William Ryan - The Bloody Meadow

‘We also found this, Lomatkin. Lenskaya typed it just before she died.’ And Korolev handed him the typed page he’d found the night before in the book of Stalin’s speeches.

Lomatkin looked at the piece of paper for a long time, his mouth moving slowly as he read it. Perhaps his English wasn’t that good – but Korolev was confident the journalist understood it all right.

‘She wasn’t religious, you know,’ Lomatkin said.

‘It doesn’t matter to me if she was or she wasn’t.’

‘But this psalm meant something to her – I suppose it means something to all of us these days.’

Korolev waited as a frown darkened the journalist’s face. It was as though Lomatkin was asking himself a difficult question – and after a time, it seemed he’d found an answer to it.

‘What did she write about me in the diary?’ he asked. The journalist spoke quietly and Korolev had the feeling that Lomatkin was bracing himself for a dead lover’s recriminations. But it occurred to Korolev that if he were in the journalist’s shoes he’d like to hear he’d been forgiven, if there was anything to be forgiven for.

‘She cared about you, Lomatkin,’ Korolev said, a sombre tone deepening his voice. ‘She loved you, it seems. She didn’t hold you responsible for the mess she found herself in.’

Lomatkin smiled sadly, turning his eyes up to meet Korolev’s. ‘You never found a diary, did you?’

Korolev started to speak, but before he could think of anything to say Lomatkin shook his head to stop him.

‘Don’t bother, Korolev, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be open with you. I knew it would end up like this. But I’d nothing to do with her death and nothing to do with Andreychuk’s escape, I promise you that much.’

‘I’m listening,’ Korolev said, hope stirring.

‘You know about my indiscretions – my dubious past as you called it. Perhaps that’s what first made them think they could blackmail me. After all, these days an anonymous denunciation based on lies can result in a ten stretch. And they had more than lies, Korolev. But they were clever, they dug a little and must have found out about Masha’s past along the way. I might have risked the consequences of what they knew about me – it was mostly gossip and I have friends who could have helped me – but Masha’s father having been a Petlyurist officer and her living under a false identity, well, those things alone would have resulted in her death. I know enough about Ezhov to know that much. It would have been done quietly, but he couldn’t have allowed her to live.’

It was true, Korolev thought: to be discovered having a dalliance with the daughter of a counter-revolutionary would have been a political disaster for the Central Committee member responsible for State Security, no matter what Comrade Stalin said about the sins of the parents not being visited on their children. No, someone with a class background like Lenskaya’s, particularly someone who’d obscured it so effectively, would be an Enemy of the Revolution in the eyes of the Party, and a traitor to the State.

‘To start with they didn’t seem to want much from me,’ Lomatkin continued. ‘Nothing more than what they could have read in Izvestia two days later anyway. They just wanted to know the stories I was working on – the launch of a new submarine, the range of a fighter bomber. Really, it was the kind of thing I’d have told anyone over a glass or two of beer.’

‘They were leading you on.’

‘Of course. I closed my eyes to the risks at first. I knew the man who approached me. A Ukrainian, like me. Living in Moscow, like me. A Party member, like me. When he started talking about a separate Ukrainian state with support from European powers I realized the mess I was in, but by then they’d enough on me to have me shot four times over, and in my own handwriting no less. Then they squeezed me, and they squeezed me till there was nothing left.’

‘So what was the information you provided after that?’

‘More confidential, much more confidential. Detailed plans for a new tank, inch-accurate maps of the western defences, locations of armaments factories, our preparations against chemical warfare. In my position I had access to such information on a regular basis, and when I did I passed it on. I was afraid of ending up in a place like this, and of Masha ending up here as well, but now that I’m here, and Masha’s dead, well, there’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?’

Korolev wasn’t sure about that, but he let it go.

‘How did they find out about her, do you think?’

‘It must have been when she came down here scouting for the film location. I suppose she was curious to see where she came from and it was she who suggested to Savchenko that they shoot down here. That her father turned out to be the caretaker at the College was a complete coincidence, I think. They kept it a secret between them, I’m sure of that – I didn’t even know about it. But someone must have known.’

‘Who?’

‘I’ve no idea. It must have been someone who knew her father well. Perhaps someone who knew her mother too. That would be my guess. Masha’d kept her mother’s maiden name – someone must have been able to put the names together, do the research, find the evidence.’

‘What evidence?’

‘They had a baptism record. I showed her a copy.’

‘She knew about the blackmail?’

‘I told her it was just for money and that I’d dealt with it. I never put Andreychuk and the baptism certificate together, though. He’d changed his name, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Korolev agreed. ‘Why do you think they killed her?’

‘It was my fault,’ Lomatkin said. ‘I kept her out of it as much as I could, but when Masha started coming down here so often, their man in Moscow, the Ukrainian, wanted me to slip the documents into her belongings. Sometimes microfilm was hidden in the binding of a book and when she arrived here the book would be swapped for a duplicate, and the film retrieved. It was their idea, not mine. But I should have resisted because, you see, she must have found it this time. That’s why I had to come down so suddenly. They’d put something in the binding of a report she was working on, but when they went to find it, it was gone.’

Belakovsky’s report on his plans for a Soviet Hollywood. Korolev whistled. This wasn’t something a Moscow flatfoot should be involved in. This was something for Rodinov when he arrived. No matter what the risk. He’d have to tell the colonel everything now and the sooner the better.

Lomatkin went on. ‘They must have thought she was going to expose them. Whoever it was, I don’t think Andreychuk had any part in it – but if he was a Petlyurist during the Civil War… well, who knows?’

‘I don’t think Andreychuk was responsible – I’m not sure who was, though,’ Korolev said. ‘This report – it was for Belakovsky? Some idea he has for a film town – Kinograd, I think.’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘It was missing when he went to look for it,’ Korolev told him, wondering what its absence might mean. ‘Tell me, we found a fingerprint that puts your friend Les Pins at the spot where Lenskaya was found hanging. What do you make of that?’

‘Les Pins? He can’t have been involved in this, can he? What would a Frenchman have to do with this?’

It occurred to Korolev that, all things considered, Lomatkin was remarkably calm – especially given that his life expectancy had radically shortened in the last couple of minutes. But that was sometimes the way it went with criminals who’d been living with guilt for a long period of time – when they were finally uncovered it was almost a relief. He extracted his cigarette packet and offered the journalist one.