‘That won’t be necessary,’ Korolev replied, thinking a fellow like this could make the local people’s life a misery if he put his mind to it. But it wasn’t his place to tell the other Militiamen how to do their job, so instead he asked for a chair to be taken into the small room where the caretaker was being kept and, when the sergeant had obliged, asked to be left alone with the prisoner.
Andreychuk looked older than when Korolev had spoken to him the previous night, and a little smaller as well, sitting on the wooden bench with his head bowed. Korolev had visited worse cells in the course of his duties, and at least someone had given the caretaker a dirty blanket which he’d wrapped around his shoulders, but it was chilly enough. Outside in the main room, where the uniforms sat, there was a large tile-faced stove. In this room, however, there was only a much smaller version for which there seemed to be no fuel. The temperature wasn’t far off what it was outside, and Andreychuk’s face was drawn and pinched with cold.
‘Can you get us some heat in here? This place is freezing,’ Korolev called through the door, and then leant against the wall looking down at Andreychuk until the sergeant arrived. The caretaker didn’t meet Korolev’s gaze, which gave Korolev a chance to consider how to approach the task at hand. He’d been tired when he’d questioned him the night before, but today he’d do a better job.
‘So, Andreychuk,’ Korolev said, when the sergeant had left and an orange flame flickered in the grate. Andreychuk didn’t look up, but kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
‘You weren’t honest with me yesterday – were you, Citizen?’
‘I was, Comrade Captain.’
‘Were you? You didn’t tell me Lenskaya was sleeping with just about every man on the filmset. You must have known, but you chose not to tell me. Why was that?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Andreychuk answered, his voice barely audible.
‘Come on, Andreychuk, she was a friendly girl. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Andreychuk’s expression wasn’t angry, more confused. He shook his head in disagreement.
‘She wasn’t like that. She was a good worker, a Party member. She didn’t behave that way.’
‘Was that why you argued? Near the village? Comrade Sorokina saw you. She heard you warn Lenskaya to – ’ Korolev paused to take his notebook from his overcoat pocket and open it to the correct page – ‘let me see… ah yes. “Go back to Moscow, you don’t belong here.” The “you” being Comrade Lenskaya. And then you said: “It’s dangerous here for you. Get away before it’s too late.” Do you remember now?’
Korolev sat down on the chair the sergeant had brought in for him and leant forward until his head was on the same level as the caretaker’s, only a few inches away. Andreychuk tried to back away, but there wasn’t anywhere to go except through the wall. Korolev was so close he could see the tiny red veins in the whites of the man’s eyes.
‘I don’t need more than that, you know,’ Korolev said, almost whispering. ‘I could call up the procurator’s office right now, and he’d be happy to go to court with that. Let’s see – you were the last person to see her alive, you were the one to find her, and we have you threatening her shortly before her death. I don’t doubt that we’ll find out the rope came from somewhere in the College buildings, a place that maybe only you had access to. Do you see how it looks?’
‘I didn’t kill her. And I wasn’t threatening her, I was warning her.’
‘Warning her, you say? Warning her of what? That you were going to kill her? That sounds like a threat to me.’ The old man flinched at that and Korolev felt a momentary guilt which he immediately put aside. If the caretaker had been involved in killing the girl, then the questioning was justified. And if not, well, then he had to understand the situation he was in and that his only hope was to be completely honest.
Andreychuk was shaking his head now, and his eyes were wet with tears. Korolev had to admit he didn’t look much like a killer.
‘You say you liked her?’
‘Nothing wrong with liking her, was there?’
‘Were you jealous of her admirers?’ Korolev asked, keeping his voice dispassionate.
‘Jealous? I’m fifty-eight, I won’t last many more winters.’
‘Why not? You’re still a vigorous man – there’s still powder in your keg, as the saying goes.’
Andreychuk’s mouth dropped open, an expression of horror on his face.
‘You can’t believe that. Surely not?’ he said.
‘Why were you warning her, Citizen? And who were you warning her about? If you didn’t kill her, why are you protecting her murderer? Tell me the truth, Citizen. If you’ve done wrong the punishment will be fair, and if you’ve done nothing you’ll walk free.’
‘I doubt that,’ Andreychuk said. ‘I’ve seen what you people do. That’s what I warned her about.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I know what you’re like, Comrade Captain – how you oppress the ordinary people. How you trap them and how you deal with them when you have them in your grasp. I knew if she stayed here it would go badly for her, as it’s gone badly for me. She was my daughter. There, now you know. I buried her mother not four years past and I didn’t want to bury my only daughter as well. But she wouldn’t be warned. And now it’s come to this.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘Her FATHer?’ Slivka asked, her voice rising in disbelief.
Larisa, who was still typing like the Stakhanovite worker that she was, paused and the carefully neutral expression she’d maintained up until that moment slipped. But after she’d taken a deep breath the pretty blonde typist restarted the clatter that had provided the background music to their conversation.
‘More than that,’ Korolev said, considering young Larisa and wondering whether they should be talking this way in front of her. ‘He was a father who’d fought with Petlyura’s mob during the Civil War and hadn’t had the sense to leave the country with the rest of them – an officer, no less.’
‘A Petlyurist?’ Slivka asked. ‘He doesn’t look the type. And he certainly doesn’t look like an officer.’
Korolev shrugged, wondering what the young woman thought the officer type was. As far as he remembered, many soldiers back then had been conscripted one way or another – a lot of the Red Army had, certainly. And in a place like the Ukraine, where fortunes had ebbed and flowed, it hadn’t been unusual for soldiers to have fought for the Red Army, the Whites, Petlyura’s nationalists and maybe even Makhno’s anarchist bandits as well. And as for being an officer, if you could read and write and had a talent for avoiding bullets, well, the odds were in your favour. He himself had ended up commanding a company of infantry at one stage and, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember how.
‘Well, he’s admitted to it, anyway,’ Korolev said. ‘After the war he tried to keep his head down, live a normal life. He was happy to support the Revolution, he says. But someone denounced him in ’twenty-four and they made a run for it. Sent the girl to her aunt in Moscow, while he and his wife spent six years working in a factory in Kiev using false papers. Then they came back down this way. In the meantime the aunt died and the girl went to the orphanage and knew enough to keep her mouth shut. They thought they’d lost her – and she thought they were dead. And then she shows up with the film crew.’
‘But even if her parents were Enemies of the People, that wouldn’t apply to the child. Comrade Stalin has said as much.’
Korolev looked at her to see if she was joking. Slivka was under a considerable misapprehension if she thought having a Petlyurist officer as a father wouldn’t have been a disaster for the girl if it had become known. She wouldn’t have been going to America with any delegation, that was for sure. The Gulag more likely.
‘Whatever she did or didn’t do,’ Korolev said, deciding to change the subject, ‘it’s Andreychuk who’s been concealing himself using false papers for the last twelve years.’
‘Do you think he killed her?’
He considered the question for a moment or two, organizing his thoughts.
‘Not at the moment. First, there’s the morphine and then the fact that whoever murdered her cleaned the place thoroughly of any evidence. Where would Andreychuk have got morphine? I don’t think it would be easy to obtain around here. And he may have been an officer fifteen years ago, but I’d be surprised if he’s familiar with the way an investigation works – and whoever did it probably knows their way around. On top of which I don’t see a
