William Ryan - The Bloody Meadow

‘Any news?’ Korolev said, offering her one of his three remaining cigarettes.

‘A couple of things, Chief,’ Slivka said, cupping her hands around the match he lit for her. ‘Firtov has more fingerprints from the station. They don’t belong to the Militamen, Andreychuk or Lomatkin. Or us, for that matter. They’re working on identifying them. At this stage they think it’s one individual.’

‘They could belong to anyone, of course.’

‘They’ve fingerprinted most of the villagers for the Lenskaya matter and Firtov says the Greek will crack it, if anyone can. He seemed confident. And that’s not all – Firtov said the Greek was making progress on the partial fingerprint, the one on the bracket from which the girl was found hanging.’

‘What does he mean by “progress”?’

‘As of this morning, the Greek had limited the possible matches to six people, and Firtov reckons he’ll have narrowed it down still further by now.’

Korolev felt a stab of irritation.

‘Narrowed? What’s this narrowing in aid of? Why can’t he just tell us who’s on this list of his now? We’re detectives, not judges. If they give us the names we can do some narrowing of our own. What’s the point of keeping quiet about it?’

‘He wants to be sure – there isn’t much of a print, he says, and the Greek takes his time. But the important news is they’re sure the fingerprint doesn’t belong to Andreychuk and it doesn’t belong to Shymko either.’

Korolev hesitated, more curious than ever about this damned fingerprint. Andreychuk and Shymko had been the ones who’d cut the girl down and if the fingerprint wasn’t theirs, who did it belong to? He’d have some names out of the Greek before the day was out – even if the fellow couldn’t speak and didn’t want to tell him.

‘What did Firtov make of Andreychuk?’ he asked, swallowing his frustration along with a lungful of smoke.

‘Same as us – murder. He took the gun back to Odessa, as well as Andreychuk’s truck.’

‘I see. And Peskov?’

‘The same. Gunshot wound to the back of the head. Death instantaneous.’

Slivka pointed at where the snow had been cleared away to reveal a spray of frozen gore.

‘He was pretty confident that Andreychuk was kneeling when he was killed, but he said he’d have a better idea once he’d examined him at the School of Anatomy.’

Korolev grunted, not relishing the thought of another autopsy – if he never had to attend one again he’d die a happy man.

‘Anything else?’

‘The captain had his dogs running round here for a while, but they came up with nothing. But he checked with the nearest roadblock – the snow stopped falling at around two in the morning.’

Korolev considered the new information. ‘Did you get a chance to call your mother?’ he asked eventually.

Slivka looked pointedly around her at the desolate landscape.

‘All right,’ he said, his tone resigned. ‘Let’s go and see what Peskov has to tell us about Andreychuk.’

As they walked across the field towards the car, Korolev was tempted to light up his last cigarette but, after a moment of consideration, he decided to save it for after the autopsy. The thing about morgues, autopsies and the like was that the smell got inside you: inside your nostrils, inside your mouth, in amongst the very fabric of your clothing. That cigarette would go some way to burning away some of that heavy scent of chemicals and death, and remind him he was alive after all.

That was the thing about working outside Moscow, Korolev decided as he stood on the pavement, feeling as though his body had been beaten with an axe handle. After a couple of days of being battered by bad suspensions and rotten roads, you were pretty much finished. He stretched gently, ignoring Slivka’s smirk, deciding the woman must have the constitution of a bear. Here he was, half-dead from the bruising he’d got from all their hithering and thithering and bumping and battering, and there she was, looking as fresh as an early summer rose.

Damn the young, he thought to himself as he nodded to her to lead the way around the side of the university to where the School of Anatomy was situated.

As it happened, Peskov already had Andreychuk’s body naked on the stainless-steel autopsy table and, if Korolev wasn’t wrong, the external examination completed. Peskov, in apron, white gown, surgical cap and gloves, turned his attention away from a tray of medical instruments to greet them, frowning with some concern as he examined Korolev.

‘Ah, Captain Korolev, you look quite pale. Are you in good health?’

‘I was fine until I walked in here,’ Korolev said, the words slipping out before he could catch hold of them.

He smiled an apology and took a step forward to look at the grey body on the table, struck by the pelt of white hair that covered much of Andreychuk’s chest. The dead often looked surprisingly calm and Andreychuk was no exception – his skin smooth now that gravity was pulling it tight.

‘You’ve been quick – getting him prepared, that is,’ Korolev said after a moment, hoping to make amends for his earlier remark.

‘I understood it was a matter of urgency.’ Peskov smiled at him. ‘You look anxious, Comrade Korolev.’

He was anxious – he had a Chekist colonel flying down in less than twenty-four hours; he wanted to get across the city to Bebel Street and find out who was on the Greek’s list of possibilities for the partial fingerprint; and then he had to give Lomatkin a thorough grilling. And if that wasn’t enough, he had Kolya’s gunrunners on his mind. Yet here he was, about to see a human being cut open from head to toe, all so that he could be told that the fellow had been shot in the head.

‘I’ll be straight with you, Doctor,’ Korolev said. ‘The investigation has produced a number of leads which need to be followed up as soon as possible. So, while I know it’s not the way you probably like to do things, I have to ask you – what do you think? Are you going to be able to tell me anything I don’t already know?’

Peskov considered the question, running a finger along the dead man’s arm. Korolev wondered whether he was checking the muscles for rigor mortis or whether it was an inadvertent action – the type of thing a man who works with dead bodies would think perfectly normal – even though it set Korolev’s teeth on edge.

‘At this stage,’ Peskov said, nodding, ‘I can tell you that the bullet wound entered from extremely close range – two to three centimetres away judging from the burn marks.’

He looked up at Korolev, who nodded his agreement.

‘Time of death,’ Peskov said. ‘Last night, late, or very early this morning. It’s a guess, based on a number of factors. You see these marks that look like bruising?’ Peskov pointed to a patch of discoloration on the skin. Korolev had been in enough autopsies to know what he was talking about.

‘Hypostasis?’

‘Very good,’ Peskov said. Then, seeing Slivka’s puzzled expression as she looked up from her note-taking, he explained. ‘The blood follows the natural laws of gravity, Sergeant. What you’re seeing isn’t bruising but the dead man’s blood accumulating in the part of his body which was closest to the ground when we found it. It doesn’t generally manifest itself for at least eight hours. It was present when I examined him by the river, so that tells us he’d been dead for at least that long. On top of that, look at his eyes.’

Peskov placed a gloved finger against an eyeball. It gave under the pressure like the softest of jelly and Korolev felt his stomach twist, but he managed to nod his interest, not trusting himself to speak.

‘If I were to put my finger in Captain Korolev’s eye, there would be elasticity,’ Peskov said, and Korolev thought there might also be an uppercut that would lift the doctor a foot or so into the air.