Russian Roulette (13 page)

Vasily was enjoying playing Watson to Pudovkin's Holmes – that was one of the Western books that Moiseyenko really enjoyed, in spite of all the aristocrats and humble servants that filled the pages. The detective captain soon gave up his bloodhound act and set off back to the hotel.

‘We'll see what the man from the Institute has to say about the injuries.'

Leaving the militiaman standing like a statue in his long blue overcoat, they walked back to Petrovka 38 to get a car to take them down to Pirogovskaya.

They were just driving out of the transport pool in another black Volga when a clerk ran breathlessly down from the duty room to hand a small parcel through the window. ‘Just arrived on an early flight from Leningrad, from Militia HQ.'

As they drove off into the morning rush hour, Alexei unwrapped a shoebox, inside which nestled a small automatic pistol wrapped in yesterday's
Pravda
.

A sheet of paper with the Leningrad Militia heading lay underneath, but it told them nothing except that this was the gun found in Simon's cabin aboard the
Yuri Dolgorukiy
.

‘I can't see what use it is having this,' muttered Alexei ‘It hasn't been used – it wasn't even brought into the country.'

He slowly repacked the pistol into its box.

‘Still, I'll bet a year's pension that this turns out to be murder.'

‘Unless we're unlucky and the pathologists tell us it was a suicide or an accident.' Moiseyenko sounded afraid that he might be right.

Alexei poured scorn on the idea. ‘I believe in coincidences like that as much as I believe in fairies, Vasily Sergeivich! Fragonard was flung from that window by someone and hit the ground with a fatal attack of gravitational force!'

Which only goes to show that even experienced detective captains can occasionally be wrong.

The militia car sped down Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Street and, just past the Air Ministry building, turned sharp right and stopped outside a small, old building set in some trees. This was the Pathology department of the Sechenov First Moscow Institute of Medicine, and combined the forensic medicine department under the same roof. A burly, genial man in his fifties met them on the steps.

‘Back to the “temple of truth”, eh, Alexei Alexandrovich?'

He thumped Pudovkin on the shoulder, nearly knocking his lean body to the ground.

The captain introduced him to Moiseyenko as they went into the gloomy entrance. The two senior men were old friends, it seemed.

‘We had plenty of work together when I was in the City Service,' boomed the doctor, whose name was Gyenka Segel. ‘Now I'm a damned armchair pathologist. This will be an excuse for keeping away from the paperwork for a couple of hours!'

Inside the main doors, it seemed half-dark and the place stank of varnish and embalming fluid.

‘This way, to the left – the next performance is just about to begin!'

The exuberant Segel guffawed and treated Moiseyenko to one of his karate-like backslaps. Opening a door, he stood back to let them through. As they went down a couple of steps onto a terrazzo floor, the sickly-sweet smell of death flooded over the two militiamen.

Pudovkin had experienced it many times, but familiarity brought no relief. Vasily had paid about a dozen visits to autopsies, but this large teaching institute looked at first sight like something from an illustrated copy of Dante's
Inferno
.

Dr Segel boomed in his ear and he braced himself for another blow between the shoulder blades. ‘Try these for size, comrades.'

Caps and gowns were produced from a side table and as they stood fumbling them on, the lieutenant stared around the autopsy room. An old, high-vaulted place, it contained five porcelain tables, around four of which clustered gowned doctors and students, like ants over a dead beetle.

Naked electric bulbs hung on long wires from the ceiling, and as the students milled around for a better view, he kept getting glimpses of flesh and bones, glinting horribly red in the harsh light. There was a buzz of discussion at each table, the pathologists teaching and the students asking questions.

‘Your customer is over here.' Gyenka Segel marched off across the hall to the deserted table, his bald head gleaming under the lamps. They followed him, slopping through water patches stained ominously pink near the tables.

A white-gowned woman broke away from one group and joined them as they reached Segel.

‘This is Dr Evdokia Yashina,' he said, with a gesture at the thick-set woman. ‘She is a senior member of the staff here and will assist me.'

