by William Ryan
“I see, did your husband perhaps take some action against Comrade Shtange? Inform State Security as to his concerns, perhaps?”
She shrugged, not meeting his gaze, and her reaction was as good as a written confirmation. Well, that was a motive for murder, Korolev thought—if only Shtange hadn’t had such a solid alibi.
“You disagree with such an action, Comrade Korolev?” Azarova’s question interrupted his thoughts.
“Comrade Azarova, if you think I disagree with citizens bringing their honest concerns about potential enemies of the State to the proper authorities, then you’re much mistaken.” He spoke sternly, as he was supposed to. “One more question—it seems likely that your husband opened the door to whoever killed him. Your maid says she locked it when she left to go shopping and unlocked it when she came back and found him dead. Was he expecting anyone to visit that morning?”
“No one.” She shook her head after a moment’s consideration. “And I can’t think who he would have opened the door to either, if he was working. Galina was under strict instructions to admit no one who might interrupt him and he certainly wouldn’t have answered the door himself.”
“I see,” Korolev said. “One last thing—are you aware that Dr. Shtange was also murdered? On Tuesday morning?”
“Murdered? Shtange?” She looked at him blankly.
“You’re sure you weren’t aware he was dead? No one called to tell you? A friend perhaps?”
“No one.”
It amazed him that the Twelfth Department hadn’t questioned her about the deputy director—because if Azarova was in the clear for her husband, that wasn’t necessarily the case with regard to Shtange’s murder.
“May I ask where you were on Tuesday morning?”
“I was at the orphanage. I leave at eight and I would have arrived at eight-fifteen. I departed at twelve-thirty, no earlier.”
“The day after your husband’s murder?”
“Of course.” She seemed surprised he should question it. “I believed my duty to the State required it. We’re under siege by our enemies, Comrade Korolev—we might as well be at war. If you were a soldier and your brother was killed beside you in battle, you’d fight on—wouldn’t you? This situation is no different. That’s what being part of a Revolution means.”
Korolev thought it best to say nothing, just write the information down: “Tuesday morning left for orphanage at eight,” and the time she’d returned. But he did allow himself to add a small exclamation mark and an asterisk. He looked at his watch. He needed to wind this up.
“Do you mind if I ask why you’re not there today?”
“Doctor Weiss believes I need to rest—he was annoyed with me for going out on Tuesday. He said I must conserve my strength.” She seemed torn between gratitude and irritation.
“And you do what he says?”
She shrugged.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone there on Tuesday. I’m not sure I did useful work. Perhaps I made a mistake—it’s difficult to tell.” She seemed tired now, her voice becoming quieter each time she spoke.
He shut his notebook. Slivka could talk to her again later—she might get more out of her with a different approach. And for the moment, he’d no good reason to doubt anything Azarova had said.
“Can you understand what my life will be without him?” she said, looking up again through her tears. “I’ve lost—so much. And more will be taken. Galina has heard that the neighbors are already jostling among themselves to take over this apartment. I’ll be lucky if I’m allowed to stay in the building.”
Korolev nodded—he didn’t think she was being paranoid. He’d come into his own room because Valentina Nikolayevna’s husband had been killed in an accident. In some buildings in Moscow there were two or three families sharing smaller spaces than one of this apartment’s bedrooms. If she was looking for sympathy, she’d find none from her fellow Muscovites.
“Thank you for your time, Comrade. May I look around your husband’s study once again? I’m afraid it’s necessary.”
“Help yourself,” she said, turning away to look out the window, and leaning her head onto the back of the armchair.
He nodded and walked out into the hallway. There was no sign of the girl.
“Where’s your maid?”
“She’s gone for bread,” she said, and Korolev could have sworn she was crying, but he thought it impolite to go back to check. Instead he turned the handle to the professor’s study and saw that, as with Shtange’s, the bookcases in his study stood bare, cleared of books and papers. His footsteps sounded loud as he walked across the room to the open window.
He leaned out, looking around to see if there was any possibility someone could have climbed in from somewhere, but it seemed impossible. Perhaps if they’d been one of Shtange’s monkeys—otherwise there was a five-story drop to the pavement below.
He turned back to look at the room once again, even considering the two small ventilation grilles high on the wall behind the professor’s desk—but not even the smallest of monkeys could have got through one of them. And the mice the professor had complained of wouldn’t have been firing bullets.
Everything pointed to the killer having been someone Azarov had let into the apartment.
Now all he needed to do was find out who.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Korolev looked into Timinov’s office on his way out—the doorman rising to his feet when he saw him.
“Listen, Timinov,” he said, waving him back down. “Are there really mice in a building like this? I’m surprised is all.”
“Mice?”
“Or rats—she said she wasn’t sure which.”
“Or rats?” Timinov looked appalled. “Who told you that? I tell you there’ll be hell to pay if there are.”
“Azarov’s maid told me on Monday. But it wasn’t her who heard them—the professor complained about them on the morning of the murder—said they were in the walls.”
“No one else has said anything.” The caretaker seemed to relax a little. “That was three days ago—if they were in the building, someone would have heard them since.”
