The Holy Thief (18 page)

“Rats! Rats! Rats!” the sergeant bellowed at the retreating figures and then leaned against the alley wall breathing heavily. “They mug drunks like that, Comrade. At night. A little swarm of them. Once the fellow goes down, he doesn’t have a chance. They’ll kill someone one of these days. Look at your coat, if you don’t believe me.”

A long straight cut ran downward from beneath his armpit. He checked it quickly with his free hand. No blood.

“God above,” he said. “How the hell will I get that mended?”

“Sew it yourself, you old woman.” The voice came from the bundle of legs and coat he had pinned to the alley wall. As if on cue, stones and pieces of wood began to thud into the ground around them as the children, regrouped, now advanced to recover the captive.

“Hey, hey. Stop that, you little shits,” Korolev shouted, allowing his annoyance about the slashed coat and bruised testicles to come through. “I’m not going to hurt any of you unless I have to, and I’m not going to take young Goldstein in either. I just want to ask a few questions. I’m a detective, from Petrovka Street.”

Everyone knew about Petrovka Street and the boys, and what looked like one or two girls, stopped their bombardment. Korolev took the opportunity to arrange Kim Goldstein’s clothing so that his face was visible.

“See? He’s fine,” Korolev said, keeping his hands well clear of Goldstein’s teeth and stopping his kicking by holding the boy’s legs flat against the brickwork.

“Do you remember me? From outside the church where the lady was murdered?”

“What do you want,
Ment
?” the boy said, his voice low with indignation, but at least he’d stopped struggling.

“Information. There’ll be a few roubles in it for you.”

“We don’t grass people up, not us.”

A rare distinction, thought Korolev, in a city where so many denunciations came to Petrovka Street each day that they had a team of eight officers just to read through them.

“Look, I’m after a murderer who tortures young women to death. He’s a monster, not some regular fellow from the neighborhood who buys and sells a few vegetables down at Sukharevka market. I need your help.”

The children looked at him, considering the proposal.

“Like the Baker Street Irregulars?” a small blonde girl asked. She had a dirty face and a filthy but well-cut woolen overcoat.

“You like Sherlock Holmes?” Korolev asked. Several of the children nodded and one of them produced a savagely mangled copy of
The Sign of Four.
“Well, you can be the Razin Street Irregulars, if you’d like. A rouble for a prime piece of information.”

“A rouble? Forget it.”

Korolev looked down at the scornful face of young Goldstein, noting his obvious interest. He felt it safe to loosen his grip now it had become a matter of price rather than principle.

“I could go a little higher,” Korolev said, wondering how he would explain this to the general, who didn’t approve of paying informers at the best of times.

“Five.”

“If it’s very good, yes. Otherwise, we’ll have to see.”

Two shrewd eyes stared up at him from beneath red hair, curled thick with grime.

“Well then,” the boy said, which seemed to constitute an acceptance of the offer. The others came closer, although the sergeant still kept his night stick ready and Korolev made sure to keep the children where he could see them.

“All right, Citizens. My name’s Korolev. Alexei Dmitriyevich. First things first—this is the lady who was murdered. Does anyone recognize her?”

He showed around Mary Smithson’s passport photograph, but there was no response apart from ghoulish interest and a quiet sob from the little girl. He tried again.

“Some witnesses may have seen her at around midnight on the day in question. Were any of you up then? There may have been a car parked further along the street. Anyone see that?”

“There was a black Emka, right enough. Remember? Near the cigarette stall?” This from a scrawny child in a flat cap and a stretched and worn jumper. Two others nodded agreement.

“I remember it, toward the Kremlin it was. On the same side of the street as the church.”

“Yes, and there was a fellow in the driver’s seat smoking, remember?”

“Anyone get a look at him?”

“No, we thought it was some high-up’s driver, or a
Ment.
Stayed well clear.” The other two nodded agreement with flat cap.

“He’d his collar turned right up. All you could see was the cigarette poking out.”

“Very good.” Korolev reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He extracted two single rouble notes, thought about it and took out another three.

“There’s someone I want you to see if you can find for me.” He said, taking out the picture of Nancy Dolan. “Ten roubles if you track her down, and these five to share among yourselves in the meantime.”

Goldstein took the money from him and extended his hand to shake on the deal.

“We’ll find her, don’t you worry.” He walked over to the other children, nodded and then they turned as one to walk off down the alleyway.

“Waste of money, if you ask me,” the sergeant grumbled, but he had a smile hidden under his mustache. Korolev nodded in the direction the children had departed.

“What happens to them? In the end?”

