The Beast in the Red Forest Read Online Free PDF

being haunted by a man who might not even be dead.
    In spite of his stubborn convictions, as far as Kirov was concerned, if anyone had figured out how to transform himself into a wandering spirit, it would be Pekkala, for the simple reason that he had never been completely of this world in the first place.
    Evidence of this was the Inspector’s utter disregard for even the most basic creature comforts. Although Pekkala had a bed, he usually slept on the floor. His meals, when he remembered to eat them, were always taken at the dingy, sour-smelling café Tilsit, where customers sat at long, bare wooden tables, surrounded by a haze of tobacco smoke. Seemingly impervious to temperature, he wore the same clothing every day of the year, no matter what the weather was outside:  corduroy trousers, a deep-pocketed waistcoat and a thigh-length double-breasted wool coat made from material so heavy that it would have been better put to use in the manufacture of curtains or carpets.
    Kirov had abandoned any hope of unravelling the mystery of why the Inspector lived the way he did.
    And if Stalin is right, thought Kirov, as he strode across to the window and looked out over the rooftops of the city, I must now devote my energy to solving the riddle of his death.
    Catching sight of his own reflection in the glass, Kirov thought back to his bizarre encounter with Poskrebychev in the hallway of the Kremlin. Until Poskrebychev mentioned it, he hadn’t even considered buying a new tunic. But now, as Kirov surveyed his shabby appearance in the glass, he realised that the man had a point.
    The cuffs of Kirov’s tunic were frayed and stained. Both elbows had been patched and the inside of his collar, polished by sweat, had turned from olive brown to a slick, gun-metal grey. Washing did little to help, except to shrink the cloth and fade what was left of its original colour.
    Given the shortage of materials since the German invasion back in June of 1941, the idea of requisitioning a new uniform had simply been out of the question. As a result, the clothes he wore now were more than two years old and he had used them almost every day. But now that war aid was flowing in from the United States – everything from tanks to clothing to cans of blotchy pink meat commonly referred to as ‘The Second Front’ – the stranglehold on such items was slowly beginning to loosen and tailors like Linsky could find the raw materials to carry on their trades.
    Kirov had previously convinced himself that he could perhaps get another year out of his present set of clothes. But if a man like Poskrebychev can notice the defects, he thought, then maybe it is time, after all.
    And although Kirov hated to admit it, Linsky was a good tailor. It wasn’t his fault that Pekkala ordered him to make garments that were as much of a throwback to a bygone age as the Inspector himself seemed to be. Kirov took great pleasure in reminding Pekkala that Linsky was best known as a man who made clothes used for dressing corpses laid out at funerals. It only made sense that a man like Linsky should have ended up as tailor to the Emerald Eye, especially since Pekkala’s own family had been undertakers back in Finland.
    Kirov’s good-natured mockery hid the fact that he was extremely self-conscious about his own appearance. He was tall, with a shallow chest and embarrassingly thin calves. His uniform cap made his ears stick out and his waist was so thin that he couldn’t get his thick brown gun belt, its buckle emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, to stay where it should across his stomach. Most shameful of all to Kirov was his thin neck, which, in his own opinion, jutted from the mandarin collar of his tunic like the stem of some pale, potted plant. Since joining NKVD, he had only ever worn issue clothing. His natural frugality prevented him from actually paying for a uniform when he could get one for free, even if the issue clothes never quite fitted as they should.
    Maybe