Fandorin in English 1-10

Fandorin turned over a page.

'This is Jack's work without a doubt. The prostitute Mary Jane Kelly was discovered in her own room on Dorset Street, where she normally received her clients. Her throat had been slit, her breasts had been cut off, the soft tissue on her thighs had been stripped away, her internal organs had been laid out neatly on the bed and her stomach had been cut open - it is conjectured that the killer consumed its contents.'

Anisii's stomach began churning again, as it had that morning at the cemetery.

'On her temple she had the bloody imprint of lips that is familiar to us from Andreichkina's corpse.'

Erast Petrovich broke off his reasoning at this point, because Angelina had come into the study: in a plain grey dress and black shawl, with locks of blonde hair dangling over her forehead -the fresh wind must have tugged them free. The Chief's lady-friend dressed in various styles, sometimes like a lady, but best of all she liked simple, Russian clothes like the ones she was wearing today.

Are you working? Am I in the way?' she asked with a tired smile.

Tulipov leapt to his feet and hurried to reply before his chief: 'Of course not, Angelina Samsonovna. We're glad to see you.'

'Yes, yes,' said Fandorin with a nod. 'Have you come from the hospital?'

The beautiful woman lifted the shawl off her shoulders and pinned her rebellious hair in place. 'It was interesting today. Dr Bloom taught us how to lance boils. It turns out not to be hard at all.'

Anisii knew that Angelina, the kind soul, went to the Shtrobinderovsky Clinic on Mamonov Lane to help relieve the pain of the suffering. At first she had taken them presents and read the Bible to them, but then she had begun to feel that was not enough. She wanted to be of genuine benefit, to learn to be a nurse. Erast Petrovich had tried to dissuade her, but Angelina had insisted on having her own way.

A saintly woman, the kind that was the very foundation of Russia itself: prayer, help for one's neighbour, a loving heart. She might seem to be living in sin, but no impurity could stick to her. And it wasn't her fault that she found herself in the position of an unmarried wife, Anisii thought yet again, feeling angry with his chief.

Fandorin frowned. 'You've been lancing boils?'

'Yes,' she said with a joyful smile. 'For two poor old beggar women. It's Wednesday; they can come without having to pay. Don't worry, Erast Petrovich, I managed it very well, and the doctor praised me. I can already do a lot of things. And afterwards I read the Book of Job to the old women, for spiritual reinforcement.'

'You'd have done better to give them money,' Erast Petrovich said in annoyance. 'They're not interested in your book or your concern.'

Angelina replied: 'I did give them money, fifty kopecks each. And I have more need for this care and concern than they do. I'm far too happy living with you, Erast Petrovich. It makes me feel guilty. Happiness is good, but it's a sin to forget about those who are unhappy in your happiness. Help them, look at their sores and remember that your happiness is a gift from God, and not many people in this world are granted it. Why do you think there are so many beggars and cripples around all the palaces and mansions?'

'That's obvious enough: they give more there.'

'No, poor people give more than the rich. It's the Lord showing the fortunate people the unfortunate, saying: Remember how much suffering there is in the world and don't try to ignore it.'

Erast Petrovich sighed and made no attempt to reply to his mistress. He obviously couldn't think of anything to say. He turned towards Anisii and rattled his beads. 'Let's c-carry on. So, I am proceeding on the assumption that Jack the Ripper's last crime in England was the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, committed on the ninth of November, and that he was not involved in the case of the twentieth of December. In the Russian style, the ninth of November is still the end of October, and so Jack the Ripper had enough time to get to Moscow and add a victim of his perverted imagination to the November ditch at Bozhedomka. Agreed?'

Anisii nodded.

'Is it very likely that two maniacs would appear in Europe who act in an absolutely identical fashion, following scenarios that coincide in every detail?'

Anisii shook his head.

'Then the final question, before we get down to business: is the likelihood I have already mentioned so slight that we can concentrate entirely on the basic hypothesis?'

Two nods, so energetic that Tulipov's celebrated ears swayed. Anisii held his breath, knowing that now a miracle would take place before his very eyes: an elegant thesis would emerge, conjured up out of nothing, out of the empty mist, complete with search methods, plan of investigative measures and perhaps even specific suspects.

'Let us sum up. For some reason so far unknown to us, Jack the Ripper has come to Moscow and set about eliminating the local prostitutes and vagrants in a most determined fashion. That is one.' The Chief clicked his beads to add conviction to his assertion. 'He arrived here in November last year. That is two (click!). He has spent the recent months in the city, or if he has gone away, then not for long. That is three (click!). He is a doctor or he has studied medicine, since he possesses a surgical instrument, knows how to use it and is skilled in anatomical dissection. That is f-four.'

