Brian Freemantle: Dead Men Living

“Personnel,” said Williams, shortly.

“Here we go again!” sighed Simpson, in weary anticipation. “Why do you have such animosity toward Charlie Muffin?”

Williams shifted uncomfortably, knowing it would be wrong for his objections to appear a personal vendetta, even though it had, for him, developed into one from how Charlie Muffin had maneuvered his attempt to impose some financial restraint into open ridicule throughout the department. Holding back from the specifics he’d intended, Williams said, “He totally disregards authority-doesn’t conform. Which are attitudes I don’t think we can afford in our current situation.”

“You think he should be withdrawn?” asked Hamilton.

“I would not oppose the suggestion,” snatched Williams, eagerly.

“Most of the cabinet Intelligence Committee would, after that most recent business,” deflated Pacey.

“There’s no justification any longer in his retaining the apartment he has,” blurted Williams, unable to stop himself and regretting it at once.

“Now we’re getting to it!” jeered the lawyer.

“It’s excessive expenditure,” said Williams. “My function is to control the finances of this department. I will be hard-pressed to explain the huge amount of money Moscow is costing.”

“There was every justification for the apartment to distance Muffin from the embassy over the nuclear business,” pointed out Dean, becoming as irritated as Simpson by the accountant’s obduracy. “And you won’t be called upon to explain. I will.”

Enough, Williams decided; he was on record as having fulfilled his official and expected role, which was important. He said, “I felt-and still feel-that the point should be made.”

“And you’ve made it,” dismissed Simpson.

And would again, determined Williams. It was extremely important to discover everything he could about Charlie Muffin’s extravagant lifestyle in Moscow. The problem was finding a way of doing it.

Vitali Novikov’s mortuary, examination room and what were supposed to be his scientific testing facilities epitomized the township at the center of which it stood: crumbling and inadequate. Like the provincial government offices and militia headquarters to which it was attached, it had been built of brick and concrete, to appear impressive, before architects learned brick and concrete thawed the permafrozen ground upon which they were placed. The whole complex was now lopsided and gradually subsiding, breaking up like a sinking ship. The freak thaw had caused fresh cracks in Novikov’s particular section, and down the outside wall brick dust leaked and smeared appropriately red, like blood. The space originally made for it had pulled away from the frame the only outside window in what passed as Novikov’s laboratory, widening an already existing gap that needed fresh canvas packing, cardboard and binding tape to block up. Fortunately the inner autopsy room didn’t have an outside wall. It had little else, either.

Novikov had only ever had one corpse at a time and was unsure how effective the two additional but rarely used freezer cabinets were. It was not an immediate problem while the bodies were still melting, but on their journey back to Yakutsk from the grave, Novikov and Kurshin had agreed, anxious to convince themselves, that Moscowwould send in a team that required, ironically, that the bodies be refrozen after Novikov’s initial examination. And because of the climate change he couldn’t simply leave them in an outside storage shed, which he would otherwise have done in January.

There was only one examination table and there weren’t replacements anywhere in town for the three bulbs that had blown in the overhead cluster, reducing his working light by half.

Novikov had both watched and conducted full autopsies at his father’s side, but always the medical details of the killings had been as unarguable as the circumstances of their being inflicted. During the day and a half it still took for the bodies sufficiently to melt, he reviewed two basic guidance manuals on forensic pathology-both Communist-era unauthorized translations of American originals-and decided his best protection against professional criticism was to remove and preserve as many of the most obviously necessary body organs as possible for later Moscow analysis. Almost at once he realized that with three bodies he wouldn’t have enough proper preserving containers. He supposed he’d be able to improvise with ordinary pickle jars, but he wasn’t sure if he had sufficient formaldehyde. He’d have to be sparing from the start.

Novikov was not permitted to concentrate entirely upon the postmortems, which he would have liked. During the delay in being able to start them, he-together with Kurshin-was summoned before the inner governing cabinet of Yakutskaya for a meeting that was pointless, because neither could offer any evidence or theory about bodies still too frigidly rock-hard even for clothes to be stripped and examined. Equally without any practical purpose, apart from their physical presence being recorded-which it was by two photographers and a secretary-the five-man group also personally visited the mortuary to examine the ice mummies.

It was headed by Valentin Ivanovich Polyakov, the chief minister whose detestation of everything Russian stemmed from the exile and premature death of his father, banished not by Stalin but by his secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. Polyakov was the region’s fiercest advocate of distancing itself from Russian domination with the end of communism. Until now Polyakov regarded as his best independence gesture persuading in 1994 the Yakutskaya cabinet now uncomfortably grouped around him to impose a local visa requirement uponany foreigner-particularly Russians-arriving at the town’s airport. Although he still hadn’t worked out how, Polyakov considered the finding of the three bodies-two of them Westerners-an opportunity to make another dramatic gesture of independence.

By comparison-although paradoxically by the same reasoning-there was hardly any of the outrage Kurshin had feared from Yuri Ryabov for not being alerted before the bodies had been removed from their grave. The local militia commander was well aware of their professional and technical inadequacies and saw protection in not having been involved from the very beginning. So for once local newspaper and radio headlines were secondary to an excuse-if excuse was needed-for any failure in the investigation. If there was praise, he could equally ensure he was the recipient, as the ultimate commander.

He also didn’t like the way Kurshin looked from having been out there. Ryabov, a vain man constantly aware of his appearance, was as familiar with the warm-weather infestation as anyone else in the region but could rarely remember seeing anyone so badly bitten as Kurshin. The man’s head and neck remained so swollen, even after two days, that he was physically unable to button his collar and his pumpkin-sized face was purpled from the insect attack.

The government visit was spoiled before it began by their entry-perhaps because of the door slamming-being the moment that the Englishman’s upright arm abruptly fell perfectly by his side, as if he’d suddenly become alive. All the cabinet, apart from Polyakov, were full Yakuts, but it was Polyakov who cried out in terror, pulling back toward the door to which the rest retreated, actually huddled together as if for protection.

Recovering the quickest, Novikov said, “It’s nothing: what I’m waiting to happen.” He, too, was surprised by the state of Kurshin’s face and was glad, now that the bodies were softening, that he’d suctioned the persistent mosquitoes, midges and gnats from the victims’ mouths, noses, ears and eye-socket surrounds.

Despite Novikov’s assurance, the cabinet remained tightly just inside the door. As if the medical judgment were his, Polyakov declared, “It will still be some time before we can discover anything about them. I want to know as much as possible, before contacting Moscow.”