Sam Eastland - The Beast in the Red Forest

Obediently, Kirov removed his Tokarev, slid out the magazine and, using his thumb, pushed out a copper-jacketed round. ‘You’re right, Inspector. These are different.’

Now Pekkala held up the fired bullet, pinched between his thumb and index finger. ‘This bullet, however, is only half sleeved in copper. The front part is left open, exposing the lead core. Once it leaves the gun, the soft point collapses into the centre, causing the bullet to expand. It shortens the range, but produces greater impact strength than a regular bullet.’

‘The doctor said it was a ricochet,’ said Kirov. ‘I thought it looked this way because it was damaged by whatever it hit before it struck me. But now that you mention it, I can see the line where the copper jacket ends. So that’s why he rebuilt the cartridges, replacing regular bullets with these soft points. But if they are so effective, then why aren’t they standard issue for all Tokarev pistols?’

‘The exposed lead leaves a residue in the barrel which, if the gun is not constantly cleaned, can lead to jamming and misfires. The fully jacketed bullets are more practical for use in the field. Whoever this man is, he came prepared to do his killing at close range, and he worked hard to make sure that his identity could not be traced. Even the markings on the base of the cartridge have been filed off.’

‘Very thorough,’ agreed Kirov, ‘which makes me wonder what he had to gain by allowing me to live.’

‘And you say he wore the uniform of a captain?’

‘An army captain. Yes.’

‘Was he wearing any service medals?’

‘None that I saw.’

‘Did he say anything at all?’

‘When I mentioned your name, he asked if I was referring to the Emerald Eye.’ Kirov shrugged. ‘That was the only time he spoke, and his voice was muffled by the bandages.’

Although they continued to hunt for any trace which the killer might have left behind, the bunker yielded no more clues.

‘It’s time we left this butcher’s shop,’ said Pekkala.

‘We should make our way to the Red Army garrison,’ added Kirov.

‘The only Red Army garrison in Rovno is Yakushkin’s Counter-Intelligence brigade. They are quartered at the old Hotel Novostav, which the Germans used as the headquarters for their Secret Field Police until they pulled out last week.’

‘That will be the safest place.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Pekkala cautioned him. ‘Other than the partisans themselves, the only people who knew where and when that meeting was taking place were members of Yakushkin’s brigade. Until we have established the identity of this assassin, there is no one we can trust.’

They climbed up to the street.

A bank of clouds was closing in, as if a stone were being dragged across the entrance to a tomb, extinguishing the stars which lay like chips of broken glass upon the rooftops of abandoned houses.

Kirov raised his hands and let them fall again. ‘Then where are we to go, Inspector? There’s a storm coming in and I’d rather not sleep in the street.’

‘Luckily for us,’ replied Pekkala, ‘I know the finest place in town.’

*

Two hours after Kirov had checked himself out of his room at the hospital, a stranger appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in the uniform of a Red Army officer.

Except for the splashing of sleet against the windowpanes, it was quiet in the hallway. The patients had been ordered off to sleep or drugged into unconsciousness. The night orderly lay dozing in his chair, cocooned within a pool of light from the candle which burned upon his desk. The young man’s name was Anatoli Tutko and he had been released from military service on account of blindness in one eye and a haze of cataract across the other.

Reaching down, the stranger slowly placed his hand upon Tutko’s forehead, the way a parent checks for fever in a child. So gently did he raise Tutko’s head that the orderly was only half awake when the stranger whispered in his ear, ‘Where is the commissar?’

Tutko’s eyes fluttered open. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’ Then he felt the pinch of a knife held to his throat.

‘Where,’ the stranger asked again, ‘is the commissar you brought in here last night?’

‘Major Kirov?’ whispered Tutko, so conditioned not to wake the patients after dark that even now he did not raise his voice.

‘Kirov. Yes. Which room is he in?’

Tutko tried to swallow. The knife blade dragged against his Adam’s apple. ‘At the end of the hall on the left,’ he whispered.

‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Now you can go back to sleep,’ said the man.

Tutko felt the stranger’s grip loosen. A sigh of relief escaped his lungs.

In that same moment, the stranger slipped the knife blade into Tutko’s neck, then twisted it and, with one stroke, cut through the windpipe, almost severing the young man’s head. He laid the body face down on the desk as a wave of blood swept out across the wooden surface.

The man replaced the knife in its metal scabbard, which was clipped to the inside of his knee-length boots. Treading softly, as if the floor beneath his hobnailed soles was no more than a sheet of glass, he moved on down the hallway until he came to Kirov’s room.

But it was empty.

A whispered curse cracked like a spark in the still air.

‘You’re too late,’ said a voice.

The stranger whirled about.

Dombrowsky, unable to sleep as usual, had just wheeled himself into the hallway.

‘Where is he?’ asked the man.

‘Gone,’ Dombrowsky rolled his chair forward, the heel of his palm dragging on the wheel until it brought him to a stop before the man. ‘Earlier tonight, a visitor appeared and spoke to him.’

‘What kind of visitor?’

‘A man. More like a ghost, the way he moved.’

‘Yes,’ muttered the stranger. ‘That sounds like him.’

‘They spoke,’ said Dombrowsky, ‘and then they left.’

‘Do you know where they were going?’

‘I don’t, but nurse Antonina might. The major talked to her. He must have told her something.’

‘Where is this nurse?’

‘Gone home, but she lives at the end of this street, in a house with yellow shutters. I can see it from the window in my room. But you shouldn’t go there, Captain. Not if you value your life.’

‘And why is that?’

‘She’s a friend of Commander Yakushkin. His “campaign wife”. That’s what they call them, you know. He showed up here about a week ago, along with a battalion of Internal Security troops. Yakushkin came in here to get medicine for a stomach ulcer and she’s the nurse who treated him. Since then, from what I hear, Yakushkin has practically been living at her house. She’s a good cook, you see, and Yakushkin likes his food. But even if you were foolish enough to go there at this time of night, you wouldn’t get past Yakushkin’s bodyguard, who is with him wherever he goes.’

‘Thank you,’ said the man. ‘You have been very helpful. Now let’s get you back where you belong.’ Taking hold of the wheelchair’s handles, he turned the chair around and began to wheel him down the hall.

‘My room is the other way,’ said Dombrowsky.

‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘Yes, it is.’

They moved by the night orderly’s desk.

In the rippling light of the candle, Dombrowsky saw what had become of Anatoli Tutko. The thin wheels of his chair rolled through the blood which had cascaded from the desk and pooled across the floor. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he whispered frantically, his hand skidding uselessly upon the rubber wheels as he tried to slow them down. ‘I won’t say a word. No one believes me, anyway.’

‘I believe you,’ said the man and, with one sudden, vicious shove, he pushed Dombrowsky’s chair over the edge of the stairs and sent him tumbling to his death.