“You’ve won Shura’s heart, you know,” Babel said, when the other guests had left and his wife had gone to bed. “She loves a man with a healthy appetite and a good atrocity up his sleeve. You’ll have to come again-she’ll want to feed you now. If you don’t watch out she’ll make you fat. Look at me. I was a stick when she took me on.”

“A fat stick,” Shura said, from the kitchen. Babel laughed and stood up awkwardly from the daybed.

“Now, Captain, come into my study-we can talk privately there.” Babel led him along the corridor to a room with a desk and a typewriter, a chaise longue and a great many books that were shelved and stacked on or against every available surface. He shut the door behind them.

“It’s not really mine, this room,” Babel said. “I share the flat with an Austrian engineer, but he’s in Salzburg and we don’t know when he’s coming back. It’s been eight months, so I’m gradually taking it over. I don’t think he’s coming back, if the truth be told-but I tell the BMC his arrival is imminent. Of course.”

“An Austrian?” Korolev couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Yes, an engineer. I think he decided he couldn’t face another of our winters, so he’s staying at home in the Alps, listening to Mozart and drinking hot chocolate instead. They probably have a different type of snow, a polite kind, very gentle.”

“I would have thought…”

“Yes. It is dangerous, but I need the space to write. I assure you I’m not an Austrian spy, by the way.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Oh, you can’t be sure of it. The Party may decide otherwise.” He winked at Korolev and gave him a slanted smile. Then he frowned. “Pay no attention to Ginzburg-he’s at the end of his tether. Highly strung poets aren’t designed for Five Year Plans and purges.” He put the glass to his lips and closed his eyes as he drank.

“Anyway, what’s all this about? What assistance can a poor writer offer the combined forces of the NKVD and Petrovka Street?”

“I can’t tell you all I would like to,” Korolev began and Babel nodded.

“That doesn’t surprise me. I guessed as much when Gregorin called. Tell me as little as you can, if you don’t mind. I’ve a two-year-old daughter asleep down the corridor and a wife I plan to spend a lifetime with-but I’m happy to help if I can.”

It was Korolev’s turn to nod. “There have been two murders. One of the dead was a Thief. The other was a young American woman, although of Russian birth-it seems she was also an Orthodox nun. The two killings are almost certainly connected.”

Korolev looked into Babel ’s eyes for a moment, then opened his briefcase and extracted the envelope of case papers. He took out the woman’s autopsy photographs.

Babel took his time with each picture, seemingly absorbing each pore of her skin, each crusty fleck of blood. He turned the images to see them more clearly and when he had reached the last photograph, the one Gueginov had taken of the girl’s profile, he sighed.

“She was quite beautiful. You would think he must have hated her to do this. But maybe not-he’s such a precise man. See the way the clothes are neatly folded, the body parts arranged in just such a way. I wonder. Perhaps he’s sending a message.”

Korolev leaned forward to look at the girl’s body, all shadows and light in the black and white photograph. “I thought as much myself. The way the ear, eye and tongue are arranged?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of something like this, but I’ve never seen it. It’s something the Thieves used to do. To an informer. Or a spy. It means that the dead person may have heard and seen but he will never tell.” Babel looked up at Korolev, his eyes blinking as though trying to remove the dead girl’s image from his retinas. “But the Thieves would be unlikely to desecrate a church. They might steal from it but they wouldn’t do something like this. Well, not while Kolya rules Moscow, that’s for sure.”

Korolev found himself blinking now, but with surprise. He’d heard of Count Kolya, but Babel ’s offhand reference implied a personal knowledge of a man reputed to be the Chief Authority of all the Thieves in Moscow. It wasn’t an elected position, it was open to challenge, but Count Kolya was never challenged. At least, if he had been, the challenge had been dealt with so quickly and savagely that it had barely rippled the surface of his reign. The Militia had been trying to track him down for seven years, but a wall of silence surrounded him and any time the wall looked as if it might be penetrated, the informant who’d seemed to be a promising prospect had either disappeared or shown up dead. Now that Korolev thought of it, one of them had been mutilated in just such a way.

Babel tapped the side of his nose. “I was born in Odessa, Captain. Do you think I made up the stories I wrote about Benya Krik? I changed his name, but if you ask any of the old Militiamen from Odessa they’d tell you all about him. As brave and honest a Thief as ever broke a maiden’s heart. It was just that his version of honesty was quite different from yours and mine, and most certainly from the Party’s. They caught him in the end. A bullet in the neck, I’m told. But they probably needed more than one to finish him. And he was revenged by his fellows, you can be sure of it.”

“Do you know Count Kolya?” Korolev asked and Babel exhaled a long breath, then nodded.

“I talk to him sometimes when I go out to the Hippodrome. Horses are a weakness we share. You might not spot him straight away, except that if you were to look in his direction for a little longer than you should you’d find three or four handy-looking lads with blue fingers have surrounded you, and then you get the strong impression it’s time to go and look at the horses for the next race.”

“You know Count Kolya.” Korolev wasn’t asking the question again, just expressing a quite amazing fact.

“Why do you think Gregorin sent you to me? The NKVD use me as a line of communication from time to time, although I try not to know what they communicate about. I’ll tell you this, though. Kolya would never desecrate a church in this way. He’s not a Believer, at least not the way I suspect you may be, but there’s a code he must live by the same as any other Thief. If this was done on his instructions or with his consent-well, he wouldn’t be the Chief Authority for long.”

Babel seemed oblivious to the fact that Korolev’s blood had concentrated in his toes.

“A Believer, Isaac Emmanuilovich? Me?”

Babel looked up at him and smiled.

“Am I wrong?” He leaned across and put his hand on Korolev’s arm, smiling. “Comrade Korolev, I apologize if I’ve offended you. I must be mistaken.”

Korolev drank the rest of the wine in a single gulp and wondered, not for the first time that day, how the hell he’d got himself into this mess. He took a deep breath, put the glass down firmly on the table and thought for a moment.

“I think I agree with you. If it was a message, maybe it was a message sent to the Thieves. Maybe to Kolya himself. The dead Thief was tortured as well. See these electrical burns on the girl’s body-they both have them.”

Babel whistled. “Is that what they are? You hear things, of course…”

“What things?”

“Things. How people are interrogated these days. I’ve heard that electricity isn’t only used to brighten Lenin’s Lamp.”

Korolev suspected Babel was coming to conclusions about what kind of a person might be behind the killings.

“Look, Comrade,” Korolev said, emphasizing the word “Comrade” and putting into it all the loyalty and hope that old soldiers like Babel and himself remembered from the bitter years after the German War. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but there’s someone going round killing people and I want to stop them, if I can. Whoever they are.”

Babel rolled the red wine round his glass, let it settle and then drank. He pursed his lips in appreciation and then shifted his gaze to Korolev.