The Bloody Meadow

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It was snow, or sleet, or something in between – whatever it was, it swirled around them like smoke and seemed to freeze solid as soon as it hit fabric, coating their clothes with a white sheen. It had been snowing, or sleeting, depending on your opinion, for days now and they stepped carefully along the icy path that led to their destination.

Captain Alexei Dmitriyevich Korolev followed the director of the First Mikoyan Agricultural Tooling Trust with a sense of foreboding – the two uniforms and his fellow detective Yasimov trailing behind. Korolev knew this was going to be an awkward job – it just had that feel to it. The director had said as much when they’d told him they were there to question one of his men – at first he’d been all cooperation, but when they’d told him the man’s name, Shishkin, and he’d looked to see where they could find him, his attitude had changed.

‘Shishkin, Shishkin, Shishkin,’ he’d said, going through cards in a wooden filing cabinet. ‘Here we are. Ah. Workers’ Hostel Seven. I should have guessed.’

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