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“Why can’t these characters write in simple Russian?” he asked the wall, not for the first time. It was all talk of lacerations and contusions; if you mean cuts and bruises, say so, he thought.
A number of aspects puzzled him once he had worked his way through the jargon. He checked the official stamp of the mortuary at Second Medical and rang the number. He was lucky. Professor Kuzmin was at his desk.
“Is that Professor Kuzmin?” he asked.
“It is. Who speaks?”
“Inspector Volsky. Homicide. I have your report in front of me.”
“Lucky you.”
“May I be frank with you, Professor?”
“In our day and age it would be a privilege.”
“It’s just that some of the language is a bit complex. You mention severe bruising on each upper arm. Can you say what caused that?”
“As a pathologist, no, it’s just severe contusion. But between us, those marks were made by human fingers.”
“Someone grabbed him?”
“Meaning he was held up, my dear Inspector. Held up, supported, by two strong men while he was being beaten.”
“This was all done by humans then? No machinery involved?”
“If his head and legs were in the same condition, I’d say he’d been dropped from a helicopter onto concrete. And not a low-flying helicopter. But no, any form of impact with the ground or a truck would have damaged the head and legs as well. No, he was struck repeatedly between the neck and the hips, front and back, with hard blunt objects.”
“Cause of death ... asphyxia?”
“That’s what I said, Inspector.”
“Forgive me, he was beaten to pulp but died of asphyxia.”
Kuzmin sighed.
“All his ribs were broken, bar one. Some in several places. Two were driven back into his lungs. Pulmonary blood then entered the trachea causing asphyxiation.”
“You mean he choked on the blood in his throat?”
“That’s what I have been trying to tell you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m new here.”
“And I’m hungry here,” said the professor. “It is the lunch hour. Good day to you, Inspector.”
Volsky rechecked the report. So the old boy had been beaten. It all said “gangland.” But gangsters were usually younger than that. He must really have offended someone in the mafia. If he hadn’t died of asphyxia, he would have croaked from the trauma.
So what did they want, the killers? Information? Surely he’d have given them what they wanted without all this? Punishment? Example? Sadism? A bit of all three perhaps. But what on earth could an old man who looked like a tramp have in his possession that a gang boss would want so badly, or what could he have done to a gang boss to deserve what he got?
Volsky noticed one more thing under “Identifying marks.” The professor had written: “None upon the body, but in the mouth two frontal incisors and one canine, all of stainless steel, apparently the inheritance of some crude military dentistry.” Meaning the man had three steel teeth at the front.
The forensic pathologist’s last remark reminded Volsky of something. It was the lunch break and he had agreed to meet a friend, also in Homicide. He got up, locked his shabby office behind him, and left.
Langley, July 1986
THE letter from Colonel Solomin caused quite a problem. He had made three deliveries by dead drop in Moscow but now wanted a remeet with his controller Jason Monk. As he had no opportunity to leave the USSR, it would have to be on Soviet territory.
The first reaction of any agency receiving such a suggestion would be to suspect their man had been caught and was writing under duress.