The Red Coffin (22 page)

‘What did you do?’ asked Pekkala.

‘I confronted him. I said how dangerous it was to keep information from Stalin. He told me to keep my mouth shut. That was when I decided to quit and, in return, he saw to it that I couldn’t find another place to do my work. No one would team up with me. No one would even come close! Except them,’ he jerked his chin towards the leeches in the pool.

‘But you said you still do research,’ said Pekkala.

‘That’s right.’

‘And what happens to your work?’ asked Pekkala.

‘It piles up on my desk,’ replied Zalka bitterly, ‘page after page, because there is nothing else I can do with it.’

‘That reminds me,’ said Pekkala, removing the equation from his coat pocket. ‘We were wondering if you could tell us what this is. It may have something to do with Nagorski’s death.’

Carefully, Zalka took the brittle paper from Pekkala’s hand. He stared at it intently as the meaning unravelled in his head. At one point, he laughed sharply. ‘Nagorski,’ he muttered and kept reading. A moment later, Zalka raised his head. ‘It is a recipe,’ he told them.

‘A recipe for what?’

‘Oil.’

‘That’s it?’ said Kirov. ‘Just oil?’

‘Oh, no,’ replied Zalka, ‘not just oil. Motor oil. And not just any motor oil, either. This is a special low-viscosity motor oil for use in the V2 engine.’

‘And are you sure this is Nagorski’s writing?’

Zalka nodded. ‘Even if it wasn’t, I could still tell this belonged to Nagorski.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of what’s not there. See?’ He pointed to a batch of figures. The numbers seemed to gather around his finger tip like iron filings around a magnet. ‘The polymer sequence is interrupted at this point. He left it out on purpose. If you tried to recreate this formula in a lab, all you’d get would be sludge.’

‘Where is the rest of the formula?’

Zalka tapped a finger against his temple. ‘He kept it in his head. I told you he didn’t trust anyone.’

‘Could you complete these equations?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Of course,’ replied Zalka, ‘if you gave me a pencil and ten minutes to work out what’s missing.’

‘What’s the point of low-viscosity motor oil?’ asked Kirov.

Zalka smiled. ‘At thirty degrees below zero, normal motor oil will begin to thicken. At fifty degrees below zero, it becomes useless. What that means, Inspectors, is that in the middle of a Russian winter, you can have an entire army of machines which suddenly comes to a stop.’ He held up the piece of paper. ‘But that wouldn’t happen with this oil. I’ll give Nagorski this much. He was certainly planning for the worst.’

‘Is this formula valuable enough for someone to have killed him over it?’ asked Pekkala.

Zalka narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘This simply represents a design decision. The recipe itself is not unknown.’

‘Then why keep it a secret?’

‘It’s not the formula he was trying to keep secret. It’s the decision to put it to use. Look,’ sighed Zalka, ‘I don’t know why Nagorski was murdered, or who did it, but I can tell you that he must have known the person who killed him.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because Nagorski never went anywhere without a gun in his pocket and that means he didn’t just know the person who killed him. He must have trusted them to let the killer get that close.’

‘Who did Nagorski trust?’

‘As far as I know, there is only one person who fits that description, and that’s his driver, Maximov. Nobody got to Nagorski without getting past Maximov, and believe me, nobody got past Maximov.’

‘We have spoken with Maximov,’ said Pekkala.

‘Then you’ll know Nagorski didn’t hire him for his witty conversation. He hired Maximov because the man used to be an assassin.’

‘A what?’

‘He was an agent for the Tsar,’ explained Zalka. ‘Nagorski told me so himself.’

‘That would explain why he didn’t answer any of my questions,’ said Pekkala, and suddenly he remembered something Rasputin had once told him, on that winter’s night when he came knocking on the door.

‘There are many others like us,’ Rasputin had said, ‘each one entrusted to a different task – investigators, lovers, assassins, each one a stranger to the other. Only the Tsar knows us all.’ At the time, Pekkala had thought it was just the ramblings of a drunk, but now he realised that Rasputin had been telling the truth.

‘It also explains why there was nothing on him in the old police records,’ added Kirov.

The door opened and the nurse came in with a tray, on which sat a plate covered by a metal dome.

‘Ah, good!’ Zalka held out his arms.

The nurse handed him the tray. ‘Just the way you like it,’ she said.