A final click, and the Chief put the beads away in the pocket of his dressing gown, which indicated that the investigation had moved on from the theoretical stage to the practical.

As you can see, Tulipov, the task does not appear so very complicated.'

Anisii could not yet see that, and so he refrained from nodding.

'Oh, come now,' Erast Petrovich said in surprise. 'All that's required is to check everyone who arrived in Russia from England and settled in Moscow during the period that interests us. Not even everybody, in fact - only those who are connected or have at some time been connected with medicine. And th-that's all. You'll be surprised when you see how narrow the range of the search is.'

Why indeed, how simple! Moscow was not St Petersburg; how many medical men could have arrived in the old capital from England in November?'

'So let's start checking the new arrivals registered at all the police stations!' said Anisii, leaping to his feet, ready to get straight down to work. 'Only twenty-four inquiries to make! That's where we'll find our friend: in the registers!'

Angelina had missed the beginning of Erast Petrovich's speech, but she had listened to the rest very carefully and she asked a very reasonable question: 'What if this murderer of yours didn't register with the police?'

'It's not very likely' the Chief replied. 'He's a very thorough individual who has lived in one place for a long time and travels freely across Europe. Why would he take the unnecessary risk of infringing the provisions of the law? After all, he is not a political terrorist, or a fugitive convict, but a maniac. All of a maniac's aggression goes into his "idea"; he has no strength left over for any other activities. Usually they are quiet, unobtrusive people and you would never think that they c-carry all the torments of hell around inside their heads ... Please sit down, Tulipov. There's no need to go running off anywhere. What do you think I have been doing all morning, while you were disturbing the dead?' He picked up several sheets of paper, covered in formal clerk's handwriting, off the desk. 'I telephoned the district superintendents and asked them to obtain for me the registration details of everyone who arrived in Moscow directly from England or via any intermediary point. To be on the safe side, I asked for November as well as December - just a precaution: what if Rose Millet was killed by our Ripper after all, and your November discovery, on the contrary, turns out to be the work of some indigenous cut-throat? It is hard to reach any firm conclusions on the pathology of a body that has been lying in the ground for five months, even if the ground was frozen. But those two bodies from December - that's a serious matter.'

'That makes sense,' Anisii agreed. 'The November corpse really wasn't exactly ... Zakharov didn't even want to rummage inside it; he said it was profanation. In November the earth hadn't really frozen yet, so the body had rotted a bit. Oh, I beg your pardon, Angelina Samsonovna!' Tulipov exclaimed, alarmed in case his excessive naturalism had upset her. But apparently his alarm was needless: Angelina had no intention of fainting, and the expression in her grey eyes remained as serious and intent as ever.

'There, you see. But even over two months only thirty-nine people arrived here from England, including, by the way, myself and Angelina Samsonovna. But, with your permission, I won't include the t-two of us in our list.' Erast Petrovich smiled. 'Of the remainder, twenty-three did not stay in Moscow for long and therefore are of no interest to us. That leaves fourteen, of whom only three have any connection with medicine.'

Aha!' Anisii exclaimed avidly.

'Naturally, the first to attract my attention was the doctor of medicine George Seville Lindsey. The Department of Gendarmes keeps him under secret surveillance, as it does all foreigners, so making inquiries could not have been any easier. Alas, Mr Lindsey does not fit the bill. It turned out that before coming to Moscow he spent only one and a half months in his homeland. Before that he was working in India, far from the East End of London. He was offered a position in the Catherine the Great Hospital, and that is why he came here. That leaves two, both Russian. A man and a woman.'

A woman couldn't have done anything like this,' Angelina said firmly. 'There are all sorts of monsters amongst us women too, but hacking stomachs open with a knife - that takes strength. And we women don't like the sight of blood.'

'We are dealing here with a special kind of being, unlike ordinary people,' Fandorin objected. 'This is not a man and it is not a woman, but something like a third sex or, to put it simply, a monster. We can by no means exclude women. Some of them are physically strong too. Not to mention that at a certain level of skill in the use of a scalpel, no special strength is required. For instance' - he glanced at one of his sheets of paper - 'the midwife Elizaveta Nesvitskaya, a spinster twenty-eight years of age, arrived from England via St Petersburg on the nineteenth of November. An unusual individual. At the age of seventeen she spent two years in prison on political charges and was then exiled by administrative order to a colony in the Arkhangelsk province. She fled the country and graduated from the medical faculty of Edinburgh University. Applied to be allowed to return to her motherland. She returned. Her request for her medical diploma to be accepted as valid is under consideration by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in the meantime Nesvitskaya has set herself up as a midwife at the recently opened Morozov Gynaecological Hospital. She is under secret surveillance by the police. According to detectives' reports, although her right to work as a doctor has not yet been confirmed, Nesvitskaya is receiving patients from among the poor and impecunious. The hospital administration turns a blind eye and secretly even encourages her - no one wishes to waste their time on dealing with the poor. That is the information that we p-possess on Nesvitskaya.'

