Free Siberian Red by Sam Eastland Page B

preserved?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I need to see the remains,’ said Pekkala. ‘Preferably now.’
    ‘By all means,’ replied Klenovkin, rising to his feet. ‘The sooner you can deliver to Stalin whatever it is that he wants from these men, the quicker I can be rid of them. And of you as well, Inspector.’
    Heaving on a canvas coat, thickly lined with coarse and shaggy goat fur, Klenovkin led Pekkala out of the office.
    Shivering in his prison jacket, Pekkala followed the Commandant to the camp kitchen, which had been closed down for the night.
    Inside, at the back of the building, stood a large walk-in freezer, its door fastened shut with a bronze padlock as big as a man’s clenched fist.
    Removing a key from his pocket, Klenovkin unfastened the padlock and the two men stepped inside.
    Klenovkin turned on an electric light. One bare bulb glimmered weakly from the low ceiling. Frost which had coated the thin glass shell of the bulb immediately melted away. By the time the droplets reached the floor, they had frozen again and crackled on the ground like grains of unboiled rice.
    On one side of the freezer, pig carcasses dangled from iron hooks. On the other stood glass jars of pickles, slabs of pasty white beef fat and stacks of vegetables which had been boiled, mashed and pressed into bricks.
    A wall of splintery wooden crates lined the back of the freezer. The crates were filled with bottles, each one marked with a yellow paper triangle, indicating Soviet Army issue vodka.
    On the floor, behind the barricade of vodka crates, lay a dirty, brown tarpaulin.
    ‘There he is,’ said Klenovkin.
    Pekkala knelt down. Pulling aside the brittle cloth, he stared at the man whose death had brought him to Siberia.
    Ryabov’s skin had turned a purplish-grey. A dark redness filled the lips and nostrils and the dead man’s open eyes had sunk back into his skull. His open mouth revealed a set of teeth rotted by years of neglect.
    Ryabov’s throat had been cut back to his spine, almost as if the murderer had wanted not simply to kill him, but to remove his head as well.
    The huge amount of blood which had flowed from Ryabov’s severed jugular had formed a black and brittle crust over the dead man’s chest.
    At least it had been quick, Pekkala noted. From a wound like that, Ryabov would have bled out in less than thirty seconds.
    The hands of the dead man had been wrapped in strips of rag, a common practice among prisoners to protect against the cold. Pekkala peeled back the layers of filthy cloth. It was not easy. Ice had bonded the strips so solidly together that Pekkala’s fingernails tore as he prised away the layers. At last the skin was exposed, revealing the image of a pine tree which had been crudely etched on the tops of Ryabov’s hands using a razor blade and soot.
    ‘The mark of the Comitati,’ answered Klenovkin.
    Pekkala set his fingertips against the edges of the wound in the dead man’s neck. The skin was curved back on itself, a sign that the blade used to kill Ryabov had been extremely sharp.
    Now Pekkala turned his attention to the man’s clothes. The padded coat and trousers had been washed so many times that the original black colour had been bleached to the same dirty white shade as the snow which piled up on street corners in Moscow at the end of winter. The buttons had been replaced with pieces of wood hand-carved into toggles, and there were many repairs in the cloth, each one meticulously stitched with whatever fabric had been available. Searching the pockets of Ryabov’s jacket, Pekkala found nothing but black crumbs of Machorka tobacco, the only kind available to gulag prisoners. It was made from the stems as well as the leaves of the plant and produced a thick, eye-stinging cloud that could be inhaled only by the most desperate and hardened smoker.
    ‘Where was the body found?’ Pekkala asked.
    ‘At the entrance to the mine. I discovered it myself when I went there to speak with