“I’m only repeating what the maid, Galina, said.”
“Mice would be more likely—they’ll slip through the smallest crack.” The doorman scratched his head. “I’ll look into it though, you can be sure of that.”
Korolev shrugged. What with a missing son and two murders to solve, to the satisfaction of a certain Colonel Rodinov—he couldn’t care if the damned place had kangaroos. He said his farewells and left.
* * *
The car he’d asked Belinsky to arrange for him was parked outside and, to his surprise, Morozov himself, the head of the car pool, was leaning on its bonnet. The one-eyed Cossack glanced over at his approach, and his surprise at Korolev’s appearance was evident.
“I didn’t know you could drive,” Korolev said dryly, ignoring Morozov’s look, and getting into the car. “I thought you were above that sort of thing.”
“I can’t.” Morozov opened the door and sat into the driver’s seat. He took another good look at Korolev’s face and shook his head slowly. “Where to, then, Alexei Dmitriyevich?”
“Bolshoi Nikolo-Vorobinsky first—I need to clean up—then the Anatomical Institute.”
Morozov, who’d worn an eye patch ever since an encounter with a bullet during the German War, turned his head to nod his agreement then put the car smoothly into gear—pulling away from the curb without any obvious signs that he’d checked he was clear to do so.
They drove in silence for a while, which suited Korolev—he’d a few things he needed to think through, after all. He opened his notebook, flicking back through the pages.
“Tell me, Pavel Timofeevich,” he asked Morozov, “what do you know about the Vitsin Street orphanage? You live over that way, don’t you?”
Korolev winced as the car squeezed through a tiny gap between an oncoming bus and a construction truck that had pulle
d out unexpectedly. He shut one of his own eyes as an experiment—the range of vision was much reduced.
“Why should I know anything about an orphanage on Vitsin Street?”
“Come on, Pavel Timofeevich—it’s a stone’s throw from you. You must know the place.”
“Oh, I know it all right. It used to be the Monastery of the Annunciation—I pass it every day. As for what the place might be like? Well, I’m glad my children are grown and will never see the inside of it.”
“Not good?”
“It’s hard to say—I haven’t heard it’s bad as such. But people think there’s something not quite right about the place all the same.”
“I see.”
Korolev thought about Yuri ending up in such a place and found his jaw was clenched so hard it hurt. The boy would show up, he was sure of it. And he’d get himself out of this investigation in one piece as well. Everything would be all right—if only he could keep himself calm.
* * *
When Morozov stopped the car on Bolshoi Nikolo-Vorobinsky, Korolev took a quick look around the neighborhood, just in case the boy was somewhere nearby—wary of approaching the house itself in case State Security might still be on his tail. But there was no sign of him—no sign of anyone, as it happened. The laneway, and the courtyards off it, seemed unnaturally still. But perhaps that was just because of the way the bright noon sunshine seemed to press every corner and curve into straight lines, leaving only white surface and crisp shadows. He was relieved when he stepped into the cool shade of the hallway.
“Korolev, a word with you please.” Lobkovskaya, his elderly downstairs neighbor, stood in her half-open doorway, tapping her walking stick on the floor gently, perhaps to get his attention. Most uncharacteristically, she seemed to be trying to keep her voice to a level that could almost be described as a whisper. She gestured for him to come closer. For a moment, he wondered if she’d news of his son.
“Is it about Yuri?” Korolev said, keeping his own voice low.
The only light in the stairwell came from soot-stained windows on the upper landings and as he came close to her he could see that the imperturbable old lady appeared—well—perturbed.
“No. Something else. You had visitors, an hour ago.” She put a finger to her lips as if that might make her words quieter. “I heard them in your room, they moved every piece of furniture. Then I heard them move to the next room and the next. They searched the whole apartment. Careful, quiet men. Not the kind of visitors you’d want to have, I think”
“When did they leave?”
“Half an hour ago.”
Korolev knew Lobkovskaya well enough not to question her story. After all, she lived directly beneath him—and the old house’s walls and floors kept few secrets between neighbors. Nor was he surprised that she was telling him something most Muscovites wouldn’t admit was happening—even to themselves. Lobkovskaya was a tough old girl at the end of the day.
“Chekists?” he asked.
She shrugged, then nodded—indicating that his suggestion seemed the most likely possibility. She patted his elbow.
“Shura told me about your boy being missing—she had to go out but asked me to keep an eye out for him. If he comes, I’ll look after him—don’t worry.”
Korolev nodded his thanks and with a smile Lobkovskaya managed to close her door without making the slightest sound.
Korolev began to climb the stairs one slow step at a time, his eyes adjusting to the half-light as he did so. He listened hard to the sounds of the house, wondering if someone might be waiting for him up above, their intentions unfriendly and a weapon in their hand. He allowed his fingers to trail up the banister, aware of each nick and groove they touched. But when he found himself outside his door he wasn’t quite sure how he’d reached it or, indeed, how he’d managed to slip his key into its lock. He paused, took a long, deep breath, and reached for the Walther underneath his armpit. He touched the metal of the pistol’s handgrip and then stopped. What was he going to do? Shoot it out with State Security? And anyway, the apartment was empty—Lobkovskaya had said so. For all her age, the woman had ears like a bat. He turned the key.
