Red Moth

Rather than return

Rather than return to the silence of his office, Kirov went straight to work.

His first stop was the office of municipal police for the 4th Central District of Moscow, within whose boundaries Kovalevsky’s murder had taken place. In order not to draw attention to the significance of Kovalevsky’s death, the case had not been handed over to NKVD. Kovalevsky’s true identity had not been revealed, even to the police or the doctors who pronounced him dead when his body arrived at the hospital. In a city where gunfire was not uncommon, the murder itself had not even been mentioned in the newspapers. Except for the few bystanders who had seen what happened, few people even knew that the killing had taken place.

When Kirov entered the municipal office, the sergeant on duty took one look at the red stars of a commissar sewn on to the forearms of the major’s tunic and stood to attention, sending his chair scudding back noisily across the wooden floor.

The air smelled heavily of cigarettes and sweat. There was also a stench of vinegar and garlic coming from a jar of pickles the sergeant had open on his desk. As the man rose to salute, he struggled to finish his mouthful.

‘I’ve come about the shooting of Professor Shulepov,’ said Kirov, making sure to use the alias under which Kovalevsky had been living.

‘And where have you come from‚ Comrade Major?’

‘Special Operations.’

The sergeant nodded. ‘I knew there was something about that man.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The one who got killed. He had bullet holes in him.’

‘Of course he did. He was shot to death.’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘I’m not talking about the bullet which finished him off. I’m talking about old scars he had from the ones that didn’t kill him.’

‘And where is the body now?’

‘I called the hospital myself, a few hours after the shooting, and asked them the same question. They told me it had been cremated.’ The sergeant shrugged. ‘I tell you, Major, it’s as if this whole thing never happened. And there’s more as well.’

‘Yes?’

‘People on the scene told us there had been another man walking with this Professor Shulepov, but by the time we arrived, he had disappeared. Before I could even begin conducting a proper investigation, this little bald man shows up, waving a Kremlin ID card. .’

Poskrebychev, Kirov thought to himself.

‘. . and tells me there’s not going to be an investigation.’

‘May I see your report on the incident?’ asked Kirov.

‘Report! You don’t seem to understand, Major. That man had orders direct from Stalin. There is no report. There will never be a report.’

‘Was anything recovered from the scene?’

‘Officially, no.’

‘And unofficially?’

The sergeant held up a finger, like a man testing the wind. ‘Unofficially‚ I think I can help you.’ Rising from his desk he walked down a short hallway to a room closed with a cage-like metal door. He unlocked the door, entered, and then locked himself in from the inside. A moment later, the sergeant repeated the procedure in reverse and returned to Kirov with a little white cloth bag pulled shut with a red piece of string. Back at the front desk the sergeant opened the bag and poured its contents into his hand. There were six pistol bullets, only one of which had been fired.

‘I should probably have thrown them out,’ said the sergeant, ‘but old habits die hard, you know.’

‘Where were they?’

‘Scattered in the road, about twenty paces from the site where the shooting took place.’

Kirov picked up one of the cartridges and examined it. The markings on the base had been filed off, so he could not tell where it had been made or the precise calibre, although it looked like 9 mm to him. There were other file marks around the rim, as well as the indentations where each bullet had been clamped in a vice. ‘Is this all of them?’

‘Yes. I searched the area thoroughly.’

‘From the number, it almost looks as if the weapon was a revolver.’

‘That was my thought, too, but why go to all the trouble of emptying the cylinder when there was no need to reload and most of the rounds hadn’t even been fired? Strange, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ murmured Kirov, as he replaced the bullets in the cloth evidence bag. ‘May I hold on to these?’

‘Considering they’re from a non-existent investigation, I’d say that little bag of evidence doesn’t exist either. You may as well take it, since there’s nothing to take.’

Kirov put the bullets in his pocket. ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’

On his way to inspect the site where Kovalevsky had been murdered, Kirov stopped off at NKVD headquarters. He made his way down two flights of stairs to the underground firing range in search of the Chief Armourer, Captain Lazarev; a red-faced man with watery blue eyes and pock-marked cheeks, whose frequent laughter sent him into spasms of liquidy coughs from his tobacco-corrupted lungs.

‘I know you,’ said Lazarev. ‘You’re the one who’s got his eye on that woman in the records department, Elizaveta Kapeleva.’

‘Kapanina,’ Kirov corrected him.

‘Yes, well, whatever her name is, you had better grab her while you can. Half of the men in this building have their eyes on her as well.’

‘Thank you, Captain,’ Kirov replied stiffly. ‘I will be sure to follow your advice.’

Lazarev let out one of his gurgling laughs. ‘But I don’t expect you came down here into the bowels of the earth to seek advice on women.’

Kirov handed over the small evidence bag containing the bullets. ‘What do you make of these?’ he asked.

From a pocket in his tattered, oil-stained shop coat, Lazarev produced a surprisingly clean handkerchief, and carefully unfolded it upon a counter top strewn with gun parts. After emptying the bullets out of the bag, he stood the cartridges in a row, as if setting them up for a game of chess. ‘Nine millimetre,’ he said, ‘designed for the Mauser model 1896. The famous broom-handled model. But this is curious.’

‘What is?’

‘These bullets did not fit the standard model, which was 7.63 calibre. The 9-mm were made for export models only.’

‘Where was it exported?’

‘Asia. Africa. Some of them went to South America. There were a number of them around during the Revolution, but it is now considered somewhat obsolete by our own military, and certainly in the 9-mm version. Our own Tokarevs and Nagants take 7.62 cartridges. What makes this interesting — ’ with one finger, Lazarev pushed over one of the bullets, like a man tipping over his king as he conceded defeat — ‘is that these rounds have been modified.’

‘I noticed that as well,’ remarked Kirov. ‘But why would someone go to all this trouble?’

‘To make them fit another gun, of course,’ replied Lazarev.

‘A German gun?’ Kirov’s suspicion, from the moment he had learned about the shooting, was that the murderer was either a German agent, or else had been supplied by them.

Lazarev screwed up his face. ‘These days, anyone who has got their hands on a German gun, say a Luger or a perhaps Walther, is probably a soldier who’s been at the front. And anyone who has snatched up a German pistol is almost certain to have found ammunition as well. This is more complicated, because these bullets,’ he gestured at the cartridges laid out before him, ‘would not require modification to be used in the guns I have mentioned.’ Slowly, he shook his head. ‘No. Your weapon is not a Luger, or a Walther, and definitely not a Mauser.’

‘A Browning?’

‘No!’ shouted Lazarev. ‘That takes a short 9-mm cartridge.’ He picked up one of the bullets and held it in front of Kirov’s face. ‘Does this look short to you?’ Without waiting for an answer, Lazarev continued. ‘This is something else. Something more peculiar. I wish I could be of further help to you, Major, but in order for me to do that, you will have to bring me a few more pieces of the puzzle.’