Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

14

The first thing Powerscourt noticed about Nicholas the Second, Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias, was that he was quite short for an Autocrat. He must, Powerscourt thought, have been about five feet seven inches tall. His father, Powerscourt remembered, had been a great bear of a man, capable of bending pokers into circles and other feats of strength guaranteed to impress small children. The second thing was a quite remarkable similarity to his cousin George, Prince of Wales, second son of King Edward and Queen Alexandra. There was the same neatly trimmed beard, the same shape of face, the same hair greying slightly at the temples. Nicholas had lines of strain running across his forehead, not surprising, Powerscourt thought, when you were presiding over an empire in chaos, even less surprising when you thought of the haemophiliac son and heir, possibly bleeding to death even now in some upstairs nursery.

The Tsar was wearing a simple Russian peasant blouse, baggy brown trousers and soft leather boots. Standing in front of his desk, he ushered Powerscourt into an armchair. The room was quite small with one window. There were plain leather chairs, a sofa covered with a Persian rug, some bookshelves, a table spread with maps and a low bookcase covered with family photographs and souvenirs.

‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome to Tsarskoe Selo,’ said the Tsar. His English would not have been out of place in an Oxford quadrangle. ‘How may I be of service to you and your government?’

‘I am not in the service of my government, sir. I am an investigator employed by the British Foreign Office to look into the death of a Mr Martin. Mr Martin, sir, was on the staff of the Foreign Office. He came here to see you at the end of last year. Then he was killed.’

‘I heard that sad news, Lord Powerscourt. Tell me, you say you are an investigator. What, pray, do you investigate?’

Powerscourt thought the Tsar made investigating sound like a most disagreeable profession. Perhaps he imagined investigators scouring the files of his ministries for examples of administrative incompetence or worse, looking into the inefficiencies of his armies, or, saddest of all, creeping round his household for long enough to tell his subjects that their future sovereign Alexis the Tsarevich might have bled to death before he was one year old, never mind attaining his majority.

‘I am not alone in being an investigator, sir. There are a number at work in London at present. I only operate when people ask me to. Usually they ask me to investigate murders.’

The Tsar sounded faintly relieved to hear Powerscourt and his ilk were not contemplating opening a branch office in Moscow or St Petersburg. ‘Do you think Mr Martin was murdered, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I most certainly do, sir.’

‘And,’ the Tsar went one, ‘do you expect me to know who killed him?’

‘No, I do not, sir,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if the Tsar did actually know but wouldn’t say, ‘but I would find it very helpful to know what you talked about with Mr Martin.’

‘I cannot help you there, I’m afraid, Lord Powerscourt. The matter was confidential.’

Confidential enough to get a man killed, Powerscourt thought bitterly. Confidential can mean fatal on a bad day in the Tsar’s palace at Tsarskoe Selo.

‘I fully appreciate that, sir,’ said Powerscourt, looking at a photograph of three very happy little girls draped round their papa on a yacht, ‘but I would like to appraise you of what I propose to tell my government about your conversation with Mr Martin on my return.’

‘And why should that interest me?’ said the Tsar rather shortly, as if he had had enough of investigators.

‘It should interest you, sir, because it will contain my account of what transpired between you and Mr Martin. I give you my word that if you wish to correct my version in any way, I shall not tell a single soul who provided the information. Come, sir,’ Powerscourt smiled suddenly at his host, ‘come on a little adventure with me. Put aside the cares of state for ten minutes or so. Join the ranks of the investigators!’

The Tsar lit himself a cigarette. He returned the smile. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘for the moment I am your Mr Sherlock Holmes of 221b Baker Street. Sherlock Romanov perhaps. I shall consider what you have to say. Begin please!’

Powerscourt drew a deep breath. Now was his opportunity. From Markham Square to Tsarskoe Selo, via the British Embassy, Kerenkov’s shipyard, Kerenkova’s dacha, the eyes of Natasha Bobrinsky and the torture chambers of Okhrana boss Derzhenov was a long and complicated journey.

