The Holy Thief

CHAPTER FOUR

Once the ambulance started to move, Korolev and the photographer found themselves sitting on a bench across from the canvas-swaddled body as the wheels bumped along the cobbled stones of Razin Street. The ambulance had little or no suspension and the two of them were thrown around and against each other as it clattered round corners and rumbled over pot-holes. In the front, Chestnova shouted at the driver to avoid collisions and to pass slow-moving carts. Gueginov, on the other hand, spent most of the journey trying to make himself a cigarette and, what with his spasms and the roller-coaster ride, it was with a great deal of satisfaction that he put the finished product between his lips and lit it. Then he frowned and nodded toward the corpse.

“I huh-hope you ca-catch the fellow. It’s unpleasant, ha-having to phuh-photograph suh-such a thing.” He extended the cigarette in the direction of the corpse. “Before the Ruh-revolution, I took portraits of the living. Fuh-families, children, that kih-kind of thing. Suh-since the Revolution, I only photograph the duh-dead.”

It was difficult to make out the spirit in which the remark was made, as Gueginov’s normally quiet voice was competing with the engine and Chestnova, and Korolev looked at him to see if he was making a terrible and dangerous joke. Oblivious to Korolev’s scrutiny, Gueginov took another drag from his cigarette.

“The cuh-capitalists were a sight to see back then, you know,” he continued. “One of their women’s druh-dresses could feed a family for a year. Muh-maybe two. It was exploitation. I uh-uh-understand that, of course. It was bluh-blood beauty. Now, things are better. Fuh-fairer. I don’t miss those days. And whuh-what I do now is of benefit to suh-society.”

Korolev wondered what the dead woman would make of such a statement.

“Huh-here,” Gueginov said, reaching into his pocket to produce a stainless-steel hip flask, “ha-have a drink. My next-door neighbor works for a di-distillery. It’s the real stuff. I did him a phuh-photograph of his wife. It made a nice chuh-change. I’d have done it for fuh-free, if the truth be tuh-told, but he guh-gave me a couple of bottles and I duh-didn’t refuse.”

Korolev took the flask and the vodka warmed its way down his throat. The dead woman’s hand slipped from the canvas bag with the movement of the truck and brushed against his leg. He reached down to move it and was surprised by the softness of the ice-cold skin.

When they arrived at the Institute, Korolev stepped down from the back of the ambulance with foreboding. Some of his dislike for autopsies came from the sheer brutality of the procedure. He couldn’t help feeling victims of violence should be left in peace after what they’d been through, but instead they were chopped at, sliced, skinned and sampled. It was worse than butchering in some ways. The dead person, once entitled to all the respect properly due a Soviet citizen, was reduced to nothing more than a piece of meat for doctors and policemen to poke at. Surely the world owed them something more after what had befallen them? And then, of course, there was the fact that even after fourteen years in the Militia and seven years of war he still had to struggle to control his stomach.

With a dry mouth, he mounted the worn steps of the Institute and was struck, not for the first time, by the melancholy atmosphere of the place. Before the Revolution it had been a nobleman’s mansion, a building built for pleasure. The ceilings still retained frescoes of naked cherubim perched on tufts of cloud, eating grapes and laughing across a cerulean sky, in stark contrast to the whitewash and plain floorboards beneath them. He wondered why they hadn’t been painted over-perhaps there were no ladders available that day. At least they cheered the building up a little; otherwise it seemed reduced to despair by the use it was being put to. The feeling was at its most intense in the pathology department. The glossy white walls, the harsh glare of the electric lighting, the polished concrete floors-they all combined to distort sound, space and even time in some strange way. Whenever he entered the place he had the urge to sit down, cradle the impossible weight of his head in his hands and savor the stink of dead dreams and ruined hopes that permeated the place. He stumbled, nausea rising in him, and looked around for a chair, but the doctor marched on regardless, sweeping him along in her wake, down the corridor and into the main morgue, two walls of which were made up of steel squares, behind each of which lay cold corpses on smooth-running shelves. Formaldehyde, disinfectant and the sweet scent of dead flesh filled Korolev’s nostrils. Somewhere a tap dripped.

“They’re two to a shelf in there,” Chestnova said, pointing to the steel boxes, “We’ve even got them piled up in Autopsy Room One.”

She pointed through a glass window. A two-high line of corpses lay on the floor, each wrapped in a sheet with a number tied to a bloodless toe. Chests of ice had been laid around them like waiting coffins.

“Too many bodies, not enough pathologists, and now we don’t even have enough autopsy rooms. Citizens should travel to another city if they feel they have to kill themselves. The problem isn’t so bad in Leningrad, you know. Maybe the Party could organize special tours there.”

