The Investigator

Margarita Khemlin

Contents

Copyright

The Investigator

The Investigator

by Margarita Khemlin

First published in Russian as "Дознаватель"

Translated by Melanie Moore

Book created by Max Mendor

Cover art: © Marc Chagall, "Interior II" (DETAIL), 1911, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2015.

® Chagall is a registered trademark, owned by Comité Marc Chagall

© 2012, Margarita Khemlin

© 2015, Glagoslav Publications, United Kingdom

Glagoslav Publications Ltd

88-90 Hatton Garden

EC1N 8PN London

United Kingdom

www.glagoslav.com

ISBN: 978-1-78437-967-4 (Ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The Investigator

Let’s be honest, the only thing the people I’ve dealt with in my line of work ever succeeded in was not being successful at all. Destiny is something you make for yourself. And that’s not easy. And it’s not within everyone’s power.

I’m going to tell you about a single incident from my long and extensive career. It dates back to the start of the 1950s, in what we now call the twentieth century. I’m talking about the case of one Lilia Vorobeichik.

At the time, I was a police officer in the city of Chernigov in the Ukrainian SSR. A wonderful place where anyone could listen to the nightingales or the sound of the poplars in the ancient streets, admire the calendar made of flowers in the central square or stroll around landmarks from centuries gone by.

Against a background like this, the Vorobeichik case really stood out. I thought as much when it was assigned to me.

I ought to point out that back in Civvy Street after the war, a lot of people suddenly found themselves in new occupations.

I’d been in military intelligence. More than once, I was sent behind enemy lines to capture potential informers and brought or dragged them back to make them talk. I earned decorations, including the military Red Banner and the Red Star. I lived and breathed respect for the common cause.

As a demobbed intelligence officer, I joined the police. I studied and then worked as an investigator.In the event of murders or other serious crimes, a criminal investigator was immediately brought in from our Criminal Investigations Department or the Prosecutor’s Office. But on this particular occasion, things didn’t turn out quite like that.

Our chief, Maksim Prokopovich Sviridenko, indulged me, a touch against the book. As a result, it fell to me, a humble investigator, to look into the murder as it stood.

A woman, Vorobeichik, had been killed with a knife. A blow to the heart from below, beneath the shoulder-blade. Consequently, there was hardly any blood.

Since I was relatively junior, I wanted to take the utmost care with this case so it would be crystal clear that the assignment had been honourably performed.

I didn’t keep detailed records so I’m fairly unconcerned. It’s better not to go rifling through the paper work or do any cross checking. Nothing good ever comes of that in my experience.

Vorobeichik lay in her courtyard at No. 23, Clara Zetkin Street, where she lived alone, on 18 May 1952. Which is why she was lying there in a polka-dot dress that was the height of fashion. The doctor, a woman, determined that it was the work of a good dress-maker, which led me to think I should find out who the seamstress was.

A neighbour of the victim pointed me in the direction of one Polina Lvovna Laevskaya as both dressmaker and friend. Middle-aged, unattractive, with bulging eyes and lips painted into a little pointy heart. Well-known for her skill. In addition, she had a good brain.

She was a complicated woman. Alone after all the misfortunes that had befallen everyone and her, by her own reckoning, most of all. And for that she deserved attention and respect. Although that’s by way of an aside.

What I knew of Laevskaya led me to one Roman Nikolayevich Moiseenko, who had been romantically involved with the victim.

In the context of that particular year, the victim’s Jewish surname immediately caused me misgivings – in case national politics came into it. Although all races here are equal all the same. Especially as a result of the Great Patriotic War.

In the normal course of events, Jews were rarely murdered. They are a quiet race, the vast majority teetotal.And, since nothing pointed to a robbery, it looked set to be an innocent sort of case. By which I mean a crime of passion and jealousy, for example.

Moiseenko was the prime suspect. That’s generally how it goes. The lover’s first in line. Unless there’s a husband, of course. Furthermore, he worked as an actor at the drama theatre and, word had it, was an enthusiastic drinker of spirits. But at that time almost everybody was. The suspect’s personal profile in that regard had still to be ascertained.

The day I first met Roman Nikolayevich Moiseenko, I did a commendable job.

I found him looking distracted during a rehearsal for Hulak-Artemovsky’s people’s opera, “Cossacks beyond the Danube”. Moiseenko wasn’t taking part. Instead, he was sitting in the front row, voicing the part of an actress who was off sick. I determined that he was in the auditorium rather than on stage because he was seriously unsteady on his feet and might fall through the stagehands’ trapdoor which was open for some reason, or into the orchestra pit.

When I asked him nicely, Moiseenko followed me into one of the dressing-rooms for a chat. Although I did have to take him by the arm while he loudly indicated the way.

I asked him straight out whether he knew about Lilia Vorobeichik’s murder and what his thoughts about it were. Particularly since the woman had not yet been buried and her corpse awaited vengeance.

I am not a great fan of statements for the record, although these always remain a strict requirement. I prefer to meet the person I’m interested in at their place of residence or work first. At the station, the atmosphere itself encourages the person being questioned to mobilize their forces. Personally, I used to think – still do indeed – that such all-out mobilization is detrimental to an investigation. What’s needed is freedom and the impression that before too long this chap will be on his way and everything will go back to normal. A few days later, I issue the citizen with a summons and by then the mobilization has no effect. It can’t handle that preliminary easing off. Yet that’s precisely what I offer for an ulterior motive of my own.

At the time, I preferred to operate using intuition rather than book learning. I was selected by the Party to enter the police when I was demobbed from the army. And I saw myself primarily as a human being rather than a stickler for the law. I was thirty-two.

Roman Moiseenko turned out to be a handsome man, considerably younger than Lilia Vorobeichik. At the time of her sudden death, she was thirty-eight. He was twenty-seven.

Nature itself seemed to have destined Moiseenko for a career on the stage. Black brows, hazel eyes, a cascade of dark hair, his figure, his height etc. etc. He was the complete opposite of Vorobeichik. Before she died, she had bright red hair and her eyes were blue. As for her height, she was tall and just a tiny bit overweight.

Some people like to show photos taken at the scene of the incident because they bank on shocking the suspect. I didn’t. After the war, no-one could be shaken by the sight of death. Moreover, things are always worse in the imagination than in reality. I know that from my own experience.