‘When I first began investigating the death of Mr Martin,’ he began, trying to be as honest as he could with the Tsar, ‘I thought that he had been sent here by the British Government with some proposal or other. A new treaty perhaps, an alliance with the French against Germany, maybe. It was possible, I thought, that he had been killed because somebody didn’t like the proposal or didn’t like your response to it. That all seemed perfectly possible.’

‘But you changed your mind, Lord Powerscourt. Why did you do that?’

‘I spent a lot of time, sir, trying to work out the dynamics of the meeting, who summoned who, that sort of thing. After a while I decided that the most likely sequence of events was rather different. The first event was you sending a message to England, to the King, I think, with a request that he should only discuss it with his Prime Minister. I think the request was in the form if not of a question, then something very like it. You see, sir, I began to think that the meeting had more to do with family than it did with affairs of state. That would explain why the conversation, if you like, began as monarch to monarch rather than minister to minister. And the need for confidentiality, for secrecy, if you will, explains why a man had to come from London rather than going through the British Embassy here.’

‘I was going to ask how you arrived at that conclusion but I shall save my questions for the end of this fascinating piece of investigation, Lord Powerscourt!’ Sherlock Romanov finished his cigarette and immediately lit another. Powerscourt noticed that some of his fingers were deeply stained with nicotine.

‘The second event,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘was Mr Martin arriving here with the answer from London. Again I can only guess at what the answer was. And I can only speculate as to why up until now no action has been taken.’

‘And what was the answer, Lord Powerscourt?’ The Tsar was now surrounded by a penumbra of smoke, his hand emerging from time to time to knock off the ash at the end of his cigarette.

‘I think, sir, that the question sent by you or your agents to London went something like this: Would the British royal family, and by extension, the British Government, be happy to welcome the Tsar’s wife and children to England while the present unrest in Russia continues. And,’ Powerscourt was reluctant to divulge this piece of news, ‘were there doctors in London who were experienced in the treatment of haemophilia.’

‘God bless my soul!’ The Tsar had turned pale.

‘And the answer, brought by Mr Martin,’ Powerscourt carried on relentlessly now, ‘was Yes, as long as the Russian royal family were content to live quietly in the country and didn’t expect to be taken round London on a never-ending quadrille of state banquets and ceremonial balls. A suitable place could be found for them in Norfolk, close to the Royal Family establishment at Sandringham.’

The Tsar looked at Powerscourt with considerable pain in his eyes. His question now had a slightly desperate air. ‘There is a flaw, of course, in this theory of yours. Do you see what the flaw is, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I am not sure it is a flaw, sir. I presume you refer to the fact that your wife and children are still here in Tsarskoe Selo, St Petersburg, not in Norfolk, England. But I do not believe that invalidates any of the rest of the theory, sir. There has been a British frigate on patrol in the waters off the coast here for a number of weeks now. People are beginning to talk. It seems possible to me, sir, that a number of factors could have intervened to modify the situation. The Empress might not have liked the plan. She might have preferred to stay with her husband in his hour of duty and help him fulfil what she saw as his obligations as ruler of Russia. The Tsar’s advisers, if they heard of the plan, might have thought it an unhelpful act to send the Tsar’s family and his heir out of the country. Hostile elements in society, not just the bomb-throwing fraternity, might have branded it cowardice, a vote of no confidence by the Tsar in the Tsar’s own administration. And finally, sir,’ Powerscourt thought he must stop very soon, ‘if security is so bad at present that you cannot attend the funeral of one of your own relations, blown to smithereens by the Kremlin walls, it might also be too bad to permit a party of six with all their attendants to make their way from here to a main-line railway station or to the English frigate.’

The Tsar crossed his legs and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘You will be interested to hear, Lord Powerscourt, that almost all of what you said is true in one sense or another. I congratulate you. But I have two questions for you. How did you know we were thinking of sending the children to England? And how did you know about my son?’

Powerscourt thought fast. He knew that if he mentioned the disappearing toys or the vanished Trans-Siberian Railway egg, Natasha would be in trouble. He did not dare rely on her testimony for the haemophilia either. He decided to take a huge gamble, not with the first question, but with the second.

