He flicked back the autopsy photographs and then shook his head.

“No. If they were worried about that, they’d have chopped off her face and hands. Old Thief trick. They get rid of the tattoos as well, if there are any. Perhaps they were disturbed?”

The general’s rambling series of deductions were making Korolev uncomfortable, particularly the part about him ending up in an unmarked Butyrka grave.

“All very interesting,” the general continued. “Not least because there was another murder last night, out at Tomsky stadium. A Thief, it’s true, but there might be a connection. It certainly sounds like it. The body was nicely sliced up, like your one. But what do a Thief and a nun have in common?” He stopped and half-smiled at the thought. “It sounds like the beginning of a joke.”

“Tomsky?” Korolev said, trying to refocus the general on the matter at hand rather than suggest a punchline.

“Yes, Tomsky. They found the body there this morning. Larinin’s taking it over to the Institute. Go and have a look-ask the good doctor for her opinion. Maybe it’s our killer, maybe not. Maybe the conspirators are falling out. Mind you, it was found in Spartak’s stadium-anything could happen there.”

The general smiled, almost hopefully, looking for a reaction from Korolev, who, in his youth had played central defender for the Presnaya football team, the factory area he grew up in. The same team, led by the four Starostin brothers, had become the nucleus of the now famous Spartak.

“You know I’m too old to play for Dinamo,” Korolev said, preempting the general’s usual teasing on the subject. Korolev, despite having been a useful defender in his time, had never joined Dinamo, Spartak’s great rival, whose players largely came from the Militia, NKVD and other arms of State Security. The general found it amusing that he had a Spartak old boy in his command. “Anyway,” Korolev continued, “Presnaya boys stand together, thick and thin, and we wouldn’t do in one of our own.”

Popov nodded, but the smile slowly faded.

“You know, Alexei,” he said in a quiet voice, “you’re a good man and people see that. But, for your own sake, be careful on this one. Promise me? And let’s hope the Chekists take it off us. A good honest axe murder or something, that’s what we need.”

The two men held each other’s eyes for longer than would have been polite in other circumstances, then the general stood up from his chair and extended his hand across the table. Korolev took it and felt the general’s grip hot and hard around his own.

“Don’t come to the meeting. It won’t do any good and if the bastards want my head, well, I won’t drag a good man down with me. Anyway, nothing may come of it. It’s only the Wall Paper, after all. Nothing official as yet.”

Popov stood back a pace and regarded Korolev for a moment, then nodded, as if to agree with his private assessment of the detective. Korolev also took a step backward and, because the moment seemed to require the gesture, he brought his heels together and came to attention. The general’s smile turned downward into a scowl, but he didn’t look particularly displeased for all that, and he waved his pipe at Korolev to dismiss him.

Korolev left the general at the window, looking down at the pedestrians, cyclists, horses, carts and occasional car that struggled along Petrovka in the slush and ice left by the snowfall. Perhaps the general was considering how so many people, moving in so many different directions and at such different speeds, managed to avoid collision. It could put years on you, trying to work out the answer to a question like that.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Korolev was still considering the significance of the Wall Paper’s attack on Popov as he descended the stairs to Room 2F. Perhaps, after all, it was nothing to be worried about. Maybe it would be enough if the general was open and frank with the Party meeting and admitted to a lapse in the constant vigilance which Party members were required to exercise. Perhaps it was an offense that could be forgiven if Popov cleansed his character through public self-criticism. Or perhaps not. There seemed to be something in the air these last few weeks that didn’t bode well. Nobody knew much about Ezhov, the new Commissar for State Security, except that he had to be better than Yagoda. After all, even Stalin had seemed to suggest, in the months before Yagoda’s replacement, that the endless self-evisceration might have gone too far. But now, more recently still, Yagoda seemed to be in disgrace for not having gone far enough. If this was the case, then the public criticism of Popov, who’d discreetly, but firmly, prevented a wholesale purge of the Criminal Investigation Division, could signal the commencement of something far worse than had gone before. Gregorin’s talk that morning of Ezhov wanting to hit back hard against the Party’s enemies was alarming, after all it seemed to confirm the rumors that Yagoda had in some way been soft. Korolev cursed under his breath as he caught sight of the Wall Paper and the clutch of tight-faced detectives gathered around it. He hoped his instincts were failing him, but judging from his colleagues’ expressions and the bubbles of silence surrounding each of them, he suspected he wasn’t the only one who had a bad feeling about where things were heading.

Semionov was waiting in Room 2F and, unlike Korolev, seemed positively enthusiastic at the prospect of an autopsy, as well as apparently being the only person in the building oblivious to the portent of the Wall Paper. It took Korolev a moment to outline the events at Tomsky stadium and by then Semionov had gathered his flat cap and mackintosh from behind the door, and they were on their way down to the courtyard to pick up a car. As they walked, the younger man filled Korolev in on the details of the forensic investigation and the house-to-house interviews that the local Militia were undertaking. As far as Semionov could tell, the power cut had indeed been an accident-he’d spoken to the foreman on the building site and the worker who had cut into the cable was seriously ill in hospital. That seemed to suggest that the location of the crime had been opportunistic-which was interesting. Otherwise there had been no substantive steps forward as yet, but at least the process was starting and with a bit of luck it might soon begin to produce scraps of information that could lead to the killer. Semionov was excited at the scale of the investigation and the mysterious nature of the crime.

“This is just like Sherlock Holmes, Alexei Dmitriyevich. Really it is. Logical deduction, that’s what we need here. ‘Logic, my dear Watson’-that’s what will unmask the fellow.”

Korolev looked at his colleague with some amusement, although he was careful not to show it. He pointed at the mackintosh.

“That won’t be much good when the cold weather comes,” he said.

Semionov took the hem of his coat between his finger and thumb and squeezed it, showing how thin the rubberized cotton was.

“Maybe not. But I’ve three vests on underneath my shirt. I have an old winter coat, from before. When it gets really cold, I’ll wear that.”

“At least it looks as though it’s waterproof,” Korolev said.

“Indeed it is, and all the Arbat crowd are wearing them.”

Korolev could think of several responses to that, but he decided to restrain himself. In his opinion, the trend-setting youngsters who paraded up and down Arbat Street could jump into the Moskva River en masse and the city wouldn’t be the poorer.

When they arrived at the small wooden hut that stood in the center of the cobbled courtyard, the elderly Morozov, a bearded ex-soldier who’d lost an eye in 1914 came out to greet them. Morozov supervised the twenty or so cars that constituted the Criminal Investigation Division’s transport pool from behind his pirate’s patch, and was renowned for his grouchy demeanor.