Andrei collided with the boy at such speed that they both fell to the ground. Andrei was on top, the boy wriggling underneath; scratching and biting his jacket. Keeping himself flat on the boy to stop him escaping Andrei muttered:
— It’s still alive!
He pulled out the long hunting knife attached to his belt. Closing his eyes, he jabbed the blade underneath him, cautious jabs at first, stabbing only with the tip, small stabs, listening to its screams. He waited, savouring this moment, feeling the vibrations of the struggle in his stomach. What a feeling! Excited, the blade went in further and faster, further and faster until finally the blade went in all the way up to the hilt. At this point the child was no longer moving.
THREE MONTHS LATER
South-Eastern Rostov Oblast The Sea of Azov
4 July
Nesterov sat with his toes buried in the sand. This stretch of beach was popular with people living in the nearby city of Rostov-on-Don, some forty or so kilometres to the north-east. Today was no exception. The beach was crowded. As if the inhabitants of the town had emerged from hibernation, their bodies were drained of colour by the long winter. Could he guess what kind of jobs people held from the shapes of their bodies? The fatter men were important in some way. Perhaps they were factory managers or Party officials or high-ranking State Security officers, not the kind who kicked down doors but the kind who signed forms. Nesterov was careful not to catch their eye. He concentrated on his family. His two sons were playing in the shallow water, his wife lay beside him, sleeping on her side — her eyes closed, her hands tucked under her head. At a glance they seemed content: a perfect Soviet family. They had every reason to be relaxed — they were on holiday, allowed the use of an official militia car, with a State voucher for fuel, as a reward for the successful, discreet and efficient handling of the two separate murder investigations. He’d been told to take it easy. Those had been his orders. He repeated the words in his head, sucking on their irony.
The trial of Varlam Babinich had lasted two days with his defence lawyer entering a plea of insanity. According to procedure the defence were forced to rely upon the testimony of the same experts used by the prosecution. They couldn’t call their own independent witnesses. Nesterov was no lawyer and didn’t need to be in order to understand the enormous advantage this set-up handed to the prosecution. In Babinich’s case the defence had to prove insanity without being able to call a witness who hadn’t first been groomed by the prosecution. Since there were no psychiatrists working at Hospital 379 a doctor with no specialist training had been selected by the prosecution and called to make a judgement. This doctor had stated that he believed Varlam Babinich understood the difference between right and wrong and knew murder was wrong; the defendant’s intelligence was limited certainly but sufficient to grasp concepts such as criminality, after all he’d said upon arrest:
I’m in so much trouble.
The defence then had no choice but to call the same doctor and attempt to argue a contradictory point of view. Varlam Babinich had been found guilty. Nesterov had received a typed letter confirming that the seventeen-year-old had died on his knees, shot in the back of the head.
Dr Tyapkin’s case had taken less time, barely a day. His wife had testified that he was violent, describing his sick fantasies and claiming that the only reason she hadn’t come forward before was because she’d feared for her own life and for the life of her baby. She’d also told the judge that she renounced her religion — Judaism. She would bring her children up to be loyal Communists. In exchange for this testimony she’d been transferred to Shakhty, a town in the Ukraine, where she could continue her life without the stigma of her husband’s crime. Since no one outside Voualsk had heard of the crime, there wasn’t even any need to change her name.
With these two cases concluded, the court had processed close to two hundred cases against men accused of anti-Soviet behaviour. These homosexuals had received hard-labour sentences of between five and twenty-five years. In order to deal with the sheer number of cases swiftly the judge had devised a formula for sentencing which depended upon their employment record, the number of children they had and finally the quantity of perverse sexual encounters they’d been alleged to have experienced. Being a member of the Party was counted as a strike against the accused since they’d brought the Party into disrepute. They should have known better and their membership was stripped from them. Despite the repetitious nature of these sessions Nesterov had sat through all of them, all one hundred and fifty or so. After the last man had been sentenced he’d left the court only to find himself being congratulated by local Party officials. He’d done well. It was almost certain he’d have a new apartment with the next couple of months, or if not then by the end of the year.
Several nights after the conclusion of the trials, as he’d lain awake, his wife had told him it was only a matter of time before he agreed to help Leo. She wished he’d just get on and do it. Had he been waiting for her permission? Perhaps he had. He was gambling with not only his own life but with those of his family. It wasn’t that he was doing anything technically wrong by asking questions and making enquiries, but he was acting on his own. Independent action was always a risk since it implied that the structures put in place by the State had failed: that the individual could somehow achieve something the State could not. All the same he was confident that he could begin a quiet kind of investigation, a casual investigation which would appear to be no more than conversations between colleagues. If he discovered that there were no similar cases, no other murdered children, then he could be sure that the brutal punishments he’d been instrumental in bringing about had been fair, just and appropriate. Though he mistrusted Leo and resented the doubt he’d stirred up, there was no escaping that the man had posited a very simple question. Did his work have meaning or was it merely a means to survive? There was nothing shameful about trying to survive — it was the occupation of the majority. However, was it enough to live in squalor and not even be rewarded with a sense of pride, not even to be sustained by a sense that what he did served some purpose?
For the past ten weeks Nesterov had operated on his own without any discussion or collaboration with Leo. Since Leo was almost certainly under surveillance the less contact between them the better. All he’d done was to scribble Leo a short note—I’ll help—including instructions to destroy the note immediately.
There was no easy way of accessing regional criminal files. He’d made phone calls and written letters. In both forms of communication he’d mentioned the subject only in passing, praising the efficiency of his department for the swift resolution of their two cases in an attempt to provoke similar boasts. As the replies began to arrive he’d been forced to make several off-duty train journeys, arriving in towns and meeting with his colleagues, drinking with them, discussing relevant cases for no more than a fraction of a minute before boasting about other things. It was an extraordinarily inefficient means of collecting information. Three hours of drinking might provide two minutes of useful conversation. After eight weeks Nesterov hadn’t unearthed a single unsolved crime. At this point he’d called Leo into his office.