Child 44 (26 page)

Leo had rushed to the conclusion that this was a frenzied attack. The blood and mutilation represented chaos to his mind. But it was no such thing. It was ordered, precise, planned.

—Do you label the bodies when you bring them in–for identification purposes?

—Not that I’m aware.

—What is that?

Around the girl’s ankle was a loop of string. It had been tied in a tight noose and a small length drooped down off the gurney. It looked like a pauper’s anklet. There were burn marks where the string had rubbed against the skin.

Tyapkin saw him first. General Nesterov was standing at the door. It was impossible to say how long he’d been there, watching them. Leo stepped away from the body.

—I came here to familiarize myself with procedure.

Nesterov addressed Tyapkin.

—Would you excuse us?

—Yes, of course.

Tyapkin glanced at Leo, as though wishing him luck, before moving away. Nesterov approached. As a crude way of deflecting attention, Leo began summarizing the recent observations.

—The original report doesn’t mention that her stomach has been removed. We have a specific question to put to Varlam: why did he cut out her stomach and what did he do with it afterwards?

—What are you doing in Voualsk?

Nesterov was now standing opposite Leo. The girl’s body was in between them.

—I was transferred here.

—Why?

—I can’t say.

—I think you’re still
MGB
.

Leo remained silent. Nesterov continued.

—That doesn’t explain why you’d be so interested in this murder. We released Mikoyan without charge, as we were instructed to.

Leo had no idea who Mikoyan was.

—Yes, I know.

—He had nothing to do with this girl’s murder.

Mikoyan must be the name of the Party official. He’d been protected. But was a man who beat a prostitute the same man who murdered this young girl? Leo didn’t think it likely. Nesterov continued.

—I haven’t arrested Varlam because he said the wrong thing, or forgot to attend a march in Red Square. I arrested him because he killed that girl, because he’s dangerous and because this town is safer with him in custody.

—He didn’t do it.

Nesterov scratched the side of his face.

—Whatever it is that you’ve been sent here to do, remember that you’re not in Moscow anymore. Here, we have an arrangement. My men are safe. None of them have ever or will ever be arrested. If you do anything to endanger my team, if you report anything which undermines my authority, if you disobey an order, if you derail a prosecution, if you portray my officers as incompetent, if you make any denouncements regarding my men: if you do any of these things, I’ll kill you.

20 March

Raisa touched the window frame. The nails that had been hammered in to keep the bedroom window shut had all been prised out. She turned around, moving to the door and opening it. In the hallway she could hear noise from the restaurant downstairs but there was no sign of Basarov. It was late in the evening, his busiest time. Shutting the door and locking it, Raisa returned to the window, opening it and glancing down. Directly below was a sloping roof, part of the kitchen. The snow had been disturbed where Leo had climbed down. She was furious. Having survived by the thinnest of margins, he was now gambling with both their lives.

Today had been Raisa’s second day at Secondary School 151. The school’s director, Vitali Kozlovich Kapler, a man in his late forties, had been more than happy with Raisa joining his staff since she’d be taking over many of his lessons enabling him, he’d claimed, to catch up with his paperwork. Whether her arrival was actually freeing him up to do other work or just allowing him to do less work, Raisa couldn’t say for sure. On the basis of first impressions he seemed like a man who preferred bookwork to teaching. But she’d been more than happy to start work immediately. From the handful of classes she’d taught so far she’d found the children less politically savvy than students in Moscow. They didn’t break into applause at the mention of key Party figures, they weren’t fiercely competitive about proving their loyalty to the Party and generally they seemed much more like children. They were made up of a patchwork of different backgrounds, families plucked from all corners of the country–their collective experiences wildly contrasting. The same was true of the staff. Almost all of the teachers had been transferred to Voualsk from different regions. Having experienced a similar upheaval to the one she’d just gone through they treated her nicely enough. They were suspicious of her, of course. Who was she? Why was she here? Was she all that she seemed? But she didn’t mind, these were questions everyone asked of each other. For the first time since arriving in this town Raisa could imagine creating a life here.