Comrade Yashina nodded abruptly at them, a forbidding figure in a rubber apron and thick gloves.

An attendant brought Gyenka the same things and, as he stood pulling the gloves over his great hairy fingers, another assistant removed a sheet from the still shape on the table.

‘Let's get this straight again, Alexei … this fellow fell from the fourth floor of the Metropol sometime during the night?'

Pudovkin re-told the whole story as fully as he knew it and ended, ‘The Procurator's Office said just now that they don't intend to take it over straight away, so we have to follow it up until told to keep off.'

Segel scowled. ‘Not like them to pass the buck so readily – I wonder if they've been tipped off from higher up?'

Alexei shrugged. ‘I'm not complaining – we'll hang on to it as long as we can. There's no sign that the Dzerzhinsky Street mob are involved.'

Segel moved forward and stared impassively at the body. His assistant stood grimly on the other side of the table, her hands folded over her ample stomach.

There was another cloth over the face of the corpse and Segel whipped it off with a flourish that would have done credit to a conjurer unveiling a cage of white rabbits.

He smiled down at the calm features of the battered Jules Honore Fragonard.

‘Pyjamas and a slipper on the left foot – and dressing gown.'

Alexei grunted. ‘The other slipper was found at the foot of the wall outside – there were scratches across the windowsill that could have been made by black leather like this. The Criminalistics Laboratory are going to compare the polish stains.'

One of the attendants stood dutifully alongside, taking notes on a clipboard when Segel or the woman threw comments at him. The senior pathologist bent over the body again and poked at the bright yellow-green pyjamas.

‘The front of the trouser legs are torn – bits of earth and weeds inside. Abrasions of the face and hands, with dirt in the wounds.'

He looked up at Pudovkin. ‘Any blood on the ground where he fell?' His bantering humour fell away when he was actually at work.

Alexei looked at Moiseyenko, who was trying to keep his stomach in the right place.

‘What would you say, Vasily … very little, eh?'

The lieutenant gulped and nodded rapidly. ‘Hardly any – it was bare earth, but I saw no more than a few spots.'

The burly pathologist had a muttered conference with the woman, then turned back to the detectives.

‘I don't understand it, to tell the truth. Under these rips in the trousers, there are great gashes in the legs. They should have poured blood, but as you see, there's only a local staining of the cloth – ghastly stuff that it is,' he added, fingering the lime-coloured material with distaste. ‘You agree, Evdokia Maximova?'

The hard-faced female glared at the body for a full quarter-minute before replying. ‘Yes, I agree, but I want to see the insides before passing any more opinions … and why the bruise around the eye – that's one thing, and this staining around the cut on the head is another.'

Segel skipped around to the top of the porcelain slab to look at the head of the victim. He sucked in his breath mightily and stood back with Evdokia to stare at the corpse, as if challenging Fragonard to explain himself.

‘Why indeed!' hissed Gyenka Segel dramatically.

An hour later, the quartet sat in a tiny office, drinking a hot, dark fluid optimistically called instant coffee. Segel had a wad of handwritten notes in front of him, the fruit of their recent labours in the post-mortem room.

‘Murder, Alexei Alexandrovich … murder, definite murder!' He sounded as if he was trying to set the words to music.

‘All these things add up to something very odd … I don't pretend to know exactly what, but I can assure you that this man Fragonard was dead before he hit the ground … he had severe injuries, mainly to his pelvis and legs, but he was dead before they happened.'

Alexei scowled up at him from his chair. ‘But the bruised eye and the cut on the top of the head were done before death.'

Gyenka beamed back at him. ‘Right … there was considerable bleeding into the tissues of the eye and under the scalp – but the main feature about the head wound was that iodine had been dabbed on to it – and a dead man doesn't do that!'

‘There was a bottle of iodine with his toilet things in the bathroom,' cut in Vasily, with some pride.

Alexei nodded at him –
this is the ability to observe that will take Moiseyenko to a Colonel's rank one day
, he thought.

He looked back at the extrovert Segel, who was perched on the edge of a table, sipping his steaming coffee.

