On the second day of April, 1932, I received an urgent knock on my front door at nearly six o'clock in morning. The sun had broken the hilly horizon already, throwing out orange rays in the east. The rattling of the wood woke Mama, who slept downstairs, and, cursing, I followed her as soon as I'd pulled some clothes on.

"Who comes all the way up here at this time in a morning?" I growled, throwing open the door.

I recognised the grey-streaked hair straight away. It was Pyotr, panting slightly and with a vibrant flush in his cheeks.

"Just the man, Stefan," he said as he barged inside. "I need to speak to Aleksy Malenhov. Right now. Do you still keep him here? Is he downstairs? Is he safe?"

I rolled my eyes. Not again. "Da. Why?"

"I got word from Isaak. It's about Viktor."

"What about him? He's long dead."

"You'd better sit down," Pyotr scoffed, "because you're never going to believe this."

"What do you mean, his body is gone?" Aleksy spat when Pyotr told him. I'd given him more or less the same reaction. "He's dead. Dead and buried. I saw them lower him into the ground!"

"Viktor being alive or dead has nothing to do with it," explained my cousin. "The grave keeper said he heard noises in the night but was too scared to investigate it, no surprise. He's a superstitious man, that Yeshevsky, perhaps not ideal for a grave keeper. When he did his rounds this morning he found your father's grave wide open. Somebody or something dug up his remains and there's not a trace of him anywhere in the graveyard."

I held my hands up. "The hell do you mean something?" I interrupted. "You're not trying to say an animal did this, are you?"

"This wasn't done by tools," Pyotr replied. "If a man had wanted to dig up Viktor Malenhov's body, wouldn't he save himself the labour and use a shovel? Isaak distinctly saw signs of clawing in the earth around there."

"Claws or fingers?" Aleksy asked.

"I don't know – he didn't specify. Perhaps when the sun's higher you should come and see for yourself." He looked at me with worried, grey eyes. "Stefan, will you make sure the boy's chained up? I want to go home to Yuliya in one piece and preferably unchewed."

I nodded, stiffly, "Da," and then to Aleksy, "sorry, malysh."

An officer from Darakyev took our names and granted Aleksy, Pyotr and me entry into the cemetery. Aleksy followed behind with his hands bound in the kind of chains one might reserve for a boisterous hound, which caused a stir when the officer noticed them.

He barred my way with his arm. "Any reason the boy's chained like that?"

"Er ..."

"He's mentally unsound," Pyotr offered, and the officer's eyes widened.

"Shouldn't we have been informed of that, doctor?"

"I've already done my psychological report on him and filed it at the practice in Darakyev. Our only home for the mentally ill is the kabina, but that's where he got a taste for ... never mind. Doesn't make sense to put the fox back in amongst the hens, does it? My man Stefan here's his keeper."

My grip on Aleksy's chain tightened. "He's a good kid, really, officer. Let us by so we can get this over with." With a final misgiving glance at Aleksy, the officer dropped his arm and opened the gate. In the periphery of my vision I caught Aleksy suggestively wetting his lips towards the officer, seeming to enjoy playing on his reputation.

Pyotr slapped me on the shoulder and ushered me through first. "Right you are. Take the lead, then, Stefan."

Isaak Yeshevsky met us halfway up the path and led us into the fray of gravestones jutting out of the snow like crooked teeth. The grave keeper stopped short and pointed, and almost inaudibly he said, "That one, over there."

He needn't have shown me; the great gouge in the earth was stark against the untouched sheet of white.

"Y'see," Isaak grumbled, scratching his turkey neck, "like I said. Man's gone. Have to see it to believe it, huh?"

My skin prickled.

Aleksy approached the wreckage with a glum expression, leaning in with his hands on his knees. "Why would somebody do this to him? We didn't even bury him with anything valuable."

"I don't know," sighed Isaak. "Ain't the foggiest why anybody would want to disturb the dead in the first place. Place is sacred. Thing is with these graves is everybody's a right to a resting place or they'll just come back an' haunt these hills for all time. Even the ones who kills 'emselves; even in death they ain't at peace. Meaning no offence to your mother, Alyovich."

I frowned. "My mother?"

"The suicide," whispered Pyotr.

"What?"

"But lookin' at it, somebody in Renkassk's got it in for your father instead. It's like him dying of that new-monia wasn't cruel enough ..."

"Wait a minute –"

"Funny coincidence though, ain't it? The sounds I heard last night sounded like coughing. Horrible." Isaak shuddered and placed his hands in his pockets. "God help me. Never seen anybody do anything like this before in my grounds. Not in all my days."

"No," Aleksy cut in before I could get my answers, "I don't think anybody did this."

"So, an animal," said Pyotr. "That's what I said."

"No, not that either."

I raised my palm. "If you're going to say that godforsaken Folveshch did this, you can forget it."

"Might be, but that's not what I was thinking."

"What, then?"

"Look at the way the soil and snow have fallen back into the hole. It's all where Papa's body would have been. If I'm right in thinking ... he sat up and clawed his way out himself."

"Don't start," I growled. "Dead men don't walk."

"Ignore him, Stefan," said Pyotr, "the boy is nuts. Likely he's the culprit, if you want my opinion. Fancied a late snack and came and sniffed this grave out. You sure you have strong enough chains on him?"

"Enough! Both of you. Somebody dug Viktor up for some reason or another – that's all we can be sure of."

"But where are the shovel marks?" Isaak pointed out. "I know dug up graves when I see 'em. People put the soil on one side and there's always marks in the ground where the back o' the shovel cuts in. You see any of that, either of you?"

"Come on," I said, "we're a builder, a medical practitioner and a grave keeper. Any of us qualified to solve crimes. Hm? We'd best leave it to the Darakyev police."

"What about me?" Aleksy said. "I've seen things in this valley."

"You?" Pyotr snorted, crossing his arms over his chest from the cold. "You're Renkassk's token creep. What do you know?"

"Enough to have noticed there are no footprints. Man or beast. Just a big track in the snow from here to the path."

"So Viktor got dragged over the footprints, huh?" said Isaak. "Whoever or whatever took him was in front. Must'a been something pretty damn strong to drag him out of the grave like that."

"We're not talking about a fresh body," Pyotr interjected. "Even before we buried him he'd mostly decomposed on the inside. Whoever did this ripped open the coffin and took poor Viktor out in bits."

I scoffed. "Listen to yourself. You'd need an axe to get in that coffin. I see no signs of any hacking."

Aleksy rattled his chains. "You're all wrong! You're all missing the obvious! There's no spade, no footprints, no axe. Don't you see that my father did this himself? He dragged himself out. Maybe he's been trying for two years!"

"Your father is dead," said Pyotr. "Unless you mean to question my practice, Stefan's got the right of it: the dead don't walk."

"Only in spirit," Isaak chipped in. "And this ain't the works of no ghosts."

"This is ludicrous," I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Nobody knows what went on here, and until we do, it's best we don't speculate. Come on, Aleksy, Pyotr. I've had enough of this."