Standing stiffly, he began his stretching. Wherever he was, and whatever his schedule for the day, he tried to spend a few minutes exercising. If that meant he had to get up a little earlier, then so be it. He moved on to some light callisthenics, then press-ups and sit-ups, reminding himself to bring his weights over from the old apartment later. He finished his routine with some more stretching and then, slightly out of breath and aware of a pleasant dull tiredness in his muscles, he forced himself to run on the spot for five minutes, the window rattling as his feet made the floorboards bang like drums. Finished, he went through to the kitchen, where he cleaned himself thoroughly at the sink, keeping an eye on the corridor when he washed himself below the waist. The water was surprisingly cold and it was with something of an effort that he resisted vocalizing his body’s shock, but as there was a young girl in the apartment, and he had only just moved in, he thought it best to bear it in silence.

Clean-shaven and his morning rituals over, he put on a vest that had seen better days and went to sit at the writing table. Outside the first cockerel announced the new day, immediately answered by two more nearby. There were regulations about keeping livestock in communal apartments and residential blocks, but many of the new Muscovites were from the country and found ways round the restrictions. Even here, in Kitaj-Gorod, among the Party elite and the bosses, there were chickens pushed into small wooden runs on flat roofs or the corner of a courtyard. Once the winter really bit, they’d be kept inside, stepping over and around their peasant owners, who often slept in shifts.

He opened his notebook and began to write. “Organization.” A disorganized file was not much use, in his opinion. There were times in Petrovka Street when he had to leave the room, so distressed did he become at Yasimov’s sloppy approach to filing. He was certain that his friend’s successful convictions were often not the actual perpetrators, although Yasimov argued that, even if they weren’t guilty of the crime in question, the people he convicted were certainly guilty of something. Korolev shook his head, believing it was Yasimov’s duty to identify the right criminal for the right crime, not just assign the crimes willy-nilly to whichever criminal took his fancy.

“Subsections” was the next thing he wrote. He wrote it underneath “organization,” as “subsections” was itself a subsection. Then, in a column that reached halfway down the page, he added “statements,” “photographs,” “evidence,” “autopsy/medical report (if any),” “fingerprints,” “other forensic data,” “suspects,” “alibis,” “lines of inquiry” and “miscellaneous.” Then he started on his favorite topic: “Purpose.”

In Korolev’s opinion, a good file should be like a mathematical formula from which, provided the necessary information was entered in the correct order, the solution would result as inevitably as night followed day. He was aware that some of his colleagues laughed at him when he said things like this, but it didn’t change his view that the purpose of a file was, as with all police work, to identify and detain the perpetrators of particular crimes, Yasimov notwithstanding. A good file did this by providing a sound basis for logical deduction. A good policeman used the tools at his disposal to pursue criminals and serve them their just desserts and, when the time came, a good prison was one which kept the criminals secured for the period of time the People’s Court determined they were to spend there. This was Soviet logic, beautiful in its simplicity and directness.

He looked again at the notes he’d made and wondered whether the skills he hoped to teach the cadets might possibly be used against innocent people. Yagoda had gone too far, that was clear, but the Central Committee had removed him. The Party had to take the utmost care to protect the State, of course, but within reason, and the expectation was that things would be different under Ezhov. However, now there were rumors that Ezhov had declared, on taking up his new position, that it would be better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy go free-that “When you chop wood, chips fly.” Korolev sighed and stood up from the table, imagining a host of innocent chips on a sawmill floor. Still, his filing techniques, clear and logical as they were, should operate to protect the innocent, or so he reassured himself.

With this happier thought in mind he put on the rest of his clothes. The image of the indiscriminate axe wouldn’t leave him, but he did his best to brush it aside and, putting his notes in his briefcase, closed the apartment door quietly behind him.

He’d just succeeded in clicking the lock gently shut when he heard a cough behind him and turned to see a bundle of black woolen shawl on three legs swaying precariously from side to side. On closer examination, one of the three legs turned out to be a walking stick.

“So you’re the Ment?”

“Ment? That’s not a very polite way to refer to a Militiaman, Citizeness.”

“What are you going to do, arrest me? I’m eighty-three years old and, anyway, I’ve been to prison before. It’s not so bad. They feed you quite well and the conversation is entertaining. Quite intellectual sometimes.”

Korolev looked for a means of escape, but she had the corridor blocked and, other than standing his ground, the only option was to retreat into the apartment, which he didn’t have time to do. He pointed to his watch.

“Excuse me, Citizeness, I’ve no intention of arresting you, but I do have to go to work.”

“Work, is it? Well listen here, Mr. Ment, what I want to know is this-how did you manage to get an elephant up these old stairs? I found it difficult enough to get up them myself. The elephant must have had a terrible time.”

“An elephant?”

“Exactly, an elephant. Which reminds me of a story about sheep. Have you heard it? Some sheep tried to cross the border to Finland. ‘Why are you running away to Finland?’ the border guard asks. ‘It’s the NKVD,’ the sheep say. ‘Comrade Stalin has ordered them to arrest all the elephants.’ ‘But you aren’t elephants,’ the guard says. ‘We know,’ say the sheep, ‘but try telling that to the Chekists.’ It’s a good one, isn’t it?”

It was also the joke that had cost Mendeleyev a stretch in the Zone and Korolev put a finger to his lips, looking over his shoulder to get the point across. The old woman scowled in response, but said nothing.

“My exercises,” Korolev said, changing the subject as realization dawned, “that was what the noise was. I apologize if I woke you.”

“Woke me? My dear Mr. Ment, you woke the whole damned house and half the damned street. Can’t you go to an athletics club or a gymnasium if you must undertake these dreadful exercises? I thought the Judgment Day had finally come, but then I reminded myself that God was a fiction of primitive man’s imagination and concluded it was elephants. I’m sorry it wasn’t-they’d make interesting neighbors. I believe they mate for life, like swans.”

“I apologize again, Citizeness. Allow me to introduce myself, Captain Alexei Korolev of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Division.”

“Yes, so I believe,” the old woman said, condescension coloring her voice. “Maria Lobkovskaya. I live below you, although if you do too many more of your exercises you’ll probably come through the ceiling and end up living downstairs too.” She regarded him with a keen eye. “You look like an honest fellow, for a policeman, and not bad looking. Why aren’t you married?”

“I was married, Citizeness, but it ended.”

“It was different in my day. You married for life, like the elephants. Now you sign a form and it never happened. Anyway, you must be on your way. You have work to do. All those hooligans on the street and you standing around talking to old women.”