Korolev felt an acid rage coursing through his veins – his hands were trembling again, even as he tried to hold them still. Was it the anger, or was it his nerves again, he wondered.
It wasn’t just him in the firing line, that was the problem. He knew how things worked these days – if he were to be arrested, it would mean Valentina Nikolaevna would almost certainly also end up in the Zone, then Yasimov, whom he’d worked alongside for so long, and probably Zhenia, even though they hadn’t been married for two years now. And what would it mean for young Natasha, if her mother was shipped off to the Zone? Or Yuri for that matter, his own flesh and blood, if Zhenia got ten years? An orphanage, if they were lucky, otherwise the streets. And they probably wouldn’t be as lucky as the dead girl – they’d always be children of Enemies of the People and that would bring difficulties that might never be surmounted.
And so he had to remain vigilant, and that meant living on the edge of a blade, and knowing it, and trusting in the good Lord to preserve him and his. Of course, people might tell him the Lord was a superstitious fiction of his imagination, unsuited to the scientific and logical reality of Soviet Power. Well, he’d bet his good boots that half of those same people were praying just as hard as he was to be guided through this valley of shadows. In fact he was sure of it. They might talk like Bolsheviks, but in their hearts Russians would always be Believers. It was just the way they were.
He splashed his face with water cold enough to stop him thinking of anything very much for a moment or two and reminded himself that solving the case was what mattered now and everything else was a distraction.
Five minutes later he was dressed and standing in the dining room where the girl had been found. He considered the height again. Could someone have lifted her on their own if they’d used a table to stand on? Peskov would weigh the girl as part of his autopsy – that might tell them something.
And what about the murder weapon? Some sort of cord, Peskov had said. If the doctor could extract some more evidence from the corpse, that might give him something to follow up. He reached his hand up towards the cast-iron bracket. He’d have to get it measured properly.
‘How did the killer do it, do you think?’
The voice came from behind him. He turned to find Slivka, legs apart, standing square, her leather jacket open at the neck. An unlit papirosa hung from the corner of her mouth and she was raising her hands to light it, again cupping them round the cigarette to shield it from a wind that wasn’t there.
‘Got one of those for me?’
‘I forgot. Compliments of Comrade Shymko.’ She pulled an unopened packet of Our Brand from her pocket and handed it to him.
‘Bless the man,’ Korolev said, opening the packet. He looked back up at the bracket, thinking about her question. ‘The table perhaps. Did Andreychuk tell you anything interesting last night?’
‘Nothing. Denied the conversation had ever taken place.’
‘And?’
‘He’s cooling his heels at the Militia station.’
‘Good. Let’s have another go at him when we get back. Whoever cleaned the place after the crime did a thorough job. They must know something about police investigations – and I’m not sure Andreychuk fits the bill.’
‘I can’t decide whether it was planned or not,’ Slivka said. ‘Do you know what I mean? Whether whoever did it decided to cover it up before or after the killing. Either way he didn’t make too many mistakes. He was calm enough to clean her office of prints, and in here as well. And if you hadn’t been sent down here, I doubt a pathologist would have looked too carefully – if one would have even looked at her at all.’
There was an implicit question lurking in her words that Korolev decided to ignore.
‘You’re presuming it’s a man,’ he said after a moment.
‘A strong woman – to have got her up there.’
‘True,’ he said, turning away. ‘Come on, let’s get to Odessa and see what the sawbones has discovered for us.’
Chapter Ten
The dawn light was flat across the even flatter steppe as Slivka manoeuvred the car, doing her best to avoid the various ridges and trenches that criss-crossed what passed for the road. She didn’t drive as fast as Mushkin, or with such disregard for the car’s suspension, but she maintained a constant speed and drove with a good deal of skill. Spring might well be on its way, but it was still cold enough to have Korolev burrowing inside his winter coat.
‘Have you been to Odessa before?’ Slivka asked, her voice rising to compete with the engine.
‘Apart from the airport yesterday, no.’
‘Did the plane fly in over the town?’
‘I think so. I wasn’t looking.’
‘Of course,’ Slivka said, nodding. ‘You were reading the case material. Admirable.’
‘There was a lot of it to read,’ Korolev said, even if what he’d actually been doing was keeping his eyes tight shut and praying to the Virgin.
‘A shame, you would have been impressed. From the air you can see what a well-planned city Odessa is.’
‘Our Soviet planners are the envy of the world,’ Korolev said automatically.
‘They are, although in this case the planning was done long before the Revolution.’
‘Tsarist planners?’
‘A Frenchman.’ She shrugged. ‘Wait till you see it – it looks like Paris, they say. Maybe the Frenchman was homesick.’
Slivka’s smile faded.
‘Of course,’ she added, her words coming out faster than previously, ‘Soviet Power has transformed the city for the better. In every way.’
‘I knew what you meant, Slivka,’ Korolev said. ‘There’s no need to concern yourself.’
It was the first time he’d seen her confidence slip, and it saddened him that she should be concerned about such an innocuous comment. Even if, of course, she was right to be.
Maybe Odessa did look like Paris – Korolev had never been there. He’d seen pictures of the place in newspapers, of course, and it seemed to him that, despite the peeling paint, Odessa had a certain fin de siecle elegance which might well be similar to that of the French capital. The cold sun twinkled on tram tracks and polished the cobblestones golden as the car roared happily along wide boulevards, scattering the odd pigeon and drawing the occasional glance from pedestrians huddled against the frosty morning chill. Maybe it was also a bit like Petersburg, it occurred to him, before he reminded himself that it had been Leningrad since Lenin’s death in 1924 and it was about time he remembered.
‘It’s a fine town,’ Korolev said, in response to Slivka’s enquiring glance and wondered if he was the only person who regretted Petersburg’s change of name. He was as keen on the Soviet State’s forward development as anyone, but Petersburg still conjured up images from before the Revolution, and not all were negative. The old imperial capital might have been built on the bones of serfs, but still it was a city to make a man proud to be Russian. And that was something, even now – when imperial Russia had become the Soviet Union, and was ruled by workers rather than tsars.
‘This is Pasteur Street,’ Slivka said, interrupting Korolev’s thoughts. ‘Just before eight, not bad.’
She brought the car to a halt and nodded towards a large building in front of which students in white laboratory coats and round cotton surgical caps stood smoking. This, Korolev presumed, was the university. Like all students the smokers looked hungry, and like all Soviet citizens they looked away when a Black Crow, as police vehicles were known, pulled up beside them.
‘This is it? The university?’ Korolev asked Slivka as they stepped out of the car.
‘Founded in 1865.’
Korolev leant backwards to look up at the building.
