“Yes, and I’ll show you and willingly, Comrade. Let me just call in and tell the station I’m leaving my post.”

Korolev wondered whether the boy’s parents had called him for the Kipling character or the Soviet acronym for the International Communist Youth Movement. He hoped it was the former, given where the young lad had ended up. A bit of resourcefulness would not be a bad thing.

Ten minutes later, Korolev stood at the end of an alley, watching some dilapidated stables that were scheduled to be knocked down for a telephone exchange. In the meantime, it was the besprizorny hideout. He heard the sergeant blow his whistle as he entered the stables from the other end, and almost immediately ten or twelve young children burst out into the alley, rather than the three or four Korolev had been expecting. They came to a halt when they saw him, looking uncertainly behind them as the sound of the whistle came closer.

“Hey, old-timer! Don’t get in the way of the Collective!” a voice came from the back.

“Listen to that, Grandad. There are no fortresses we can’t storm!”

The voices were absurdly young, but their angry eyes were like searchlights in the wet gloom. Korolev almost reached for his pistol, but that would have been ridiculous. They were just a bunch of kids shouting slogans from the movies.

“Now just stay there, I’m a Militia investigator,” Korolev said in what he hoped was a firm voice, but at that moment the sergeant appeared at the stable doors and then the whole bunch were pelting toward him. Korolev, bending down to their level, picked out Goldstein from the charge and decided it might as well be him as any other. He grabbed hold of the boy around the stomach, felt the padded jacket squirm in his hands as the boy nearly dropped out of the bottom of it, but managed to catch a leg. He’d expected the others to run on past, but instead he felt feet kick at him, hands pull at his hair and then the excruciating pain of a small fist punching him repeatedly in the testicles. He swung Goldstein around like a weapon and then the sergeant was roaring above him and laying into the slower children with his night stick.

“Rats! Rats! Rats!” the sergeant bellowed at the retreating figures and then leaned against the alley wall breathing heavily. “They mug drunks like that, Comrade. At night. A little swarm of them. Once the fellow goes down, he doesn’t have a chance. They’ll kill someone one of these days. Look at your coat, if you don’t believe me.”

A long straight cut ran downward from beneath his armpit. He checked it quickly with his free hand. No blood.

“God above,” he said. “How the hell will I get that mended?”

“Sew it yourself, you old woman.” The voice came from the bundle of legs and coat he had pinned to the alley wall. As if on cue, stones and pieces of wood began to thud into the ground around them as the children, regrouped, now advanced to recover the captive.

“Hey, hey. Stop that, you little shits,” Korolev shouted, allowing his annoyance about the slashed coat and bruised testicles to come through. “I’m not going to hurt any of you unless I have to, and I’m not going to take young Goldstein in either. I just want to ask a few questions. I’m a detective, from Petrovka Street.”

Everyone knew about Petrovka Street and the boys, and what looked like one or two girls, stopped their bombardment. Korolev took the opportunity to arrange Kim Goldstein’s clothing so that his face was visible.

“See? He’s fine,” Korolev said, keeping his hands well clear of Goldstein’s teeth and stopping his kicking by holding the boy’s legs flat against the brickwork.

“Do you remember me? From outside the church where the lady was murdered?”

“What do you want, Ment?” the boy said, his voice low with indignation, but at least he’d stopped struggling.

“Information. There’ll be a few roubles in it for you.”

“We don’t grass people up, not us.”

A rare distinction, thought Korolev, in a city where so many denunciations came to Petrovka Street each day that they had a team of eight officers just to read through them.

“Look, I’m after a murderer who tortures young women to death. He’s a monster, not some regular fellow from the neighborhood who buys and sells a few vegetables down at Sukharevka market. I need your help.”

The children looked at him, considering the proposal.

“Like the Baker Street Irregulars?” a small blonde girl asked. She had a dirty face and a filthy but well-cut woolen overcoat.

“You like Sherlock Holmes?” Korolev asked. Several of the children nodded and one of them produced a savagely mangled copy of The Sign of Four. “Well, you can be the Razin Street Irregulars, if you’d like. A rouble for a prime piece of information.”

“A rouble? Forget it.”

Korolev looked down at the scornful face of young Goldstein, noting his obvious interest. He felt it safe to loosen his grip now it had become a matter of price rather than principle.

“I could go a little higher,” Korolev said, wondering how he would explain this to the general, who didn’t approve of paying informers at the best of times.

“Five.”

“If it’s very good, yes. Otherwise, we’ll have to see.”

Two shrewd eyes stared up at him from beneath red hair, curled thick with grime.

“Well then,” the boy said, which seemed to constitute an acceptance of the offer. The others came closer, although the sergeant still kept his night stick ready and Korolev made sure to keep the children where he could see them.

“All right, Citizens. My name’s Korolev. Alexei Dmitriyevich. First things first-this is the lady who was murdered. Does anyone recognize her?”

He showed around Mary Smithson’s passport photograph, but there was no response apart from ghoulish interest and a quiet sob from the little girl. He tried again.

“Some witnesses may have seen her at around midnight on the day in question. Were any of you up then? There may have been a car parked further along the street. Anyone see that?”

“There was a black Emka, right enough. Remember? Near the cigarette stall?” This from a scrawny child in a flat cap and a stretched and worn jumper. Two others nodded agreement.

“I remember it, toward the Kremlin it was. On the same side of the street as the church.”

“Yes, and there was a fellow in the driver’s seat smoking, remember?”

“Anyone get a look at him?”

“No, we thought it was some high-up’s driver, or a Ment. Stayed well clear.” The other two nodded agreement with flat cap.

“He’d his collar turned right up. All you could see was the cigarette poking out.”

“Very good.” Korolev reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He extracted two single rouble notes, thought about it and took out another three.

“There’s someone I want you to see if you can find for me.” He said, taking out the picture of Nancy Dolan. “Ten roubles if you track her down, and these five to share among yourselves in the meantime.”

Goldstein took the money from him and extended his hand to shake on the deal.

“We’ll find her, don’t you worry.” He walked over to the other children, nodded and then they turned as one to walk off down the alleyway.

“Waste of money, if you ask me,” the sergeant grumbled, but he had a smile hidden under his mustache. Korolev nodded in the direction the children had departed.

“What happens to them? In the end?”

“The Lord takes them to himself soon enough, if the State doesn’t throw them into an orphanage. I don’t know which is better.”

It was as Korolev had expected. He buttoned his overcoat against the floating drizzle and ran a finger down the cut as they walked back toward the Militia post.

“What’s your name, Sergeant? So I know it, if you call?”

“Pushkin.”

“Really?”

The sergeant shook his head in resignation. “Please, Comrade Captain. It wasn’t my choice. I was just born to it. You can’t change your family name, can you? I don’t complain-a name’s only a name. The Lord willed it. I mean to say-it’s the way it must be. Comrade Stalin wouldn’t change his name, now would he?”