'During the time the Ripper committed his crimes, she was in London - that is one,' Tulipov began summarising. When the crimes were committed in Moscow, she was here - that is two. She possesses medical skills - that is three. From what we know, her personality seems to be unusual and not particularly feminine in its make-up - that is four. Nesvitskaya can certainly not be discounted.'

'Precisely. And in addition to that, let us not forget that in the London murders and in the murder of the spinster Andreichkina there are no indications of the sexual molestation which is usual when the maniac is a man.'

'And who's the other one?' asked Angelina.

'Ivan Stenich. Thirty years old. A former student of the medical faculty of the Moscow Imperial University. Excluded seven years ago "for immoral conduct". God only knows what was meant by that, but it looks as though it might fit our bill all right. He has held several jobs, been treated for psychological illness, travelled around Europe. Arrived in Russia from England on the eleventh of December. Since the New Year he has been working as a male nurse in the Assuage My Sorrows hospital for the insane.'

Tulipov slapped his hand on the table: 'Damned suspicious!'

And so, we have t-two suspects. If neither of them is involved, then we shall follow the line suggested by Angelina Sam-sonovna - that when Jack the Ripper arrived in Moscow he managed to avoid the eyes of the police. And only if we are convinced that this too must be excluded will we then abandon the main hypothesis and start to search for a home-grown Ivan the Ripper who has never been to the East End in his life. Agreed?'

'Yes, but it is the same Jack anyway' Anisii declared with conviction. 'Everything fits.'

'Who do you prefer to deal with, Tulipov - the male nurse or the midwife?' the Chief asked. 'I offer you the right to choose as the martyr of the exhumation.'

'Since this Stenich works in a mental hospital, I have an excellent excuse for making his acquaintance: Sonya,' said Anisii, expressing this apparently perfectly reasonable idea with more vehemence than cold logic required. A man - and one with a history of mental illness at that - appeared a more promising candidate for the Ripper than a runaway revolutionary.

All right, then,' Erast Petrovich said with a smile. 'Off you go to Lefortovo, and I'll go to Devichie Polye, to see Nesvitskaya.'

In fact, however, Anisii was obliged to deal with both the former student and the midwife, because at that very moment the doorbell rang.

Masa entered and announced: 'Post.' Then he explained, taking great satisfaction in pronouncing the difficult phrase: 'A smopackadj'.

The package was indeed small. Written on the grey wrapping paper in a hand that was vigorous but careless and irregular was: 'To His Honour Collegiate Counsellor Fandorin in person. Urgent and strictly secret.'

Tulipov felt curious, but his chief did not unwrap the package immediately.

'Did the p-postman bring it? There's no address written on it.'

'No, a boy. Hand to me and wan away. Should I catchim?' Masa asked in alarm.

'If he ran away, you won't catch him now'

Underneath the wrapping paper there was a small velvet box, tied round with a red satin ribbon. In the box, resting on a napkin, there was a yellow object. For the first moment Anisii thought it was a forest mushroom, a milky cap. He looked closer and gasped.

It was a human ear.

The rumours have spread round Moscow.

Supposedly a werewolf has appeared in the city. If any woman puts her nose outside the door at night, the werewolf is there in a flash. He creeps along so quietly, with his red eye glinting behind the fence, and if you don't say your prayers in time, your Christian soul is done for - he leaps out and the first thing he does is sink his teeth into your throat, and then he tears your belly to shreds and munches and crunches on your insides. And apparently this werewolf has already bitten out countless numbers of women's throats, only the authorities are keeping it a secret from the people, because the Father-Tsar is afraid.

That's what they were saying today at the Sukharev Market.

That is about me, I am the werewolf who is prowling their city. It's funny. My kind don't simply appear in a place, they are sent to bring terrible or joyful news. And I have been sent to you, citizens of Moscow, with joyful news.

Ugly city and ugly people, I will make you beautiful. Not all of you, please forgive me - that would be too much. But many, many.