At first glance everything was perfectly normal. Natasha’s exercise books were where they should be. The bags he’d left on the chesterfield during his whirlwind visit that morning were in the same position. The small vase of flowers he’d noticed then was in its same spot. Even the dust dancing in the sunlight that streamed through the half-closed curtains appeared to circle and twirl in the same way it always did. He stopped, stood still and looked again and, on closer examination, there were indeed small anomalies—the bags on the chesterfield had an unusual symmetry, not that he could put his finger on why; and, unless he was much mistaken, the exercise books had been piled by hands other than a ten-year-old girl’s—hands that liked to organize things, to tie up loose ends, to make sure a confession covered all possible crimes.
The thought that someone had been in here, because of him, reading through Natasha’s homework, running his hands down the seams of Valentina’s clothing and handling her belongings—well, it took the air out of his chest all of a sudden. He had to make a conscious effort to start breathing again.
He stood, not moving for at least a minute, becoming almost certain he could smell the faintest trace of the searchers—that slight scent of sour sweat and stale cigarettes wasn’t coming just from him; they’d been suffering in the heat as much as he was.
He could almost see them, their practiced movements as they searched for—what? The thought soon had him reaching for a knife in the small kitchen and making his way into his bedroom, pulling the curtains shut and then rolling up the small carpet near the window. He pushed the blade of the knife into the crack between two boards and levered up one of them to reveal a small cavity. There it was, sitting there, the bible he kept for the insane reason that he believed it protected him—when the opposite was almost certainly the case. As far as he could tell, it hadn’t been disturbed, but how could he be sure?
He replaced the board and the carpet and looked around him—scratching at that familiar itch just beneath his right ear and thinking for a moment. Well, whatever was going on, he decided, after considering the situation from a number of different angles, it wasn’t good news—but he had to tidy himself up and move on. There wasn’t anything to be done about this—it had happened and that was that.
Removing his clothes, he picked up a towel and made his way to the kitchen to wash.
His first thought was that Rodinov might be behind it. But why would Rodinov search his apartment? What would he gain from it? Nothing. Rodinov had him where he wanted him already. Why waste energy on a man you already had firmly under your thumb? No, not Rodinov.
That other Chekist, the one who had taken over the case before Korolev had been reinstated—Zaitsev. Now he might have a reason—he’d certainly wanted to talk to him the night before. If a man like him didn’t want a person, Korolev for example, poking into the affairs of his institute, what better way to exert pressure than to dig up some dirt on him? And, if they’d found the bible, then they had it.
He looked up to see his face in the mirror over the sink, his stubble like a shadow, his teeth yellow as a carthorse’s, his swollen, purpled eye. The tap squirted out brown water before it began to run cleaner. He leaned down, feeling his bruised ribs, his stomach complaining as he did so, and allowed the water to splash over his hands before pulling a scoop of it up to his face, rubbing it into his skin. The fact was he’d nowhere to run to. And how could he run anywhere with Yuri still missing? All he could do was hope that, if he did what Rodinov told him to, things would return to normal. That whatever these Chekists were up to, they’d eventually forget about him.
He picked up his shaving soap and reached for his razor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When Korolev came back out of his building Morozov was leaning against the car once again, his arms folded, his good eye shut as he al
lowed the sun to warm his face.
“It took longer than I thought it would.”
Morozov opened his eye to look him over. “You look better in some ways, worse in others,” he said. Korolev knew what he meant—he was tidier, for certain—but shaving seemed to have shown up his cuts and bruises all the more. At least the shirt he was wearing was clean and ironed—that must count for something.
They got into the car and Morozov turned the key in the ignition, causing a bark from the exhaust that sent a cat on the other side of the road leaping for the protection of a windowsill.
“Well, I feel better in some ways and worse in others.”
Korolev ran a hand through his still-wet hair and took a deep breath. He had to focus on one thing—the most important thing. He’d a job to do and doing it well might save both Yuri and him from unpleasantness.
* * *
By now, they were on the Boulevard Ring heading north and he caught Morozov looking in the rearview mirror—and not for the first time, it occurred to him. He twisted in the seat to look out of the back window, wondering what had caught the old soldier’s attention.
“Do you see them?” Morozov asked.
“Who?”
“Those two fellows in the black Emka.”
Korolev saw them all right—they were hard to miss, given that there wasn’t much traffic and they were only a short distance behind them. Two familiar men, as it turned out—the two fellows from the station in Peredelkino and from the riverbank.
“I have to ask you, Alexei Dmitriyevich, are you in some sort of trouble? They’ve been behind us since I picked you up in Bersenevka. I thought they’d dropped us when we went to your place, but they were just waiting at the top of the lane.”
Korolev had a quick look at his surroundings.
“Pavel Timofeevich—if we stop at the next corner it’s a five minute walk to Petrovka. I’ll need the car for the rest of the day and I’m sure you’ve better things to be doing than driving me around.”
