‘Could one of them have done it?’ asked Voss, glancing over at the commission.
I pulled a face. ‘I don’t think so, do you? Look at them. There’s none of them that looks like he could hit a vein with a needle, let alone fire a broom-handle Mauser and actually hit anything.’
‘But if not one of them, who?’
‘I don’t know. Find that shoulder-stock yet?’
‘No. To be honest I can’t spare the men to look for it. We have our hands full keeping people away from this place and Katyn Wood.’
‘That’s all right. I’m just on my way back to Krasny Bor now. I’ll take a look for the stock myself.’
Back in the woods at Krasny Bor all of the wild flowers were in bloom and it was hard to believe there was a war on. Von Kluge’s huge staff car was parked in front of his villa but almost everywhere else there was no clue that the place was anything other than the health resort it had once been. Behind the neat curtains of the wooden huts where Russians had previously stayed to take the sulphurous spring waters to move their bowels, nothing moved. There were just the trees whispering to each other in the breeze and some birds punctuating the silence with their bright exclamations that spring had truly arrived at last.
I drove through the gates and, leaving my car, walked to the place where the field police had found the murder weapon, which was marked with a little field police flag. I began to search the long grass and the bushes. I did this in ever-increasing circles, walking around the spot like the hands on a clock until, after about an hour, I found the paddle-shaped polished-oak Mauser stock resting against a tree. It was obvious at once that this was the spot from which the gunman had shot Berruguete, for tied to the branch of the tree at about head height was a length of rope through which anyone seeking to steady his aim might have pushed the Mauser’s 10-centimetre barrel and then secured it tightly with a couple of quick turns. The place where Dr Berruguete’s body had been found was almost a hundred metres away and unimpeded by any trees or bushes. Less obvious however was how the gunman could have used the same length of rope to shoot at me in the opposite direction; he would need to have turned more than a hundred and fifty degrees to his right, which would have left the barrel of the Mauser knocking against another branch of the same tree. In other words, to have shot at me from this same spot using the tie was impossible. This left me puzzled, and wondering if there might have been a second gunman.
I pocketed the length of rope and spent the next thirty minutes carefully searching the grass until I’d found two brass bullet casings. I didn’t bother to look for a third as it was immediately apparent that these could not have been fired from the same gun: one was a 9-millimetre Mauser casing, the other was something bigger – most likely a rifle bullet.
In Krasny Bor the spring silence endured, but inside my head there was now a riot of noise. Finally one clear voice asserted itself against the clamour. Had there been one gunman or two? Or perhaps one gunman with two different weapons – a pistol and a rifle? Certainly it made sense to shoot at me with a rifle – I had been the more distant target. But why not shoot Berruguete with the rifle, too – unless the reason had been to use the borrowed Mauser to point the finger of blame elsewhere?
I walked over to the upturned stump under which I had sought to bury myself to escape my putative assassin and glanced around, looking for the standing tree that the third bullet had hit instead of me, and when I found it I spent the next few minutes gouging it out with my lock-knife.
Lying on the palm of my hand were two misshapen pieces of metal, one of which – the one gouged from the tree – was larger than the other taken from my pocket, and before that from Berruguete’s chest.
When the international commission arrived back from their morning’s inspection of documents at Grushtshenki and went along to the Krasny Bor officers’ mess for lunch, I sought out Professor Buhtz.
Ines, who came into the mess with him, ignored me as if I had been invisible and continued into the dining room.
I motioned Buhtz to follow me. ‘Doubtless you’ve already heard something of the events of last night. The unfortunate death of Dr Berruguete.’
‘Yes,’ said Buhtz. ‘Lieutenant Sloventzik has put me in the picture about that and the overriding need for discretion. What happened, exactly? All Sloventzik told me was that Berruguete had been found murdered in the woods.’
‘He was shot in the woods with a Mauser C96,’ I said. ‘I only know that because we found the weapon on the ground not very far from the body.’
‘A broom-handle eh? Fine pistol. Can’t think why we stopped using them. Good stopping power.’
‘More importantly, how were our guests? Did they believe the story: that Berruguete was suddenly obliged to return home to Spain?’
‘Yes, I think so. None of them has commented on it, although Professor Naville said he was glad to see the back of him. There’s no love lost there, that’s for sure. Under the circumstances it has been a very satisfactory morning. The display of Polish documents recovered from grave number one is most effective. And persuasive. The smell or rather lack of it at Grushtshenki means that we have been able to take our time with the papers. To have read them in Katyn Wood would have proved difficult, I think. The inspection of the graves and the autopsies are an ordeal yet to come, of course. François Naville is perhaps the best of the experts, with the most searching questions – especially since he seems to detest the Nazis so much. I imagine it’s for this reason that he’s refused to take any payment from Berlin, unlike some of the others. Several of them are rather less principled than Naville, which makes the Swiss’s opinion all the more valuable, of course. He speaks good Russian, which is useful as he intends to interview several local people himself – the ones Judge Conrad has deposed. And he’s quite free with his opinions concerning politics and the rights of man. Several times this morning he’s told me in no uncertain terms what he thinks of “Herr Hitler” and his Jewish policies. I didn’t know what to say. Yes, he’s proving to be a very highly awkward fellow is our Professor François Naville.’
‘There’s a possibility that the death of Dr Berruguete is somehow connected with the death of Signalsman Martin Quidde,’ I told him. ‘You remember, at the beginning of April? What happened there? You were able to determine from the ballistics tests you carried out that it wasn’t a suicide but a murder.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Quidde was shot with a Walther that wasn’t the one we found in his own hand. A police pistol, I would suspect. Some fool assuming we’d simply accept the most obvious explanation.’
I nodded, doing a very good impersonation I thought of someone who was entirely innocent of this foolish crime.
‘And you gave me until the end of the month to find his killer before informing the Gestapo. In order that we might avoid any unnecessary action against the local population.’
‘Very principled of you.’ Buhtz nodded. ‘Hadn’t forgotten. Wondered if you had, though.’
‘This is one of the bullets that killed Berruguete,’ I said, handing him the spent bullet and its casing. ‘Your charming assistant, Dr Kramsta, dug it out of his chest first thing this morning when she carried out the autopsy.’
‘Good girl, Ines Kramsta. First-rate pathologist.’
‘The casing I found later on when I searched the area.’ I paused, and then added: ‘Yes, she is.’
‘Not had the best of luck though. Her brother was killed in Spain. And her parents were killed in a bombing raid just a year ago.’
‘I didn’t know.’