Moiseenko looked at me calmly and directly. He didn’t smell too good, his breath reeked of several days’ worth of stale alcohol.

“What’s there to talk about?” he said. “I killed Lilka.”

I wasn’t happy with such a quick confession, especially taking Moiseenko’s personality into account.

With the utmost severity, I said, “You are misleading the investigation.”

He lowered his gaze but stuck to his guns.

You can’t argue with an unforced confession. At that point, everything has to start going on the record and so on.

The main thing was that the murder weapon hadn’t been found. There were two knives of the right size in the victim’s house. They were identical, sharpened and almost new.There were other styles of knife too but they were very small and clearly blunt. All the knives were clean, as clean as knives can be that are in daily use.

A close neighbour testified that there had been a third knife too. One that apparently looked just like the other two apart from having, as the late Lilia used to say before she died, a blade made of special steel. She would boast about it, demonstrating its sharpness against her own finger nail. This made it possible to suppose that that very knife was the murder weapon, missing, whereabouts unknown.

There was a thorough search but without the required result. Incidentally, concealing the murder weapon attested to the perpetrator’s sober state of mind. When the balance of his mind is seriously disturbed, a malefactor tends to panic and dispose of the weapon at the scene of the crime, not always out of remorse but seemingly in sheer surprise at what he has done.

It went against Moiseenko that the neighbours had seen him in the courtyard not long before Vorobeichik was found dead.

Moiseenko gave a good verbal description of just where the knife had gone in. But that didn’t mean a thing since rumours about the killing had spread quickly. Before the officers of the law arrived, the local women had come running at the scream of a neighbour who had popped into Vorobeichik’s for something and, quick as a flash, they had passed on a description of the corpse and so on.

At the morgue, Moiseenko conducted himself with dignity and gazed at Vorobeichik with honest, open eyes.

My quick action earned me plenty of praise from the top brass. However, the day before the court hearing, Roman Nikolayevich Moiseenko committed suicide by hanging. He didn’t leave a note as he didn’t have a pen or pencil about his person and, since he was neither a writer nor a revolutionary in the Tsar’s torture chambers, he hadn’t requested anything to write with in advance.

His personal confession outweighed any arguments for continuing the investigation. There was no shortage of other work. Those were hectic times.

The incident receded as other business came to the fore.

One July evening, I was walking along Clara Zetkin Street at dusk. Taking a stroll before bed. For some reason, I had chosen a different route – from where I lived to the River Strizhen.Perhaps I felt drawn to go and look at the military hospital, where I’d spent a long time recovering from wounds at the front after we won the war and where good fortune had brought my wife, Lyubochka, and me together. She was an auxiliary nurse on the surgical ward.

Suddenly, I caught a clear glimpse of a shadow at the gate to No. 23. The shadow reminded me of Citizen Vorobeichik. I didn’t doubt for a moment that it was she who had closed the gate, looked back and given me the once over.

The gate slammed shut. The catch caught on the inside.

I continued on my way. And, of course, once I’d recovered from the surprise, I realized I’d seen a relative of some kind, there to inherit. The incident wasn’t worth a fig, as they say.

But I had been so struck by the likeness that it very much piqued my interest.

The next morning I approached the house on Clara Zetkin Street. The gate was ajar, giving me legitimate access to the courtyard.

I knocked at the door. It was opened by an old woman of Jewish appearance. So Jewish that her headscarf was even tucked behind her ears in the Jewish way and only then tied under her chin the way decent people do.

There was a good smell in the house, like bread or baking. Since the kitchen was right next to the doorway, I immediately spotted some large circles of dough on the table, thin as could be and riddled with tiny holes. There was also a little wheel with a wooden handle for evenly distributing the holes. The old woman’s apron was covered in flour and there was flour on the floor.

I wasn’t born yesterday. I knew this was “matzo”. Special food for their Passover. From my own experience and from the nature of my work, I knew that this Passover was over. Furthermore, not only was matzo making not welcomed by the Soviet law-enforcement agencies, there were examples of it leading to convictions that cost the offenders dear, including lengthy prison sentences.

Jewish nationalism is Jewish nationalism. What can you do?

I showed my ID and gave my name. The old woman mumbled something and yelled into the house, “Evka, get out here. It’s you they’ve come for!” Making her way towards me from behind a lace curtain was, apparently, the late Citizen Lilia Vorobeichik. Clearly, however, it was the same women I had spotted yesterday in the dark and, incidentally, alive.

She was wearing just a set of camiknickers. I’d seen a lot of those in Germany in ‘45.

She was perfectly at ease as she came over to me although she hadn’t done her hair and was barefoot.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I repeated my name and rank and presented my ID.

She read it carefully. You could still let other people take your papers in those days.

“Police Captain Mikhail Ivanovich Tsupkoy,” she read out, deliberately pronouncing each individual letter.

The woman looked me up and down from head to toe and wanted to add something of her own to what she saw in the document.

But I wouldn’t let her. I asked for her passport.

She fetched it. She still hadn’t got dressed or smoothed down her red hair.

As she held out the passport, I noticed that her underarm hair was light too. It was. Thick and light. I felt embarrassed for her. Being like that.

Passport details: Eva Solomonovna Vorobeichik. Registered in the town of Oster, Kozelets District, Chernigov Oblast.

I asked what she was doing in the late Lilia Vorobeichik’s house and how she was related to her.

She replied, saying, “We’re sisters. Twins. I’m going to wait here until the inheritance is sorted out. Once I’m entitled to do so, I intend to stay on. Or I might sell the house, I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

There was nothing to object to. But there was the matzo.

I said, “Citizen Vorobeichik, why are you making matzo, especially when it’s not Passover? That’s really not on. I’m giving you a serious warning. And it’s compounded by you taking on hired labour.”

Eva addressed the old woman in a loud voice. “He wants you to show him your passport. Show him. And tell him we haven’t hired you, you’re our auntie, mine and Lilka’s.”

The old woman got her passport from her room. It was well-thumbed and covered in flour. She opened it and held it out on the palm of her hand.

She had a different surname – Tsvintar. Her first name, Malka, was pure Jewish, old-fashioned, as befitted one of her years.

I asked her on which side of the family they were related.

