Authors: Brian Freemantle
Dead Men Living (10 page)
It was Charlie who afterward suggested returning to the bar and its Canadian whiskey, which he considered an unexpected bonus. Everyone except Charlie, who was confident of his capacity, and Olga, who appeared uncaring, continued to limit their alcohol intake, although as the evening progressed Lestov’s stammering became more pronounced.
Using Novikov’s insistence that his wife was expecting him, Charlie broke the evening up, walking with the local pathologist to the lobby where the elevators were.
Charlie said, “Thank you again for being at the airport. I enjoyed our conversation.”
“I did, too,” said Novikov.
“I’m looking forward to starting work tomorrow. I’m going to be relying upon you a great deal. I hope we can learn to work together.”
“That doesn’t seem to be anyone else’s idea.”
“I’m only interested in my own,” said Charlie. “In case you need to contact me at all, I’m in room thirty-seven.”
“I’ll remember that,” promised Novikov.
Charlie rode bemused, silently, to the third floor but made no effort to get into bed. Within fifteen minutes he heard Miriam’s quick footsteps, alone, along the outside corridor and her door open and shut. It was half an hour later when there was a second set of heavier footsteps and another quick opening and closing of the American’s door.
With the six-hour time difference it was still only six in the evening in Moscow, but Charlie failed to get a connection to the embassy when he tried to dial direct. Experimentally Charlie booked the call through the hotel switchboard, where it would be logged. The connection was made immediately. Charlie smiled, not surprised.
Raymond McDowell and Richard Cartright came anxiously on to a conference call together. For the benefit of the suspected eavesdropper, Charlie exaggerated the total cooperation and assured the two men he had made the official request for the return of the body, which had amounted to the only proper conversation that evening with the militia commander.
“Do you imagine any problem with that?” asked McDowell.
“No.”
“When are you meeting the council?”
“Nothing’s been arranged.” Which wasn’t, Charlie had already decided, an oversight. He made up his mind to give the head of chancellery a gift of his special hat if McDowell had personally to come from Moscow.
“What’s it like there?”
“Unusual.”
“London is concerned,” announced Cartright. “The finding of the bodies got leaked, it seems, through Canada, and from there, obviously, to America. There’s a lot of media interest building up.”
“I can imagine,” said Charlie.
“I’ve promised a cable from here tomorrow.”
“I’ll try to give you something.” Charlie hesitated. “If I haven’t come through to you by this time tomorrow, you ring me. Telephone calls out aren’t easy.”
Charlie had just replaced the telephone when the knock came hesitantly at his door.
“I hope you don’t mind,” said the rapidly blinking Novikov.
“Not at all,” said Charlie, opening the door more widely.
Richard Cartright was seeking, not providing, so it was right he crossed the river from the British embassy to the American legation on Ulitza Chaykovskovo, and when Saul Freeman said he liked Chinese food Cartright suggested they simply walk the few blocks to the Peking. It was Freeman who guided the way into the foreign currency section. Cartright deferred to the American’s superior knowledge of a Chinese menu written in Russian, too.
“We heard from Charlie in Yakutsk,” offered Cartright, at once. “Just arrived. Nothing’s started yet.”
“That’s what Miriam told me. Bizarre place, apparently.”
“Thought you might have gone yourself.”
“What about you?” hedged Freeman.
“Would have done in the old days,” agreed Cartright, as if he were volunteering something, seeing a way to follow. “MI5 in England is increasingly taking an FBI, crime-fighting role, so it had to be Charlie.”
The wine—Georgian—was poured without their being asked to taste it. The surprise was that it was drinkable.
“Interesting guy,” said Freeman, which was precisely the reaction Cartright wanted.
“No one at the embassy quite knows how to take him. Lot of experience, apparently. Bit unconventional.” Like the second phone call from Gerald Williams was unconventional, although it was a combined operation and Cartright had checked that the two financial directors were talking to each other in London. Cartright’s unease was not so much keeping an eye on a colleague as personal apprehension at that colleague being as odd and as unpredictable as he was finding Charlie Muffin to be.
“One of our guys died in that nuclear business,” reminded Freeman, although without hostility.
“There were some casualties, although not physical, at our embassy, too,” recalled Cartright, nervously. “You ever go out socially with him, find out what sort of guy he was?”
