Free The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan Page B

information.
    ‘So, Comrade?’ he said, trying to ignore the smirk on Babel’s face.
    The girl smiled and extended her hand. ‘Slivka, Comrade. Nadezhda Andreyevna. Sergeant – Odessa CID. Unless the Comrade Colonel just wanted to take me for a drive in the country, my
guess is I’m your junior detective. I’ll help you track down whoever did this – don’t you worry, Comrade Captain.’
    Korolev shook the offered hand and allowed himself to return the smile. A bit of spirit wasn’t such a bad thing in a young detective.
    ‘Well then. Good,’ he said. ‘Anything you’d like to ask?’
    ‘Yes,’ the young female detective said, looking down at her notebook. ‘Comrade, is Andreychuk the only one with keys to the house? Apart from the deceased, that is.’
    ‘Lord no,’ Shymko began, before collecting himself when Babel tutted at his careless use of the Lord’s name – as close to blasphemy as it got these days.
    ‘No,’ he continued with more care, feeling his way into each word now – apparently having decided that in the kind of company that wrote down everything you said, words could
run amok and bite a man where it hurt.
    ‘You’d have to ask Comrade Andreychuk,’ he continued, ‘but I have one, and I know the director of the kolkhoz keeps one in his office. Then there’s Elizaveta
Petrovna, of course.’
    ‘Elizaveta Petrovna?’
    ‘Elizaveta Petrovna Mushkina,’ Shymko clarified, emphasizing the surname.
    ‘Major Mushkin’s mother,’ Babel said, his voice coming from behind Korolev. ‘She’s the director of the Agricultural College. But before that she was a Party boss in
Odessa.’
    ‘I met her earlier,’ Korolev said, remembering the elderly lady with her walking stick.
    ‘A hero of the Revolution,’ Shymko added in a hushed tone.
    ‘And before that,’ Babel said. ‘She was in Siberia with Stalin. That’s how far she goes back.’
    ‘Stalin?’ Korolev repeated, not quite believing his ears. Could this get any worse? Now he had to deal with someone who was an old comrade of Stalin’s.
    ‘She calls him Koba,’ Babel said with a significant look.
    Korolev swallowed, then decided it was best to get on with the job in hand.
    ‘We’ll need a list of who had access to keys and where all the keys were last night. Slivka?’
    ‘I’ll see to it.’
    ‘And a list of all the cast and crew. Anyone who had contact with Lenskaya. I saw a small Militia post in the village. Can you ask the colonel if the uniforms there can help? We’ll
want to interview everyone as soon as possible.’
    Slivka nodded. ‘They’ve already been instructed to assist you should you need them. Comrade Shymko, how many people are we talking about? For the cast and crew?’
    Shymko ran a hand over his skull, a gesture that seemed to age him considerably.
    ‘Cast – speaking roles we have sixteen. Production and crew? About twenty – small, but Savchenko likes it that way. Extras? Every living soul for five versts . Then there
are a few hangers on. I can get you a list of cast and crew. For the extras you might be better off talking to the kolkhoz people – they assist us with that side of things. I
don’t even have a list, I just tell them how many we want and when.’
    Korolev noted Slivka’s raised eyebrow. She was right – it could take days to interview that number of people. Perhaps weeks.
    ‘Well, we’ll start with the people who had most contact with her,’ Korolev said, ‘at least until we have a definite line of enquiry. So who would they be?’
    Shymko looked trapped, as though he were considering that question from two different angles. The first being what useful assistance he could give in this regard, and the second being what his
colleagues might think of him if he were to point them out to the Militia.
    ‘We’ll be interviewing everyone in due course,’ Korolev said after a few moments, tempted as he was to let the man sweat. ‘But let me take a guess that she would