The Margin of Evil! by Simon Boxall Page B

murder.
     
     
    Georgii put the file away inside the bottom drawers secret compartment. He thought, 'Who is feeding me this information?' It was obvious to him that the Goldstein file raised more questions than it answered. O.K - it had shaded in one or two areas, without really giving him any hard information. If the truth were told everybody had links with the criminal world. You had to in order to survive. Georgii decided that after work he would walk down to the river and take a look at the place where Isaak Goldstein had disappeared. First he had to go to one of Trofimov's daily briefings. It promised to be a briefing with a difference. Burov the political officer was going to be there.
    There were about ten people in the office. Each person, including Georgii, had to update her on his or her progress. That bit went quite well and then Burov started droning on. Because of the late night the night before, Georgii spent the whole time fighting the urge to fall asleep. Eventually the proceedings came to an end, much to his relief and all of those present, Georgii suspected. He got his coat and walked out on to the street.
    There had been a time, and this included the old times as well, when you could gauge the people by the mood on the street. Now you couldn't tell, you had to tread carefully. Because nowadays, there always seemed to be an air of desperation that permeated everything. Georgii knew only too well that 'God Fearing' people in certain situations would even go to the lengths of committing murder. Even a Cheka man could no longer rely on prestige and status to save him from the blood hungry desires of 'The Mob'. These were definitely strange times and you had to learn to walk carefully.
    Georgii arrived at The Moscva River. He got out his notebook and looked for the exact location of where Goldstein, or whoever's corpse, had been pulled out. What was even more interesting was the river tended to be frozen over this time of year. So the persons that recovered the two bodies must have had to drag the bloated corpse over the ice to get it on the shore.
    He arrived at his destination and looked around him. In front of him there was a makeshift slipway leading down to the frozen water's edge. Further on there were some sheds. He looked over the river to the other side; he could make out some vague shapes nothing else. The light was fading fast. Georgii looked around him and then down on to the ground. If it had been him he would have transported the body back down to where the slip was. He walked down to it. Then he would have been faced with two options. Drag the corpse out to where there was a channel running through the middle of the ice or, two, cut a hole in the ice near the river bank and lower the weighted body through it and into the river. The second option was the least dangerous. Georgii now walked up to the edge of the dock and peered over. The ice was pretty white; it had snowed virtually every day, and sometimes all day over the intervening weeks since the body had been recovered. He started to walk over to the far side of the slipway. Georgii walked up the other side and stood there looking down on to the ice. There it was, it was just about visible, even in this fading light. But there it was nonetheless. In the ice, one part slightly dipped, not only that, it was also slightly faded.  Could this be the place where bodies were lowered into the Moscow River? He walked back; this time he examined the ground. He pulled out his Swiss army knife, and then started to dig around. Below the snow there seemed to be evidence that indicated that a car might have drawn up to the docks edge. There was also an oil stain in the ice. Georgii Radetzky pondered all of this and then looked up and down the river. This was a perfect location for the disposing of evidence. The whole place was deserted. No one ever came here; no barges ever docked, not since the economy had died. If they did they unloaded further up river.