The Secret Speech Read Online Free PDF

them. Leo’s private hope was that one day he’d balance his arrest ledger, the guilty outweighing the innocent. Even at a conservative estimate, he had a long way to go.
    The freedoms granted to the homicide department resulted in their work being subject to the highest level of secrecy. They reported directly to senior figures in the Ministry of Interior, operating as a covert subsection of the Main Office for Criminal Investigations. The population at large still needed to believe in the evolution of society. Falling crime rates were a tenet of that belief. Contradictory facts were filtered from the national consciousness. No citizen could contact the homicide department because no citizen knew it existed. For this reason Leo couldn’t broadcast requests for information or ask witnesses to come forward since such actions would be tantamount to propagandizing the existence of crime. The freedom that he’d been granted was of a very particular kind, and Leo, who’d done everything in his power to put his former career in the secret police behind him, now found himself running a very different kind of secret police force.
    Uneasy with the first-glance explanation behind Moskvin’s death, Leo studied the crime scene, his eyes fastening on the chair. Positioned, unremarkably, in front of the desk, the seat was at a slight angle. He walked up to it, crouching down, running his finger over a thin fracture line on one of the wooden legs. Tentatively testing his weight, pushing down on the back, the leg immediately gave way. The chair was broken. If anyone had sat on it, it would have collapsed. Yet it was positioned at the desk as though it were suitable for use.
    Returning his attention to the body, he took hold of the victim’s hands. There were no cuts, no scratches—no sign that this man had defended himself. Kneeling, Leo moved close to the victim’s neck. There was hardly any skin left except on the back, the area touching the floor, protected from repeated slashes. Leo took out a knife, prising it under the victim’s neck and lifting the blade up, exposing a small stretch of skin that hadn’t been destroyed. It was bruised. Lowering the flap of skin, retracting the knife, he was about to stand up when he caught sight of a pocket on the dead man’s suit. He reached in, taking out a slim book—Lenin’s
The State and Revolution.
Even before opening the book, he could see that there was something unusual with the binding: a page had been glued in. Turning to the page in question, he saw a photo of a disheveled man. Though Leo had no idea who the man was, he recognized the type of photograph—the stark white background, the suspect’s disoriented expression. It was an arrest photo.
    Puzzled by this elaborate anomaly, Leo stood up. Timur Nesterov entered the room, glancing at the book:
    —Something important?
    —I’m not sure.
    Timur was Leo’s closest colleague and friend. The friendship they’d developed was of an understated kind. They didn’t drink together, banter, or talk very much except about work—a partnership typified by long silences. To cynics there was reason to suppose resentment in their relationship. Almost ten years younger, Leo was now Timur’s superior, despite the fact that he’d previously been his subordinate, always formally addressing him as General Nesterov. Objectively Leo had benefited more from their joint success. People had insinuated that he was a profiteer, individualistic and career-minded. But Timur showed no jealousy. The issue of rank was incidental. He was proud of his job. His family was provided for. In moving to Moscow he’d finally, after languishing on waiting lists, been appointed a modern apartment with running hot water and a twenty-four-hour electricity supply. No matter how their relationship might outwardly seem, they trusted each other with their lives.
    Timur gestured toward the main factory floor where the towering Linotype machines stood, giant