“Oh, come on, Comrade.” Semionov was indignant. “How old were you when you went to the trenches? Surely fighting the Germans was a little more dangerous than a Moscow murder investigation, political or not. This is 1936, Comrade, in the Soviet Union, and we are Militia investigators. There’s nothing we should be frightened of.”

“That’s not the point, and it was a different situation back then.”

Semionov’s jaw hardened. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Alexei Dmitriyevich, but it doesn’t matter to me who the criminals are. All the better, as far as I’m concerned, if they turn out to be Party members. A Party member who commits a crime is worse than an ordinary criminal because he’s guilty not only of the crime, but also of betraying the Party. If I can help catch such a traitor, then I should be given the opportunity to do so. That’s my duty and, as Comrade Stalin says, ‘Duty comes first.’ ”

Korolev looked at his colleague and saw that there was no budging him. He’d known it would be this way, but he wouldn’t have been able to forgive himself if something happened to the young fellow later on and he hadn’t tried. At least he’d given him a choice. He shrugged his shoulders and waved Semionov to sit down.

“Then it’s agreed, you stay on the case. Just trust me to handle some things alone until the situation is a little clearer. That’s not an insult or a lack of trust on my part-just common sense. There’s no point in putting us both at risk. I think I was followed here after I met the American. So you see? I may already be marked-no point in adding you to their list as well. Anyway, there’ll be plenty of things for you to do, believe me. Just let me look after the political aspects for the moment.”

Semionov thought about it and then spoke quietly. “I’ll accept that, but let me help as much as I can. I’m not afraid of the consequences.” He held Korolev’s gaze. “So what’s our next step?”

Korolev tapped the interviews in front of him. “Well, let’s work our way through these for a start.”

“Agreed,” said Semionov with a grin.

Korolev took the top half of the papers and slid them across to Semionov.

“Make notes as you go-anything remotely relevant or even just unusual. Remember, we don’t know what we’re looking for necessarily, so look for what shouldn’t be there.”

Semionov nodded and opened his notebook beside the first interview. He was soon making notes. Korolev picked up an interview from his own pile and began to read, hoping a nugget might be hidden among the gossip and denunciations that made up the first few interviews. Why was it, he wondered, that if you put a policeman in front of a Muscovite these days they’d use the opportunity to denounce half the people they knew? Here was another one, a single man with no apparent job, out all night and possessed of a large room all to himself, while Citizeness Ivanova, her husband and four children were crammed into a smaller room that they had to share with a young couple and a baby. How had the rascal managed it? Citizeness Ivanova asked. A drug dealer and a male prostitute was her answer. Korolev was almost tempted to look into it, but then it would probably turn out the fellow’s uncle was a senior Party member or the like.

He plowed his way through the grimy reality of Soviet life from one end of Razin Street to the other. Primus stoves missing from the communal cooking area, drunkenness in Metro Workers’ Dormitory Number 12, a single mother’s string of male visitors: it would be better soon, he hoped, for the next generation anyway. A thought occurred to him and he flicked through the interviews to confirm it. No one had spoken to any of the street children who’d been outside the church. It might be worth tracking them down-children often noticed things adults took for granted. He made a quick note.

It was tedious work, but the best way to approach interview notes was to read with a sort of double focus. You obviously had to take in every detail, no matter how mundane it seemed, and then you had to fit that detail into the wider picture. As it turned out, Brusilov’s men had done a good job. Korolev wasn’t surprised-you didn’t last long on Brusilov’s beat if you weren’t up to scratch. It was an uphill struggle for the Militia in Moscow at the best of times, but the last few years had seen huge numbers of peasants coming in from the countryside, driven by a combination of hunger at home and the prospect of work in one of the big factories or on the many construction sites. Getting a residence permit was tough, but that didn’t stop them; if they got a job they’d probably get the permit. In fact, getting a permit wasn’t that difficult compared to finding a scrap of dry floor to lie down on at the end of the day’s work. There were people sleeping on stairs, on trams, in the Metro. The Militia uniforms moved them on when they found them, but there were so many. And the hardness of life led to other problems as well. The incomers made fools of themselves when they managed to get enough money together for drink, not that native Muscovites were much better, and the drunkenness led to violence, rape, sometimes murder. But Brusilov had a lid on things around Razin Street and mischief-makers avoided the area.

Perhaps as a result of this, Brusilov’s men had found the local residents helpful or at least very talkative when they’d asked them whether they’d seen anything unusual on the night of the murder. Korolev suppressed a smile when one interviewee in a communal apartment claimed that her neighbors, recently arrived from some far-off village to work at the Red October factory, were keeping a pig in the shared bathroom. Korolev was fairly comfortable that this was both unlikely and unconnected to his case, although, on second thought, he’d heard stranger tales about communal apartments, where collective insanity, after years of living in strangers’ armpits, was not unusual.

In among the gossip and recriminations, however, two interviewees mentioned a black car parked on Razin Street, close to the church. One remembered nothing more than the color of the car, but the second, a teenage boy, was absolutely certain that the car was a GAZ M1. The “M” in the car’s name referred to Molotov, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and so the car was known to all as the Emka, the car Semionov suspected the murderers might have been driving out at Tomsky. Korolev made a note. It was surprising anyone had mentioned a Black Crow at all, the nickname for the black cars associated with the security Organs, particularly the NKVD, who had production priority. He usually refused if Morozov offered him one; the old Model T might have a broken windscreen, but at least people didn’t turn away when they saw it, not immediately anyway. Finishing the pile, he looked up at Semionov, who was waiting patiently.

“I’ve two people who saw a black car that night,” Korolev said. “One of them, at least, saw an Emka.”

“I’ve a black car parked near the church,” Semionov said.

“It doesn’t prove anything, of course, but I think we should re-interview those witnesses. Ask them if they remember anything about the number plate. This boy who identified it as an Emka might remember something. He seems something of an enthusiast. Anything else?”

“This one here might be worth following up: an old woman who lives a few doors away from the church saw a drunk girl being guided along Razin Street by two men in heavy overcoats-just after midnight. She knew it was after midnight because she’d just heard the ‘Internationale’ on the radio and then, because she lives so close to the Kremlin, she heard the bells from the Spassky tower ring the time as well. What do you think?”

Korolev was too long a detective to be surprised that an old lady would be scanning the street at midnight.

“Two men-same as the stadium. Any description of the girl?”

“Black coat, short hair-it could be her.”