Continuing on down the street, Kirov realised that there was likely to be nothing more that he could learn from the crime scene, especially since it had not been cordoned off immediately after the event.
Passing a narrow alley which separated a bakery and a laundry, Kirov caught sight of two boys, almost hidden in the shadows, tussling amongst the garbage cans and clouds of steam from hot soapy water pouring out of a pipe in the wall directly into the sewers. One boy had an armful of stale bread rolls and was pelting the other, who had a toy pistol which, judging from the sound effects this boy was making, he had mistaken for a machine gun.
Kirov walked on a couple of paces, wondering just where inside his head to store the image of that boy acting in a game so close to the place where its deadly reality had played out only a day before.
Then he froze.
A tiny woman in a headscarf and dress that nearly dragged along the ground, who had been walking towards him, carrying a bundle of clothes for the laundry, came to an astonished halt, as if the two of them had just been turned to stone.
Kirov spun about and dashed into the alley.
Seeing Kirov descending upon them, the boys cried out, ditched the bread rolls and were just about to vanish, one into the bakery and the other into the laundry, when Kirov grabbed them both by the collars of their coats.
‘We didn’t do anything!’ shouted the boy who had been throwing bread rolls. He had on a short-brimmed cap whose sides flopped down over his ears, making him look like a rabbit.
The other boy tried desperately to stuff the gun into his pocket but it wouldn’t fit.
‘Where did you get that?’ demanded Kirov, having realised that the gun was not, in fact, a toy.
‘I found it!’ shouted the boy. ‘It’s mine!’
‘Just show it to me,’ said Kirov.
‘Let me go.’
‘First show me that gun.’
As the boy held it out, muttering under his breath, Kirov saw that it was only part of a gun, specifically the barrel section of a revolver, including the cylinder. It was from a type of gun which, when reloading, would be opened on a hinge that allowed the front section to swing forward like a shotgun. Other revolvers had cylinders that opened out to the sides. There were markings on the cylinder, but they were very small and he could not make out what they meant. The hinge which joined the two parts of the gun had been wrenched violently away. The gun had not been well cared for. The bluing on the barrel was stained and faded and there were flecks of rust inside the cylinder.
Although Kirov had seen revolvers like this before — in fact Pekkala’s Webley operated on the same principle — he had never come across one exactly like it.
‘Where did you find this?’ Kirov asked the boys.
‘Over there,’ the boy pointed towards where the laundry water pipe emptied into the sewer. ‘It was lying right next to the hole.’
‘Was there another piece with it?’
‘No. Maybe the rest of it fell down the drain.’
‘When did you find it?’
‘This morning,’ said the boy with the rabbit-ear hat.
‘Was there anything else lying around?’
‘No. Can I have it back?’
Kirov lowered himself down on one knee. ‘I can’t do that‚’ he said‚ ‘but I can make you a detective in a murder investigation.’
The boy’s eyes grew big and round.
‘What about me?’ shouted the other boy. ‘I saw it first.’
‘But I picked it up. That’s what counts!’
‘You can both be part of the investigation‚’ he assured them. Ten minutes later, with the remains of the revolver bound up in a handkerchief, Kirov set off for NKVD headquarters, leaving the two boys, each now bearing the rank of honorary commissar, lying beside the drain, up to their armpits as they reached down into soapy water, searching for the rest of the gun.
Having left behind the town
Having left behind the town of Chertova, the truck carrying Pekkala, Lieutenant Churikova and Rifleman Stefanov passed along a straight road bordered by tall trees with dappled bark. Beyond the trees, fields of ripened barley, left to rot, spread out on either side.
With the front line now only a few kilometres away, heavy gunfire could be heard over the rumble of the truck’s engine. In spite of the canvas roofing, dust from the road filled the air in the back of the truck. Through tears in the cloth, bolts of sunlight stabbed into the darkness.
As they jostled over the uneven road surface, Pekkala explained their mission to Stefanov.
The son of the gardener of Tsarskoye Selo listened in silence, his eyes wide with amazement. ‘Under the wallpaper?’ he stammered.
‘That is correct,’ Pekkala replied, ‘and if we are successful, that is where it will remain.’
The ZiS-5 motored over gently rising ground towards some woods on the horizon. They had just reached the crest of a thickly wooded ridge when a Russian soldier stepped out on to the road. He held up a rifle in one hand and crossed his other arm over the rifle to make an X, indicating that they were to stop.
The truck skidded to a halt.
Now Stefanov saw movement. More soldiers, dozens of them, lay on the damp ground, with rain capes pulled over their heads.
The sun was going down, detonating in silent poppy-coloured explosions through clouds on the horizon.
The man in the road lowered his rifle and walked towards them. He had a heavy, dimpled chin and dark brown eyes. A tiny pair of crossed cannons on his faded olive collar tabs marked him as a sergeant of artillery.
The driver pulled his orders from under the chest flap of his raincoat. After brushing off some flecks of mud, he handed his papers to the soldier.
As the sergeant was flipping through them, Pekkala climbed down from the back of the truck and stood on the road.
Filing past him in the opposite direction were a dozen German soldiers. At the front marched an officer, his tunic unbuttoned down to the thick black belt at his waist. Behind him walked two men in long rubberised canvas coats. Half-moon-shaped discs on chains around their shoulders bore the word Feldgendarmerie, indicating that they were members of the military police. The rest, judging from the yellow piping on their collar and shoulder boards, were a squad of reconnaissance troops. All of the soldiers moved with their fingers laced together behind their necks. A few still wore their helmets, sweat-greased leather chinstraps dangling down the sides of their faces. With the exception of the officer, who stared straight ahead as he walked, the rest looked down at the dusty-yellowed boots of the man walking in front.
The prisoners were flanked by two soldiers carrying rifles, which brought back to Pekkala memories of the guards at Lubyanka and the long, silent, dread-filled journeys he had made as a prisoner from his cell to the interrogation room.
The soldiers marched down a dirt track towards a cluster of farm buildings whose whitewashed walls glowed like glacier ice in the twilight. Still with their hands behind their necks, the soldiers were herded into a thatch-roofed barn.
‘Come with me, Inspector,’ ordered the sergeant of artillery.
The two men made their way into the pine woods. Light winked through beads of sap oozing from the green pine cones above their heads. They passed a row of six heavy mortars camouflaged under green netting. The mortar crews sat cross-legged against tree trunks, eating rations of boiled buckwheat and sausage. The odour of machorka tobacco, which smelled to Pekkala like a new pair of shoes, mixed with the sweet dry balsam of the pines.