“The Lord takes them to himself soon enough, if the State doesn’t throw them into an orphanage. I don’t know which is better.”

It was as Korolev had expected. He buttoned his overcoat against the floating drizzle and ran a finger down the cut as they walked back toward the Militia post.

“What’s your name, Sergeant? So I know it, if you call?”

“Pushkin.”

“Really?”

The sergeant shook his head in resignation. “Please, Comrade Captain. It wasn’t my choice. I was just born to it. You can’t change your family name, can you? I don’t complain—a name’s only a name. The Lord willed it. I mean to say—it’s the way it must be. Comrade Stalin wouldn’t change his name, now would he?”

“No, that’s true enough, Sergeant.” Although, of course, the big boss
had
changed his name, the canny Georgian. Stalin sounded better than Djugashvili to Russian ears, after all.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Korolev splashed through a deep puddle in front of the Razin Street Militia Station and cursed. Brusilov was waiting inside the doorway, smoking a cigarette.

“Korolev. You look like you swam the Moskva to get here. What happened to your coat?”

Korolev shook Brusilov’s shovel of a hand, holding up the edge of the slashed coat as he did so.

“A little brat tried to shave me with his razor. Is there a fire I can put it in front of for a while? It’s wet through.”

The captain’s face seemed formed from the same hard stone as the station’s walls, but his eyes were friendly as he pointed to a cast-iron stove at the back of the room, and Korolev gladly shed the sodden garment. The station was even more rundown than Korolev remembered it. A mixed bag of citizenry sat on a bench that ran the length of one wall, their clothes wet and their faces sour, while in front of them uniformed Militiamen sat at three desks dealing with the endless complaints, notifications and attendances. A bare electric light bulb lit the scene. Brusilov followed his glance and shook his head.

“Half our time is taken up with bureaucracy—I’ve three of my boys stamping documents from morning to night and the queue gets longer every day. Anyway, your young fellow’s upstairs with Citizeness Kardasheva, and a right one she is too. Mind if I sit in?”

“Help yourself, brother. The more the merrier.”

Semionov and Kardasheva were sitting facing each other across a pockmarked wooden table in the station’s interview room. Paint peeled from the gray walls and the weak light bulb didn’t seem quite strong enough to reach the corners.

“Ah, more of you, I see,” Kardasheva said, adjusting her glasses so that she could focus on Brusilov and Korolev. “Am I under arrest?”

“No, Citizeness, we just have a few questions for you about what you saw the night before last.” Semionov looked weary; it clearly wasn’t the first time he’d explained this to her.

“But this is a cell, is it not? It has bars on the window.” She pointed at the tiny window high on the wall facing the door. The window was so dirty Korolev was surprised she could see the bars outside.

“I’m not the architect, Citizeness, but this is an interview room, nothing more. And I’ve asked you to remain here so that you can describe exactly what you saw to Captain Korolev.”

“I thought it was you investigating the murder?”

“I am, but Captain Korolev is the senior officer on the case.”

The elderly lady snorted, then pulled her ancient brown coat closer around her, tucking her silver hair inside the frayed velvet collar. She was about sixty-five, Korolev guessed, with a once pretty face sharpened by hunger and chronic cynicism.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Citizeness Kardasheva. I’m afraid I’m at fault here. I wanted to hear what you had to say directly.”

“Well, it’s just not right. I haven’t done anything wrong and I’ll be lucky if I get a crust at the bakers’ cooperative now. There’ll be a queue a
verst
long—all for black bread at one rouble and seventy five kopeks a kilo. It was easier with coupons. But go on, go on. Ask your questions. I’ll tell you everything. I’m a loyal citizen—see no one tells you different.”

“Of course, I can see that.” Korolev spoke in a conciliatory voice, “I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions yet again.”

Kardasheva’s hard mouth softened into a grimace and she inclined her head in acknowledgment of his courtesy.

“You saw a young woman walking with two men on the night of the murder, heading in the direction of the church where the victim was found. Do you think you would recognize the woman from a photograph?”

“Perhaps. My eyesight isn’t perfect, but I was wearing my glasses and the street is well lit.”

Korolev put the photograph of Mary Smithson on the table and pushed it toward her. A long thin hand extended to pick it up and then held it so as to catch as much of the light from the bulb as possible.

“I think so. It was dark, but I would think so. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t her, anyway.”

She pushed the photograph back and then refolded her arms. Brusilov leaned forward and picked up the picture, examining it with the same care.

Korolev continued. “Your description of the clothes matches those of the victim as well. So, for the purpose of discussion, let’s presume the woman you saw was the victim. I’d like you to tell me as much as possible about the two men with her.”