Freeman shook his head. “Gather he and a gal from our technical department in Washington got close on the nuclear thing, but he doesn’t seem particularly social, apart from the odd drink. Got a hell of an apartment, I understand. Never been there, though.”
“Neither have I.” Cartright decided he was wasting his time. “Got any interesting numbers to swap?”
Freeman smiled. “Got to know a fantastic Aeroflot stewardess.”
“Worth a hello call?”
“Wouldn’t be telling you if she wasn’t. Her name’s Irena.”
“It must be widely known that there was a camp nearby?” pressed Charlie.
“There were so many.”
“How did you remember Gulag 98?”
“My father.”
“You haven’t told anyone else? Not Ryabov or Kurshin?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want something they can’t give me.”
“What makes you think I can?”
“I’m taking the biggest chance I’ve ever taken in my life, in praying that you might be able to. And until you do, you don’t get everything. Which is how I am protecting myself.”
In a long and often uncertain life, Charlie Muffin had met a lot of desperate men and recognized that Vitali Maksimovich Novikov was a very desperate man indeed. Without any compunction Charlie further decided it was an attitude to be taken every advantage of, certainly until the doctor stopped playing games and spelled out the deal he wanted. Everyone had to live, and to live it was first necessary to survive. It was a very good beginning.
The transport division was the same as the previous day. As they
assembled in the hotel parking lot, Charlie thought it was practical for Olga Erzin to have worn trousers, but as big as she was it created an unfair comparison between the Russian pathologist and the American, whose jeans were actually tailored.
assembled in the hotel parking lot, Charlie thought it was practical for Olga Erzin to have worn trousers, but as big as she was it created an unfair comparison between the Russian pathologist and the American, whose jeans were actually tailored.
As the vehicles moved off, Novikov said, “It’s getting hotter.”
He’d follow the other man’s pace at all times after the previous night’s approach, Charlie decided, settling in Novikov’s car. Which did not, of course, preclude a little prodding.
The sun was actually visible today and it was airless. The roads were permanently wet with the seepage from the deeper thawing of the road-edge tundra, and the insect swarms were much thicker and persistent. Charlie lowered the window, hoping the rush of passing air would blow them away. It didn’t seem to help. Seizing the obvious opening, Charlie said, “When the weather is normal, when you have your usual spring and summer here, does it get as hot as this?”
“This would be a very hot day. Unusually so.”
“At the end of your summer, after a period of warmth, how deep into the ground does the thaw reach?”
Novikov gave one of his nervous sideways glances, aware it was not a casual conversation about the weather. “About a meter, I suppose. Maybe less. Why?”
“How deep was the grave?”
Novikov drove on in silence for several moments. “Much deeper than that. At least a meter and a half. Kurshin took measurements.”
“Had anything been done to disinter the bodies, before you arrived
?
”
?
”
“No.”
“But an arm was protruding?”
“Yes.”
“How much of an arm? To the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder?” asked Charlie.
“From the wrist. Not much of that.”
They were among the higgledy-piggledy nursery-rhyme buildings of the town again. The lines seemed longer outside the shaman temples on Prospekt Lenina. A lot of the people there—and on the other streets—were wearing their heavy winter clothes, unbuttoned and undone, expecting the phenomena to disappear at a finger snap or a shaman’s incantation.
Although it was only ten in the morning, there were already several men slumped drunkenly or sleeping against walls. One lay in the gutter. Novikov said, “Miners. They come into town once a month, to drink and fuck. There have to be houses, because normally it’s too cold, but they’re hardly brothels. Just shelters. There’s three in the next street back, by the vodka factory. I suppose there’s something significant that the factory is the biggest building in town.”
Charlie thought the red, brick-dust smear down an ocher wall looked like blood several moments before Novikov identified it as their mortuary destination. Charlie made a mental note to pick up later on the mine conversation.