‘I have a politician friend, sir, who is intimate with members of the British royal family. Forgive me if I do not mention his name. I asked him to inquire among his contacts to see if preparations were being made for the possible reception of a party of Russian royalty. His inquiries revealed that the answer was Yes. He also told me that inquiries were made about whether London had doctors skilled in the treatment of certain diseases. No name was given to the disease but it was clear from the descriptions given that it was haemophilia. The disease is all too well known to London doctors, unfortunately. Queen Victoria was a carrier.’ So far so good, Powerscourt thought, looking at the Tsar closely, now for a diversion. ‘When I considered where the British royals would be likely to accommodate Russian royals, I felt London would be inappropriate. Too public, too many prying eyes from the journalists and members of the public. Windsor Castle? Large enough, certainly, but there’s rather a lot of gloom and not much privacy. Sandringham is where they would send them. And when I asked a colleague to go and make inquiries in the area about any plans that might have been made to receive a group of foreign royalty, the answer was Yes. No nationality was known, but a party of foreign royals including a number of children was expected, had indeed been expected for some time.’ Powerscourt smiled faintly, as if apologizing for knowing too much, for being too well acquainted with the Tsar’s affairs.

‘I see,’ said Nicholas the Second, ‘I see.’ He looked like a man playing for time. Powerscourt remembered de Chassiron saying that the Tsar had plenty of charm but very little in the way of brain. ‘This is all very interesting, Lord Powerscourt, but please enlighten me as to how it helps your investigations with Mr Martin, the dead Mr Martin.’

Powerscourt prayed that Nicholas was not going to look at his watch. That, the Ambassador had told him, in what must, Powerscourt thought, have been the only piece of useful information ever imparted by His Nibs, was a certain sign that the Tsar wished the interview to end.

‘Let me try to explain, sir.’ Don’t patronize the man, for God’s sake, Powerscourt said to himself, don’t let him see I think he’s rather dim. ‘Suppose you have two friends. You know they have met for a conversation. Almost immediately afterwards one of them is killed. Anybody trying to solve the mystery would wish to know what the two men talked about. It might have a bearing on the reasons for their murder. The same thing applies to Mr Martin.’

‘Do you,’ asked the Tsar, possibly returning to the Sherlock Romanov mode, ‘have a list of suspects, as it were, for the killing?’

‘I do, sir, but forgive me if I do not put names to them,’ Powerscourt said. ‘I would not want you to carry round in your head a collection of possible murderers who might be totally innocent. It would be as unfair on you as it might be unjust on them.’

‘And do you think, Lord Powerscourt, that this conversation we have just had will make it easier for you to catch the murderer?’

Powerscourt noted that the conversation had now reverted to the past tense. He did not tell the Tsar that he believed his best chance of finding the murderer still lay in the three or four hours immediately after this interview.

‘I do, sir, and I am most grateful to you for your time and your patience in listening to my theories.’

‘I wish you good luck in your inquiries, Lord Powerscourt. Perhaps we shall meet again some day.’

‘I hope so, sir, I sincerely hope so.’

The interview was at an end. The symphony in gold braid and the footman with the plumed hat collected Powerscourt and the rest of the party and escorted them to their carriage. The symphony wished them Good Evening. The plumed hat bowed slightly at the departing foreigners. Not too near the palace, probably just outside the park, Powerscourt expected the carriage to be stopped and that he and Mikhail would be taken away. This was the gamble he had taken when he sent his message to the Embassy about being in a position to solve the mystery of Martin’s death inside a week. Whatever happened to Martin had happened after he left the Tsar. Somewhere between Tsarskoe Selo and St Petersburg he had been killed.

They heard their adversaries before they saw them, a rattle of horses’ hooves hurrying across the snow. Then a party of six men came into view, all in some elaborate Russian army uniform Powerscourt didn’t recognize, all with rifles slung across their backs, the leader with a pistol in his left hand. Powerscourt remembered an old army instructor telling him years before that left-handed shots had to be treated with great care as they were often more accurate than right-handers.

‘You!’ the left-hander barked at the coachman. ‘Follow us.’ A very young soldier took his place beside the coachman on the box seat and stuck a gun in his ribs.

