him.
‘Don’t waste your breath, Citizen Lomatkin. For a start, I don’t have time to be writing down your worthless excuses and, second, I’m investigating a murder – no – two murders now. Believe me, if you irritate me by not cooperating fully, I’ll make sure what I know is passed on to people who take an interest in these things.’
‘Two murders?’
‘Your friend, Andreychuk. He’s lying on his front with a bullet in the back of his neck not ten kilometres from here.’
‘Andreychuk’s dead?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘I…’ began Lomatkin, ‘I heard he’d escaped – but for him to be dead…’
‘You know nothing about his death either, of course.’
‘No, of course not. What are you suggesting?’
‘I’m suggesting I’ll see about that. And I’ll take my time seeing. You’re under arrest.’
Lomatkin’s face paled. ‘For what?’
‘For letting Andreychuk out of his cell, that’s what. And then conspiring with someone to have a bullet placed in his skull.’
Lomatkin fell silent. He looked at Korolev, speechless, and Korolev wondered whether he was in shock at the uncovering of his crime, or just bewildered at the predicament he found himself in.
‘Letting him out of his cell?’ the journalist eventually repeated.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘What makes you think-’ Lomatkin began, and Korolev took his hand and turned it palm upwards. He tapped each fingertip one by one.
‘Little. Fingers. Leave. Little. Prints. And these little fingers left prints all over Andreychuk’s cell door. Now, seeing as I’ve just left Andreychuk’s body not so very far from here with a bullet hole in his head, and seeing as I’m now sitting here with you and the same little fingers that smudged up that cell door, I’m wondering is that just a coincidence or something else? To put it bluntly, I’d like you to do some explaining.’
‘About the fingerprints?’ Lomatkin asked, his eyes now round with terror.
‘Yes, about the damned fingerprints, about the way you decided to drive over here to a place where Andreychuk ended up dead. While we’re at it, we’ll have a little talk about the morphine we found in Lenskaya’s stomach and whether that might have some connection with the cocaine you enjoy so much.’
Lomatkin took a deep breath, as if he were trying to gather his courage, to calm himself.
‘I can explain,’ he said.
Korolev folded his arms and settled himself into the seat.
‘Explain, then.’
Lomatkin took another deep breath.
‘The truth is I went to the station yesterday. I went to visit Andreychuk. I wanted an explanation from him, to understand something about Masha’s death.’
He paused, sighing.
‘Anyway, when I arrived the door to the station was open so I just walked in. There was no one there, Korolev. No Andreychuk, no Militia, nobody. The cell is right there, and it was open as well. I also called upstairs just in case, but the whole place was empty. I looked inside the cell, I must have touched the bars or the wood when I did, but Korolev – he was already gone. And when I got back to the house and I heard he’d escaped, I kept my mouth shut. That was stupid, I see that now, but I swear I had nothing to do with his escape.’
‘What kind of a fool do you take me for?’
‘It’s what happened, Korolev. God help me, it’s what happened. I wanted to ask him about Masha, what he knew, why it had happened. That’s all.’
Korolev considered the journalist’s story and took his time doing it. Lomatkin looked back at him unblinkingly – if he was lying, he wasn’t bad at it. And he must be lying.
‘And what time did this all happen?’
‘About six o’clock.’
‘About? You need to be more specific than that, Lomatkin.’
‘Just before six, then. I’m not sure exactly, I didn’t look at my watch. It could have been a quarter of an hour before. Now that I think of it, I’m sure of it. About a quarter to six, that’s when I arrived.’
Korolev considered the timing, almost allowing himself to entertain the possibility that Lomatkin might be the victim of extraordinary bad luck, but then he remembered he wasn’t there to witness miracles, but to uncover the truth. And the fellow would know the timings just as well if he’d let the caretaker out as if he’d stumbled upon the escape after it had taken place.
‘You say you saw no one, not even in the village?’
‘The village was deserted. I saw one of the Militia near the house, but apart from him, no one.’
That would be Gradov, who’d seen Lomatkin as well.
‘You didn’t see anyone driving past? The truck Andreychuk drove, or Sergeant Gradov in the Militia car, perhaps?’
‘I didn’t walk back along the road. There’s a path through the trees.’
It occurred to Korolev that if he looked at the situation from a different point of view, an interesting question presented itself. How had Lomatkin known the station would be open, or rather that the key would be hidden under a brick around the corner and the uniforms away? Helping Andreychuk to escape would have required some local knowledge which the journalist probably didn’t have and a large dose of luck – or assistance. And then there was also the fact that Lomatkin couldn’t have put the bullet in the back of Andreychuk’s head because he’d been back at the College when the caretaker had died, at least if the snow was anything to go by. But why shouldn’t there have been two of them involved? Clearly someone else had killed the caretaker and perhaps that person had been the one with the local knowledge. And that person had probably also killed Lenskaya.
‘Who are you working with, Lomatkin? And why did you need to free Andreychuk in the first place? That’s what I’d like to find out. Did he know enough to point the finger at you for Lenskaya?’
‘I’d nothing to do with Masha’s death, Korolev, and nothing to do with Andreychuk’s escape. And I know nothing about the murders either – I swear on my mother’s grave, I know nothing about anything.’
Korolev looked at the journalist and wondered whether his mother was even dead. He wound down the window and beckoned the border guards over.
‘Comrades, can you hold this man for me for a little while? He’s under arrest.’
He heard Lomatkin let out a low moan which he ignored, instead leaning across him to open the passenger door as the border guards came round.
‘You’ll be seeing the inside of a cell again before the day is out, Citizen Lomatkin,’ Korolev said, irritation as much as anger adding a gravelly growl to his voice. ‘Only there won’t be anyone coming along to let you out.’
‘But this is a mistake, Korolev,’ Lomatkin said, his eyes black in his white face.
‘I doubt it.’
The border guards stood beside the car, either side of Lomatkin’s door, waiting. The journalist glanced out at them, then back to Korolev, looking like a man who’d been handed a death sentence, and stepped out of the car. As the guards led him away, Korolev lit up a cigarette, thinking that there was something about smoking that kept a man sane in this job of his, then got out and walked over to the other car, where Babel waited.
‘Alexei,’ the writer said as Korolev opened the driver’s door. ‘You got my message? I thought it best to hitch a ride in case he was making a bolt for it. Did I do the right thing?’
Korolev shrugged. ‘You did the right thing. We found his fingerprint on Andreychuk’s cell door, so it looks like he had something to do with his escape. But what made you suspect him?’
‘The morphine. I remembered what you said about the morphine and then I recalled Lomatkin had a past with such things. When he said he was going off towards Krasnogorka I thought I’d better go too.’
Korolev examined the glowing end of his cigarette, trying to work out whether there was enough tobacco left for another go at it. He decided there was and felt the heat on his lips and his fingers as he inhaled.
‘Have you arrested him?’
Korolev looked at Lomatkin, a lonely figure as he walked towards the town between the two border guards, and sighed.
