William Ryan - The Twelfth Department

“So he was here all that morning. Could he have left for an hour or so—or even longer? Say if he needed to go up to one of the apartments, or something else perhaps?”

“If a doorman leaves his post for any length of time, he has to get cover. He had half an hour for lunch at twelve-thirty and he was covered for that. But I had a look at the book in the canteen, he signed in there at twelve-forty—so that’s where he went. I even looked at the log for the building, where we sign visitors in and out. If he slipped off during the morning, I don’t know how he could have managed it—none of the visitors are more than twenty minutes apart and he has to counter-sign each one of them in and out—which he did.”

“I see,” Korolev said, grasping Timinov’s arm in gratitude. “This has to be kept between us. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Is the professor’s wife in?”

“I’m not sure, Comrade Captain, but the maid, Galina, just went up.”

“I’ll pay a visit, I think.”

Korolev looked at the lift’s doors for a long moment, felt sweat prickling at the back of his neck, and found his experience earlier in the day had made him even less keen to take it. He started up the stairs, looking at his watch as he did so. He’d two hours before he was due to meet Rodinov, but that should be enough—at least, it would be if Comrade Madame Azarova was at home. If not? Well, he’d solve that problem if it came to pass.

Galina came to the door when he knocked, and her eyes widened at the sight of him.

“Comrade Azarova isn’t here,” she said with an urgency that came close to vehemence.

She made to push the door closed, but Korolev put his foot against it, and then a hand. He could feel her try to close it all the same, but that wasn’t going to happen. She might have been a farm girl and still have a farm girl’s biceps, but Korolev was a solid man, a few too many pounds solid, as it happened. The door swung open under his weight and Galina stepped back.

“Where is she?” Korolev could feel disappointment in his throat like a physical object, but he swallowed it, just about.

“I’m sorry,” Galina said, and there was a break in her voice.

Korolev examined her. He thought back to the last time she’d been here, her strange behavior. Now more strange behavior. But then, of course—there should be strange behavior. She must know most of it—she was bright enough.

“You’re sorry?” he said. “You think that’s enough?”

The words came out just as bluntly as he intended and Galina’s head dropped. Meanwhile Korolev recalled the various pieces of information he’d discovered, dusted them off, and lined them up in a row.

“I think you’d better tell me everything, Citizeness Matkina. I think it’s about damned time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—I don’t.”

It came out almost like a wail. Her hand went to her throat and, avoiding his eyes, she turned away from him.

“I think you do, Citizeness. Stand aside.”

Korolev walked past her without bothering to wait for permission and she didn’t resist him. He made his way into the Azarovs’ sitting room and heard the apartment’s front door shut and her footsteps following him. He looked around the room. It was as before—the empty shelves, the plush furniture, the panoramic view over the capital city of the Soviet Union. Madame Azarova had sat just there, wearing her black gloves, only yesterday. Black gloves in summer. In a country that didn’t mourn that way these days.

“She cut herself, didn’t she, Galina? She cut her hand.”

He heard movement—as if Galina were walking in a circle, looking for a way out perhaps. He didn’t turn around. If he turned she might be able to tell that he was half-bluffing.

“She came back early on Tuesday morning, didn’t she? You weren’t expecting her. She came back in a stranger’s coat.”

He tried to remember the respective size difference between Azarova and Madame Shtange’s wife. Azarova would have been taller, possibly broader in the shoulder as well.

“A coat that was too small for her,” he continued. “Black, with large shoulders. Four buttons, if I remember.”

“How do you—?” Galina began to say, but Korolev held up a hand to stop her.

“Her hand was bleeding. No, she’d bandaged it with something—hadn’t she? And, of course”—Korolev remembered back to the small footprints the forensics men had told him about in Shtange’s apartment—“there was blood on her shoes as well—not her blood. And her clothes underneath the coat—they must have been covered as well. That’s why you were so nervous when I came to see her yesterday. And that’s why you were sent out immediately. She’d sworn you to secrecy but you’re no fool, you knew keeping a secret like that could mean ten years in a mine. So she had something over you. Let me think … Ah—the residency permit. Of course. Did she promise she’d get you one? Or did she tell you if you opened your mouth that at best you’d be on a train back home before the week was out? That, more likely, you’d end up in the mine just the same.”

There was silence behind him, before a quiet sobbing began.

“The doorman told me what happened to Dr. Shtange,” she said.

Galina’s voice was almost drowned out by a sudden hammering from the direction of the bridge. The windows rattled and for a moment it was all Korolev could do just to think. The hammering ended, and Korolev turned to find Galina, tear tracks running down her face.

And behind her, standing in the doorway, face as pale as a sheet of freshly milled paper, was the professor’s wife. In the gloved hand that was pointed at him was a small silver automatic.

“You can go into the kitchen, Galina,” Azarova said, calm as death itself.

“I tried to keep him out.”

“I know you did.”

Galina cast Korolev a quick glance and he nodded his agreement. “Go on, go into the kitchen. Don’t worry about anything. This will all be agreed in a sensible fashion or it will go hard with everyone. Harder than anyone can imagine.”

“We’ll see about that, Comrade Captain Korolev,” the professor’s wife said and, when Galina had made her way back into the corridor, Azarova closed the door behind the girl and turned a key in the lock.

“You overheard our conversation?”

“Enough of it.”

“Well?”

“He killed Boris. I killed him. I’m not going to let you take me to prison for it. I’ll shoot myself before that happens.” She spoke matter-of-factly, but Korolev thought back to Shtange’s body, stabbed twenty or thirty times. He looked into her eyes and saw something like madness there, but he thought he also saw uncertainty.

“Shtange didn’t kill your husband,” he said. “Someone else killed your husband.”

She appeared to consider this—then shrugged.

“Who?” she asked—as if such a possibility could matter less to her.

“If it’s who I think it was, someone who’d a reason to kill him and an opportunity to do it. Anyway, Shtange was at the institute at the time of your husband’s death. Whoever it was, it wasn’t him.”

Azarova considered this for a moment, before shaking her head in the negative.

“No, it was Shtange. He might not have pulled the trigger himself, but he as good as did so with that report of his. Boris meant well, but Shtange couldn’t see that—couldn’t see that everything Boris did, every hard decision he made, every necessary brutality, they were all done with the best interests of the State as their basis. We’re a country of two hundred million—a few convicted criminals don’t count for anything against that. He had to make progress—and quickly. We’re in a war already, Korolev. An internal war that each Soviet citizen wages against an enemy that is within themselves. Boris was going to help Soviet citizens defeat that enemy—to allow us to become fully one with the Revolution, completely loyal, completely dedicated. There would have been no more doubt, no more backsliding—we would all be perfect citizens of a socialist utopia built in Lenin’s image.”