‘What do you think is going to happen now, Francis?’ whispered Johnny Fitzgerald.

‘I think they’re going to haul me off for questioning, Johnny. If they take me on my own that probably means it’s Derzhenov. He doesn’t need an interpreter. If they want Mikhail to come too, it’s a different collection. Whatever happens, I don’t think it’s going to be good for my retirement prospects to stay with these gentlemen long, whoever they may be.’

The coach had turned out of the park and was now passing down the main street of the village. At the very end of the built-up area they turned left into the grounds of a rather dilapidated house. Faint lights could be seen in a room on the ground floor. The paint seemed to be peeling from the pillars by the front door. There was some discussion between the men who had captured them. Then Powerscourt and Mikhail were ordered out of the carriage and marched roughly into the house. Four men stayed on guard by the coach, scowling at the English and smoking strong-smelling cigarettes.

Powerscourt and Mikhail were shown into what had once been a handsome room with high ceilings and sash windows. There were a couple of battered armchairs in the middle of the room. Two wooden chairs had been placed in front of a rickety table at the opposite end from the window. Powerscourt noticed to his dismay that there were a number of stout sticks and a couple of Russian knouts or whips lying casually in the corner of the room. Opposite the chairs was a pale officer in his mid-forties with a great scar running down the lower side of his face. Most people, Powerscourt thought, would have grown a beard to hide the injury. Not this man. He flaunted it like a badge of honour. His hair was grey and his eyes were a dull brown.

‘Major Andrey Shatilov of the Imperial Guard, Royal Palaces Security Division,’ he said crisply.

‘Lord Francis Powerscourt, attached to His Majesty’s Foreign Office,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘Mr Mikhail Shaporov of the Shaporov Bank, acting as my translator. Pray explain to us why we have been taken prisoner in this fashion. I shall report this to my Ambassador here.’

Powerscourt wondered suddenly if the world of conventional diplomacy, with its notes and its niceties, its protocols and its levees, was somehow alien even in St Petersburg. Peter the Great may have been trying to civilize a nation when he built his capital here on this isolated spot, but after two hundred years he still had not succeeded. These people here, the Major with his scar and the rough soldiery outside, belonged to some alien world, the world of the peasants perhaps, tucked away in the great empty vastness of Russia with only their women and their violence for company. Russian generals, he remembered, had always been careless with the lives of their men. There were so many of them, endless reservoirs to make up the numbers when the first drafts had perished.

Shatilov’s voice was crisp. ‘It is not for you to inquire why you have been taken into temporary custody by the local authorities here, Powerscourt or whatever you say your name is.’

Powerscourt said nothing. Two of Shatilov’s thugs were lounging on the chairs in the middle of the room. One of them was fiddling with a very long piece of rope.

‘My request is quite simple,’ Shatilov said, managing to imbue even those innocent-sounding words with a charge of venom. ‘All you have to do is to tell me the nature of your conversation with the Tsar.’

Powerscourt paused for a moment. ‘Don’t translate this bit,’ he said to Mikhail, speaking very fast, ‘I want to make him lose his temper. My conversation with the Tsar was confidential,’ he went on more slowly. ‘It is not my business to tell you of his business any more than it would be for me to tell you of any discussions I might have with my King in London. What right do you think you have to make such a request?’

Shatilov was beginning to warm up nicely, Powerscourt thought. His fingers began strumming on the table.

‘Those of us in charge of the security of the imperial family are entitled to know all of his conversations! All of them. For his own safety! Now will you please tell me the nature of your conversation!’

Powerscourt wondered suddenly what would happen if it became known that the Tsar was planning to send his children abroad. It would say, as surely as if he had signed a proclamation, that he was not in control of events, that he had lost faith in the ability of his regime to protect his children. The Emperor himself would be announcing that he has no clothes. The myths and facade of autocracy, built up over nearly three hundred years of Romanov rule, would vanish like mist on a summer morning. Maybe the monarchy would fall and the Tsar would have to follow his family to England to stick family photographs into English albums and watch an English sea lapping at an English coast. The alternative, of course, might be worse, the Tsar’s children blown into minute fragments by a terrorist bomb, or murdered in their beds. It was, they had said to him in London before he left, a matter of vital national importance. Well, Powerscourt thought, looking absently at the Major’s scar, it certainly was for Tsar Nicholas the Second. And for King Edward the Seventh? The presence of the Tsar’s family in England would surely lead to an alliance with Great Britain. Confronted by the vast forces of France, Russia and the British, surely even the Kaiser would not risk a war, particularly when those other English-speakers, the Americans, might join the battle on the side of the Allies. A matter of vital national importance in London as it was in St Petersburg.