While the old lady struggled to understand the question, Eva said with a sigh, “On the Jewish side, alright?” She didn’t lower her voice as people usually do even when she used these unflattering terms. Brazen bitch. “And we’re just going to crumble the matzo up quickly for the chickens. It’ll be a real feast. We’ve got hens, out there, behind the house. We’ll give it to them. It was just for something to do, out of boredom and sadness. Lilechka’s gone. And she loved baking. Matzo couldn’t be easier to make. Just water and flour. That’s all. Water and flour. What’s wrong with that? No yeast, no butter, nothing, not a thing, nothing at all.”

She advanced towards me as she said “nothing” and everything beneath the repellently pink camiknickers jiggled right in my face. Although height-wise she was shorter than me.

I left.

Suddenly it dawned on me that Lilia Vorobeichik hadn’t kept chickens. There had been a shed full of clutter behind the house. Moreover, I had been negligent in studying the paperwork. I had failed to check whether Eva was married. At the time many women kept their maiden names when they got married. I had no idea what her job was or where her income came from.

I scheduled a follow-up for the day after tomorrow. In order to allow Eva Vorobeichik and her so-called aunt to lower their guard.

I turned up in uniform.

The gate was locked. It was quickly opened when I knocked loudly.

The dressmaker, Polina Lvovna Laevskaya, who was in the house at the time, recognized my face and said in delight:

“You see, the Soviet system stands up for people. It really does! I was just explaining to Eva. There’s nothing on earth that the Soviet authorities can’t find out. Isn’t that so, Comrade Captain? Have you come to talk about Lilia? If it’s hard to bear, tell me first and then I’ll pass it on gently to Evocha. Hand it to her on a plate. Ever so carefully. I can do that. You know me.”

She was talking too much and taking her time about letting me into the house. I remarked that I was on duty and didn’t want to listen to anything irrelevant.

I went ahead of her and pushed the door open myself.

Order and polish reigned in the kitchen.

Laevskaya squeezed past me and through the door. As she did so, she made sure one solid leg made contact.

“I’m sorry, Comrade Captain. I’ve embarrassed you. Here you are on duty and you’re blushing. That wasn’t very nice of me. Evochka’s just popped out to the shop and Malka’s asleep. There, behind the curtain. Sleeping like a baby. It’s true what they say – old age is a second childhood.”

On the small, round table with its white, crocheted cloth stood two thimble-sized liqueur glasses and a small decanter of cherry brandy. It was immediately obvious that it was last year’s liqueur because, firstly, the new fruit had still to be picked and, secondly, it was turning to syrup. The inside of the glass was virtually coated in a layer of deep red. Like blood.

Laevskaya made herself at home and got another glass.

She turned it about in front of her face and offered it to me questioningly. “You, of course, won’t be having a nice little snifter of brandy but I’ll put it on the table for form’s sake. Just to be friendly.”

I didn’t want to cause a conflict over nothing and nodded my assent.

Laevskaya sat down.

So did I.

She was first to break the silence.

“So, what do you have to say about Lilechka?”

“I’m here about something else. And it would be better if you left now, Polina Lvovna. With the utmost respect, of course.”

“Oh, of course, I’ll go. If that’s what it takes. Just tell me one little thing. What’s happened to bring you here about something else?”

I behaved entirely properly and immediately gave myself due credit without bragging or vanity. Laevskaya had taken a shine to me and a little later I would be able to milk her for a good deal of useful and important information. With a view to receiving information in return, she would tell me all she knew.Whether she might make up anything extra was the real question.

I said meaningfully, “That’s police business. I’d like you to leave.”

She looked behind the curtain and, blinking her eyes towards it, whispered, “If it’s a secret, don’t mention it in front of Malka even if she is asleep or something. She pretends to be deaf as a post but there are no flies on her.”

Aloud and in the direction of the curtain, she said, “I’ll be guided by you. I’m going. Please, wait for Evocha. She’ll be here any minute. In the meantime, try dear Lilechka’s tasty little liqueur. What the eye doesn’t see... It’s lovely and sweet. Poor Lilechka had a sweet tooth.”

When I entered the house on Clara Zetkin Street, the clock read exactly two o’clock. I left at half past three. I read the papers on the bookshelf and listened quietly to the wireless.

Malka never emerged from behind the curtain. At the same time, I noticed that she answered little calls of nature in a pot or something of the sort.

Eva never turned up.

I drank one glass. To spite myself. It was the first time I had shown such weakness. Rules are rules. But show it I did. Right before I left. And a good job too. The liqueur was bitter and I concluded that the women hadn’t been drinking it at all. Just pretending in case someone looked in.

Next I walked all around the outside of the house. There really were chickens in the backyard. The shed had been cleared of its clutter and fitted out as a henhouse. I found light coloured crumbs and broken bread on the ground. Broken into big pieces as if to prove that it really was matzo.

The plot was enclosed by a fairly low but sturdy fence. It would be impossible for an adult to pass through the thin gaps between the slats. Which meant there was only one way into the house – through the all-too-familiar gate. I checked again although I had already ascertained this during the Lilia Vorobeichik case. Next, I made a grade A study of the house.

And the backyard and outside the front. But a lot had changed in the past two months. Just look at the chickens.

I observed the gate from various vantage points. No one went into the house or came out either.

At 1700 hours, I gave up and called it a day.

There was real work waiting for me and I had no right to be distracted by a personal matter. Even then my conscience told me that it was personal.

That night I dreamed about the small, round table at the Vorobeichiks’ house.

They wanted to lift the body of the murdered woman onto the table in its coffin to begin the farewells. The coffin wouldn’t fit. It was losing balance, threatening to fall.

They lifted the coffin down.

On the table lay another woman, the same as the one in the coffin but naked, who said, moreover, “That’s not how you do it. This is.”

She curled up in a foetal position. And that worked well.

They said, “Since you fit so well there, we’ll say our last goodbyes to you and Lilia can continue to thrive and prosper.”

It’s possible I made those last words up but that was the essence of it.

I make no secret of it. I immediately took an awful lot on myself. I didn’t share my impressions with my work colleagues. And, as a result, stewed it all over by myself.

