“When were they arrested?”
“Last week, Monday, I think. There were three arrests last week.”
“In this part of the building alone?”
“In the whole building.”
Korolev thought it through, three arrests out of five hundred apartments-quite a high number all the same.
“Is that unusual?”
“No,” she said. “Ever since I came here there have been arrests. But it’s not people like me-it’s people like the Golovkins. Girls like me just go and work for someone else. Unless they get caught without a residency permit.”
She gave him a look that said, I’m being honest with you, Ment, you’d better be honest with me.
“I won’t be bothering you about your permit, I’ve said as much already. Now, what about this morning?”
The professor, it seemed, had left the house at 7:30, as Belinsky had told him, to go to his institute-a short walk away on Yakimanka-then he’d returned at about nine. He’d had some meeting, she thought, but about what she didn’t know, and when he came back he’d seemed distracted, maybe even worried. Again, consistent with what she’d told Belinsky. He’d made a phone call-but to who, she couldn’t say. She’d brought him a pot of coffee at 9:30, as usual-just before she’d left to do the shopping. The only strange thing was that the professor had complained about rats, or mice perhaps. In the walls. He told her he’d been hearing them all morning.
“Rats?”
“I didn’t hear them,” the girl said, helping herself to another cigarette. “But he could be a bit like that. He liked everything just so. You couldn’t have a dog in the building, in case it might bark and the professor be disturbed. Then you’d be in trouble. Big trouble.”
The professor had drunk most of the coffee she’d brought him by the time she returned, and left the pot and the dirty cup in the kitchen.
“What size pot?”
She pointed at a coffee pot drying beside the sink-it wasn’t small.
“So a few cups?”
“He finished most of it, so I’d say yes.”
If she’d left just after she’d brought him the pot of coffee it would have taken the professor some time to drink so much-at least fifteen minutes, would be Korolev’s guess. Which narrowed the period in which the death must have occurred, he supposed.
“So you washed the cup and the coffee pot?”
“And I began to make their lunch.” She pointed to a pile of chopped vegetables. “And then. Well, Comrade Captain, then I found him.”
And she looked away from him, chewing on her lip-her eyes wet.
CHAPTER SIX
Korolev and Slivka stood on the landing one flight up from the dead man’s apartment, looking out the open window down onto the street far below, watching the traffic pass over the soon-to-be-destroyed Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge and sucking the smoke out of a pair of Belomorkanals. Korolev could see lightning flicker over the northern suburbs and the shadow of rain underneath the low clouds as they approached. He hoped Yuri wouldn’t be caught outside when the bad weather came.
“What we need is a motive, Slivka,” he said, flicking the papirosa tube out the window and resisting the temptation to light up another. “If we can find one, then like as not we’ll find a murderer attached to it. But the only thing we’ve got to go on so far is that the sealed apartment on the third floor might have been the victim’s doing. It seems he liked to tell tales.”
“I see.” Slivka didn’t seem keen on it as a motive-but, then again, nor was he.
“I know. We’ll have to look into it all the same-I’ll ask Popov for the best way to go about it. What did this doctor say about Comrade Madame Azarova?”
“He said she should be awake soon. We can speak to her about half an hour after that, he thinks.”
“Good, we talk to her as soon as we can. What else?”
Slivka looked down at her notebook.
“The doorman has gone through the list of residents-who was here this morning and what their movements were. Belinsky’s men are going door to door through this part of the building-so we’ll soon add detail to that. No one we’ve questioned so far has heard or seen anything directly related to the murder, but we have two people who say they saw the professor leaving the building early in the morning, which confirms what the maid told you. We’ve also got a list of people who were visiting the building-Belinsky’s men are working their way through them. And they’re also trying to make contact with residents who left for work earlier in the day, in case they might have seen anything.”
Korolev considered this, and found that somehow another Belomorkanal had ended up in his mouth. He lit it.
“Talk to the widow when she surfaces-I’m going to take the car and drive to this institute of his and find out what he was up to there this morning and why it might have upset him. Oh, and I got one more thing out of Matkina-she could smell gunpowder when she went into the study. That-and all the coffee he drank after nine-thirty-suggests he wasn’t shot long before she found the body. Something to bear in mind.”
He turned to lead the way down the staircase and found Priudski, the doorman, standing on the landing below-his ears no doubt having been tuned in to their conversation like a radio receiver.
“Comrade,” Korolev said dryly. Priudski returned the greeting without the slightest trace of embarrassment. Well, Korolev thought, the fellow’s probably just doing his job-the same as he was. Not that this made him any happier.
* * *
Inside the Azarovs’ apartment the forensics men were standing back, watching the burly figure of Zinaida Chestnova carefully lift the dead man’s head in her small plump hands. Gouts of semi-coagulated blood were providing some resistance and her assistant was holding down the paperwork on which the head had rested while Chestnova moved it from side to side. She was careful, almost gentle, but Korolev knew she’d be less gentle when the autopsy proper began. She was looking for hypostasis on the dead man’s face, unless Korolev was mistaken-one of the indicators that might tell her when he’d died.
“Let me guess, Korolev,” Chestnova said, without looking up. “You want me to tell you to the minute, as usual.”
Despite the fug of cigarette smoke, he could smell the corpse’s sweet stench now. The summer heat was having its effect.
“I wouldn’t be so unreasonable. We’ve some ideas, but if you tell us something different then we’ll have to think again.”
“I see,” Chestnova said, pressing a thumb to the dead man’s eye. The elasticity would give her another clue as to the time of death.
“No more than two or three hours ago, I’d say. I doubt his body temperature will indicate much different. It wasn’t yesterday, that’s for sure. Does that tally with your ideas?”
“It does.”
Korolev looked down at the body and had the sense that everything around him was receding, leaving just him-and the corpse.
“Chief?”
Korolev started, aware that he had somehow become the center of attention. He sighed. That was the thing about death-it had a way of slipping into your thoughts and taking them over, leaving you forgetting where you were.
“Yes, Slivka, yes. I hear you.” Korolev rubbed the palm of his hand across his jaw once or twice, savoring the bristly scrape. He had to focus on the job in hand.
He turned to regard Chestnova.
“Zinaida Petrovna, we can see the bullet hole in the back of his head, and we can draw our own conclusions. The question is, is there anything else you’d like to bring to our attention?”
“No. The bullet killed him, if that’s what you’re asking. I doubt the autopsy will tell us otherwise.”
“Nothing that might indicate a struggle of any kind? Or resistance?”
“Not that I can see,” Chestnova said, placing the head gently back on the desk. “I studied under him at university. An ambitious man-not pleasant about it, either. Have you any idea who killed him?”