‘So if his main injuries were after death and his head injuries trivial, as you said earlier – what killed him?' demanded the detective.

Gyenka peered impishly at the grim Evdokia before answering. ‘Ha – you hear that, citizeness? … this is what the Western radio calls the “sixty-four million dollar question”! Shall I tell them or will you?'

She waved her permission with a stern hand and he went on happily.

‘We know he didn't die from the main injuries caused in the fall, because there was almost no bleeding from them – the liver was torn, and the main artery at the back of the left knee was severed, but there was hardly any blood on the ground, you say. If he had been alive when it was torn, the haemorrhage would have been like the fountains in Ostankino Park!'

Moiseyenko heard this revolting simile with a return of his queasiness. His coffee turned sour in his mouth as Gyenka carried on with his oration with every sign of delight.

‘His fractured pelvis, ribs and internal organs also showed no significant bleeding, so his heart must have been stopped when he fell.'

Alexei gestured impatiently. ‘You keep telling us this – but what
actually
killed him?'

‘Ah – I was keeping the best bit until last – I have never seen this method of killing in peacetime before. He was given a very sharp blow to the side of the neck, such as the traditional Japanese fighters use. The same thing is taught to our combat troops – and probably to those of every other army. The signs are slight, but distinct.'

‘Such as …?' persisted Pudovkin.

‘Bruising on the side of the neck and in the neck muscles. But, most convincing of all is the cracking of the cartilage of the voice box.'

Alexei scribbled some notes onto his pad, then grunted, ‘Would this be a rapid death?'

Segel threw up his hands in mock drama. ‘But yes! … instantly! The heart stops dead, which is the whole point in unarmed combat.'

Moiseyenko was listening intently, his nausea under control again.

‘You said there were small bruises on the upper part of the arms and on the chest – very recent, like the eye … what about those?'

The pathologist shrugged and turned up his palms appealingly. ‘Here even the great Segel is confounded … I don't know. I should think they were caused by knuckle blows.'

There was a momentary silence as each thought their private thoughts. Then Pudovkin asked his final question. ‘And what about the time of death – can you now get any nearer than the service doctor who came to see the body on the ground?'

Segel gave another of his Parisian shrugs. ‘Not really – you know from our past cases that fixing the time of death is most unreliable. We know he was dead just after five o'clock and from the high body temperature, it seems unlikely that he died before, say, three a.m. – possibly an hour later.'

‘But certainly not late last night or around midnight?' Alexei seemed intent on pinning down the rather vague answer.

‘Definitely not midnight … even with all our inaccuracies, it couldn't have been before two o'clock.'

With this, the detectives had to be satisfied and they got up to leave.

‘Telephone me just before noon, I may have something more for you then … I'll be back at the Sadovaya Triumfalnaya.'

Their minds seething with the implications of Segel's conclusions, Pudovkin and Moiseyenko set out for Petrovka again.

⁶
Muscovites' nickname for the KGB headquarters.

Chapter Nine

In spite of his early morning hangover, Simon managed a good breakfast and felt all the better for it. A very pale Liz Treasure sat with him in the restaurant, picking at some rolls and drinking strong coffee.

They talked the affair over and over, getting exactly nowhere. It seemed to Simon that Liz seemed far more worried about the intentions of the militia than over the death of Fragonard. He recalled the curious thing she had said the previous evening … something about not being a tourist, but on ‘secret business'.
Silly idiot, probably the effects of the vodka
, he thought. He ladled butter onto another slice of rye bread and dismissed it from his overcrowded mind – he had troubles enough of his own.

Gilbert was eating at another table with the old ladies, trying to convince them that they were unlikely to end their tour in Lubyanka, the KGB prison only a stone's throw away from the Metropol. The courier looked pretty seedy himself.
Probably still trying to word that cable to ‘Head Office'
, thought Simon.

There was no sign of Michael Shaw, though that was routine at this time of day – he was presumably breakfasting off a new bottle of Johnnie Walker in his bedroom.