‘I would like you to tell me about a different conversation, Major Shatilov, a conversation you had, possibly in this very room, with a predecessor of mine, a man called Martin who came to St Petersburg, who saw the Tsar on a Wednesday evening, and who was found dead on the Nevskii Prospekt later that night or very early the next morning. Did you come across Mr Martin, Major? Did he perhaps sit in this very room with you and your thugs?’

There was a quick muttering from the pair in the chairs. ‘I know little or nothing of this man Martin,’ said Shatilov. ‘I repeat, before my patience runs out, tell me what happened with the Tsar!’ He looked meaningfully at the whips in the corner.

Now it was Mikhail Shaporov’s turn to speak very fast. ‘We weren’t meant to hear it, but one of the chair people said, “Mind the same thing doesn’t happen to you,”’ and then he went on to translate the rest of it.

Powerscourt wondered how much longer Johnny Fitzgerald and the man from the Black Watch were going to be. He had no doubt that they had begun working on a rescue mission as soon as he and Mikhail had been taken away. He too looked with some suspicion at the whips in the corner. Whatever happened he had no intention of betraying the Tsar. He wondered how painful it might be.

‘Did you kill Martin? Here in this room?’ He spoke with as much hostility as he could muster.

‘Shut up about Martin!’ shouted Shatilov, half rising now out of his chair. ‘I want to know about the Tsar!’

‘Did you kill Martin?’ If Powerscourt had wanted to make the Russian Major angry he had certainly succeeded.

‘Shut up about Martin! For the last time, I want to know about your conversation with the Tsar!’

Powerscourt was certain the man was lying about Martin.

‘Did you kill Martin?’ Powerscourt shouted for the third time. Mikhail Shaporov raised his voice to the same pitch.

‘That’s it! That’s it! I’ve had it. Vladimir! Boris! Tie them up!’ Shatilov had turned bright red.

‘The full treatment, boss?’ one of the soldiers asked.

‘Not yet, tie them up first,’ said Shatilov, going over to the corner and picking up a whip.

‘Sorry about this, Mikhail,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll be all right in the end,’ said the young man cheerfully.

By now the two men were tied securely to their chairs. Powerscourt found he could just about move his arms. If there was a deus out there somewhere, he said to himself, he wished he would hurry up and get out of his machina. Shatilov was pacing up and down behind the chairs, brandishing the whip in his left hand. Powerscourt felt there appeared to be a poverty of imagination in Russian torture methods, whips, whips and more whips.

‘Do you see this, Lord Powerscourt?’ Shatilov was showing him the leather thong. ‘In a moment, this is going to tear into the bare flesh of your back. After a while there won’t be any flesh left. All you have to do is to tell me the nature of your conversation with the Tsar and nothing will happen to you.’

‘Is this what you did to Martin? Whip him till he died?’

‘Cut his coat off!’ Shatilov was shouting to his assistants. Powerscourt felt his jacket being ripped away from his back.

‘You can keep your shirt on to start with, you bastard,’ yelled Shatilov, and the whip whistled through the air to bite deeply into Powerscourt’s back.

‘Tell me about your conversation with the Tsar,’ Shatilov shouted. ‘You’ve got ten seconds before I whip you again. After that your shirt comes off. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six -’

On the count of six there was a tremendous crash as Johnny Fitzgerald and the sergeant from the Black Watch rushed into the room, pistols in their right hands. They made straight for the two soldiers who had left their guns by the chairs in the centre of the room. But it was Ricky Crabbe who was the real revelation in the rescue party. Powerscourt was to say later that he had seen David as in David and Goliath reborn in a dingy house on the outskirts of the Tsar’s Village. He had bestowed about his person a number of large stones. The first of these, less than a second after Johnny had entered the room, he despatched with remarkable accuracy at the head of Major Shatilov. It took him right in the centre of his face and he collapsed to the ground, blood pouring from his face, hands searching amidst the blood for what might remain of his nose.

