‘My congratulations to the groom.’
‘I’ll pass them on. Listen, Lyoshka, I was going to call you first thing. I asked around about your girl.’
‘Any luck?’
‘Let me step into my office.’
Korolev had visited Yasimov’s kommunalka – a former merchant’s residence that had been divided, sub- divided, and then divided once again so that there were now seventeen rooms in which bakers, factory workers, teachers, accountants and one Militia detective and his family sweated and froze hip to hip. For privacy Yasimov would take the receiver into the toilet beside the phone, if by some miracle the convenience was free.
‘There we go,’ Yasimov said as the background noise diminished considerably. ‘In here I’m a king as well, you know. Sitting on my throne.’
Korolev laughed at the wordplay on his name, as much for the pleasure of hearing a joke he’d heard a hundred times before as anything else.
‘What have you got for me?’ he asked.
‘You sound dreadful – got a cold or something?’
Korolev felt his shoulders relax and a smile tug at the straight line of his mouth. ‘Mitya, it’s good to hear your voice, I can tell you.’
‘Now, don’t get all emotional on me. Everything all right down there?’
‘Could be better – the local uniforms have just managed to let our main suspect escape. And the likelihood is he’s doing his best to slip across the border as we speak.’
There was a pause, and he could almost hear Yasimov doing the computations. Korolev knew what conclusion his fellow detective would come to – a mishap like this wasn’t good news for Korolev, of course, but it probably wouldn’t be much better for people he knew and worked with. In other words, Yasimov.
‘But you’re on it, right? You’ll catch up with him.’ Yasimov’s voice had an edge to it now.
‘I hope so. I don’t think the fugitive killed the girl, which is something at least, and we’ve a good chance of picking him up before he gets too far. We’ll see. Anyway, what did you find out about her?’
‘Some things, I’m not sure how useful, though. The orphanage people spoke highly of her – proud, they were. I didn’t find out much about her background for you, except for the name of her mother. Elizaveta Andreyevna Lenskaya. From down that way.’
‘Her mother?’
‘Yes, when she died the girl was sent to the orphanage.’
‘I think that’s her aunt – one moment.’ Korolev flicked back through his notebook. Andreychuk’s wife was dead all right, she’d died back in ’thirty-three. What had her name been? Here it was. Anna. Anna Andreyevna Andreychuk. The patronymic was the same – Elizaveta must have been the sister who’d lived in Moscow. The one whose death had resulted in Lenskaya ending up in the orphanage.
‘Yes – her aunt, most probably – but I thought they didn’t have any information on her family.’
‘I’m guessing someone tidied the official file up a bit – it had that feel to it. But when we looked back at the admissions book the details were all there. The older Lenskaya was from some place called Angelinivka down near you – age at at time of death thirty-three, occupation wages clerk. They lived in a communal apartment in Presnaya, but no one remembered them there. I dropped in and had a look around all the same. According to the housing office records, they shared a room with a family of five, so the orphanage was probably a change for the better.’
‘Angelinivka, you say?’
‘That’s what it says in the register.’
‘A place I’m visiting tomorrow, as it happens. Anything else?’
‘Well, I asked around about her out at Mosfilm – a nice enough girl, I was told. Ambitious. By that they meant-’
‘That she was friendly with Belakovsky?’
‘That’s the fellow. No one could think of a reason why she’d be murdered, though. I have the names of some other men she’d been friendly with. One will be familiar to you.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Babel the writer.’
‘Babel?’
‘A surprise?’
‘Anything firm?’ Korolev asked, ignoring Yasimov’s question for the moment as his mind scrambled to fit the new piece of information together with what he knew already. Why had the writer not told him he was romantically connected with the victim? Unless, of course, he’d a damned good reason not to.
‘Rumours. Want me to see if I can flesh it out a bit?’
‘If you can find out anything useful to do with this damned case I’ll be forever grateful, Mitya – it’s turning out to be a pig. And the more about the girl’s personal life the better.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. One more thing, before you hang up.’
‘Go on.’
‘You asked about Lomatkin.’
‘Yes?’
‘I had a sniff around. Interesting fellow – a man about town, although not so much in recent months. He used to have a bit of a reputation – a few people have mentioned him spending time with undesirable elements and gambling at billiards. By undesirable elements, I mean elements with blue fingers.’ Thieves. In Moscow. Kolya’s people, then. So there might be something in what the Thief had said about Lomatkin. ‘And there’s some suggestion he might have dabbled in cocaine,’ Yasimov continued. ‘Although apparently he’s a reformed character since he began seeing the dead girl. Make of that what you will.’
Cocaine. Was that what Kolya had been getting at in his phone call?
‘Anyone mention morphine?’
‘No. Want me to go back and ask again?’
‘It might be worth it. And see if you can find out more about these undesirable elements, will you, Mitya? And whether any of his acquaintances might be down here on the shoot. I’m interested in the cocaine – the autopsy shows the dead girl was drugged with morphine, that’s why I’m asking.’
‘Got you,’ Yasimov said.
‘Did you visit where she lived?’
‘Yes – a small room in a kommunalka near the Mosfilm studios. Plain, simple, clean. A couple of shelves of books, quite a few of them foreign. A gramophone. Three records. Nothing much else. I sealed it in case you wanted a forensics team to look over it.’
‘Any letters, diaries, that sort of thing?’
‘Nothing, but one of her neighbours told me she did keep a diary.’
‘I haven’t found it if she did, but you can be sure I’ll be searching hard for it now.’
The door opened and Slivka looked in at him enquiringly, a pot of her own held in her hand. He waved her towards the chair in front of him.
‘Mitya, brother, I owe you a favour.’
‘Lyoshka, you owe me a number of favours, and I owe you as many in return. Be careful there and come back to Moscow soon – the Thieves miss you.’
Korolev hung up and filled his mouth with the last of the now cold stew.
‘An interesting conversation, that,’ he said, still chewing, and relayed Yasimov’s information about the dead girl, her possible relationship with Babel and about Lomatkin’s blue-fingered friends.
‘Angelinivka?’ she said. ‘There’s a coincidence.’
‘Yes – another coincidence, and I don’t believe in coincidences. Not much, anyway.’
‘What are you thinking, Chief?’
‘Thinking?’ Korolev said, thinking, and therefore a little distracted. ‘Nothing much. But if Lenskaya’s family are from this place, Angelinivka, then maybe that’s why Andreychuk took her there. A family reason. His wife died in ’thirty-three. A tough year, but why wouldn’t he bury her there if he could? It’s not that far away. And when their daughter shows up out of the blue, what would she want to see? Her mother’s grave, perhaps? It’s a guess, but I’ve a feeling about it. She’d have been twelve when they parted ways, old enough to remember her mother