I love you, with all your hideous abominations and deformities. I only wish you well. I have enough love for all of you. I see Beauty under lice-ridden clothes, under the scabs on an unwashed body, under rashes and eruptions. I am your saviour and your salvatrix. I am your brother and sister, father and mother, husband and wife. I am a woman and I am a man. I am an androgyne, that most beautiful ancestor of humanity, who possessed the characteristics of both sexes. Then the androgynes were divided into two halves, male and female, and people appeared - unhappy, remote from perfection, suffering from loneliness.

I am your missing half. Nothing prevents me from reuniting with those of you whom I choose.

The Lord has given me intelligence, cunning, foresight and invulnerability. Stupid, crude, dull, grey people tried to catch the androgyne in London without even attempting to understand the meaning of the messages he sent to the world.

At first these pitiful attempts amused me. Then a bitter taste rose in my throat.

Perhaps my own land will receive the prophet, I thought. Irrational and mystical Russia, which has still not lost true faith, lured me to itself with its eunuch skoptsy sect, its schismatics, its self-immolations and its ascetics - and it seems to have deceived me. Now the same stupid, crude kind of people, devoid of imagination, are trying to catch the Decorator in Moscow. It amuses me; at night I shudder and shake in silent laughter. No one sees these fits of merriment, and if they did, no doubt they would think there was something wrong with me. Well certainly, if everyone who is not like them is mad; but in that case Christ is also mad, and all the holy saints, and all the insane geniuses of whom they are so proud.

In the daytime I am not different in any way from all the ugly, pitiful people with all their vain concerns. I am a virtuoso of mimicry; they could never guess that I am from a different race.

How can they disdain God's gift - their own bodies? My duty and my calling is to teach them a little about Beauty. I make the ugly beautiful. I do not touch those who are beautiful. They are not an offence against the image of God.

Life is a thrilling, jolly game. Cat and mouse, hide and seek. I hide and I seek. One-two-three-four-five, ready or not, I'm coming. If you're not hiding, it's not my fault.

CHAPTER 4

Tortoise, Setter, Lioness, Hare

Holy Week Wednesday, 5 April, afternoon

Anisii told Palasha to dress Sonya up in her holiday clothes. His sister, a full-grown adult but mentally retarded, was delighted and began gurgling in joy. For her, the poor imbecile, going on any trip was an event, wherever it was to, and she was particularly fond of visiting the 'dot' (in Sonya's language that meant 'doctor'). They talked to her patiently for a long time there; they always gave her a sweet or a spice cake; they put a cold metal thing against her chest and pressed her tummy so that it tickled and gazed into her mouth - and Sonya was happy to help by opening it wide enough for them to see everything inside.

They called a cabbie they knew, Nazar Stepanich. As always, at first Sonya was a little bit afraid of the calm horse Mukha, who snorted with her nostrils and jangled her harness, squinting with her bloody eyes at the fat, ungainly woman swaddled in shawls.

They drove from Granatny Lane to the Lefortovo district. Usually they went to a closer place, to Dr Maxim Khristoforich on Rozhdestvenka Street, to the Mutual Assistance Society; but this time they had to make the journey right across the city.

They had to drive around Trubnaya Street - it was completely flooded. When would the sunshine ever come and dry the ground out? Moscow looked dour and untidy. The houses were grey, the roads were dirty, the people all seemed to be wrapped in rags and hunched up against the wind. But Sonya seemed to like it. Every now and then she nudged her brother in the side with her elbow - 'Nisii, Nisii' - and pointed at the rooks in a tree, a water wagon, a drunken apprentice. But she prevented him from thinking. And he had a lot to think about - the severed ear, which the chief was dealing with in person, and his own difficult task.

The Emperor Alexander Society's Assuage My Sorrows Hospital, for the treatment of psychiatric, nervous and paralytic illnesses, was located on Hospital Square, beyond the River Yauza. He knew that Stenich was working as a male nurse with Dr Rozenfeld in department five, where they treated the most violent and hopeless cases.

After paying five roubles at the desk, Anisii took his sister to Rozenfeld. He began telling the doctor in detail about what had been happening with Sonya recently: she had begun to wake up crying in the night and twice she had pushed Palasha away, which had never happened before, and she had suddenly got into the habit of toying with a little mirror and staring into it for hours with her little piggy eyes.

It took a long time to tell the doctor everything. A man in a white coat came into the surgery twice. The first time he brought some boiled syringes, then he took the prescription for making up some tincture or other. The doctor spoke to him politely. So he had to be Stenich. Exhausted and pale, with immense eyes, he had grown his straight hair long, but he shaved his beard and moustache, which gave his face an almost medieval look.

Leaving his sister with the doctor to be examined, Anisii went out into the corridor and glanced in through a half-open door with the inscription 'Treatment Room'. Stenich had his back to him and was mixing up some green stuff in a small bottle. What could Anisii see from the back? Stooped shoulders, a white coat, patches on the back of his boots.

