‘Yes?’
‘Muntjan’s her uncle, well, sort of half-uncle, really. But she’s got an overdeveloped sense of family responsibility. I tell her I’ve got my responsibilities too. I told her when I got Josif the job that if he didn’t do it properly, he was out. I meant it, believe me, Inspector.’
‘And what did your wife say to that?’
‘She said she understood. I was quite right. I had my job to think of. Only …’
‘Only?’
‘She said if Uncle Josif got the sack, he’d never find another job, and he’d not be able to afford to keep his room, so he’d have to come and live with us.’
That must have sounded like the ultimate threat! thought Chislenko. He looked with pity at the unhappy supervisor. The man had more cause for worry than he knew. He’d just offered himself as another sacrificial victim to Serebrianikov. The only difficulty in presenting Muntjan as an advanced alcoholic in the grip of the DTs had been in explaining how he kept his job. Now all was clear. The poor bastard was in the trap beyond all hope of escape.
But why should he be feeling this degree of sympathy? Chislenko asked himself. The case he was building up against Muntjan was surely not only the best, but also the only possible explanation of the incident! Natasha was mistaken; her mother was mistaken; Rudakov was mistaken. They must all have been mistaken, mustn’t they?
Of course they were, he told himself angrily. He was absolutely certain of it. All that remained now was to go and arrest Muntjan.
He said to the supervisor, ‘I’d like to examine the south lift. Can you arrange for it to be stopped and put out of use for half an hour?’
‘Yes, of course, Comrade Inspector. But couldn’t you examine it just by riding in it?’
‘I want to look in the shaft, and at the winding machinery too,’ said Chislenko.
The supervisor clearly thought he was mad but was wise enough to hold his peace. Chislenko too began to think he was mad as he got covered with dust in the shaft and stained with oil in the machine cabin. What he was looking for, he admitted to himself in that tiny chamber of his mind he reserved for his most lunatic admissions, was some mark of manufacture, preferably one which would indicate that the lift had been produced in Machine Plant No. 242 in Serpukhov in the year 1948.
For a long time he found nothing. After a while this began to worry him. There were places where perhaps a name or a number might have been expected to be stamped, but when the dust and oil were rubbed away, only a smooth surface appeared; but something about the smoothness was not quite right. Was it his imagination or had something been filed out of existence here? He could not tell. He must be mad, playing about up here when he should be arresting poor Muntjan, the drunken bum who’d started all this brouhaha!
Then he found it, screwed with Germanic thoroughness to the underside of the brake-lock housing, a small plate packed so tight with a cement-like mix of dust and oil that he had to chip at it with his pocket knife before the letters slowly emerged.
Elsheimer GmbH Chemnitz, and a reference code, FST 1639–2.
Carefully he copied them down in his notebook before triumphantly emerging from the machine cabin at the top of the shaft. The supervisor looked at him in horror.
‘Would the Comrade Inspector care to wash his hands?’ he asked carefully.
Chislenko examined his hands. If the rest of him was as filthy as they were, then it was a hot bath and a dry-cleaner’s he really needed.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
The supervisor started the lift once more and they descended towards his quarters in the basement. On the way down, the lift stopped at the seventh floor and Chislenko felt a dryness in his mouth as the door opened. But his apprehension turned to surprise when he saw it was Natasha standing there.
‘Good lord,’ she said. ‘What on earth have you been doing? You’re filthy.’
‘More to the point, what are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t work on this floor. You’re on the eighth.’
She flushed.
‘That’s right. But I had to go down to ground floor for something and the lift was marked Out of Order. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve tended to use the stairs anyway rather than get in by myself. But I heard it start moving as I reached the seventh landing and I thought, this is stupid, I’m not a child to be frightened of ghosts in broad daylight, so I came along here and pressed the button.’
She spoke defiantly as if challenging him to laugh at her. When she looked defiant, she still looked beautiful. It was perhaps at this moment that Chislenko realized he was in love with her.
He said, ‘Well, get in if you’re getting in. We can’t hang around here all day.’
Gingerly she stepped inside. When the lift stopped at the ground floor, he said formally, ‘I may have some more questions to put to you later, Comrade Lovchev. I would like you to be available for interview this evening.’
‘This evening is not possible, Comrade Inspector, but at the moment, I have no plans for tomorrow evening,’ she said pertly. ‘So try me then. Who knows? You may be lucky!’
The supervisor shook his head as she walked away.
‘Give ’em a bit of status and they think they’re boss of the universe, these young ones, eh, Inspector? What that one needs is a randy man to satisfy, and half a dozen kids to bring up, what say you?’
‘What I say is, why don’t you keep your stupid mouth shut,’ said Chislenko.
Half an hour later, relatively clean, he was back at Petrovka. There was a bit of a setback when he could find no reference to a German town called Chemnitz in his up-to-date World Gazetteer. That know-it-all Sub-Inspector Kedin, solved the mystery.
‘Try Karl-Marx-Stadt,’ he said. ‘The name was changed in 1953.’
So at least the town was in the Democratic Republic which would make cooperation easier once the initial contact had been made. That was where the real difficulty lay. An Inspector of the MVD might just get away with mailing an official request for help to the police force of a friendly country, but telephoning, which was what Chislenko wanted to do, was impossible without higher approval.
He asked to see Procurator Kozlov.
‘I don’t see any point in it,’ said Kozlov after he’d listened to Chislenko’s report. ‘Muntjan is obviously at the centre of this business. I’m not certain Comrade Serebrianikov is going to be happy that it’s all down to drunkenness. He seemed certain there must be a Western connection somewhere, but I’ve no doubt he can track that down for himself once he has Muntjan. This supervisor seems a likely contact to me. Check him out thoroughly, Chislenko.’
Chislenko shuddered. Poor old Uncle Josif! Poor old nephew supervisor!
Kozlov continued, ‘As for this lift business, I don’t see what difference it makes. There’s probably some simple explanation. Perhaps it’s you that’s got things muddled, Inspector. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that it was your muddle that got us into this in the first place!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Chislenko, admitting defeat. ‘I’ll put my report in writing, then.’
‘I’d appreciate that,’ said Kozlov sarcastically. ‘And stick to the relevant facts, will you? Nothing about lifts and Germany, understand?’
Chislenko left and returned to the Inspectors’ office. Half an hour later he was summoned back to Kozlov’s room. The Procurator was writing at his desk and did not once look up as he spoke.
‘I’ve been thinking, Chislenko. I don’t like loose ends. You have permission to contact the authorities in Karl-Marx-Stadt in pursuance of your inquiries. Thoroughness in small things, that’s