“Kaz?” I said, shielding my eyes from the light, while trying to see into his.
“Billy, I found him like this, not one minute ago.”
“Then why do you have that rock in your hand?” I pointed to where his right hand rested on the ground, palm down on what looked like the murder weapon. Kaz pulled his hand away, his fingertips stained crimson, his eyes wide with disbelief and confusion. We stared at each other as the silence was broken by a whistle, a piercing, screeching sound as the sentry blew his whistle with all his might, sounding the alarm, too late to do any good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“ Now let’s get this straight,” Detective Sergeant Roy Flack said for the hundredth time. I took a drink of tea, wishing it was coffee. It had been hours since I found Kaz, and we’d spent every one of them in this room. Brick walls and arched ceiling, every brick painted a glossy pale yellow, the kind of paint job you get when you have plenty of free labor, officers with not much else to do, and an endless supply of government-issue paint.
“You became angry after reading the newspaper accounts of the Russian investigation of the Katyn affair,” Flack said, reading from his notebook.
“Yes. And then quite inebriated,” Kaz said. He looked pale, but that could have been the lighting. It was harsh, a row of light fixtures above the table where we sat, Kaz and I on one side, DS Flack on the other, and a constable at the door. There was a British soldier standing guard on the other side of that door. I hadn’t tried to leave, because I didn’t want to desert Kaz and because I wasn’t sure if they’d let me.
“Inebriated, as you say,” Flack noted. “You left your room as it was getting dark, about 5:00 p.m. Lieutenant Boyle observed this, right?”
“Right,” I said. “Inebriated is too strong a term. Tipsy, maybe.”
“Angry and tipsy,” Flack said, raising his eyebrows. “Sounds like a vaudeville act. Were you going to meet someone, Lieutenant Kazimierz? Or look for someone?” It had been the same question, over and over again, since Flack arrived. The sentries had summoned their commanding officer, who sent for Sidorov and the local constable. Sidorov was nowhere to be found. The commanding officer and the constable both sensed more trouble from more quarters than either wanted any part of, and made a call to Scotland Yard. Flack had been the closest inspector, still coordinating the hunt for downed Germans south of London. He’d been awakened in the middle of the night and forced to drive over country lanes in the blackout to get to Dover. By the time he arrived, rain clouds had moved in, and he’d gotten soaked dashing in from his car. He wasn’t much happier about being here than we were.
“No,” Kaz said, shaking his head, as if willing the cobwebs to be cleared from Flack’s single-track mind. “I left rather than make more of an ass of myself. I knew I’d had too much to drink, and that I was verging on self-pity. I thought the cold night air would do me good, and I’d heard that from a good height, you could see the muzzle flashes from the German railway guns, when they bring them out to shell Dover.”
“You were determined to get yourself killed?” Flack suggested.
“Not at all. It may not have been my most splendid idea, but it was something I thought interesting. Better than drinking more vodka. So I climbed the path up the cliff and sat on a bench at the top. I watched the bombers fly over. It was really magnificent, if one could separate spectacle from reality. When the antiaircraft gun behind me opened up, I almost fell into the sea. I watched the two planes go down, and sat for a while longer.”
“How long?” Flack said.
“I have no idea. I was lost in my own thoughts after the firing died down.”
“What were you thinking about, Lieutenant?”
“My homeland. The likelihood that I will never see it again. What to do with my life. To whom I owe my loyalty. The woman I loved and lost. How beautiful the water looked under the starlight. The things one thinks about late at night, in wartime, under the stars, after death has flown overhead.”
“And you say you saw no one until Lieutenant Boyle came along?”
“No, I did not say that, DS Flack. I said I saw the sentries at the gate, when the guns fired. They were far away, though, and I’m sure they didn’t see me. And I saw the body, before I saw Billy.”
“Ah, yes,” Flack said, making a show of consulting his notebook. “You had no idea that the murdered body of Rak Vatutin lay just a few yards from where you sat? You didn’t see it when you looked toward the sentries?”
“No, it was pitch black, except for when the antiaircraft gun fired, and there was a bright explosive light, which lit the area around the gun. The sentries were only shadows.”
“With all that shooting, and everyone looking up, it would have been a simple matter to bash a man’s brains in,” Flack said, his voice mild but his eyes unblinking, riveted on Kaz. “It must have been tempting to come upon a Russian in the dark.”
“If Joseph Stalin had walked by, I would have given it some thought. But he was nowhere to be seen.” The constable at the door laughed, but lost the smile as Flack turned to stare him down.
“Explain the blood on your hands then,” Flack said.
“When I saw the body, I knelt down to get a closer look, to see if he was alive. I rested one hand on the ground and felt for a pulse with the other. I didn’t even notice I’d put my hand on a stone, until Billy pointed it out. Inspector, if I wished to kill anyone, Russian or otherwise, I wouldn’t do it within plain sight of sentries and a gun crew.”
“But you said yourself, they didn’t see you, that it was too dark.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t have taken that chance.”
“Very well,” DS Flack said. “Now, Lieutenant Boyle. We know what time you left the inn, based on witnesses there. Approximately fifteen minutes elapsed between then and when you found Lieutenant Kazimierz leaning over the body.”
“Yes,” I said. Never give an interrogator more words than you need to. Words are his weapon against you.
“You saw no other people in the area?”
“Not in the immediate area. I saw Archie and Topper Chapman at the inn. They were looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“Vatutin. They’d asked me to deliver a message to him.”
“Why would they do that?” Flack said, underlining something in his notebook.
“They’d lost contact with him after the Soviet group moved down here.”
“What was the message?”
“They wanted to know the time and place. Of what, I don’t know. Maybe it had to do with the hijackings. Maybe they killed him.”
“It would be unlike the Chapmans to eliminate a useful conduit for information. And I doubt Vatutin would have been a threat. One word from Archie and his own people would have sent him to Siberia. Still, it may put an end to the hijacking investigation. One less thing to worry about.”
“You don’t think Archie capable of murdering Vatutin?”
“Capable?” Flack said. “Certainly. But I know how he works. He wouldn’t show up outside of his own turf and commit murder. Too obvious, too visible. He’d hire it out. Easy enough to pay someone to watch for Vatutin and do away with him. But not while Archie is within spitting distance.”
“That makes sense,” I had to admit.
“Yes. Now tell me, did you ever witness an argument between Lieutenant Kazimierz and Captain Vatutin?”
“No.”
“Nothing unpleasant at all?”
“No. We met him at the embassy. He gave us food and drink and was a cordial host.”
“On the night of the opera, when Lieutenant Kazimierz threatened Captain Sidorov? Called him a butcher, and said he’d pay for what he’d done?”
“Is that what Inspector Scutt told you?” I knew I should have kept my answer to one word.