She’d lingered at the school until late in the evening, reading, preparing for her lessons. School 151 was considerably more comfortable than a noisy room above a stinking restaurant. The shabby conditions had been intended as a punishment and while they bothered Leo they were an ineffective weapon against her. Above all else she was supremely adaptable. She had no attachment to buildings or cities or belongings. These sentiments had been taken from her, stripped out the day she’d witnessed the destruction of her childhood home. During the first years of the war, seventeen years old, she’d been foraging in the forest, mushrooms in one pocket, berries in the other, when shells had begun to fall. They’d landed not near her but in the distance. Climbing the tallest tree, feeling the vibrations through the trunk, she’d perched on a high branch, like a bird, watching as several kilometres away her home town had been transformed into brick dust and smoke, a town literally flung up into the sky. The horizon had disappeared beneath a man-made fog, beaten up from the ground. The destruction was too swift, too widespread, too complete for her to have felt even the slightest hope for her family. After the shelling had finished she’d climbed down from the tree and walked back through the forest in a state of shock, her right pocket dripping juice from the crushed berries. Her eyes had streamed: not tears of sadness, for she hadn’t cried then or since, but a reaction to the dust. Coughing on an acrid cloud, all that remained of her home and family, she’d realized that the shells hadn’t been fired from the German line, they’d whistled overhead, direct from the Russian front line. Later, as a refugee, she’d heard confirmation that their country’s army had instructions to destroy any towns and villages which might fall into German hands. The complete annihilation of her childhood home had been a:

Precautionary measure.

With those words any deaths could be justified. Better to destroy your own people than there be a chance a German soldier might find a loaf of bread. There were no qualms, no apologies and no questions allowed. To object to the killings was treason. And the lessons her parents had taught her about love and affection, the lessons a child learns from watching and listening and living around two people in love, were pushed to the back of her mind. That behaviour belonged to a different time. Having a home–a sense of place: only children held onto such dreams.

Stepping back from the window, Raisa was struggling to remain calm. Leo had begged her to stay with him, detailing the risks in leaving. She had agreed for no other reason than this was her best bet, not much of one, but the best all the same. And now he was jeopardizing their second chance. If they were to survive in this new town they had to remain inconspicuous, do nothing out of the ordinary–say nothing and provoke no one. They were almost certainly under observation. Basarov was almost certainly an informer. Vasili would most probably have agents in the town spying on them, just waiting for a reason to go the extra distance, to upgrade their punishment from exile to internment to execution.

Raisa turned the light off. In the dark she stood, staring out of the window. She could see no one outside. If there were agents working surveillance they’d almost certainly be downstairs. Maybe that’s why the window had been secured. She would have to make sure Leo brought back the nails so they could be replaced. Basarov might check them when they were at work. She put on her gloves and coat and climbed out of the window, lowering herself onto the icy roof, trying not to make a sound. She closed the window behind her and clambered down to the ground. She had made Leo swear to one condition–they were to be equals as they’d never been equals before. Yet he’d already gone back on his word. If he thought that she would silently stand by him–the obedient, supportive wife–while he endangered her life for his own personal reasons, he was mistaken.

Same Day

An area with a radius of roughly five hundred metres from the point where Larisa’s body had been found had been searched as part of the official investigation. Even without any experience in murder investigations that area seemed small to Leo. Nothing had been discovered except the girl’s clothes, discarded some forty or so paces from the body deeper into the forest. Why were her clothes–her shirt, skirt, hat, jacket and gloves–located in a neat pile so far from her body? The clothes showed no trace of blood, they bore no knife marks, no slashes or cuts. Larisa Petrova had either been undressed or she’d undressed herself. Perhaps she’d tried to run away, towards the edge of the forest, only to be caught just before the clearing. If that was true she’d been running naked. The killer must have persuaded her to accompany him, maybe offering money for sex. Once hidden in the relative depths of the forest, once she’d taken her clothes off, he’d attacked. But Leo was finding it difficult to apply logic to this crime. The incomprehensible details–the soil, the removal of the stomach, the string–were alien to him and yet at the same time he couldn’t stop thinking about them.