To all intents and purposes, there was nothing going on. But I began to keep a very serious eye on the house in Clara Zetkin Street. When I wasn’t engaged in urgent police work, of course.

In this way, I established that the dressmaker Laevskaya was constantly visiting the house (several times in forty-eight hours).

Several times, a Jewish man of very advanced years darted in and out with a bag.

There was a dog barking. Previously, in the late Lilia Vorobeichik’s time, there had been no guard dog in the yard.

The Tsvintar woman didn’t put her nose outside.

And, most importantly, there was no sign whatsoever of Eva Vorobeichik.

Light showed in the windows on the side of the street where the fence was lowest until late at night. Until about eleven o’clock.

Facts are stubborn things. And these facts were saying they needed to be understood. I couldn’t figure them out.

Just one fact was abundantly clear and that was Eva Vorobeichik. The one and only.

Incidentally, my family life at that time consisted of a family of three: me, my wife Lyubov Gerasimovna and our four-year-old daughter Anechka.

We were renting a room from an elderly couple named Shchupak and aspired to nothing better since we had been promised our own space in a nice new barracks on Voykov Street before too long. And, if we had another baby in short order we might even hope for a flat in an official block on Kotsyubinsky Street. But we hadn’t managed to produce that other baby. And particularly not to order.

And so, off my own bat, wearing ordinary trousers and a white shirt, I set off to see Polina Lvovna Laevskaya.

She wasn’t surprised. Greeted me like a dear friend.

“Mikhail Ivanovich, at last! The things people are saying in town, the things people are coming up with… And about you in particular. I’m not talking about all the different gossip. You know about that from work without me. I can tell you what’s being said about you, if you like. And you can take action. Because you can’t let it carry on. Not nowadays, you can’t.”

I asked what she meant exactly.

Laevskaya made a show of being embarrassed and began her account.

This is what she said.

Rumours about the Vorobeichik case were rife in Chernigov. No-one believed that the now late actor, Moiseenko, was guilty. I was being accused of prejudice against the Jewish people and of blocking the investigation. In a word, people were saying, it was all a shady business. And when Malka Tsvintar told her neighbours I had called in and made Eva Vorobeichik’s acquaintance, Malka Tsvintar was informed in return that they expected nothing else of me since I had personally brought the investigation to an artificial conclusion and was now intent on silencing Eva Vorobeichik as Lilia’s immediate heir.

At this point, I caught Laevskaya out.

I said:

“And when did the old Tsvintar woman spread all this nonsense? What day was it? Yesterday? The day before? Or when? Have a think, Polina Lvovna. Rumours take time. Rumours are not little children. It takes more than a second to produce them.”

Laevskaya shot back:

“I don’t know. But Malka has been talking to people. And people have been talking to her. You won’t stop her mouth.”

But who could Malka have been talking to any great extent? After all, she was new in town. Laevskaya was another matter.

“I hereby declare, Polina Lvovna, that you are the person behind these rumours. And that the Tsvintar woman wasn’t popping in to see you, you were going to see her a hundred times a day. And then you spread all sorts of nonsense around town. Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you! There’s nothing on the floor. Or on the ceiling. Look me in the eye when I ask nicely, please.”

Laevskaya looked balefully in the general area of my face but not in my eye. Of course, she wasn’t brazen enough for that.

“You know something, Mikhail Ivanovich… Here you are in your nice white shirt. And no gun. So I can tell you – you don’t know everything and you can’t bring everything to light.”

“What light are you talking about, Polina Lvovna? Show me! Go on!”

I was losing patience. Not because some goggle-eyed piece of mutton dressed as lamb was pressing her fat thighs against me but because I was insulted. I was going out on a limb. But was as if she was looking down from above and could see.

“Mikhail Ivanovich, Lilechka’s case is closed, under lock and key, isn’t it?”

“And?”

“And… who has the key?”

“I have no intention of trying to guess your Jewish riddles. That’s not what I shed blood for. Even now, I’m taking a risk for your sake.”

At this point, Polina Lvovna grabbed me by the arm and hissed right in my face and the breath of that hiss was like Red Moscow perfume only musty and rank:

“How long have you been in this town? So, five years. At most. But it’s not about how long. I haven’t been here all that long either. But you, Mikhail Ivanovich, only talk to people when your works means you have to. Whereas I know everything and everyone because I choose to. And you’re not doing me a favour by taking my hand. I’m the one who can do you a favour - or not. It doesn’t matter who’s saying what. What matters is that it’s about you in person. And things don’t look good for you personally. It could be reported to the Party Committee. And taken even further.”

I didn’t understand a thing. Maybe she’d been drinking that perfume and was drunk on it. After that rancid cherry brandy of theirs, I wouldn’t put it past her. No. She was sober. If she’d been one of ours, I might still have had my doubts. I know the Jews! A man maybe but the women, they really don’t drink.

There was a knock at the door.

It was a customer with some fabric.

Polina Lvovna graciously spread the fabric on the table. She waved the crepe de chine in front of my face so that it billowed out.

She said:

“And is your wife, Lyubov Gerasimovna, planning to have a nice new frock made? If she is, she should come to me. I’ve made a note of all her measurements. She told me you really like what I’ve made for her. A woollen dress for winter – terracotta. She’s such a pale little thing. Terracotta puts a bit of colour in her cheeks. That was my advice. Thank you for coming to settle your account. Say hello to your wife. And little girl. Give the little one a kiss from me, precious little poppet that she is.”

And she began to chat to the woman who had come for a fitting.

I didn’t know my Lyuba had her clothes made by Laevskaya. I didn’t keep count of her frocks. There was nothing to count in any case. There was one, terracotta, for going out and another, brown, that she wore all the time. That was for the winter. For summer, she had a pinafore dress or something like that.

No doubt that schemer Laevskaya was now discussing me with her customer. Who knew what she would concoct? And how many women went to see her in a day? Well, two for certain. And those two would talk to another two and so on and on. No need for the Tsvintar woman at all.

And all of it baseless. Absolute twaddle.

However, if I were the type to dwell on such silliness aimed at me in person, I wouldn’t be working in law-enforcement. Nor would any of our officers. We wouldn’t even have won the war. It’s not that there shouldn’t be anything personal. A person should have everything in perfect proportion: the personal and the public. But the personal should be as little and as humble as possible.

