Sunbathing?
‘I’ll do my best, Comrade Colonel.’ He managed to keep his irritation hidden. ‘But may I ask one thing of you?’
‘What?’
‘In the course of my interview with the journalist Lomatkin he told me that he was also planning a visit to Krasnogorka – to view the Stalin Line for some article he’s writing. Perhaps your men in Moscow could make some enquiries? I’m confident he’s a loyal Party member and so on, but it’s an unusual coincidence.’
‘Lomatkin?’ The colonel’s voice sounded sceptical, but then perhaps he remembered Stalin’s directive to remain vigilant at all times, that even the unlikeliest citizen could turn out to be a traitor. ‘All right, we’ll look into Comrade Lomatkin. Anything else?’
‘Morphine. It’s not so easy to obtain, even in the hospitals sometimes. It may have come from Moscow, or it could have been obtained locally. If State Security can provide any information that connects it to a suspect, it would certainly help. Again, if your men are looking into Comrade Lomatkin, it might be something to bear in mind.’
‘I’ll ask.’
‘Thank you, Comrade Colonel.’
‘Korolev, keep me informed of any progress. And be vigilant for signs of counter-revolutionary activity. I don’t like the smell of this one bit.’
The colonel hung up and Korolev put his own receiver down.
‘Calm yourself,’ he muttered after a moment or two. ‘It’s a mess and you’re in the middle of it, but you need to get your head straight and think it through.’
He opened his notebook – a lot had happened in the last few hours, he needed to write it down and look for the way forward.
First things first. The colonel had ordered him to go to Krasnogorka to find out what the girl and Andreychuk had been up to. He’d go, sure enough, first thing in the morning, but he didn’t know the countryside round there. It would help if Shymko had a location for this church of his, so he made a note to himself to make sure Slivka checked with the production coordinator. Another thought occurred to him – it was a border area. Did that mean it had controlled access? Would they have had to pass through checkpoints that close to the border? There must be a record of their journey somewhere. Andreychuk had said something about having a pass, according to the boy, hadn’t he? If he had, it should give details of the limits of his authorization. Slivka would know who to ask, or Mushkin perhaps – as a last resort.
Then there was Andreychuk’s escape. Somebody had helped him. And if anyone would know who might go out on a limb like that for the fleet-footed caretaker, it would be Mushkina. Another conversation with the major’s mother should be a priority. The sergeant had seen her out and about around the time the cell had been emptied of its occupant, and she’d approached him only an hour or so before about getting Andreychuk out of prison, hadn’t she? It was a ridiculous thought, but what if she’d been the one who’d helped the caretaker out of his cell?
Chapter Seventeen
It had been a long day and Korolev went in search of nourishment, but as he passed the dead girl’s office he found himself opening the door. His stomach could hold out for another five minutes.
The desk, the shelves bent under ranks of books, the papers and typewriters, the panoramic view over the lake and the snow-decked woodland – all were unchanged since the last time he’d stood there. He thought of the girl and wondered if the last thing she’d seen had been that same moon, now a luminous orb hanging low over the lake, and he hoped the morphine had done its work and that her end had been quick.
He started on the top bookshelf – Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Engels. He opened each book and flicked through the pages, just in case something might have been left there. Savchenko’s Theory of Film, a well-thumbed volume, seemed to have been more diligently read than those of Lenin, Marx and the others; then a slew of books in English – beyond his powers of translation except for the words Cinema and Film , which reassured him he was looking at technical manuals. One of the thicker volumes, filled with diagrams and pictures of cameras and other equipment, also contained a brightly coloured postcard with the word ‘Hollywood’ in inch-high red letters on top of which was draped a reclining blonde beauty wearing not very much at all.
‘A crucial piece of evidence?’
The suggestion came from behind him and for a moment he felt the urge to put the postcard back in the book as though he’d never seen it, but he recognized the voice, and the amusement in it, and so he held it up for Les Pins to see better.
‘They have a different climate there,’ the Frenchman said.
‘It gets hot here in the summer,’ Korolev replied, which it did. In three months’ time the sun would be a constant pressure on the landscape, the windows here would be wide open and the room full of the scent of flowers and the buzz of insects. He turned the card over, but there was no message.
‘I take it you’re not searching Lenskaya’s room for souvenirs of Los Angeles, Korolev?’
Korolev put the postcard back where he’d found it and replaced the book on the shelf.
‘Can I help you?’ he said, making an attempt at politeness.
‘I was thinking I might help you. I heard you trying to pronounce the titles of those English books.’
‘Trying to pronounce?’ He thought he’d been doing a pretty good job himself.
‘Anyway,’ Les Pins continued, ‘if I can be of any assistance, it would be my pleasure.’
Korolev considered the man: an irritating smile on his face that the fellow must think made him irresistible, grey eyes that appeared benevolent but were more likely to be concealing some self-serving motivation. Unless he was wrong, he’d a good idea what the fellow was after. Information, damn him. This fellow would publish his own living mother’s obituary while she was still walking around if he thought it would earn him a few more roubles or whatever it was that they paid the Frenchman in.
‘It’s all right, Comrade Les Pins,’ Korolev said. ‘I’m sure you have other things to keep you occupied.’
‘Not really. I’m here to recuperate as much as anything, you see. A fascist put a small hole in my shoulder in Spain, and the comrades there thought I needed a break. Now that I’m here, I’m bored. I’d be happy to help. I’ll put it more strongly,’ he said, smiling that priest’s smile of his again, ‘I’d be grateful.’
Korolev had picked a collection of Stalin’s speeches from the bookshelves and had opened it idly while they were engaged in conversation. Inside it was a piece of paper, folded in four and typed with Latin lettering.
‘What’s that you have there?’ Les Pins asked.
Korolev’s English wasn’t up to an instantaneous translation, but it seemed to be some sort of poem.
‘The twenty-third psalm,’ Les Pins said quietly, reading it over his shoulder, ‘from the King James Bible. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. For thou art with me.”’
A smart girl – she knew her geography if nothing else. She’d been in that valley all right, even if everywhere nearby was flat. The paper felt crisp enough to have been newly folded – was this what she’d been typing when Mushkina had passed by, before the typewriters had been switched? Was it a message and, if so, who for?
‘Curious,’ the Frenchman said. ‘It’s as though she had a presentiment of death.’
‘You’ll excuse me, Comrade. I thank you for the translation, but I must ask you to leave.’
‘Yes, yes. I’m sorry, Captain. I was only trying to offer my assistance.’
‘It isn’t required, but thank you.’
‘A shame,’ Les Pins said, not moving away, instead gracing him with a look of sympathetic concern. ‘But it must be difficult for you. I can understand why you don’t want a foreign journalist involved in a murder like this.’
There was something loaded in his tone. Enough to make Korolev give the Frenchman his full attention.
‘What do you mean, Comrade? Are you suggesting something?’
‘Suggesting something? Me? Not at all. I hear the caretaker has run away. Did you arrest him for the murder?’
‘No. For something else,’ Korolev replied.
The Frenchman smiled – a confident smile, the smile of a gambler with a card up his sleeve.