‘Fantastic shot, Ricky!’ said Powerscourt as Johnny Fitzgerald released them from their ropes. ‘I am so glad to see you all! Now, let’s tie them up. I want to have a word or two with the Major here when he’s strapped to the chair.’

The Black Watch sergeant was expert at binding the prisoners in ways they would not be able to escape from. Shatilov was spitting blood down his uniform as he was locked in position. Powerscourt took a pistol from Shatilov’s pocket and pulled up a couple of chairs next to him.

‘Can you make this sound as bloodthirsty as you can, Mikhail? He’s got to believe that I mean it when I say I’m going to kill him.’

‘Of course,’ said Mikhail.

‘Now then, Major, let me just explain the rules now we’re in charge.’ Powerscourt laughed what he hoped was a bloodthirsty laugh. The Major seemed to find it difficult to talk. ‘All you have to do is to tell us what happened to Mr Martin. Then everything stops. Possibly including you. I haven’t decided on that yet. But what you need to understand is that there are a number of ways in which we could help you talk, and there are a number of us to do it. The sergeant,’ Powerscourt pointed to the six feet four inches of the man from the Black Watch, ‘is very keen to see what happens with one of your knouts on a bare back. Death perhaps by whip. Ricky, our expert marksman here, is anxious to see what happens when people are pelted with stones from different distances. Death maybe by stoning. A biblical death for you, Major. Johnny Fitzgerald is a great believer in the sticks or canes you keep in the corner of the room. Another death by beating. I, believe it or not, Major, believe in the pistol as the means of making you talk. I have made a rough count of the number of bullets available here for this particular gun and I have so far counted fifty-four. I am curious to see how many wounds the human body can sustain before it actually dies.’

There was a sort of gurgle from the chair. Ricky’s stone had certainly left its mark.

‘So,’ said Powerscourt, pointing his pistol absent-mindedly into the middle of Shatilov’s wounded face, ‘let us begin. Why don’t we start with the moment Mr Martin was brought here at about a quarter to ten in the evening. Why don’t you take it on from there, Major?’

There was another gurgle from the Major. Powerscourt turned the pistol to the ground and fired it six inches from Shatilov’s left foot. The noise was deafening. The two soldiers twitched in their ropes as if they thought they might be next.

‘Perhaps that might help your concentration.’ Mikhail was sounding very fierce as he translated the ferocious Powerscourt, the Powerscourt hungry for wounds and thirsty for blood.

There was another gurgle. Powerscourt now placed the barrel of the gun in the middle of Shatilov’s bloody mouth. He could feel the teeth rattling inside. ‘I don’t have to use all the fifty-four bullets, Major. I could kill you now, rather like, I suspect, you killed Mr Martin and took his body away. Now it’s my turn to count to ten. You’d better start talking before I get to ten, Major, or your mouth will disappear. Probably not quite enough to kill you as long as I avoid what passes for your brain. One, two, three . . .’

There was a lot of rustling about in the Shatilov chair. He was trying to shake his head.

‘Four, five, six . . .’

Shatilov’s hands were tied behind his back so he could not point. ‘I think he’s trying to ask you to take the gun out of his mouth, sir,’ said Mikhail.

Powerscourt peered closely at the Major. ‘Seven,’ he said. He withdrew his gun from Shatilov’s mouth. ‘Eight.’

‘It was all an accident,’ Shatilov began, the words slurred and heavy as if he were drunk, and Powerscourt thanked God he hadn’t had to reach ten. He wasn’t at all sure what he would have done.

‘I don’t want to know whether you think it was an accident or not, Major. I’m sure the scribes and Pharisees would have described Christ’s death on the cross as an accident, given half a chance. Just tell me when and how things happened.’