I was particularly distressed that Laevskaya had hinted that I had been negligent in the Vorobeichik case. And yet everything was done in accordance with socialist law and order. Records kept and so on. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that Moiseenko had tragically departed his own life.

I reproduce what he said.

“Lilka was a fool. She believed in gypsies. A gypsy once told her fortune, before the war, telling her she’d have a husband whose name began with an ‘R’. Lilka used to mimic the gypsy to a T. ‘You won’t be able to resist that “R”. You’ll give in straight away. And marry him’. And she would toss the hem of her skirt and shimmy her shoulders. What didn’t she do to entrance me? I struggled to free myself. I was entirely devoted to my art. I had learnt the whole of Aleksandr Tvardovsky’s Vasily Terkin off by heart to perform when we visited the regions. But she knocked me off course with her love. When I was going away to Nosovka for the first performance, I had a real skinful. I was drunk when I set out. I thought I’d sober up. I didn’t. I got a slap on the wrist, a kick up the backside. You might think that’s why I killed her.”

I tried to corner him with an innocent question.

“Because of Vasily Terkin?” I looked him steadily in the eye.

Moiseenko looked right in my pupils, just as steadily.

“Yes,” he replied. “Because of Terkin too. And the fact that she had completely discombobulated me, telling me I couldn’t even imagine what goes on in warfare. Or what had happened to her. I’m practising a new role, reciting it off by heart and she’s couldn’t give a toss about my talent. And what did happen to her to make her know and understand what no-one else understands? She didn’t say. Just strung me along out of spite.”

“And what did happen, for example? Any suggestions?”

“You need it, you dig around for it. You can put me to bed with a shovel, I won’t say a thing about the woman I used to love. Not even if it’s true. I may have boozed away my conscience but not my art. And that’s how it is for us artists – we don’t kiss and tell!”

I quickly cut the lad down to size:

“You have nothing to do with art. You know that yourself. Let’s assume you’re the killer. Who else could have knifed Lilia? Apart from you?”

At this point, Moiseenko appeared to get a grip and drop his posturing. He said nothing for a moment.

Then declared in no uncertain terms,

“Apart from me, no-one. No-one.”

Inwardly, I was inclined to think he was the guilty party. There was the circumstantial evidence too. I’ve mentioned that already. He was drunk when he arrived in Nosovka. Lilia was murdered on the day Moiseenko came back into town. But he hadn’t come back right away. It was two days after the planned performance. He’d become entrenched at the house of a friend, chief librarian Ivan Nestorovich Shostak. Drowning his sorrows with him. Shostak testified that Moiseenko had said bad things about Vorobeichik and threatened to kill her. As it turned out, he had.

And then there were these rumours in town. “I might be poor but I’m honest,” my mother used to say. And I would repeat it too in unfavourable circumstances. Facing various losses, for example. But I had never been threatened with the loss of my good name.

I decided to come at things from the other end.

The old Jew seemed perfectly at home going to see Vorobeichik and the Tsvintar woman. I saw that he didn’t hesitate for a second at the gate, just pushed it straight open. Strangers would hesitate even if only for the tiniest moment. Whereas the old chap would leave the house slowly, looking back at the windows, casting an eye over the fence. Strangers don’t leave like that. Strangers don’t look back.

Chernigov isn’t a big town. From Red Bridge to Trinity Hill. From the Rampart to Five Corners. That’s it, all of it. It’s easy to find someone. Especially a Jew. They all know one another. It’s historical.

I went to see Veniamin Yakovlevich Shtadler. A well-known figure, originally from a rabbi’s family, who fervently welcomed the Revolution and the Civil War. He fought in the Red Army. Earned a number of medals, joined the Bolshevik Party. Then, clearly, he was purged but not sent to jail. And the reason why not was that somehow, when he was first questioned, he had bitten off part of his tongue. He banged his chin on the investigator’s desk or something like that. These things do happen.

It was concluded that he had gone crazy since he had independently embarked upon an act of self-mutilation.

He was taken to Kiev for assessment. There the final verdict was a complete absence of mental capacity.

As a result of his self-inflicted injuries, Shtadler lost the ability to speak. Most annoying was that this was when he had been called as a witness, invited for a little chat. And the investigator was a relative, a distant one. He must have asked Shtadler an indelicate question or something and the latter was so indignant that he pulled his little stunt. The relative, incidentally, soon was sent to jail.

Shtadler’s mental capacity returned in 1941 precisely. His heroic past awoke in him with terrible force and he found himself in Yankel Tsegelnik’s Partisan Detachment. He became something akin to a rabbi. He was said to pray, mumbling and murmuring, but eventually he was seriously wounded on several occasions and sent back to the rear for treatment.

After the war, he showed up in Chernigov again. Still not quite all there but basically intact. The police would contact him when they needed to find something out from the Jewish community. He wasn’t on the staff but he never refused to help. When he was asked questions, he would write the answers on a piece of paper. His writing was ugly and slanting. I know that, by nature, Jews have to write from right to left rather than left to right like other people. That’s what the language of the Jews is like, their writing in general. His handwriting had become unbalanced, what with all this relearning.

I described the old man to Shtadler and with his help established that the person in question was one Zusel Tabachnik. He was living in temporary digs in Liskovitsa. At the foot of Trinity Hill.

For the record: a sizeable Jewish population had built up at the foot of Trinity Hill. They had been there since time immemorial, according to people in the know. After the war, their numbers didn’t fall as some people had hoped, they simply increased. Those who had been killed were replaced by people from other areas. People who had nobody left anywhere at all.

Contrary to popular belief, man clings not to a place but to property. Without property, he has no ties. Although there may still be relatives who can provide support. Over time, however, relatives as an institution have lost all importance. But in those days the Jews still had something of the kind. And so they would come and take lodgings with even the remotest of relations. Especially from the small shtetls surrounding the town and from isolated villages. Where, during the war, they had been a thorn in the flesh and were almost all wiped out unless they were evacuated or went to the front. And who was it who went to the front? The men. As for the women, children and old men – well, that’s obvious.

Comrade Stalin, when foreign journalists tried to catch him out by asking why he hadn’t evacuated all the Jews, said: “My Jews have all gone.”

Perhaps they had at that.

