safely in one container, the contents of her intestines in another. There was, the pathologist told the recorder, no indication of internal bleeding, no obvious signs of poisoning. The only unusual thing about the subject was her lack of blood.
‘I’m going to check for deep damage.’
Tom looked over and she sighed.
‘Evidence that she was tied up, held down, generally restrained. If she fought against her ropes or someone’s grip, it will show. If we’re lucky …’
Cutting into the dead girl’s wrists and ankles, the pathologist found nothing. She did the same with the buttocks and along the length of the back. Then she cut into the shoulders, elbows, hips and knees looking for ligament damage.
‘It had to be done,’ she said.
To Tom, it sounded like worth a try.
The room felt hot, although it was close to zero and the young pathologist kept shivering, despite a bar heater in one corner. Tom had been breathing through his mouth since the pathologist emptied the contents of the upper bowel into an open container. You can get used to anything. He knew you could get used to anything. But he wasn’t sure how you got used to this.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said. They both knew he was lying.
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