There was little chance of finding anything new regarding Larisa’s death, even allowing for incompetence and oversight. Therefore Leo was in the conflicted position of needing to find a second body. During the winter these forests would be deserted, a body could lie here for months, preserved as Larisa’s body had been preserved. Leo had reason to believe she wasn’t the first victim. The doctor had suggested the killer knew what he was doing, that he had a competence and assuredness that came from practice. The method suggested a routine, a routine suggested a sequence. And then, of course, there was the death of Arkady–a fact that Leo held in abeyance at this time.

Searching by a combination of moonlight and discreet use of his flashlight, Leo’s life depended on being undetected. He believed the general’s death threat absolutely. However, his need for secrecy had received a setback when the man working in the train station, Aleksandr, had seen him walking into the woods. He had called out and Leo, unable to think of a plausible lie, was forced to tell the truth, saying that he was collecting evidence regarding the young girl’s murder. He’d then asked Aleksandr not to mention this to anyone, claiming that it would compromise the investigation. Aleksandr had agreed and wished him luck, remarking that he’d always presumed the killer had been on a train journey. Why else was the body so near the station? Someone who lived in the town would know far more secluded areas of forest. Leo had agreed that the location was suggestive, making a mental note to himself to check up on this man. Though he seemed nice enough the appearance of innocence counted for little. Although, Leo mused, innocence didn’t count for much either.

Using a map stolen from the militia’s office, Leo had divided the forests surrounding the railway station into four areas. He found nothing in the first area, which was where the victim’s body had been found. Much of the ground had been trampled under hundreds of boots. Not even the bloody snow remained, removed no doubt as part of the effort to erase all trace of this crime. As far as Leo could tell, the remaining three areas hadn’t been searched: the snow was untouched. It had taken him an hour or so to cover the second grid, by which time his fingers were numb with cold. However, the advantage of the snow was that he could move relatively quickly, scanning large sweeps of ground for footprints, using his own tracks to mark sections that he’d covered.

Having almost finished the third area he paused. He could hear footsteps–the crunch of snow. Turning the flashlight off, he moved behind a tree, crouching down. But he couldn’t hide–they seemed to be following his tracks. Should he run? That was his only chance.

—Leo?

He stood up, turning on his flashlight. It was Raisa.

Leo lowered the beam out of her face.

—Were you followed?

—No.

—Why are you here?

—I’m here to ask you that question.

—I told you. A little girl was murdered, they have a suspect but I don’t think—

Raisa interrupted, impatient, abrupt.

—You don’t think he’s guilty?

—No.

—And since when has that mattered to you?

—Raisa, I’m just trying—

—Leo, stop, because I don’t think I can stomach you telling me you’re here doing the right thing, motivated by the principles of justice, or honour. Let’s be blunt. This is going to end badly and when it ends badly for you, it ends badly for me.

—You want me to do nothing?

Raisa became angry.

—I’m supposed to bow down to this personal investigation of yours? There are innocent people suffering all across this country and there’s nothing I can do about it except try and not be one of them.

—You believe that keeping our heads down, doing nothing wrong, that protects us? You did nothing wrong before, they wanted to execute you as a traitor. Doing nothing is no guarantee we won’t be arrested anyway–I’ve learnt that lesson.

—But you’re like a child with a new fact. Everyone knows there are no guarantees. It’s about risk. And this is an unacceptable one. You think if you can catch one genuinely guilty person all those innocent men and women you’ve arrested will just fade away? This isn’t about any little girl, it’s about you.