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, the Russian genius, was right: in nature, nothing disappears. A loss in one place means an increase somewhere else. And so there was an increase in Chernigov.

There was one comrade who served with me in the police, a friend, you might say. I haven’t got a bad thing to say about him. Conscience, honour – all present and correct. A veteran. A Jew. Evsey Gutin. Born and bred in Chernigov. Knew everyone in town and could read them like an open book.

I decided to ask his advice in an informal setting. And not outright but, going by the book, in a roundabout way. I bought him a bottle of vodka and turned up at his house the following Saturday.

My visit didn’t come at a good time. Evsey’s wife was bathing the children, of whom there were three. Aged from two to nearly eight. And, curiously, all boys. The oldest Grishka, then Vovka, then Iosif.

Evsey had been invalided out just as Ukraine was liberated and everyone was allowed to go home. And so he back he went to his own home. The house was of the kind that no-one set their sights on during the war. And so he settled back in and welcomed his wife and her father back from evacuation. Evsey’s own father, mother and three sisters had, naturally, been shot owing to wartime conditions.

When war broke out, Evsey had been married for about five years. To Belka. They were regarded as childless. His wife couldn’t carry her pregnancies to term. But then the children began to come along.

And there was Belka, giving them a bath.

It was a joyful, irksome affair. A family affair, of course. But I really loved children just then, mainly because of my own little daughter, my Anechka-Gannusya, and I weighed in alongside Belka and Evsey. I brought over the water, took the heated pails off the stove. It was a wood stove so I chopped the wood up a bit more, just a tad.

We all dried the children off together to make sure they didn’t catch cold. Belka towelled down the littlest, carefully, carefully, while Evsey and I played rough and tumble with the other two.

All the little lads had been circumcised. I took particular notice. But in a good way.

Jokingly, I said, “Why on earth did you mark them all out like that, Evsey? Honestly, not to mention you being a Communist but, as a responsible father to your sons, how could you circumcise them and make it so easy for a potential enemy to spot an undercover agent?”

At that point, Belka’s father, came into the house, Dovid Srulevich. Or Sergeyevich, which he himself preferred to avoid but which Belka and Evsey used when introducing him.

I had sort of hinted to Evsey, that he, a Communist, shouldn’t be embarrassed by any names at all and even less by patronymics. According to his passport, he was Abramovich but he would introduce himself as Arkadiyevich. And his father-in-law was Srulevich but he’d turned him into Sergeyevich. That’s not good. No-one who stoops to that sort of repudiation deserves to call themselves a man.

“The war’s over. There’s no need to hide”: that’s roughly what I told him.

With his usual, crooked little smile, Evsey replied:

“It’s because it sounds better.”

“Better, be damned. You’re not to blame for the fact that your names don’t really suit to the Russian language. If I’m honest, they don’t really suit any language. What are you supposed to do? Give yourselves aliases or dogs’ names?”

Evsey wasn’t even smiling now.

“Aliases and dogs’ names? What have they got to do with it? I substituted a Russian name.”

I wanted to change the subject. I could see I’d hit a real nerve.

“I meant that, for you, our names are only aliases anyway so you’d be better off keeping your own.”

Of course, I hadn’t expressed my opinion particularly well. But Evsey didn’t take offence. On the contrary, he became friendlier towards me.

Now Evsey laughed and nodded towards Dovid.

“That’s the one who did it. I kept an eye on each of them so that it didn’t happen and Dovid sneaked each one out from under my nose. Just who did Grisha and Vovka, I don’t know. Dovid won’t let on. But Iosif was done by that filthy Zusel. Yoska was named after Comrade Stalin. And Dovid was well aware of it. I specifically told him not to touch the little one with his Jewish notions. But no, the bastard went and spoiled Yoska too. Belka must have been involved. She’s completely under his thumb. Fine. Circumcised, uncircumcised, so what, if they’re healthy? I don’t think the Germans will be coming back. And I’m not afraid of anyone else. Or the Germans come to that. I gave them a real thrashing, Mishka, you know I did. And it’s in honour of that, of that thrashing, that I made my lads. And I’ll make more. Belka and I have decided we won’t stop. But we’ll have to keep a closer eye on Dovid and tear Belka off a strip to prevent her propagating religion. Still, what’s done is done.”

But I could tell that Evsey himself wasn’t really opposed to Dovid’s superstitious procedure. It’s certainly difficult to knock things out of folk, especially customs and prejudices, if they’ve flourished among the people for centuries. Whether it’s nationalism or anything else. Educating people isn’t easy or done in one fell swoop.

This tender scene took us towards dinner.

We sat at the table. The children were racing around, snatching bits of food, playing and making a din.

We ate.

I poured us all one glass, then another.

Evsey kept pace with me.

Dovid didn’t touch a drop. He took charge of the children, quietly trying to rein them in.

Then, he couldn’t take it any longer. Fork in the air, the food half-way to his mouth, and presumably spurred on by what he’d been thinking, he said:

“In Tsarist times, Jews didn’t drink. They were Jews with a capital J. The Jews were kept under far more observation than anyone else. The only way they could stand out was if they didn’t drink, were always sober. That earned them a few good marks. There were bad marks for everything else, that’s for sure. Mi-i-i-nuses! Special laws were passed for the Jews. ‘Don’t let them in here. Don’t put them there.’ But in Soviet times, everyone started all over again with a small letter – Russians and Jews alike. And in Soviet times, the Jews became just like everyone else. No more restrictions. And so the Jews drink too. What’s sauce for the goose… Even though there are no good marks left. Not even the teeniest-tiniest one. Just minuses, all the way.”

Evsey was pouring the drinks just then and his hand shook. He stole a look at the children. They stood, frozen to the spot, straining to hear.

Evsey took the glass he’d poured, drank it down deliberately and said to his father-in-law:

“You might think about the children, Dovid Sergeyevich. Saying such things in front of them.”

Belka waved her arms at them both, the old man and her husband.

“Right, you’ve gone too far! Now get on with your meal quietly. It’s time to put the children to bed and there you are yelling.” She hissed at the little boys, “Now then, geschwind schlafen, you little wretches! Mattresses out!”

It was a game for the children – rolling the mattresses out on the floor, making the beds, swapping places till they were blue in the face. She was their mother. What other explanation is required? A mother knows how to soothe her child.

