It hadn’t been reported in the newspapers and yet the word had spread. Moscow was a dangerous city at the best of times-long hours, short rations and vodka were a combustible mix-but a violent rapist striking again and again in rapid succession was unusual. Women had been careful walking alone at night, especially in the streets that had no lighting, but still Voroshilov had found opportunities. After the first one, he’d explained when he was arrested, the forced possession of women had become the only thing he thought of. With each attack the violence increased and it was only a matter of luck he hadn’t killed someone. Korolev turned a page and came across a photograph of the bruised and bloodied Maria Naumova with her four missing teeth, her twisted nose and blackened eyes. Korolev wished he’d caught up with Voroshilov earlier, but sometimes to identify a criminal it was necessary for the dog to continue committing crimes. So he’d tracked him with a patient anger and extracted the information from each crime that had helped him slowly, but inevitably, bring the rapist to justice.

The first victim came from a town not forty kilometers from where Voroshilov had grown up and had recognized his accent. The second remembered his new knee-length leather boots-an almost astonishing fact in itself for a student, Korolev thought ruefully, moving a toe about inside one of his old felt valenki and wondering if they’d last the winter. The third girl had seen enough of the rapist’s face to give a good description of him, and one which turned out to be more accurate than most. The fourth victim, Masha Naumova, had barely remembered her own name by the time Voroshilov had finished with her, but the fifth had snatched a piece of paper from his pocket as he’d pressed down on her in a patch of waste ground near the Moskva. She’d rolled it up in her fist and hidden it beneath her. It was a list of lectures. But it had taken them a day to identify the academy he was studying at-time that allowed Voroshilov to attack his sixth and final victim.

They’d been waiting for him when he returned to the student hostel where he shared a tiny cubicle with three other young men. A youth like any other, it seemed to Korolev when he saw him, except for the blood-dotted scratch that ran down his cheek. He hadn’t resisted and, when they’d taken him away in the black police car, he’d seemed more relieved than frightened. The Militiamen at the local station had scuffed their knuckles on him and then thrown him into a holding cell with a bunch of Thieves. By the time the morning came, Voroshilov had an idea of just how unpleasant ten years’ hard labor could be for a rapist, and the beginning of an understanding of what the Thieves did to “furry burglars” when they fell into their hands.

Korolev closed the file and wrote a brief summary in his elegant handwriting. A priest’s hand, his mother used to say proudly, dizzy at the possibility of young Korolev entering the tsarist bureaucracy, or perhaps even the Church itself. But then the German War had come and he’d enlisted and, when the Germans and Austrians were finished with, the Civil War had begun and so he’d fought the Whites, and then finally the Poles. By the time he’d made it home, his mother was dead and clerical jobs were few and far between in the new order. How could his poor mother have imagined that, twenty years on, all that would be left of the old regime would be a few well-mannered scarecrows scratching a living off what little manual work they could find, and selling the last of their possessions for food in the currency shops? And that there would be only a handful of churches still open in a city that had one on every corner? He finished the note and took a stamp from the cluster that stood together on the windowsill. He marked the cover For Attention of Moscow Procurator’s Office with satisfaction, and was thankful for the opportunity to contribute usefully to the creation of this new society, hard though the process was.

“A job well done, Alexei,” Yasimov said, for once not joking.

“He’s Kolyma-bound for sure,” Korolev replied, tucking the folder under his arm as he stood up.

“He won’t last long there,” Larinin said, emboldened by the earlier laughter. “The Thieves will have him at the train station. The burglar will be burgled even before he gets to the Zone.”

Waves of laughter rolled up his shirt front and his stomach heaved itself up a few inches onto the desk. His eyes, half hidden by fat at the best of times, were now mere slits of skin from which he wiped away tears, not noticing that the others didn’t join in. Yasimov turned away with a frown and even Semionov looked as if he’d eaten something unpleasant. Korolev wondered how many years they’d given Knuckles on Larinin’s evidence, and what the Thieves did to ex-Militiamen in the Zone. He left the room quickly, his fingers longing to squeeze Larinin’s throat until it popped.

Outside on the landing Korolev took a long deep breath and heard the laughter come to a stop, then Larinin’s uncertain voice asking was it not amusing that the rapist would be raped? He received no response. What would the Thieves do to a cop like Knuckles? You never knew. Their sense of honor was strange. And Knuckles had been fair in his own way. He might have a chance.

There was no answer when he knocked on the general’s door, but he opened it anyway-being familiar with his boss’s ways. Popov was looking out at the passing traffic-his back to the room and his massive shoulders filling the window, his three-quarter length leather jacket reflecting the sunshine.

“Comrade General,” Korolev said, holding himself at attention. There was something about General Popov that encouraged his men to behave like tsarist guardsmen.

“Does no one knock in this damned place any more?” the general growled, without turning.

“My apologies, Comrade General. I did knock, but perhaps not hard enough.”

After a lengthy pause, General Popov turned to examine Korolev, picking up his spectacles from the table to do so more closely. Even with his glasses on, he still looked every inch the Soviet hero, handsome as a statue and with hair and eyes as black as coal. Seeing that Korolev was the previously blurred figure in front of him, his chiseled features softened into a smile.

“Alexei Dmitriyevich, is it? Come to shut down the Voroshilov file? That rat. Ten years, would you say? If I’d my way…”

But the general knew Korolev was familiar with his preference for summary criminal justice and so made do with slapping a hand onto his desk with some force.

“On his way to Siberia soon enough, I expect, General.”

“He won’t see the spring. The Thieves give fellows like him a taste of their own medicine. They don’t last long.” The general smiled at the thought. “Enough talk of that wretch. Sit, Alexei, and listen for a moment. I’ve some news.” The general took the file from Korolev and signed it quickly beneath Korolev’s note. “You did a good job here. An excellent job. Not the first time, of course. I give you all the hard cases, the crimes that look like they’ve been committed by ghosts, and yet you always find the devils and bring them to me. The highest conviction rate in the division and you don’t even beat the confessions out of them.”

The general paused for a moment to look at Korolev with a hint of reproach, his unruly eyebrows drawing together in a frown as he considered the investigator’s suspiciously liberal methods.

“I do my best, Comrade General,” said Korolev, and Popov sighed in response.

“And your best is very good. You’re a terrier. Isn’t that what the Thieves call us? Terriers? It describes you, you know. Once you’re on the trail the bandit might as well hold out his wrists for cuffing. And excellent performance deserves recognition and reward. Comrade Stalin himself has made this clear, time and time again, and the General Secretary knows a thing or two about life. So I’ve had a word with Comrade Kurilova over at housing and asked her if she could find me something for my best man. I can’t have you sharing a room with your cousin out in the back of beyond forever, can I? I want you close at hand for when I need you. And in a way, as Comrade Stalin wants the best workers rewarded, I’ve no choice in the matter.”