Kardasheva’s eyes seemed to refocus on the remembered midnight street.

“One of them was big. You know, not really tall, but very big, like a two-legged ox. I felt sorry for the girl. I thought he’d do something bad to her.”

“Why did you think that, Citizeness? You said nothing about that in the interview.”

“Well, it looked like she might be drunk. She wasn’t unsteady on her feet as such, but the big man had his arm around her and I don’t think she had much choice about where she was going. He looked like he could lift a house with one hand. Just the size of him. And it wasn’t fat either. He was solid muscle. You could tell from the way he walked.”

“How tall do you think he was?”

“I would say about five foot ten. How tall was the girl? I’d say he was half a foot taller than her.”

Korolev thought five foot ten sounded about right. The girl had been five foot four according to the autopsy report.

“The other man had a fedora, smaller, but a little taller than the girl, and he carried a suitcase. Both of the men had long overcoats. Dark. I couldn’t see their faces, but the larger man had a very wide face, the same as his body. The other man I didn’t notice so much, really. The big man caught my attention. They weren’t ordinary workers, that’s my opinion. But you’d know better than me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean what I say. They were Militia or State Security if I’m not mistaken—certainly the larger man was. Not hooligans or Thieves. I could tell, even from the other side of the street. The click, click, click of new boots on the pavement; not that many new boots clicking along Razin Street this year—you can’t buy them in the shops, no matter who you know. And the way they walked as well—like they owned the place.”

Korolev knew the kind she meant—they deliberately made their presence felt, even in plain clothes. Sometimes they were detectives, it was true, but more often than not they were Chekists. Korolev looked down at his feet and then at Semionov and Brusilov’s—both the other Militiamen wore new leather boots. Was he the only damned policeman in Moscow squelching round in felt this winter? She caught his disgruntled look and laughed.

“Yes, Captain, I’m not sure you’re taking full advantage of your position.”

“A bit of respect, please, Citizeness.” Korolev didn’t manage to keep the irritation out of his voice. How the hell
did
everyone else have new leather boots?

“Do you have any other reason for your assertion that the two men were investigators?”

“Oh no, I didn’t say they were investigators. They were heavies. You’re not a heavy, my dear Captain. Not at all. And nor’s the boy.” She nodded toward Semionov in such a dismissive way that the lieutenant blushed. “Comrade Brusilov here could be, but isn’t. The other two—well, it was their profession.”

Chekists for sure, then. Korolev looked down at his notes and then at Brusilov, who shrugged his shoulders. Semionov nodded in agreement with the consensus. She’d nothing more to tell them.

“You’re free to go, Citizeness and thank you for your help. If by any chance you spot one of the men, please call me at Petrovka Street. The exchange will put you straight through. Or contact Captain Brusilov.”

“I’m not afraid, you know. Of saying two Chekists might have been involved in a murder.” She sighed, and then lifted her chin slightly, proud or perhaps just resigned. “Maybe I would be if I were younger, Captain, but I saw what I saw. What can I do? It’s my duty to tell the truth, surely. Weren’t we all taught that in school?”

Before the Revolution perhaps, thought Korolev, and nodded toward the door. “Lieutenant Semionov will see you out. Thank you, Citizeness.”

When the heavy door had shut behind them, he turned to Brusilov.

“What d’you make of that?”

“Not possible, surely? If the Chekists need to do something like that, they’ve got the Lubianka and the Butyrka and half a dozen other prisons. It just seems unlikely. What else have you got?”

Korolev told him about the Emka and the electrical burns and the dead Thief. Brusilov rasped a broad hand back and forth across his unshaven chin.

“I’m glad it’s your case and not mine,” he said, after a long pause. “It stinks. Still, we’ll pass on anything we come across. We’re still checking the Komsomol members who visited the church.”

The way he raised his eyebrows told Korolev he thought this was a waste of time.

“It’s worth doing,” Korolev said and reached for a cigarette, offering the pack to Brusilov, who refused with a sigh.

“Did you hear the explosion last night?” Brusilov said, changing the subject.

Korolev thought for a moment before he shook his head.

“Another church. They’ve half of it cleared away already. To make space for the October Day Parade.” Brusilov’s statement was neutral, betraying no feeling about the event, one way or the other. “Maybe I will have one of those cigarettes.”

He was just lighting it when Semionov returned and handed Korolev a note with an expectant look.

Meet me at the Hippodrome at 1:30. Sit in the stands—in line with the winning post. I’ll find you. Our friend wants to meet you. I.E.B.