The Chief had taught him that the key to success lay in the first phrase of a conversation. If you could get the conversation going smoothly, then the door would open; you'd find out anything you wanted from the other person. The trick was to make sure you identified their type correctly. There weren't all that many types - according to Erast Petrovich there were exactly sixteen, and there was an approach for each of them.

Oh, if only he didn't get it wrong. He hadn't really mastered this tricky science completely yet. From what they knew about Stenich, and also from visual observation, he was a 'tortoise': an unsociable, suspicious type turned in on himself, living in a state of interminable internal monologue.

If that was right, then the correct approach was 'to show your belly' - that is, to demonstrate that you are defenceless and not dangerous and then, without even the slightest pause, to make a 'breach': to pierce through all the protective layers of alienation and caution, to take the other person by surprise, only without frightening him, God forbid, by being aggressive, or putting him off. You had to interest him, send a signal that seemed to say: You and I are berries from the same field, we speak the same language.

Tulipov mentally crossed himself and had a go. 'That was a good look you gave my idiot sister in the surgery just now. I liked it. It showed interest, but without pity. The doctor's just the opposite: he pities her all right, but he's not really all that interested in looking at her. Only the mentally ill don't need pity; they can be happier than we are. That's an interesting subject, all right: a being that looks like us, but is really quite different. And sometimes something might be revealed to an idiot that is a sealed book to us. I expect you think that too, don't you? I could see it in your eyes. You ought to be the doctor, not this Rozenfeld. Are you a student?'

Stenich turned round and blinked. He looked a little taken aback by the breach, but in the right kind of way, without feeling frightened or getting his back up. He answered curtly in the way a tortoise was supposed to: 'I used to be.'

The approach had been chosen correctly. Now that the key was in the lock, according to the teachings of the Chief, he should grab it immediately and turn it until it clicked. There was a subtle point here: with a tortoise you had to avoid being too familiar, you mustn't narrow the distance between you, or he'd immediately withdraw into his shell.

'Not a political, are you?' asked Anisii, pretending to be disappointed. 'Then I'm a very poor reader of faces: I took you for a man with imagination; I wanted to ask you about my idiot sister ... These socialists are no good as psychiatrists - they're too carried away with the good of society, but they couldn't give a damn for the individual members of society, especially for imbeciles like my Sonya. Pardon my frankness, I'm a man who likes to speak directly. Goodbye, I'd better go and have a talk with Rozenfeld.'

He turned sharply to go away, in the appropriate manner for a 'setter' (outspoken, impetuous, with sharply defined likes and dislikes) - the ideal match for a tortoise.

'As you wish,' said the male nurse, stung to the quick. 'Only I've never concerned myself with the good of society, and I was excluded from the faculty for something quite different.'

Aha!' Tulipov exclaimed, raising one finger triumphantly. 'The eye! The eye, it never deceives! I was right about you after all. You live according to your own judgement and follow your own road. It doesn't matter that you're only a medical assistant; I take no notice of titles. Give me a keen, lively man who doesn't judge things by the common standard. I've despaired of taking Sonya round the doctors. All of them just sing the same old tune: oligophrenia, the extreme stage, a hopeless case. But I sense that inside her soul is alive, it can be awakened. Will you not give me a consultation?'

'I'm not a medical assistant either,' Stenich replied, apparently touched by this stranger's frankness (and his flattery, of course -a man likes to be flattered). 'It's true that Mr Rozenfeld does use me as a medical assistant, but officially I'm only a male nurse. And I work without pay, as a volunteer. To make amends for my sins.'

Ah, so that's it, thought Anisii. That's where the glum look came from, and the resignation. I'll have to adjust my line of approach.

Speaking in the most serious voice he could muster, he said: 'You have chosen a good path for the exculpation of your sins. Far better than lighting candles in a church or beating your forehead against the church porch. May God grant you quick relief.'

'I don't want it quickly!' Stenich cried with unexpected ardour, and his eyes, which had been dull, were instantly aglow with fire and passion. 'Let it be hard, let it be long! That will be the best way, the right way! I... I don't talk with people often, I'm very reserved. And I'm used to being alone. But there's something in you that encourages frank talking. I feel like talking ... Otherwise, I'm on my own all the time; my mind could go again soon.'

Anisii was truly amazed by the results of his chief's method! The key had fitted the lock, and fitted it so well that the door had swung open of its own accord. He didn't need to do anything else, just listen and agree with everything.

