William Ryan - The Bloody Meadow

It had been one of the ironies of the tsarist times that the oppressing classes had looked after their horses better than they had their workers, but now the horses had been kicked out and the stables turned into classrooms. Light yellowed the panes of a window in the far corner of the three-sided yard and he walked towards it and opened the corresponding door marked Production Office without knocking. A bank of three female typists paused, their hands held above the keys like pianists, while behind them a young man with close-cropped brown hair and a pleasant face looked up from whatever it was he was reading.

‘Excuse me, Comrades,’ Korolev said. ‘I’m looking for Isaac Emmanuilovich. You know, the writer? Babel?’

‘Babel,’ the young man said, rising from his desk. ‘Of course, but I’m afraid he’s out with the crew. They’ll be back soon though, the light’s gone now. Pyotr Mikhailovich Shymko,’ he said, advancing with his hand outstretched. ‘Production coordinator.’

‘Korolev, Alexei Dmitriyevich. I’m a friend of his.’

‘Welcome.’ Shymko looked at the girls as though considering whether to introduce them.

‘Larisa.’ He addressed a pretty blonde after a moment’s pause. ‘Would you take Comrade Korolev over to the house? Make him comfortable while he waits?’

Larisa frowned as she stood to her feet, but Korolev waved her down.

‘Please, Comrades, I can see you’re busy. What with the tragedy, you must have your hands full.’

‘The tragedy?’ Shymko echoed, and Korolev noticed that Larisa’s eyes had filled with tears.

‘The poor girl who killed herself.’

Larisa sobbed and ran from the room.

‘I apologize,’ Korolev said, surprised to discover an unlit cigarette had appeared in his mouth. One of these days he’d give up – aside from anything else he wouldn’t be able to afford it if he’d reached the stage where his hands were feeding the things into his mouth without conscious thought.

‘Excuse me,’ Shymko said as a telephone began to ring, but Korolev had spotted a black car approaching the house and, deciding it must be the Odessa contingent, made his own excuses and left. When the car stopped, however, it was Belakovsky who climbed out rather than Militiamen and his welcoming committee consisted only of a distraught typist.

‘Larisa, is it true?’

‘It’s true, Comrade Belakovsky, it’s true,’ Larisa wailed, and Korolev, following behind the girl, saw her bury herself in Belakovsky’s overcoat.

‘Hello again, Comrade Belakovsky,’ Korolev said and Belakovsky nodded a greeting, before turning his attention back to Larisa.

‘Mikhail told me. I didn’t believe him.’ Then he paused, looking back to Korolev, recognizing him yet again, with a look of surprise.

‘Comrade Korolev?’

‘Yes, a coincidence. I’m a friend of Babel’s. I’d no idea we were visiting the same place.’

‘You have to understand – a colleague has died unexpectedly. She was one in a thousand. A vital part of this production, of course, but more than that. Much more than that.’

Behind him stood a sorry-looking man whom Korolev deduced was Mikhail, the bearer of bad news. The other occupant of the car – Lomatkin, the journalist – was leaning against the car door for support, as pale as the dead girl’s ghost. It seemed as though Masha Lenskaya had made quite an impression during her short life.

‘Korolev,’ Belakovsky said, as though thinking aloud. ‘Didn’t you say you were a detective – from Petrovka Street?’

‘I didn’t. You did and I’m on holiday,’ Korolev replied, perhaps a little too quickly.

Belakovsky glanced at the house, and if it wasn’t to see where Mushkin was, Korolev would have been most surprised. The NKVD definitely had a thing or two to learn about secrecy, even if they were always asking it of other people.

‘On holiday?’ Belakovsky repeated slowly, probably remembering how that fellow Bagraev had been booted off the plane. ‘What a coincidence. And perhaps fortunate for us. What did you say your specialization was?’

‘Petrovka Street normally handles the more serious crimes. And I’m an experienced detective.’

‘I see – bank robbery, that sort of thing. Murder perhaps?’ The fellow was putting two and two together and making four, so Korolev nodded politely, and felt in his overcoat pocket for his cigarettes, pleased that at least this time it was a deliberate rather than instinctive action.

‘Yes, I’ve handled the odd murder or two,’ he said, lighting the cigarette off the one in his mouth.

Another black car hove into view as they stood there weighing each other up, and when it pulled to a halt disgorged a stocky Militia colonel, who looked at them anxiously. He was followed by a tough-looking young woman in a leather jacket and a bald man carrying a doctor’s case. No sooner had the first car been emptied of its occupants than another arrived and three uniforms under a sergeant’s command scrambled out. It was turning out to be quite a party, and right on cue the guest of honour arrived.

‘Did you hear, Comrade Mushkin?’ Belakovsky said. ‘Korolev here is a Militia detective from Petrovka Street, visiting Babel.’

‘Indeed,’ Mushkin said, with a sliver of a smile, and Korolev deduced that the Major wasn’t too burnt-out to appreciate the humour inherent in the play they were all acting out. But for whose benefit, God alone knew.

Korolev had never been in an ice house before. Of course, he was aware that before the Revolution the rich had tried to preserve some of winter’s bite to relieve the summer’s swelter: he wasn’t uncultured after all and he took an interest in the wider world – as any Soviet citizen should. Indeed, in any other circumstances he would have found it interesting to stand in this small, brick-lined cave and to be lectured on its construction and significance. But this was not the time, in his opinion, or the place.

Shymko ran a hand along a line of bricks, his voice barely a whisper but clear in the silence of the artificial cave.

‘Two hundred peasants worked for an entire summer under the direction of an Englishman – shifting the earth to build the hill in which we stand. They say he laid each brick himself, the Englishman,’ Shymko said in his quiet voice. ‘Look how careful he was, Comrades.’

It was true, the brickwork was indeed a curious relic of that previous phase of society’s historical evolution, but the dead girl was the reason they were all here and Korolev found it difficult to look at anything other than her white face. They’d laid her out on a trestle table, her head supported on what looked like a sandbag, her skin stretched over the cheekbones where death had pulled it taut. She could have been sleeping, and her features wouldn’t have given the lie to it, were it not for the raw marks on her neck where the rope had caught her. As always in the presence of a corpse, he found himself struck by how fragile life was, and amazed that such an intangible thing as consciousness should cause such a change to the physical appearance of a person. The characteristics that had seemed to colour the girl’s photograph were now absent, as if paint had been rubbed from a picture to reveal the plain canvas underneath.

‘Captain Korolev?’ Mushkin said and Korolev found himself the centre of attention. Major Mushkin, Marchuk the Militia colonel, Peskov the bald Odessa pathologist, Shymko and the thin-lipped young woman in the leather jacket were all waiting for him to do or say something, and he wasn’t quite sure what.

‘I’ve seen him work before, Comrades. He spends a lot of time just looking, but the things he sees, the things he sees…’