During these past hours the memory of the boy lying in the snow had dominated Leo’s thoughts. He’d suffered nightmares where a boy in the middle of the forest, naked, disembowelled, had asked why they’d abandoned him.
Why did you leave me?
The boy in the nightmare was Arkady — Fyodor’s son.
Raisa had told Leo that she found it hard concentrating at school knowing there was a dead child in the woods and pretending nothing was wrong. She felt an overwhelming urge to warn the children, somehow alert the town — the parents knew nothing of the danger. None of them had reported a child missing. The school records showed no unexplained absences. Who was the boy in the woods? She wanted to name him, find his family. All Leo could do was to ask her to wait. Despite her unease she’d deferred to Leo’s judgement that this was the only way to free an innocent young man and initiate a hunt for the person responsible. The ludicrousness of the reasoning made it sound entirely plausible.
Having recruited workers from the lumber mills to make up the search teams, Nesterov split the men and women into seven groups of ten. Leo was assigned to a group searching the forests beside State Hospital 379, on the opposite side of town from where the body was located. This was ideal since it would be better if he didn’t make the discovery. There was also a possibility that there were more bodies to be found. He was convinced that these victims weren’t the first.
The ten members of Leo’s team broke down into two groups of three and one group of four. Leo was working with Nesterov’s deputy, a man instructed, no doubt, to keep an eye on him. They were joined by a woman, a mill worker. It took them the entire day to complete their portion of the search, several square kilometres through difficult snow drifts which needed to be prodded with sticks to make sure there was nothing underneath them. They found no body. Reassembling back at the hospital, none of the other two teams had found anything either. These forests were empty. Leo was impatient to know what was happening on the other side of town.
Nesterov was standing by the edge of the forest, near the railway maintenance cabin which had been commandeered and turned into a temporary headquarters. Leo approached, trying to seem unhurried and indifferent. Nesterov asked:
— What have you found?
— Nothing.
And after a calculated pause Leo added:
— What about here?
— No, nothing, nothing at all.
Leo’s poise of cool indifference fell away from him. Aware that his reaction was being watched, he turned away trying to work out what could have gone wrong. How had they missed the body? Was it still there? The tracks were clearly visible. It was possible that the search perimeter hadn’t stretched as far as the body but it must have stretched as far as the tracks. Was it that the team hadn’t followed them to their end? If they were unmotivated, then they might have given up once the tracks continued past the edge of their designated search area. Most of the teams were returning: there wasn’t much time before the entire operation would be concluded with the boy’s body still in the woods.
Leo began questioning the returning men. Two militia officers, neither of them much older than eighteen, had been part of the team searching the area of the forests closest to where the body lay. They admitted there’d been tracks but they’d appeared to be innocent since they were four sets of prints rather than two: they’d presumed that they were nothing more than a family on an expedition. Leo had neglected to take into consideration that he and Raisa had made an additional set of tracks running parallel to those of the victim and the murderer. Fighting back his exasperation he forgot that he no longer had any authority and ordered the two men back into the woods to follow the tracks to their conclusion. The officers weren’t convinced. The tracks might go on for kilometres. And more to the point: who was Leo to give orders?
Leo had no option but to go to Nesterov, illustrating with the use of a map that there were no nearby villages in that direction, arguing that the tracks were suspicious. But Nesterov agreed with the two young officers. The fact there were four sets of prints made it an unlikely trail and not worth following. Unable to contain his frustration, Leo said:
— I’ll go alone, then.
Nesterov stared at him.
— We’ll both go.
Leo was following his own footsteps deeper and deeper into the forests, accompanied only by Nesterov. Belatedly he realized that he was in danger, unarmed and alone with this man who wanted him dead. If he was going to be killed this was a good place. Nesterov seemed calm. He was smoking.
— Tell me, Leo, what are we going to find at the end of these tracks?
— I have no idea.
— But these are your footprints.
Nesterov pointed to the tracks in front of them and then at the tracks Leo had just made. They were identical.
— We’re going to find the body of a dead child.
— Which you’ve already discovered?
— Two days ago.
— But you didn’t report it?
— I wanted to establish that Varlam Babinich knew nothing about this murder.
— You were worried we’d blame him for the murder?
— I’m still worried.
Was Nesterov going to draw his gun? Leo waited. Nesterov finished his cigarette and continued walking. They said nothing more until they reached the body. The boy lay exactly as Leo remembered, on his back, naked, his mouth full of bark, his torso a savaged mess. Leo stood back, watching as Nesterov made an examination. He took his time. Leo could see that his superior officer was outraged by the crime. That was of some comfort.
Finally, Nesterov approached Leo:
— I want you to go back, call the procurator’s officer. I’m going to stay here with the body.
Remembering Leo’s concerns, Nesterov added:
— It’s obvious that Varlam Babinich had nothing to do with this murder.