The pause unsettled the male nurse. 'Perhaps you don't have any time?' His voice trembled. 'I know you have problems of your own; you can't have time for other people's confessions...'

A man with troubles of his own will understand another person's troubles better,' Anisii said jesuitically. 'What is eating at your soul? You can tell me. We're strangers; we don't even know each other's name. We'll have a talk and go our separate ways. What sin do you have on your soul?'

For just a moment Anisii dreamed of him dropping to his knees, bursting into sobs and saying: 'Forgive me, you good man, I am cursed, I bear the weight of bloody sin, I disembowel women with a scalpel.' And that would be it, case closed, and Tulipov would be rewarded by his superiors and, best of all, there'd be a word of praise from the Chief.

But no, Stenich didn't drop to his knees and he said something quite different: 'Pride. All my life I've been tormented by it. I took this job, this heavy, dirty work, in order to conquer it. I clean up the foul mess from the mad patients; no job is too disgusting for me. Humiliation and resignation - that's the best medicine for pride.'

'So you were excluded from the university for pride?' Anisii said, unable to conceal his disappointment.

What? Ah, from the university. No, that was something different ... I'll tell you - why not? - in order to humble my pride.' The male nurse blushed violently, turning bright red all the way up to the parting in his hair. 'I used to have another sin, a serious one: voluptuousness. I've overcome it now. Life has helped me. But in my young years I was depraved - not so much out of sensuality as out of curiosity. It's even viler, out of curiosity, don't you think?'

Anisii didn't know how to answer that, but it would be interesting to hear about the sin. What if there was a thread leading from this voluptuousness to the murder?

'I don't see any sin at all in sensuality' he said aloud. 'Sin is when you hurt your neighbour. But who's hurt by a bit of sensuality, provided of course there's no violence involved?'

Stenich just shook his head. Ah, you're still young, sir. Have you not heard of the Sadist Circle? How could you? - you probably hadn't even finished grammar school then. It was exactly seven years ago this April ... But in Moscow not many people know about the case. The rumours spread in medical circles, all right, but not much leaks out of them; it's a matter of esprit de corps, sticking together, a common front. Mind you, they threw me out...'

What was that, the saddler's circle?' asked Anisii, pretending to be stupid but remembering that Stenich had been excluded for 'immoral behaviour'.

Senich laughed grimly. 'Not exactly. There were about fifteen of us, wild students in the medical faculty, and two girl students. It was a dark, oppressive time. A year earlier the nihilists had blown up the Tsar-Liberator. We were nihilists too, but without any politics. In those days, for politics we'd have been sentenced to hard labour or worse. But all they did was pack our leader Sotsky off to a penal battalion. With no trial, no fuss, by ministerial decree. Some of the others were transferred to nonmedical faculties - pharmacists, chemists, anatomists - they weren't considered worthy of the exalted title of doctor. And some, like me, were simply flung out, if we couldn't find anyone highly placed to intercede for us.'

'That's a bit harsh, isn't it?' Tulipov asked with a sympathetic sigh. 'What on earth did you get up to?'

'Nowadays I tend to think it wasn't harsh at all. It was exactly right... You know, very young men who have chosen the path of medicine sometimes fall into a sort of cynicism. They become firmly convinced that man is not the image of God, but a machine made of joints, bones, nerves and various other bits of stuffing. On the early years of the course it's regarded as daring to take breakfast in the morgue and stand your bottle of beer on the stomach of a "piece of carrion" that's only just been sewn up. And there are jokes more vulgar than that - I won't tell you about them; they're disgusting. But these are all quite standard pranks: we went further. There were a few among us who had a lot of money, so we had the chance to cut loose. Simple debauchery wasn't enough for us any more. Our leader, the late departed Sotsky had a fantastic imagination. He didn't come back from the penal battalion; he died there, or he would have carried on even further. We were especially fond of sadistic amusements. We'd find the ugliest streetwalker we could, pay her twenty-five roubles and then mock and torment her. We took it too far ... Once, in a fifty-kopeck bordello, when we'd had too much to drink, we took an old whore who would do anything for three roubles and worked her so hard she died ... The incident was hushed up and it never reached the courts. And everything was decided quietly, with no scandal. I was angry at first, because they'd shattered my life - I was studying on a pittance, giving lessons and sending my mother as much as I could ... But afterwards, years later, I suddenly realised I deserved it.'

Anisii screwed up his eyes.

'How do you mean - "suddenly"?'

'It just happened,' Stenich replied curtly and sternly. 'I saw God.'

There's something here, thought Tulipov. Probe here and I'll probably find the 'idea' the boss was talking about. How can I turn the conversation to England?