Dovid Srulevich joined in as well, dragging the pillows over, moving them around. Being involved.

Belka secretly slipped us the open bottle and some of the food.

“Out,” she whispered. “Go out in the yard. Drink the rest on the logs. Out in the fresh air.”

In a nutshell, I got down to business.

It turned out Evsey knew the name Tabachnik. I didn’t even use the name, just described the old man in passing. An accurate description. That you’d recognize if you knew him. Evsey immediately came up with the name.

“He’s an odd fish, that one. Ought to be behind bars. Or better still in hospital. A dodgy character.”

“What’s dodgy about him? He’s not quite right in the head but he’s harmless.”

“But that’s the point. He’s spreading nonsense. You get propagandists canvassing before the elections to our Supreme Soviet, don’t you? Just turning up. A knock at the door and in they come. No invitation required. Everyone understands they’re there on important state business. Well, he’s some sort of propagandist too. Not for the unbreakable block but for who the hell knows what.”

“Counter-revolution? Against Stalin and Soviet power?”

“Well no, he doesn’t go that far. He only visits people of Jewish nationality. He’s got lists written down. That’s what our lot are saying. The Jews, I mean. He’s always doing the rounds. They send him packing and he’s off again. Like a clockwork toy.”

“And what, no-one’s dropped a line to you know where?”

“He hasn’t stopped, so no, they can’t have. Although they should.”

“You do it then. They’ll call him in, read him the riot act, give him a bollocking. What is it he’s campaigning for?”

“All sorts of nonsense. You, my dear Jews, you don’t exist anymore, he says. You think you do but you don’t. He says that sort of stuff then goes on his way. They give him a bit of money. Old clothes. Leftovers. Buying him off, kind of.”

“Ah, so he’s begging. Appealing for sympathy. People are such idiots. Give to a beggar once and you’re sort of in his debt. That’s what your Tabachnik’s up to too.”

“He’s not mine!” Evsey even went purple.

I pressed on, cool as a cucumber:

“A propagandist – that’s too good for him. A propagandist campaigns for the future. Tabachnik isn’t campaigning for anything.”

Evsey nodded uncertainly.

“So, hasn’t he got a home of his own? Is he living off other people?”

“He does have a house. In Oster, they say. Not so much a house as a dugout. He told someone he’ll hang around in Chernigov until the winter and the bad weather. And then off to Oster. It takes all sorts…”

I changed the subject.

“Keep an eye on Dovid Sergeyevich. He talks too much.”

I deliberately called him Sergeyevich so that Evsey would realize it was a genuine warning.

I needed to go to Oster. It was where both Vorobeichik and Tabachnik came from.

I had to approach matters in a roundabout way: the first law of investigation. I might not have special training but I knew the basics. The war and military intelligence had taught me.

It was the end of July, the weather hot. Young people were out for late-night strolls, dancing in Kordovka Park, and all around, were thick bushes, the pull of the darkness. There were misunderstandings of a particular kind.

Then people became better off. They drank too much, squabbled, got into fights. Most often in families, between relatives and friends, but that’s not the point. The slightest thing and the police were called. Whereupon there would be tears so that no-one was taken away. But even law-enforcement agents have to go on leave and so forth.

Here’s what happened next.

From time to time, I would go secretly to Clara Zetkin Street only to find the shutters closed day and night.

Walking around the location on a regular basis was not practical given the need for operational discretion. Questioning the neighbours was likewise inadvisable. Making inquiries at the local registration office or on the housing lists? What was there to find out when it was less than six months since Lilia Vorobeichik died and, legally, no-one could come into the inheritance? There was no-one to inquire about. Something, yes, but not someone. Technically, of course. Essentially, I would have made inquiries had it all been official and above board but this was a matter for my private honour and conscience.

Thanks to Evsey’s unwitting reports, I was up to date on Tabachnik’s activities.

The old simpleton dropped in to see the Gutins once as autumn approached. And not only did he drop in, he was arm-in-arm with Dovid.

They steered away from Evsey straight away. They asked Belka to follow them into the shed in the yard where they whispered away.

Evsey wanted to follow and listen in but was held back by the children’s pestering.

At the end of August, Lyubochka, in view of the approaching cold, expressed the desire to have a new dress made.

By way of illustration, she tried on the old one – the one I remembered as being perfectly fine – and said:

“I bumped into Polina Lvovna Laevskaya at the market. She said this and that and basically told me she could make me one up for half price. Of course, I flatly refused but she reassured me that it was all out of respect for you. Lilechka Vorobeichik was her friend, like a sister even, she said, and since you found the killer, she’ll be grateful to you till the day she dies and, to acknowledge it, she’ll give me a discount. She actually had tears in her eyes. She was begging me to do her a favour. Me, do her a favour! Imagine!”

I was wary of reaching a hasty verdict.

“Oh? And then what?

“That’s what I’m asking you. They say Laevskaya’s too grasping, then she does something like this. Do you think she means it, Misha?” Lyuba didn’t wait for me to reply. She reached her own conclusion. “Of course, she does. Death’s no laughing matter.”

“What’s death got to do with it?” I asked.

Lyuba replied:

“It’s just a comparison. When it’s just any old thing, you might not tell the truth but when it comes to death, you wouldn’t dare. Maybe I should accept the discount? I’ve haven’t got anyone to make me a decent dress.”

I shrugged. Though for quite a different reason. You shouldn’t be going to see Laevskaya, Lyubochka. Not for dressmaking or for discounts: you shouldn’t have anything to do with her.

What I said was:

“Do it. Things are working out. We don’t need to act like tight-fisted Yids.” The word just slipped out. Not rude, exactly, but not Soviet. Otherwise it’s a word like any other but I faltered. “There’s no need to count the kopecks. We’ve got to be able to hold our heads up in public. You’re so pretty. Castoffs are good enough if you’re as plain as a pikestaff. But not for you.”

Lyuba was radiant. She rushed over to the chest of drawers and took a length of bottle green material from under the sheets.

She put it under my nose.

“Look. I bought it ages ago.” She unfolded it, turned it this way and that, over and back. “It’s wool. From the market. From before the war. Or else brought back from Germany. It’s cheap. And with a discount on top, well, it’s practically free.”