Zalka set the tray carefully on his lap and removed the metal dome. A puff of steam wafted up into his face and he
breathed it in as if it were perfume. On the plate was a slab of roasted meat, around which a few slices of boiled potato and carrot had been strewn like an afterthought. Zalka picked up a knife and fork from the tray and sawed off a slice of the meat. Beneath the surface, it was almost raw. ‘They feed me here,’ he told them, ‘red meat every day. I have to get the blood back in me somehow.’

The investigators turned to leave.

‘The T-34 will not save us, you know,’ said Zalka.

Both men turned around.

‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it?’ asked Zalka, talking as he chewed. ‘Nagorski has you all convinced that the T-34 is a miracle weapon. That it will practically win a war on its own. But it won’t, gentlemen. The T-34 will kill hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands. What Nagorski or any of those insane scientists he’s got working for him won’t admit, is that it’s just a machine. Its vulnerabilities will be found out. Better machines will be built. And the men who used it to kill will themselves, eventually, be killed. But you mustn’t worry, detectives.’ He busied himself sawing off another piece of meat.

‘With a forecast like that,’ muttered Kirov, ‘why wouldn’t we be worried?’

‘Because the only people who can destroy the Russian people,’ Zalka paused to pack another slab of meat into his mouth, ‘are the Russian people.’

‘You may be right,’ said Pekkala. ‘Unfortunately, we are experts at that.’

Pekkala breathed in deeply as they stepped outside the building, clearing the sour reek of the bathhouse from his lungs.

‘I thought we had him,’ said Kirov.

Pekkala nodded. ‘So did I, until I saw that leg brace.’

‘Trailing suspension arms,’ muttered Kirov, ‘concentric double coil springs, leading bogies. It all sounds like nonsense to me.’

‘It’s poetry to Zalka,’ replied Pekkala, ‘just as caviar blinis are poetry to you.’

Kirov stopped abruptly. ‘You just reminded me of something.’

‘Food?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact. The day I went into that restaurant to fetch Nagorski in for questioning, he was eating caviar blinis.’

‘Well, that’s very helpful, Kirov. Perhaps he was shot by a blini.’

‘What I remembered,’ continued Kirov, ‘was a gun.’

Now Pekkala stopped. ‘A gun?’

‘Nagorski was carrying a pistol. He gave it to Maximov for safekeeping before he left the restaurant.’ Kirov shrugged. ‘It might mean nothing.’

‘Unless Nagorski was shot with his own weapon, in which case it could mean everything.’ He slapped Kirov on the arm. ‘Time we paid Maximov a visit.’

Maximov’s home was in the village of Mytishchi, north-east of the city.

They found him at a garage across the street from the boarding house where he lived by himself in a room on the top floor. The caretaker at the building, a skeletally thin, angry-looking man in a blue boiler suit, aimed one
stiletto-finger at the garage. Then he held out his hand and said, ‘Na tchay.’ For tea.

Pekkala dropped a coin into his palm.

The caretaker folded the coin into his fist and smiled. Men like this had a reputation for being the most enthusiastic informants in the city. It was a running joke that more people had been sent to Siberia for failing to tip caretakers on their birthdays than ever went away for crimes against the state.

‘Maximov is here,’ said the manager at the garage, a broad-faced man with thick black hair and a moustache gone yellowy-grey. ‘At least half of him is.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kirov.

‘All we ever see of him is his legs. The rest of him is always under the hood of his car. Whenever he’s not on the job, you’ll find him working on that machine.’

The two investigators walked through the garage, whose floor was dingy black from years of spilled motor oil soaked into the concrete, and emerged into a graveyard of old motor parts, the husks of stripped down cars, cracked tyres driven bald and the cobra-like hoods of transmissions ripped from their engine compartments.

At the far end, just as the manager had said, stood half of Maximov.

He was naked to the waist and stooped over the engine of Nagorski’s car. The hood angled above him like the jaws of a huge animal, and Pekkala was reminded of stories he’d heard about crocodiles which opened their mouths to let little birds clean their teeth.

‘Maximov,’ said Pekkala.

At the mention of his name, Maximov spun around sharply. Squinting into the bright light, it was a moment before he recognised Pekkala. ‘Inspector,’ he said. ‘What brings you here?’

‘I have been thinking about something you said to me the other day,’ began Pekkala.

