It wasn’t so much the silence that disturbed him or the absence of the Militiamen who should have been challenging them. It was something else again, something much more intangible. And he was grateful for the snug feel of the Walther in his hand when the light spilling from the windows and open front door of Mushkina’s cottage showed a crumpled body lying on the cobblestones in front of it.
With Slivka covering him, Korolev carefully approached, recognizing the young uniform from the village, Sharapov. Wet blood oozed down the boy’s pale face. Korolev leant down to feel for a pulse and was surprised by the wave of relief when he felt it. But the relief was tempered with caution – Korolev looked around the courtyard, concerned that the boy’s attacker might still be close by. The lights flickered, then went out once again and they were left in darkness. Slivka had already positioned herself beside Mushkina’s open doorway and he made his way to her, crouching as he did so.
‘Who’s that?’ she whispered.
‘Sharapov – someone’s knocked him out cold.’
In the dark, he couldn’t see Slivka’s reaction.
‘What do we do about this someone, Chief?’ she asked, her voice calm.
‘We see if we can find him and we deal with him.’ Korolev took a deep breath and stepped inside Mushkina’s cottage.
§
Inside it was as dark as the bottom of a coal mine and Korolev pushed himself against the wall, lifted his Walther and turned on his torch, running it quickly round the room. It looked just as he might have expected except for the slumped figure lying across Mushkina’s writing desk.
‘It’s clear, but we’ve another body,’ he whispered to Slivka, who entered behind him and covered him as he approached the desk.
‘The Frenchman,’ he muttered as he turned Jean Les Pins’ head, the dead man’s hair surprisingly soft and his skin, even more surprisingly, with a trace of the heat of a living person. But a thin strip of rope was still dug deep into his neck. And then the smell struck him. The perfume of hot wax. He put a finger to the wick of the candle beside Les Pins’ head – still warm and the wax underneath still liquid. The killer must have left only moments before they arrived.
‘Who is it?’ Slivka asked, moving slowly across the room, gun held out in front of her with her left hand supporting her right.
‘Les Pins. Strangled. Whoever did it is still close, Slivka. Be careful.’
There was no sign of a struggle, and yet here Les Pins was, garrotted, and Sharapov lying unconscious outside with a lump on his head the size of a lemon. There was a door leading further into the house and Korolev, followed closely by Slivka, crept towards it and, gun first, made his way into the kitchen. A quick scan of the room with his torch showed the back door was ajar.
‘Do you think we disturbed them?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m going to check upstairs.’
Leaving Slivka to cover his back, Korolev climbed the stairs to the upper storey, his feet seeming to find every possible creak in the steps as he went. A shirt lay discarded on the small landing and it was clear that someone had ransacked the two bedrooms – Mushkina’s clothes were strewn everywhere, a mattress had been thrown from the bed and cut open with a knife and books littered the floor, their spines and boards filleted. A very thorough job, but hastily done, Korolev decided, wondering what the ransacker had been looking for, and why similar havoc hadn’t been visited on the rooms downstairs. Perhaps they had disturbed the intruder. Or perhaps Les Pins had.
‘Well, Chief?’ Slivka called up to him in a loud whisper.
‘That someone’s been up here, Slivka – and searching for something by the looks of it. No sign of Comrade Mushkina.’
He turned off his torch and went back downstairs – whatever they’d been looking for must be worth having.
‘Where’s Mushkina’s telephone?’
‘I’ll find it.’
‘Get it winding, Slivka, and get people out here, soon as you can. I’ll bring Sharapov into the kitchen before he freezes.’
By the time Korolev had dragged the young Militiaman inside the front door, fat snowflakes were beginning to fall in earnest and already a thin coating of white covered the cobblestones. He could hear Slivka frantically turning the handle on the telephone she’d found on the kitchen wall.
‘No line, not even a crackle. It must be the electricity.’
‘Or perhaps that “someone” fellow cut it, just to make things easy for us. Come on, help me get Sharapov into the kitchen.’
‘Chief,’ Slivka said a few moments later, speaking quietly as she placed a cushion under the unconscious Militiaman’s head, ‘do you hear something?’
He heard it all right – the sound of an approaching motor, its engine barely turning over, but audible enough despite the snow. They crossed the room to the small window that overlooked the courtyard and saw a small truck coming up the lane where they’d left the car at a pace that a man on crutches could have kept up with, its lights off.
‘There’s a phone in the investigation room and one up at the house,’ Slivka whispered. ‘Shall we try for them?’
‘You go, Slivka. I’ll stay here. We can’t leave Sharapov on his own.’
Korolev sensed that she was about to disagree, but he took hold of her shoulder and pushed her firmly towards the back entrance.
Slivka turned as if she might resist, but then she kept on moving and closed the door behind her. Good girl, he thought, then retrieved Sharapov’s Nagant from its side holster. He cracked it open and ran a thumb round the chambers before snapping it shut. Good, it was fully loaded – he’d keep the Walther for later. He slipped off the safety catch and returned to the window just as the truck disgorged three people at the very spot where Sharapov’s body had lain just minutes before.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The first man into Mushkina’s sitting room looked around nervously, apparently not knowing what to expect, before retreating. When the tall man returned, he was accompanied by another shadowy figure who aimed what looked like a revolver into the darkness. Korolev wasn’t sure where the third member of the crew was, but he hoped he’d stayed in the truck. He waited until the two men reached the middle of the room before aiming the torch at their eyes to dazzle them.
‘Militia. I’ve a gun pointed right at you so put your hands up and drop your weapons to the floor. One wrong move and I shoot.’
Korolev flicked the beam back and forwards between the two men – he didn’t recognize the taller man, but the second man was familiar, even if it weren’t for the Militia overcoat. Blumkin from the village station. There was a clatter as Blumkin’s pistol hit the floor.
‘Who are you?’ Korolev asked the stranger, his voice sounding far more measured and calm than he felt.
The man opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it. Blumkin seemed to be trying to slowly back away towards the door until Korolev fixed him to the spot with a warning flash of the torch.
‘Blumkin, try anything and you’ll be breathing through a hole in your chest. Kick your gun over here.’
The Militiaman moved back towards his gun in order to comply, while Korolev, his eyes never leaving Blumkin, addressed the tall man.
‘You. Surname, name, patronymic.’
But the stranger was looking at a point behind Korolev’s shoulder and even Blumkin had stopped moving, waiting for something. It wasn’t much of a surprise when a voice came from the kitchen doorway.
‘Don’t move, Korolev. It would be a mistake if you did.’