To please her, I felt the material. I even wanted to stroke it but understood that I shouldn’t. My hands were trembling.

“It’s fine. Hard-wearing. Doesn’t show the dirt,” I said.

Lyuba went to see Laevskaya. This is what she brought back:

Polina Lvovna kept asking how things were at work. Whether I was being moved out of town. This happened quite a lot back then so that regional officers could reinforce district police units. She had also said that if I was sent off into the sticks, we’d never see that flat. We’d get bogged down where we were. But she had connections. She could put in a good word.

Lyuba asked if I was hiding something from her about work. The bosses went to Laevskaya, or rather, their wives did. She knew a lot. She wasn’t given to idle talk.

I assured Lyuba that there were no changes in store for me at work. But I took mental note of the fact that Laevskaya would be working on that bottle-green, hard-wearing, dirt-concealing dress for a long time. She’d be stitching and sewing for a good while. Getting my wife all worked up.

But there was no way out. Let her. She wouldn’t worm anything out of Lyubochka. Bitch.

I talked to my colleagues, analysed the situation. The bosses’ attitude towards me hadn’t changed. I had been in their good books. I still was.

I dangled the bait anyway.

“All my life I’ve dreamed of working in a small district somewhere. Getting some peace and quiet. Get the husbands out from under their wives, that’s all it takes.”

We were coming back from a Party meeting with the man from personnel.

He clapped me on the shoulder, teased me good-naturedly.

“There aren’t too many like you around, Misha, Mikhail Ivanovich. Now’s not the time to be wasting our best officers. We’re not about to hand you over to some district or other. Not even the most successful one. And we will find you a flat. Just so that you know. And tell your wife to be ready.”

Lyubochka and I were so overjoyed, it shut out the whole, wide world. Despite the fact that Anechka had picked up a severe cold on the Desna and, for over a month, we nursed her at home with the doctors’ assistance, we were already tasting the delight of our forthcoming space and independence.

At the end of September, we were given a one-room flat with a modest kitchen. On Kotsyubinsky Street. German POWs had built a whole street there. Our house was nearer to the new market.

We moved in. We’d done it, even without another baby. We’d been lucky.

And then, who should make her way to the flat but Laevskaya.

It wasn’t a secret. They knew our address at the old place. Moreover, we’d promised to tell people the new address - anything might happen.

And this was it.

I opened the door in person.

Laevskaya and her bosom bore down on me from the very first second.

“May you be very happy in your new home, Mikhail Ivanovich, my dear! I timed it deliberately for a Sunday so that I’d find you all at home. Is Lyubochka here? And your little poppet, Anechka? Is that little lass of yours here with her Mummy and Daddy?”

She gushed and she cooed as she poked her nose into everything. She opened the door into the toilet.

She nodded, as if pleased.

“Yes. I’ve heard about these houses. They’re warm. That’s the main thing. They’re warm.”

Lyuba heard Laevskaya’s voice and came out to greet her properly.

“My dear Polina Ivanovna, how lovely that you’ve managed to find us! We’ll have a cup of tea right away and preserves, all sorts! These days I don’t know, we haven’t got an allotment any more. There won’t be any preserves now. But we’ve still got some at the moment.”

Laevskaya threw her arms wide, taking in the setting with her eyes and her fingers. Of course, it was all junk. Lyubochka and I had each been putting the odd kopeck aside but we hadn’t enough put by for anything decent. Now, with Laevskaya there, I felt I needed to explain.

I put my foot right in my mouth.

“Yes, we’re not particularly well off. Not like you. You can save kopeck after kopeck and hide them away. We can’t.” I laid particular stress on that “you”.

Laevskaya laughed.

“Oh, I can, can I? I eat what I like. And literally everything goes on food. Everyone loves their food as they get older. I’ve even given up on my figure.”

She made a dismissive gesture by way of illustration. But she lifted up the frock under her sand-coloured mackintosh just enough to reveal a plump, repulsive knee.

“Ah, well, what can I say? My youth is gone and gone forever.”

The knee was one step too far.

“Come now, Polina Lvovna! You’ll still get married. You’ll be as safe as houses for the rest of your days. If you asked me, I could even recommend a husband. Dovid Srulevich Basin. A widower. Jewish nationality. Just the one for you. People say he’s got a bit put by as well. Well, your lot always do…”

Why I said it, why I put Dovid forward, I don’t know. It happens sometimes. I come up with just right word out of the blue.

Of course, Laevskaya understood the hint about her nationality and customs. But she didn’t let it show. It was only experience that enabled me to see she had clenched her teeth.

“Let’s not talk about me. That’s all in the past. I’ve brought that little dress over for you, Lyubochka. I ironed it first. You must be worn out from the move. If I have a pattern, and people don’t say this for nothing, I need just the one fitting to do the job. So, I finished this by sight. I wanted to gladden your heart as soon as possible. And your husband to be able to feast his eyes on you. Try it on, now. Go on, try it!”

She pulled a roll of material out of her almighty rucksack and lifted out the dress, holding it in two fingers, like a precious jewel. She laid it over both arms, like the cloth that holds out bread and salt in welcome. She presented it to Lyuba. With a bow.

Lyuba took it with a bow of her own.

She ran into the kitchen.

She came back.

I felt giddy, she was so gorgeous.

Lyuba twirled around, patting the dress.

Laevskaya walked around her as if she was a statue in a museum and tutted.

“And you, poppet,” she said to Anechka, “do you want me to make you something pretty?”

“What thing?” Anechka asked.

“I’ll think of something. I don’t skimp when it comes to fashion. I don’t usually make things for children but I will for you. A special children’s design. I’ve got various scraps around the place. I can put some together for you. It would be a pleasure.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

Lyubochka asked quietly and delicately.

“And how much do I owe you?” Since the move we’d really only had money for bread.

“I lined the skirt,” Laevskaya explained. “That material’s mine. The threads are mine as well. And they’re silk. I put these little tucks here in the sleeve. We hadn’t agreed on those, Lyubochka. And I added a neat little collar. The lace is mine. Anyway, I don’t want any extra for that. So it’s as we agreed, half price.”

And she named the price.

I haven’t the foggiest idea about the cost of women’s stuff but Lyubochka looked taken aback.