She sighed and entered the second, smaller, autopsy room, leaning against the polished steel table and closing her eyes. Korolev wanted to do the same, but he reminded himself that if he leaned against anything in this place he’d lose consciousness in moments. Even standing, he felt sleep licking his neck and his eyelids drooping down. He clenched his hand into a fist and punched back at the wall behind him, hoping the pain would wake him up. The punch sounded like a pistol shot against the steel. Chestnova’s eyes flew open and she looked at him in terror. She was still looking at him uncertainly when the attendants arrived with the stretcher that carried the dead body.

Korolev spoke to cover his embarrassment.

“I’d no idea there were so many of them-the suicides. Perhaps it’s the coming of the winter. Is that what brings it on?”

“It could be anything with these people,” Chestnova said, color returning to her cheeks. “All I know is it’s un-Soviet to take your own life at a time of national threat. If you’re unhappy, you should find solace in useful work. These people,” Chestnova said, waving her hand toward the mortuary and the other autopsy room, “were selfish. Individualists. They all put themselves before the State.”

“That’s right, Comrade Doctor,” one of the attendants said, as they removed the body from the blankets and laid it out. “They make work for us when they should be helping. And most of them Party members, what’s more-they should be ashamed.”

The attendants barely looked at the corpse as they worked, but their movements were efficient and quick. The girl was still caked with blood and excrement, but they showed no squeamishness.

“Shall I ask Comrade Esimov to assist, Doctor?” the second attendant asked.

“No, let him sleep. The captain here can take the notes. Is that all right, Comrade?”

“Of course,” Korolev said, thinking that at least he’d be able to read them for a change.

“Let’s begin. Preliminary examination of unidentified female homicide victim commencing at three forty-five p.m., second of November, nineteen thirty-six. Am I going too fast?”

Korolev shook his head and the doctor began to clean the woman’s body with a small hose, gently removing the thicker patches of dried body fluids with a brush. She called out details of the surface injuries to him as she uncovered them and then, when the body was clean, she stood back and reached for a large surgeon’s knife. She smiled apologetically to the two men before making a deep and precise Y cut in the chest. Then, with practiced efficiency, she peeled back the skin to reveal the girl’s ribcage and internal organs. Korolev met the photographer’s eyes for a moment before they both glanced away-it just wasn’t right for a person to look like something you’d see on a meat-shop slab, ribs sticking out of their bruised white skin.

As always, the autopsy was slow going; the doctor, despite her tiredness, was thorough. After half an hour, Gueginov, who’d been taking pictures when instructed, suggested they take a break and a nip of vodka to fortify themselves for the rest of the examination.

“Have we guh-glasses?” he said, putting his flask down beside the girl’s head.

“Sample jars. They’ll do well enough,” Chestnova said, “There are some in the drawer.” She pointed with her elbow as she scrubbed at her hands in the sink.

“Huh-here we go,” Gueginov said, splitting the remaining contents of his flask equally between the glass containers. Chestnova dried herself with the towel that hung beside the sink and then turned, stopping for a moment to look down at the girl. Korolev was surprised to see her eyes were filled with tears.

“The poor girl,” Chestnova said. “A virgin, maybe twenty. No more than twenty-two. She saved herself, I suppose, and then this. Poor little one.” Her voice broke, and she looked up at them with a weak smile. “Excuse me, Comrades, I haven’t slept for too long. I’m ashamed of myself.”

Gueginov reached out an arm and put it round her shoulder. The large woman leaned against her frail protector for a moment. Then she straightened herself and wiped the eyes that avoided theirs. She held her glass up to the corpse.

“I hope you were happy, for a moment or two at least, Citizeness. In your life. I hope so.”

The others raised their glasses in turn and then drank the vodka in a single gulp. Gueginov’s eyes seemed moist as well and Korolev felt the sapping atmosphere of the mortuary dragging at him once more. He dug his nails into the palm of his hand.

“So how long did she suffer for, do you think?” he asked, his desperation to get back to the business at hand making his voice unnaturally loud. Chestnova and Gueginov looked up in surprise.

“Well,” Chestnova said, considering the question, “I can’t tell for sure-but the mutilation probably took place after death, just because of the relative lack of blood. As for the electrical burns, my guess would be they happened before death-he used a thin, lengthy object. Like a torturer might have used a red-hot poker in the past. She was restrained with rope and gagged-see the bruising and tearing round the mouth and the marks on her wrists and ankles? I’d say she struggled a great deal. And I think it was done by one man. Probably right-handed. See these bruises here?”

Korolev nodded and looked at the purple-gray marks on the girl’s otherwise alabaster arm. The doctor explained how the bruises showed indications of being made by a right hand and that they probably indicated the hand the killer showed a preference for.

“And the mutilation? Do you have an idea why he cut her up?”

“No-I’m afraid not. That is something you’ll have to ask the killer when you find him.”