‘It seems to me that I said many things,’ replied Maximov, wiping an oily rag along the fuel relay hoses which curved like the arcs of seagull wings from the grey steel of the cylinder head.

‘One thing in particular sticks in my mind,’ continued Pekkala. ‘You said that you had not been able to defend Nagorski on the day he was killed, but I’m wondering if he might have been able to defend himself. Isn’t it true that Nagorski never went anywhere without a gun?’

‘And where did you hear that, Pekkala?’ Maximov worked the cloth in under his nails, digging out the dirt.

‘From Professor Zalka.’

‘Zalka! That troublemaker? Where did you dig up that bastard?’

‘Did Nagorski carry a gun or not?’ asked Pekkala. A coldness had entered his voice.

‘Yes, he had a gun,’ admitted Maximov. ‘Some German thing called a PPK.’

‘What calibre weapon is that?’ asked Pekkala.

‘It’s a 7.62,’ replied Maximov.

Kirov leaned over to Pekkala and whispered, ‘The cartridge we found in the pit was 7.62.’

‘What’s this all about?’ asked Maximov.

‘On the day I brought Nagorski in for questioning,’ said Kirov, ‘he handed you a gun before he left the restaurant. Was that the PPK you just mentioned?’

‘That’s right. He gave it to me for safekeeping. He was afraid it would be confiscated if you put him under arrest.’

‘Where is that gun now?’ asked Kirov.

Maximov laughed and turned to face his interrogator. ‘Let me ask you this,’ he said. ‘That day in the restaurant, did you see what he was eating?’

‘Yes,’ replied Kirov. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘And did you see what I was eating?’

‘A salad, I think. A small salad.’

‘Exactly!’ Maximov’s voice had risen to a shout. ‘Twice a week, Nagorski went to Chicherin’s place for lunch and I had to sit there with him, because no one else would, not even his wife, and he didn’t like to eat alone. But he wouldn’t think to buy me lunch. I had to pay for it myself, and of course I can’t afford Chicherin’s prices. The cost of that one salad is more than I spend on all my food on an average day. And half the time Nagorski didn’t even pay for what he ate. Now do you think a man like that would hand over something as expensive as an imported German gun and not ask for it back the first chance that he got?’

‘Answer the question,’ said Pekkala. ‘Did you return Nagorski’s gun to him or not?’

‘After you had finished questioning Nagorski, he called and ordered me to meet him outside the Lubyanka. And the first words he spoke when he got inside the car were, “Give me back my gun.” And that’s exactly what I did.’ Angrily, Maximov threw the dirty rag on to the engine. ‘I know what you’re asking me, Inspector. I know where your questions are going. It may be my fault Nagorski is dead, because I
wasn’t there to help him when he needed me. If you want to arrest me for that, go ahead. But there’s something you two don’t seem to understand, which is that my responsibility was not just to Colonel Nagorski. It’s to his wife and Konstantin as well. I tried to be a father to that boy when his own father was nowhere to be found and no matter how poorly the Colonel treated me, I would never have done anything to hurt him, because of what it would have done to the rest of his family.’

‘All right, Maximov,’ said Pekkala. ‘Let’s assume you gave him back the gun. Was Zalka correct when he said Nagorski never went anywhere without it?’

‘As far as I know, that’s the truth,’ answered Maximov. ‘Why are you asking me this?’

‘The gun wasn’t on Nagorski’s body when we found him,’ replied Pekkala.

‘It might have fallen out of his pocket. It’s probably still lying in the mud.’

‘The pit was searched,’ said Kirov. ‘No gun was found.’

‘Don’t you see?’ Maximov reached up, hooked his fingers over the end of the car hood and brought it down shut with a crash. ‘This is all Zalka’s doing! He’s just trying to stir things up. Even though the Colonel is dead, Zalka’s still jealous of the man.’

‘There was one other thing he told us, Maximov. He said you were once an assassin for the Tsar.’

‘Zalka can go to hell,’ spat Maximov.

‘Is it true?’

‘What if it is?’ he snapped. ‘We’ve all done things we wouldn’t mind forgetting.’

‘And Nagorski knew about this when he hired you to be his bodyguard?’

‘Of course he did,’ said Maximov. ‘That’s the reason he hired me. If you want to stop a man from killing you, the best thing to do is find a killer of your own.’

‘And you have no idea where Nagorski’s gun could be now?’ asked Pekkala.