They stopped at the little railway station and looked off down the empty tracks, which trailed out to the horizon. A broom stood propped against one of the support columns of the station house roof.

None of them spoke. The emptiness of the place seemed to command their silence.

Pekkala thought back to the faces he had seen when they passed through before. He remembered the fear hidden behind the masks of their smiles.

They got in the car and drove on.

Later that day, when they pulled into the courtyard at Vodovenko, the red-haired attendant came out to meet them.

“You’re too late,” he said.

Pekkala climbed out of the car, his hip joints sore from sitting cramped inside the Emka. “What do you mean we are late?”

“Not late.” The attendant shook his head. “Too late.”

“What happened?”

“We’re not sure. A suicide, we think.”

The three men did not bother to sign in and the attendant did not ask for their weapons. They hurried through the armored door and down the corridors until they came to a room whose floor and walls up to chest height were plated with white tiles, like those inside a shower. Four large lights hung down from the ceiling. It was the mortuary.

Katamidze’s body lay on a metal-topped table, half covered with a cotton blanket. The photographer’s lips and eyelids and the tip of his nose had turned a mottled blue, but the rest of his skin looked as pale as the tiles on the walls. His feet, which were facing the door, stuck out from under the blanket. Attached by wire to the big toe of his right foot was a metal disk on which a number had been stamped. The nails had turned a yellow color, like the scales of a dead fish.

Anton leaned against the wall by the door, his eyes fixed on the floor.

Kirov followed behind Pekkala, too curious to be appalled.

“Poison,” said Pekkala.

“Yes,” agreed the attendant.

“Cyanide?”

“Lye,” said the attendant.

Gently, Pekkala set his hand on Katamidze’s face and lifted one of the eyelids. The whites of the dead man’s eyes had turned red from burst blood vessels. Examining the area around the eyes, Pekkala noticed a faint blush extending from the cheekbone up to the line of the forehead. He traced his fingers down the side of the man’s neck, probing the flesh. When he reached Katamidze’s larynx he traced his finger over fragile horseshoe-shaped bone. It gave under gentle pressure, indicating that it had been crushed. “Whoever killed him,” he said, “held on to his throat until he was sure Katamidze would not survive, but it was not strangulation that killed him. Where was he found?”

“In his cell,” replied the attendant.

Pekkala jerked his head towards the door. “Show me,” he said.

The attendant led them to Katamidze’s cell.

“Where do you use lye in this building?” asked Pekkala, striding ahead.

“In the gardens sometimes.” The attendant’s legs were shorter than Pekkala’s. He was struggling to keep up with Pekkala. “We use it to clear out the drainpipes a couple of times a year.”

“Was he dead when you found him?”

“Almost. I mean he died before we had a chance to unlock him.”

“Did he say anything?”

“No. I mean…”

“What do you mean?” demanded Pekkala.

The attendant became flustered. “For God’s sake, his insides were burned out. Whatever he tried to say, the poor bastard was too far gone for us to understand. Here. This is the place.”

An orderly was mopping out the room. The air was thick with the smell of bleach, mingled with a reek of vomit and the piercing bitterness of lye. The cell had no windows, only a metal cot which folded up into the wall. There was no other furniture. A chain bolted into the wall hung down to the center of the cot. An iron cuff dangled from the chain.

Pekkala lifted the chain, then let it fall again. The metal links rattled against the wall. “He was locked to this?”

Anton’s breathing had grown shallow. Suddenly, he left the room; his hurried footsteps faded away down the corridor.

The attendant watched him go. “Some people have no stomach for a place like this,” he said.

Kirov remained where he was, peering over Pekkala’s shoulder.

“All inmates are locked to their bunks after lights-out,” the attendant explained. “During the day, the beds are folded up and the cuffs are released.”

“What happens to the prisoners then?”

The orderly continued swabbing the floor as if the men were not there.

“Prisoners are allowed out for fifteen minutes a day. The rest of the time, they sit on the floor, or they walk around their cells.”

“So you think he drank the lye before you chained him up for the night?”

The attendant nodded. “Yes. That’s the only possibility.”

Pekkala brought his face close to the attendant’s. “You know damned well this was no suicide.”

The orderly’s mop came to a sudden halt. From the twisted gray strands, sudsy water sluiced across the floor.

“Out,” said the attendant.

The orderly dropped his mop and scurried out of the room.

“Somebody gripped Katamidze’s neck,” Pekkala said.

“He scratched at himself. He was out of his mind.”

“There were other marks. Pressure marks. Somebody had him by the throat. His esophagus was damaged.”

“The lye…”

“Something had been pushed down there, probably a funnel of some sort. Then the lye was emptied into his stomach.”

The attendant had begun to sweat. He set his hand against his forehead and looked down at the floor. “Look, Inspector, in the end, does it really matter if he killed himself or not?”

“Of course it matters!” shouted Pekkala.

“What I mean is,” explained the attendant, “this is a house of madmen. Fights break out. Feuds go on which have no end and no beginning. These men have been removed from the world so that they can no longer be a danger to society, but that does not stop them from being a danger to each other. There is only so much we can do-”

“Why did you try to persuade me it was suicide?”

“A suicide”-the attendant’s hand flowed outwards, as if to ease the words out of his mouth-“requires only an internal investigation. But a murder needs a full-blown inquiry. Inspector, you know what that means. Men who are innocent, who are only trying to do a difficult job, will find themselves condemned as criminals. If there was any way that we could keep this quiet-”

“Were any intruders reported in the building?”

“Our security is designed to keep people in, not to keep them out.”

“So you are saying that anyone could walk in here and gain access to the inmates?”

“They’d have to get past me first,” the attendant replied, “or whoever else was on duty.”

“And is the front desk ever unattended?”

“Not officially.”

“What does that mean?” Pekkala snapped.

“It means that sometimes we have to answer the call of nature, if you know what I mean. Or we step out for a cigarette. Or we go to the cafeteria to grab a bowl of soup. If no one’s at the desk, all a person has to do is ring the buzzer and we come and get them.”

“But if no one was here, they could get hold of a key.”

The attendant shrugged. “Not officially.”

“In other words, yes.”

“There is a whole cabinet of entrance keys. Everyone who works in the asylum has one. They pick up the key when they arrive and they drop it off again when they leave. Each person’s key hangs on a peg with a number which corresponds to that person.”

“And is the cabinet locked?”

“Officially…”

“Don’t.”

“It should be, but sometimes it isn’t. But look, it’s like I said, this place is meant to keep people inside. An inmate trying to escape has to get out of his cell, which is locked, and through this door, which is also locked. People don’t break into asylums.”

“Do you know of anyone here who might have hated Katamidze enough to kill him?”