'I expect life has tossed you about quite a lot? Have you not tried seeking happiness abroad?'

'Happiness? No, I haven't looked for that. But I've searched for obscenities in various countries. And found more than enough, may the Lord forgive me.' Stenich crossed himself, facing the icon of the Saviour hanging in the corner.

Then Anisii asked in a simple-minded kind of voice: And have you ever been to England? That's my dream, but I'm obviously never going to get there. Everyone says it's an exceptionally civilised country.'

'Strange that you should ask about England,' said the repentant sinner, looking at Anisii intently. 'You're a strange gentleman altogether. Whatever you ask, it always hits the bull's eye. It was in England that I saw God. Until that moment I was living an unworthy, degrading kind of life. I was sponging off a certain crazy madcap. And then I decided to change everything all at once.'

'You said yourself that humiliation is good for conquering pride. So why did you decide to leave a humiliating life? That's not logical.'

Anisii had wanted to find out a bit more about Stenich's life in England, but he had committed a crude error: his question had put the tortoise on the defensive, and that was something he ought not to have done under any circumstances.

Stenich instantly withdrew into his shell: And who are you, to go interpreting the logic of my soul? What am I doing whinging to you like this anyway?'

The male nurse's gaze was suddenly inflamed with hate, his slim fingers began fumbling convulsively at the table. And on the table there happened to be a metal pan with various medical instruments. Anisii remembered that Stenich had been treated for mental illness, and he backed out into the corridor. Stenich wouldn't tell him anything else useful now.

But even so, certain things had been clarified.

Now he had a really long road to travel, from Lefortovo to the opposite extreme of Moscow, Devichie Polye, to the Timofei Morozov Gynaecological Clinic, financed by the resources of the rich Counsellor of Commerce, at the Moscow Imperial University. With all her disabilities Sonya was still a woman, and some female problems or other were sure to be found. And so the imbecile was to be useful to the inquiry yet again.

Sonya was in an agitated state - the 'dot' at Lefortovo had made a strong impression on her.

'Mer tap-tap, knee hop-hop, nofraid, sweety no,' she said boisterously, telling her brother about her adventures.

To anybody else, it was a meaningless jumble of sounds, but Anisii understood everything: the doctor had hit her knee with a little hammer, and her knee had jerked, only Sonya hadn't been afraid at all, but the doctor hadn't given her a sweet.

So that she wouldn't prevent him from concentrating, he stopped the cab at the Orphan's Institute and bought a large, poisonous-red sugar cockerel on a stick. Sonya stopped talking. She stuck her tongue out a good two inches and licked, staring around with her pale little eyes. So much had happened today, and she didn't know that there were still a lot of interesting things to come. She'd need a lot of attention in the evening; she'd be too excited to get to sleep for a long time.

They finally arrived. The generous Counsellor of Commerce had built a fine clinic, there was no denying that. The Morozov family had done a lot of good for the city in general. Recently the newspapers had written that Honorary Citizen Madam Morozova had organised working trips abroad for young engineers, in order to improve their practical knowledge. Now anyone who completed the full course at the Moscow Imperial Technical College could take a trip to England if he wanted, or even the United States - provided, of course, that he was Orthodox by faith and Russian by blood. It was a great thing. And here in the gynaecological clinic, consultation and treatment were free for the poor on Mondays and Tuesdays. Wasn't that remarkable?

Today, though, it was Wednesday.

Anisii read the announcement in the reception room: 'Consultation with the professor - ten roubles. Appointment with the doctor - five roubles. Appointment with the female doctor Roganova - three roubles.'

A bit on the expensive side,' Tulipov complained to the attendant. 'My sister's retarded. Won't they take a retarded patient cheaper?'

At first the attendant replied sternly: 'It's not allowed. Come back on Monday or Tuesday'

But then he looked at Sonya, standing there with her mouth open, and his heart softened.

'You could go to the obstetrical department, to Lizaveta Nesvitskaya. She's as good as a doctor, even though she's only called a midwife. She charges less, or nothing at all, if she takes pity on someone.'

This was excellent. Nesvitskaya was at work.

They walked out of the waiting room and turned into a small garden. As they were approaching the yellow, two-storey building of the obstetrical department, something dramatic happened. A window on the first floor slammed open and there was a loud tinkling of glass. Anisii saw a young woman climb up into the window, wearing just her nightdress, with her long black hair tangled across her shoulders.

'Go away you torturers,' the woman howled. 'I hate you. You're trying to kill me!'

She looked down - the storeys in the building were tall and it was a long way to the ground - then she pressed her back against the stone wall and began edging along the parapet in small steps, away from the window. Sonya froze, watching with her mouth hanging open slackly. She'd never seen a wonder like this before.

