Siberian Red

many years, why had Captain Ryabov suddenly approached the Commandant in order to bargain for his freedom with information too old to be of any probable use? Even if he did possess some scrap of useful knowledge, why would he choose this time to betray the Colonel?
    Perhaps Commandant Klenovkin was right, and the Captain had finally grown tired of waiting. But what Pekkala did not believe was Klenovkin’s claim that time and hardship had simply caused Ryabov to crack. Something specific had pushed Ryabov over the edge, perhaps a horror he had glimpsed on the horizon or else an event from his past which had finally caught up with him. If the latter was true, then the answer might lie in the contents of Ryabov’s file – if only the missing pages could be found.
    The time had come to bring Kirov on to the case. All Pekkala had to do now was wait until they let him out of this cell.
    At dawn on the seventh day, Gramotin and Platov came to fetch him. In their heavy greatcoats, they were sweating by the time they had trudged up the hill.
    Pekkala was sitting with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, clinging to the tiny pocket of warmth he had created under the threadbare blanket.
    ‘Get up,’ ordered Gramotin.
    ‘Time to get back to work,’ added Platov.
    Stiffly, Pekkala rose to his feet, and the two guards walked him down towards the camp.
    Halfway there, Platov tripped Pekkala‚ sending him sprawling on the muddy path.
    Rolling over on to his back, Pekkala found himself staring down the muzzle of Gramotin’s rifle.
    ‘We heard about you,’ Gramotin said.
    ‘Heard you were a detective,’ Platov chimed in.
    ‘That’s right.’ Pekkala tried to stand but Gramotin swung his rifle butt into Pekkala’s shin and knocked him down again.
    ‘We also heard that the Comitati want you to stay in one piece,’ continued Gramotin. ‘We have learned, over the years, to get along with those gentlemen, which sometimes means granting them a wish or two, but the next time you see a fight, Inspector, you stay out of it. If I have to come all this way again to fetch you down from solitary, no matter what the Comitati want, I swear you’ll never make it to the bottom of the hill. Understand?’
    Pekkala nodded, gritting his teeth from the pain in his bruised shin.
    By the time they reached the camp, a large truck had arrived in the compound.
    The canvas flaps had been thrown back and a group of hawk-eyed women were climbing down into the slush. Even more than their gender, it was the colours of their clothes that set them apart from the dreary world of Borodok. To Pekkala, they looked like tropical birds which had been blown off course from their migrations, and ended up in a place where their survival would depend on a miracle.
    ‘Hello, my darlings!’ Gramotin called to them.
    ‘I’ll see you later,’ said a woman with a tobacco-husky voice. As she spoke, she drew apart the lapels of her heavy coat and swayed her hips from side to side.
    ‘I love it when the whores come by.’ Platov was grinning. ‘But look at the line already.’
    At the camp hospital, the queue of men stretched halfway round the building. The hospital windows, lacking glass, were made from opaque panels of pressed fish-skin, and they wept with condensation. Out of the back door of the hospital, the sick were being moved to other parts of the camp. Two hospital orderlies carried out one man on a stretcher. The sick man’s face was grey with fever. He seemed oblivious to what was happening, as the orderlies parked his stretcher in the woodshed beside the main building. Even though he did not fit inside the shed, the orderlies left him there, bare feet jutting out into the snow.
    The two guards walked Pekkala to the kitchen.
    Melekov met Pekkala in the doorway. With arms folded across his chest and a large wooden spoon clasped in each fist, he eyed Pekkala disapprovingly.
    As soon as they were both inside the kitchen, Melekov launched into a scolding. ‘What did you think you were doing getting involved in a fight with the Comitati? If you want to get yourself killed, there are much simpler ways of going about it.’ As if to emphasise his point, Melekov walked over to his cutting board. The huge slab of wood had been worn down smoothly in the middle, like a rock pool formed by centuries of dripping water. Melekov scrubbed it at the end of each shift and treated the wood twice a month with special almond oil which he kept