The Major looked at Powerscourt with pleading eyes. Please don’t kill me, they seemed to be saying. Powerscourt was remaining pitiless for the time being. His quest was nearly over.

‘The man Martin,’ Shatilov began, ‘was brought to me here after his interview with the Tsar. He refused to tell me what their discussions were about. He said it was a matter for diplomats, not for secret policemen who weren’t intelligent enough to be employed by the Okhrana.’ That tribute to the intelligence of his staff would have pleased Derzhenov, Powerscourt thought. But he doubted it would have gone down too well in this room with the scarred Major.

‘So what did you do when Mr Martin refused to tell you the nature of his conversations?’ Powerscourt was dangling his gun ostentatiously in the general direction of the Major’s private parts.

‘Well,’ said the Major, glancing down anxiously, ‘we – we thought – we decided to take measures to persuade him to talk.’

Powerscourt took a brief walk up to the end of the table and back, gun in hand, always pointing at Shatilov. ‘What measures?’ he shouted, his face a few inches from the Major.

There was a long gap. Powerscourt wondered if he should start counting again. ‘We beat him,’ whispered the Major.

‘With what?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘The whip.’ Shatilov was virtually inaudible now.

‘Ordinary whip? Or Russian whip?’

‘Russian whip.’ The Major began to whimper now, like an injured child.

Powerscourt hadn’t finished yet. ‘When you say we, Major, do you mean you yourself, or your men or a combination of the two? And if you try to tell a lie I shall pull every last tooth out of your head.’

‘It was me,’ said Shatilov, trying unsuccessfully to rock in his chair.

‘And how long did it go on for?’ asked Powerscourt, feeling waves of pity suddenly for Roderick Martin, owner of Tibenham Grange, lover of Tamara Kerenkova, one of the brightest stars in the bright firmament of the Foreign Office, passing away here under the vicious care of a Russian sadist. He remembered somebody telling him years before that above a certain number of lashes, was it fifty or was it eighty, a victim of the knout would be sure to die. Certainly that death would be a welcome relief.

‘Until he died,’ Shatilov whispered, trying to draw back from Powerscourt.

‘And how long did that take?’ asked Powerscourt sadly, certain that some pedant in the Foreign Office would want to know the answer.

‘Less than half an hour. Maybe twenty minutes? The man must have had a weak heart or something.’

Powerscourt narrowly avoided the temptation to shoot all the Major’s teeth out, one by one. He was nearly finished.

‘And what did you do with his body?’

‘We dumped it on the Nevskii Prospekt and told the police to make a note. Then we put the body through a hole in the ice.’

Somewhere out in the Gulf of Finland, Powerscourt thought, a mutilated body was floating with the fishes. Maybe the weals on Martin’s back might have eased a little after their passage through the salt water. Even now, he felt sure, there would still be enough wounds on the battered corpse to tell whoever might find him, be they Balt or Finn or Estonian, that this man did not have an easy passage to the other side. Martin had served his King and country well. He had kept faith to the end, even at the cost of the most terrible pain. Now Powerscourt understood why they had never known how Martin had died, whether he had been shot or strangled. Shatilov could not let the police report say he had been tortured to death.

Somehow, Mikhail seemed to sense that the interrogation was at an end.

‘What are you going to do with him, Lord Powerscourt? This disgrace here.’ He nodded contemptuously at the figure of Shatilov, whimpering like one who thinks his last hour has come.

‘What indeed?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Part of me would like to kill him here and now. He murdered a compatriot of mine in the most horrible way. He is an appalling human being. I don’t think he deserves to live. But I can’t kill him. I’m not a Russian court or a Russian judge or a Russian court martial, though God knows what any of those would do with him. I’m not a Lord High Executioner.’

‘But your mission here, Lord Powerscourt, the quest to find out what happened to Mr Martin, the nature of his conversations with the Tsar, you know all that now. Your work here is done, is that so?’

‘Who knows?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Sergeant,’ he said to the man from the Black Watch, ‘can you make sure these people are properly tied up? So they won’t escape for days? And gag them so they can’t make a noise,’ he added, thinking incongruously of the victims of Derzhenov’s basement. ‘When you’ve done that, let’s go home.’