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He turned, feeling Yang’s eyes on him, but she was staring in a different direction now, toward Granger’s office.
Field wondered about Yang and Granger.
He stood, clutching Lena’s file and the instructions for the fingerprint bureau, ignoring Yang’s casually interested glance as he passed.
In the lift he opened the folder again. It listed where in Russia Lena was from-near Kazan-and detailed three meetings she had attended at the New Shanghai Life, a magazine funded by Bolshevik intelligence officers from Soviet Russia working undercover at the consulate, but most of the file entries had been written by Prokopieff, who was as gifted with written English as Field was with his Chinese, and even by their standards, this was thin. They had files on so many people and most gave few insights. He’d learned more in five minutes at the woman’s flat.
Field wondered why she’d attended meetings at the New Shanghai Life. The family had certainly looked as if it was part of the old, decimated aristocratic class and were unlikely recruits to the Bolshevik cause.
The fingerprint bureau was on the fifth floor, C.6 printed in the middle of its frosted glass door. Field knocked once, then entered.
The room was in darkness save for the light from two desk lamps, one of which pointed toward a sheet of paper hanging from a piece of string that ran from one side of the room to the other. A tall man with gray hair and glasses, wearing a white coat, was using the other to look at a brown leather ledger, like the ones that filled the bookshelves above him. He sat hunched over it, holding a magnifying glass. He did not bother to look up.
Field cleared his throat. “I’ve brought the paperwork on the Orlov case.”
“The Russian prostitute?” The man was English.
“Yes.”
“Fine. Put it in the tray by the door.”
Field let it drop into the wire basket. “Have you got anywhere yet?”
The man looked up, staring at Field over his glasses. He had a long nose, with black hairs poking out of both nostrils, and poor teeth. “Do I look like a miracle worker?”
“Not really, no.”
The man stared at him. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you from?”
“Yorkshire.”
“Bad luck.” He exhaled heavily, turning back to his work. “Two days, minimum.”
“Two days?”
“Minimum, I said.” He straightened, gesturing at all the ledgers above him. “Do I look as if I have any assistance?” He muttered something to himself, then added audibly, “There were different prints in the apartment, so it might take longer.”
“Have you found a match for Lu?”
The man hesitated. “Pockmark?”
“Yes.”
“You may be disappointed to discover that I haven’t looked at the Orlov prints and they’re not next in line.”
“It’s a murder case.”
“So tell me something new.”
Field took a step closer, looking over the man’s shoulder at the pages of prints in the ledger that he was using to try to find a match for the one on the piece of paper in front of him.
“I’m Field, by the way.”
He didn’t respond.
“You’re Mr. Ellis.”
“I’m Ellis.”
“Is there any chance that, when you do come to the Orlov case, you might be able to check Lu’s prints against those you took from the bedroom? It’s just it would help to-”
“Field.” The man did not look up. “Have you seen me in S.1 recently?”
“No.”
“Well, when you do, telling you how to do your job, then you can come up here and help me out with mine.”
Field retreated, shut the door quietly, and crossed the corridor to the registry, a stuffy, hot room without ventilation or light. It was run by Da
There was no one in evidence, so Field filled out one of the white forms. He wrote: Natasha Medvedev, Happy Times block, Foochow Road.
He hesitated a second before taking another sheet, writing Lu Huang on it and hitting the brass bell on the front desk beside him.
After a minute Da
“A Russian woman,” Field said.
Da
Field waited for him to expand, and when he didn’t, said, “Yes, Lu.”
Da
Field frowned.
“There’s a background file,” Da
“Then I’ll take that.”
Da
“Can I get the current file on Lu?”
“There isn’t one.”
“There must be one.”
“We don’t have it.” Da
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Field hesitated. “I thought all files have to be signed out and a memo put through to you if forwarded anywhere different.”
“Yes.”
“So you have a note of who the file’s signed out to?”
“No.”
“But-”
“I mean yes. Granger has it.”
“Well, I’ll get it from him, then.”
“Sure.” Da
Field took the stairs to the third floor, where Caprisi was on the phone, his jacket over the back of the chair, along with his leather holster. Watching him, Field noticed how well groomed he was, his hair neatly trimmed at the back and side. A leather wallet was open on the desk, and Field saw that there was a photograph inside of a young woman with short dark hair, holding a young boy.
Caprisi put down the phone and swung around. He saw the direction of Field’s gaze and snatched the wallet up, slipping it into his trouser pocket. “Come on, Krauss has got the body.”
Five
Caprisi led Field down the stairs to the basement and through the swing doors of Pathology to the darkened lab at the end. There was a single, bright light in the ceiling and the room was heavy with the smell of formaldehyde. Krauss, in his long white coat, was standing next to Maretsky.
Lena Orlov lay flat on her back on a metal trolley in front of them. A white sheet covered her from the swell of her breasts to below her knees. Somehow she looked more peaceful here.
“No assault,” Maretsky said, shaking his head.
“No sexual assault,” Caprisi corrected.
“Time of death,” Krauss said, with only the faintest hint of a German accent. “I would say around one o’clock in the morning. If the Russian neighbor found her at one o’clock in the afternoon, then I think she’d already been dead almost twelve hours.”
“No consensual sex?” Caprisi asked.
“Not as far as I can tell.”
“Then why the fancy underwear and the handcuffs?”
Krauss shrugged. Field didn’t know if it was the light, but Lena Orlov’s skin looked even whiter than it had in the flat.
“Some kind of fantasy,” Maretsky said. “Was she a prostitute?”