Then I drew the chair up to the bed and took a closer look at the body. That he was dead was obvious, since there were stab wounds all over his body, but mainly around the head, neck, and chest. Less obvious was the choice of murder weapon—a piece of elk horn that was sticking out of the dead man’s right eye socket. The ferocity of the attack was remarkable, as was the brutal instrumentality of the elk horn. I’d seen violent crime scenes before in my time as a detective, but rarely as frenzied as this. It gave me a new respect for elks. I counted sixteen separate stab wounds, including two or three protective wounds on the forearms, and from the blood spatter on the walls it seemed clear that Gebhardt had been murdered on the bed. I tried to raise one of the dead man’s hands and discovered rigor had already well set in. The body was quite cold, and I formed the conclusion that Gebhardt had met his well-deserved death between the hours of midnight and four o’clock in the morning. I also discovered some blood underneath his fingernails, and I might even have taken a sample of this if I’d had an envelope to put it in, not to mention a laboratory with a microscope that might have analyzed it. I did, however, take the dead man’s wedding ring, which was so tight and the finger so badly swollen that I had to use the soap to get it off. Any other man’s ring would have fallen off his finger, but Gebhardt drew better rations than any of us and was a normal weight. I weighed the ring in the palm of my hand. It was gold and would certainly come in useful if I ever needed to bribe a Blue. I looked closely at the inscription on the inside, but it was too small for my weakened eyes. I didn’t put it in my pocket, however; for one thing, the trousers of my uniform were full of holes, and for another, there was the starshina outside the door who might take it upon himself to search me. So I swallowed it, in the certainty that with my bowels as loose as vegetable soup I could easily retrieve the ring later.
By now I could hear the SGO addressing the German plenis outside. There was a cheer as he confirmed what most of them knew: that Gebhardt was dead. This was followed by a loud groan as he told them how the MVD were planning to handle the matter. I got up and went to the window in the hope that I might see one brave soul identify himself as the culprit, but no one moved. Fearing the worst, I took another bite off the vodka bottle and laid my hand on the stove. It was cold, but I opened it all the same, just in case the killer had thought to burn his signed confession; but there was nothing—just a few pages from an old copy of Pravda and some bits of wood, ready for when the weather turned colder.
A shallow closet, no deeper than a shoe box, was fixed against the corner of the hut and in it I found the Waffen SS uniform that Gebhardt had ceased wearing when he’d switched sides. It would hardly have done for an anti-fascist officer to have carried on wearing an SS uniform. His new Russian gimnasterka was hanging on the back of the chair. Quickly, I searched the pockets and found a few kopecks, which I pocketed, and some more cigarettes, which I also pocketed.
With time growing short now, I took off my own threadbare uniform jacket and tried on Gebhardt’s. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have fitted, but I’d lost so much weight that this was hardly a problem, so I kept it on. It was a great pity his boots were too small, but I took his socks—those were an excellent fit and, as with the jacket, in much better condition than my own. I lit another cigarette and, on my hands and knees, went hunting around the floor for something other than the dust and the splinters I found down there. I was still searching for clues when the hut door opened and Colonel Mrugowski came in.
“Did anyone come forward?”
“No. As a result, I can’t believe it was a German who did this. Our men aren’t so lacking in honor. A German would have given himself up. For the good of the others.”
“Hitler didn’t,” I observed.
“That was different.”
I pushed Gebhardt’s cigarettes across the table. “Here,” I said. “Have one of the dead man’s cigarettes.”
“Thanks. I will.” He lit one and glanced uncomfortably at the dead body. “Don’t you think we should cover him up?”
“No. Looking at it helps to give me ideas as to how it happened.”
“And have you any? Ideas about who killed him?”
“So far I’m considering the possibility that it was an elk with a grudge.” I showed him the murder weapon. “See how sharp it is?”
Gingerly, Mrugowski touched the bloodied end with his forefinger. “Makes a hell of a shiv, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I think it was probably meant to be decorative. In here. There’s a couple of nails and a mark on the wall facing the window that’s consistent with this having been part of a small trophy set of horns. But I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never been in here before.”
“So where’s the rest of it?”
“Maybe he realized how effective a weapon it was and took the rest of it with him. I rather imagine there was an argument. The killer grabbed the trophy, broke it over Gebhardt’s skull, and found himself holding just a piece of it. A conveniently sharp piece. There are some smaller punctures on Gebhardt’s head that are consistent with that possibility. Gebhardt collapsed onto the bed. The killer then went at him with the point. Finished him off. Then he went outside and caught the U-Bahn home. As to who and why, your guess is as good as mine. If this was Berlin, I’d be telling the uniforms to look for a man with bloodstains on his jacket, but of course here that’s not so unusual. There are fellows out there who are still wearing uniforms stained with the blood of comrades at Königsberg. And I expect the killer knows that, too.”
“Is that all you’ve got?”
“Look, if this was Berlin I could pick up the rugs and beat them, you know? Interview some witnesses, some suspects. Speak to a few informers. There’s nothing like an informer in my business. They’re the flies who know their shit, and that’s the detective work that nearly always pays a dividend.”
“So why not speak to Emil Kittel? The other anti-fa agent? It’s in his interest to cooperate with your inquiry, wouldn’t you say? He might wind up being the killer’s next victim, after all.”
“That might work. Of course, speaking to Kittel means I have to speak to Kittel, and if that happens, I don’t want anyone in this camp thinking it’s because I’m turning Ivan like him.”
“I’ll make sure that people know the score.”
“But that’s only one objection. You see, Kittel’s already one of my suspects. He’s left-handed. And one of the only things I can tell you about the murderer is that he’s probably left-handed.”
“How do you figure that?”
“The stab wounds on Gebhardt’s body. They’re mostly on his right side. Less than ten percent of the population is left-handed. So out of more than a thousand men in this camp, I’ve got about a hundred suspects. And one of them is Kittel.”
“I see.”
“Somehow I’ve got to clear ninety-nine of them in less than seventy-two hours, with nothing more to go on than the fact they disliked the victim only a little less than the man who actually killed him. All of this would be more than enough to do if there wasn’t already a wheelbarrow with my name on it and several tons of sand ready for shifting around this canal. That’s not a tall order, it’s a tall order standing on a box.”