Read Online The Beast in the Red Forest by Sam Eastland - Free Book Online Page B

down to the floor with his back against the wall and rested the book on his lap. He was just about to open it, when suddenly he paused. ‘Why do you even have this book, Podolski, if you’ve never looked in it?’
    ‘The government gave it to me. I told them I didn’t want it, but they said it was the law. I have to own a copy, and so does anyone else who works with leather in this country.’
    ‘But why?’
    ‘All the leather I use for mending shoes and belts and whatever else comes through that door has to come from a State-approved tannery. Each tannery has its own symbol. They stamp the outer edges usually. You find them in each corner, in the parts of the hide that aren’t of even thickness or have too many creases. They usually get thrown away as scrap or turned into laces or,’ he skimmed the tobacco bag across the floor to Kirov, ‘turned into trinkets like these. As long as one of those stamps is on the hide when I buy it, I have nothing to worry about. But if I get caught using leather which hasn’t been approved, whether it’s any good or not, then I’m in trouble. And given my clientele, Major, that’s a chance I’d rather not take.’
    ‘You mean you have to go through this whole book every time you buy a hide for fixing shoes?’
    ‘All my leather comes from two or three local tanneries. I know their symbols by heart. One thing I can tell you, Major, wherever this came from, it’s nowhere near Moscow.’
    Kirov began leafing through the fragile pages.
    Podolski went back to work, after carefully fitting a new set of wooden pegs between his teeth.
    The tanneries were listed alphabetically, each one with a symbol marked beside it, and Podolski was right – there were thousands to sort through. After half an hour of staring at symbols, they all started to look the same. They seemed to jump across the flimsy paper as if the book held a nestful of insects. Kirov kept losing his focus, sliding away into daydreams, only to wake from them and realise that he had been turning pages without looking at them properly. He had to go back and look at them again.
    ‘It’s time for me to go home,’ said Podolski. ‘My wife will be wondering what’s happened.’
    ‘Patience, Podolski,’ replied Kirov. ‘Think of your cat.’
    ‘He’s not married,’ grumbled Podolski. ‘He can afford to be patient.’
    Two hours later, just as Podolski was closing up his shop for the day, sweeping the floor for scraps of leather and tooth-marked wooden pegs, Kirov located the symbol among the tanneries beginning with the letter K. By then, he was so dazed that he had to stare at it for a while before he could be sure. ‘Kolodenka Leather Cooperative,’ he read aloud.
    Podolski’s broom came to a rustling halt across the floor. ‘Kolodenka! Where the hell is that?’
    ‘No idea,’ replied Kirov, ‘but wherever it is, that’s where I’m going.’
        ‘Then I hope it’s some place in the sun.’ Podolski propped his broom in the corner. Removing a small can of ground meat from the shelf above his head, he opened it with a key attached to its side. The lid peeled away in a coil like an old clock spring. Then he emptied the food into a bowl and placed it on the window sill for the cat.
    The two men walked out into the dusk.
    While Podolski locked the shop, Kirov glanced uneasily up and down the street.
    ‘Are you expecting someone?’ asked Podolski.
    ‘I wish I was,’ muttered Kirov. ‘Then, at least, I could explain why I always feel as if I’m being watched.’
    ‘You are being watched,’ Podolski told him.
    ‘But by whom?’
    Podolski tapped the glass of his shop window, drawing Kirov’s gaze to the Manx cat. With eyes as green as gooseberries, it stared clean through into his soul.
    *
    ‘You’re going where ?’ demanded Stalin.
    ‘To the village of Kolodenka in western Ukraine,’ replied Kirov. ‘I believe that Pekkala may have been there recently, or somewhere near there,