Korolev nodded, more in hope than conviction, and turned to Gueginov.

“Boris Ivanovich?” he said, looking at the girl’s head in profile, “if we took a picture from here, the damage isn’t so visible. Maybe we can find out who she was, if we can get it circulated.”

Gueginov nodded and positioned his lamp in preparation. Outside in the mortuary a door banged and then the younger of the attendants came in without knocking.

“Captain Korolev? General Popov wants to speak to you. There’s a phone in the director’s office. Follow me, please.”

Popov’s call turned out to be nothing much, just a request for any new information, but the air in the director’s office was fresh and a chill breeze from an open window rustled across the piles of papers on the desk, each weighed down with a pebble. The director, a middle-aged man with a wide, intelligent face, stood with his back to the window and his arms crossed, looking on as Korolev finished his report. He smiled when Korolev hung up the phone and offered him a cigarette. Korolev accepted it and then cupped a hand around the director’s lighter. He inhaled the rough smoke deep into his lungs-anything to suppress the lingering smell of death. He felt the nicotine worming its way out to his extremities, and the sudden weakness it brought reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He took a moment to savor the sensation and then nodded his thanks to the director, who waved it away. It was only when he was back at the examination room that Korolev realized they hadn’t exchanged a single word.

In his absence, Gueginov had applied make-up to cover as much as possible of the damage to the girl’s face. It was a trick Korolev had seen him perform before. The first time he’d been surprised at the garish colors, but as the photographs were taken with black and white film the end effect was lifelike. Chestnova was assisting him by positioning the head, using a towel to hold it in place. The head seemed loose in her hands and wouldn’t stay still. Gueginov and Chestnova looked up at him with welcoming smiles and Korolev detected the sharp smell of alcohol. Gueginov pointed at a beaker full of clear liquid.

“Duh-doctor Che-Chestnova fuh-found us some muh-medical spirits, Comrade. It’s the buh-business. That’s yours.”

“It’s best with jam. A little bit of jam in the spirit and it tastes very good. But we have no jam today, I’m afraid.” Dr. Chestnova seemed markedly more cheerful than before. “See? We have made her beautiful.”

“I puh-put cotton wool in her chuh-cheeks, I think it works wuh-wuh-well.”

Gueginov looked down at the corpse with a pleased expression. The girl’s hair was still wet from where Chestnova had washed it clean.

“She was good looking, the girl,” Korolev said, as much to himself as the others.

“Yuh-yes. Do you think we should huh-have the eye open or closed? I’ll tuh-take her in puh-profile obviously.”

Gueginov opened the girl’s eyelid with his thumb and looked to Korolev for approval. Korolev shook his head, disconcerted by the dead girl’s gaze.

“Yuh-yes. I think, you’re ruh-right.” Gueginov said and shut the eye once more. Then, satisfied with the positioning of the girl’s head and the arrangement of her features, Gueginov picked up the camera and the flash lit up the room twice. Chestnova let the head fall back onto the table and the jaw fell open revealing the white teeth and the butchered mouth.

“Notice anything about the teeth, Comrade?” Chestnova asked, picking up the loose head and tilting it toward him once again.

“It looks like he broke a few,” Korolev said, then looked again. “They’re exceptionally white.”

“Indeed, which may be something to note in itself, but see these fillings? Amalgam. Well, Comrade, the Ministry of Health hasn’t permitted our dentists to use amalgam fillings for the last ten years at least. And these fillings weren’t done that long ago.”

“So the fillings were done outside the Soviet Union?”

“Perhaps the girl is a foreigner…”

“Huh-her clothes.” Gueginov’s voice came from the corner where he was holding up her skirt. “They look fuh-foreign to me. No luh-labels, but they feel like cuh-capitalist cluh-clothes. Perhaps she was a suh-saboteur? Fuh-fell out with her fellows and look what happened to her.”

Korolev ran the fabric through his fingers. It felt wondrously soft.

“Perhaps, or she could have worked abroad in an embassy or with a trade delegation. And, of course, there are plenty of foreigners in Moscow these days. Volunteers, industrial specialists, Comintern employees and so on. We may be able to match her teeth to dental records if she’s listed as a missing person. We’ll look into it. Thank you-an excellent observation.”

Dr. Chestnova smiled proudly, although perhaps a little lopsidedly. Korolev wondered how much medical spirit the two of them had drunk while he’d been out of the room.

“I always do my duty,” she said, reaching for a saw from the tray of instruments that stood beside the operating table. “And now I shall look into the brain.”

Korolev felt his jaw clench. He took a quick look at his watch and gave a curt nod to the others.

“Please call me if there are any further developments. I have to get back to Petrovka.”

He decided to ignore the muffled giggle that followed him from the room.