The transformation of Olga Erzin in the surroundings of a mortuary was almost visible. She virtually expanded into an autocratic bully, clipping her words and responses, instinctively assuming superiority. It was Olga, not Novikov, whose mortuary and laboratory it was, who led the way up the rickety stairs into the building. She stopped just inside the autopsy room, exaggerating her disdain, making no effort to help Novikov or his two tentative assistants get the three naked corpses from the storage cupboards onto examination trolleys. Already on separate tables alongside each, like produce displays at a village fete, were the proper specimen containers augmented by village fete vegetable jars holding what Charlie guessed to be every removable organ of each body. Behind each, again on separate identifying tables, were the uniforms and their contents. At once Charlie saw, dismayed, that nothing had been done to keep the uniforms or the woman’s clothes in the subzero temperature at which they had survived for so long. Already mold had begun to fur the fabric, endangering possible stains or marks from the moment of death.
Charlie said to Novikov, “I’d appreciate it if you could keep it as simple—as nonmedically technical—as possible.” He smiled. “I’m going to need all the help I can get and you’re the only person who might be able to provide it.”
“That’s a hopeful expectation,” sniffed the Moscow pathologist.
“Which I’m sure will be met,” said Charlie, still smiling. “I’d appreciate your nontechnical input, too. That’s the understanding, isn’t it? Total and mutual cooperation?”
The woman looked sharply at Charlie, aware of the rebuke. She said, “I’ll look forward to your input, as well.”
“The sooner we start, the better, then,” said Charlie, easily.
The woman made as if to respond, but then apparently changed her mind. Instead she turned back to Novikov and peremptorily said, “Talk me through your examination.”
To Olga Erzin’s obvious irritation, Novikov translated every medical technicality into layman’s terms, identifying each organ in each container. Charlie listened patiently to the recital, waiting for the details of the actual injuries. At the same time, he tried his best to study the clothing, conscious for the first time that a space at the bottom of the individual tables was allocated to scene-of-crime photographs. They were either badly taken or badly printed—or perhaps both—but even from a distance of almost two meters Charlie thought he isolated something curious.
He concentrated totally upon Novikov when the man began to talk about the head wounds, looking around anxiously for the recovered bullets, relieved when he saw two in separate kidney bowls among the organ exhibits. Again before everyone else, he said, “All three were shot in the back of the head?”
“Yes,” confirmed the local medical examiner.
“I can only see two bullets.”
“The one that killed the woman exited, through the throat.”
“Didn’t you find it in the grave?” demanded Denebin, at once.
“No,” admitted Kurshin, to the forensic scientist’s sigh.
“Were there any powder burns to the skulls, to indicate the gun was held tightly against the head?” asked Miriam.
“All the skulls were shattered to varying degrees, particularly around the point of entry,” said Novikov.
“What about fragments in the grave?” demanded Olga.
From the pause and looks that passed between the local pathologist and Aleksandr Kurshin, Charlie guessed no proper search had been made.
Kurshin said, “I was not able to recover any.”
“Has the scene been secured?”
Ryabov looked to his homicide chief and quickly said, “You did put people there like I told you, didn’t you?”
“It’s intact,” said Kurshin, although unconvincingly.
Charlie said, “What about shell casings in or around the grave?”
Kurshin shifted awkwardly. “I did not recover any.”
To Denebin, Charlie said, “The bullets in the kidney bowls are reasonably intact. I’d say they’re nine-millimeter?”
“I think so,” agreed the forensic scientist. “Easy enough to establish.”
Going back to Novikov, Charlie said, “Have you weighed the bullets?”
Everyone frowned at Charlie in varying degrees. Novikov said, “They’re just bullets. They’ll be standard weight.”
“I’d like to know
precisely
,” said Charlie, surprised Lestov looked confused. That’s what too much sex does for you, my son, Charlie thought.
precisely
,” said Charlie, surprised Lestov looked confused. That’s what too much sex does for you, my son, Charlie thought.
Miriam Bell actually reached out to turn over the hand of the man designated to be American. “Was there any fingernail debris?”
“Some grave dirt that I guess was forced beneath them when he pitched forward after being shot.”
“The nails are manicured,” said Miriam, almost to herself. “You’ve washed the hands. Did you take photographs before doing that?”
Instead of answering, the pathologist shuffled through the pictures on the contents table and offered her two prints.
Miriam studied them, before offering them sideways to Charlie, who at once gestured for Lestov to look ahead of him. Before he could do so, Lestov felt the dead hand Miriam had turned and said, “It’s soft, not blistered. He didn’t dig his own grave.”
