Free Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett Page A

transformed.’
    He needed both hands to withdraw the contents. His back was to us but I glimpsed a large glass jar filled with an opaque liquid together with some solid, dark, unspecific matter. He settled the jar on the desk and stood aside.
    â€˜What is the meaning of this?’ I demanded.
    The colour had drained from Catherine’s face like water from a sink. We were looking at a human head pickled in formaldehyde.
    At that moment, when my thoughts and senses ought to have been focused on the matter in hand, I was nevertheless conscious of the sensations produced by contact with a human body. Other than to shake hands with friends and colleagues or to receive Kopelzon’s extravagant embraces, it had been more than two years since I had touched another person. As a child, Catherine had submitted to hugs rather than given herself wholly to them; when I used to lift her up and clasp her to me, the little child became rigid and would bend her knees into my chest to keep us apart. Yet now she was in my arms, her face buried in my chest. I kissed the top of her head. I stroked her hair and closed my eyes, as if the mere fact of our nearness could insulate us against the horror Lychev had brought into our lives.
    â€˜Look carefully, Miss Spethmann,’ Lychev said, placing the bag on the floor so as not to obscure the view. ‘This is the man we know as Alexander Yastrebov. I have reason to believe, however, that this is not his real name. It is imperative that I establish his true identity, and do so as quickly as possible.’
    He waited for what he may have considered a decent interval and then said evenly, but with finality, as though refusal were not an option, ‘I must insist.’
    Catherine kept her face turned away but I sensed her beginning to recover from the shock.
    â€˜Do you recognise this man?’ Lychev repeated, his patience running out.
    By degrees Catherine brought her gaze to the object before us. The glass’s convexity distorted the features somewhat, adding to their blood-drained, ghoulish quality.
    â€˜No,’ she answered in a firm voice, ‘I do not recognise him.’
    She turned to look Lychev boldly in the eye. It was the policeman who in the end had to turn away.
    In the elevator car I tried to regard Catherine not as a father does his daughter, but as a man who must extract the truth from one determined to conceal from him what he needs to know.
    â€˜I want you to be truthful,’ I whispered to her while the attendant pretended not to listen. ‘We are in danger. If you are not completely truthful, we will not escape. Who was the man in the jar?’
    â€˜What happened to him?’
    â€˜He was murdered a few days ago and his body dumped in the river.’
    The elevator car stopped with a jolt. The attendant opened the doors to the lobby.
    Though she had rallied well, the ordeal had obviously taken a lot out of her. She was still pale, and unusually placid in both speech and movement, and yet she managed to fix me with a defiant look.
    â€˜I never saw him before,’ she said.
    With the help of the doorman I saw Catherine into a taxi. Before the driver pulled away, I warned her not to leave the house or speak to anyone under any circumstances but to await my return.
    When I got back to the office Lychev had dismissed the gendarmes and was replacing the glass jar in the leather bag.
    â€˜Was that really necessary?’ I asked. ‘You must have photographs you could have shown us.’
    â€˜You thought my display over-theatrical?’ His thin lips spread in a grin.
    â€˜I thought it unnecessary and cruel.’
    â€˜The times we live in are cruel, don’t you think?’ he said, closing and strapping up the bag with methodical attention. ‘Last month I arrested a man, a member of one of the so-calledcombat detachments of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He had poured sulphuric acid over the face of one of his