“Neither did the other two,” came in Novikov quickly. “Their hands are unmarked.”
Their hands would literally have been raw if they had even been made to try digging through concrete-hard ground, acknowledged Charlie. Which had been the point of his conversation in the car with the local pathologist. He was sure he knew how the grave had been created and wondered if they’d worked it out.
“The wrist bruising is very definitely linear,” said Denebin, taking the hand from the other Russian. “Handcuffs, obviously.”
“Were they still handcuffed?” demanded Miriam.
“No,” said Kurshin.
“Why take them off?” wondered Miriam.
Charlie was sure he knew. Aloud he said, “And there were insects in the tracheae of all three?”
Novikov pointed to the microscope slides on the exhibition table. “There.”
“I want to carry out a second autopsy,” announced Olga Erzin. “Where can I change?”
For a moment Novikov looked nonplussed. “There’s a toilet along the corridor,” he managed, at last.
Sighing, the woman stomped off. At the order from Novikov the two Yakut attendants wheeled the trolley holding the corpse of the woman to the central examination table. Charlie stayed close to the uniforms, their contents and the photographs, although not at that moment making any too-obvious effort to study anything. The clothing, all heavily bloodstained around the collar, was beginning to smell as well as go moldy. Olga swept back into the room in a trousered medical tunic like a barge in full sail. Charlie waited expectantly for her to insist the room be cleared, but she didn’t. Lev Denebin appeared uncertain which group to join, those at the exhibit tables or Olga and Novikov at the autopsy slab. After a moment’s indecision the forensic scientist came to where Charlie stood, his back now to the second dissection of the female corpse.
Beside him Miriam said, “Bizarre!”
Charlie didn’t think so at all, but he said, “Certainly a strange situation.” He reached out, then stopped. He said to Kurshin, “Every hard surface has been checked for fingerprints?”
“I couldn’t find anything,” said the local detective, apologetically.
“I doubt there would have been, in the conditions,” said Denebin.
Without any discussion they divided according to nationality, Charlie by the table holding the English uniform, Miriam to the American and Denebin and Lestov going to where the clothing of the believed Russian woman was laid out.
Charlie carefully separated the coin from the paper and war-script money, feeling the surge of satisfaction at his immediate find. In predecimalization coin there were four pennies, four half crowns and two florins. Protected as they had been in a trouser-pocket, none were affected from being buried for so long. The brightest was a half crown, dated 1944. The earliest date, 1939, was on a florin. There
was another possible time frame indicator—and a very positive direction to follow—from the inscription in the case containing six Camel cigarettes: “S.N. A First. 1932. From a proud father.” Caught by the thought, Charlie turned to the corpse just as the attendants were moving it, momentarily halting them while he examined each hand. The mark where a signet ring had been was very obvious on the little finger of the left.
was another possible time frame indicator—and a very positive direction to follow—from the inscription in the case containing six Camel cigarettes: “S.N. A First. 1932. From a proud father.” Caught by the thought, Charlie turned to the corpse just as the attendants were moving it, momentarily halting them while he examined each hand. The mark where a signet ring had been was very obvious on the little finger of the left.
There was no inscription on the watch case. It didn’t have a date register, either, although an unspecified day of an unspecified month would have been a difficult clue. It was difficult, too, to surmise anything from the stopping time of 12:43. Experimentally he tried winding it, but the button was jammed: if it had run on after the assassination, it would only have been for less than twenty-four hours. Its significance was that it had still been on the man’s wrist, Charlie decided.
He closely examined the keys, the Parker pen and the tie pin before going to the photographs before the actual clothing, wanting a sequence. The agony-rigored face was dirt-smeared but clearly recognizable, particularly in comparison against the second facial set, which, from the background, had been taken in this examination room just prior to the first postmortem. Fair-haired, not clipped militarily short, a high-cheekboned, aristocratic face badly swollen by insect bites moments before he died. And agony, too: maybe disbelieving surprise. Which didn’t square with the handcuff marks. Charlie put that impression on hold, moving through the photographs, getting the confirmation of something else within the first three frames. He looked around, seeing Kurshin with the group by the Russian woman.
“Can you help me?” he asked. Everyone at the other two tables immediately looked at him.
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