Immediately several heads appeared at the window and began trying to persuade the black-haired woman not to play the fool and come back.

But it was clear that the woman was distressed. She was swaying, and the parapet was narrow. She was about to fall or jump. The snow below had melted, the earth was bare and covered with stones with some kind of iron rods sticking up out of it. It would be certain death or severe injury.

Tulipov looked to the left and the right. People were gaping, but the expression on all their faces was confusion. What should he do?

'Bring a tarpaulin, or at least a blanket!' he shouted to an orderly who had come out for a smoke and frozen at the sight, with his small cigar clutched in his teeth. He started and went darting off, but he was unlikely to be in time.

A tall woman pushed her way through the people clustered at the window and climbed determinedly out on to the window sill - a white coat, steel pince-nez, hair pulled into a tight knot at the back of her head.

'Ermolaeva, don't be so stupid!' she shouted in a commanding voice. 'Your son's crying; he wants his milk!' And then she set off boldly along the parapet.

'It's not my son!' the dark-haired woman squealed. 'It's a foundling! Don't come near me, I'm afraid of you!'

The woman in the white coat took another step and reached out her hand, but Ermolaeva turned away and jumped with a howl.

The spectators gasped - at the very last instant the doctor had managed to grab the crazed woman just below the collar. The night-shirt tore, but it held. The dangling woman's legs were shamefully exposed, and Anisii began blinking rapidly, but immediately felt ashamed of himself - there was no time for that sort of thing now. The doctor grabbed hold of a drainpipe with one hand and held Ermolaeva with the other. Now she'd have to let the other woman go, or come tumbling down with her.

Anisii tore his greatcoat off his shoulders and waved to two men standing nearby. They stretched the coat out as far as it would go, and stood under the dangling woman.

'I can't hold on any longer! My fingers are slipping!' the iron doctor shouted, and at that very moment the black-haired woman fell.

The blow knocked them all down into a heap. Tulipov jumped up and shook his jarred wrists. The woman lay there with her eyes closed, but seemingly alive, and there was no sign of any blood. One of Anisii's helpers, who looked like a shop assistant, sat on the ground and whimpered, clutching his shoulder. Anisii's greatcoat was a sorry sight - it had lost both sleeves and the collar had split - a new greatcoat, he only had it made last autumn: forty-five roubles.

The woman doctor was already there - she must have moved really fast. She squatted down over the unconscious woman, felt her pulse, rubbed her hands and feet: 'Alive and unhurt.'

To Anisii she said: 'Well done for thinking of using your coat.'

'What's wrong with her?'

'Puerperal fever. Temporary insanity. Rare, but it happens. What's wrong with you?' she said, turning to the shop assistant. 'Put your shoulder out? Come here.' She took hold of him with her strong hands and gave a sudden jerk - the shop assistant gave a loud gasp.

A female medical assistant ran up, caught her breath and asked: 'Lizaveta Andreevna, what shall we do with Ermolaeva?'

'Put her in the isolation ward - under three blankets; give her an injection of morphine. Let her sleep for while. And be careful not to take your eyes off her.' She turned to go.

'I was actually coming to see you, Miss Nesvitskaya,' Anisii said, thinking: The Chief was right not to exclude women from suspicion. A mare like this could easily choke you with her bare hands, never mind slicing you up with a scalpel.

'Who are you? What's your business?' The glance through the pince-nez was stern, not feminine at all.

'Tulipov, Provincial Secretary. Look, I've brought an imbecile for a consultation on women's matters. She seems to suffer a lot with her periods. Will you agree to take a look at her?'

Nesvitskaya looked at Sonya and asked briskly: An imbecile? Does she have a sex life? Are you cohabiting with her?'

'Of course not!' Anisii exclaimed in horror. 'She's my sister. She was born like this.'

'Can you pay? From those who can afford it I take two roubles for an examination.'

'I'll pay, with the greatest of pleasure,' Tulipov hastened to reassure her.

'If paying gives you that much pleasure, then why come to me and not to the doctor or the professor? All right, let's go to my surgery'

She set off with rapid, broad strides. Anisii grabbed hold of Sonya's hand and followed her. He worked out his line of behaviour as he went.

There was no doubt about her type: a classic 'lioness'. The recommended approach was to act embarrassed and to mumble. That made lionesses soften.

The midwife's surgery was small and neat, with nothing superfluous: a gynaecological chair, a table and a chair. There were two brochures on the table: 'Problems of hygiene and women's clothing', written by A. N. Sobolev, docent of obstretics and women's ailments, and 'Proceedings of the Society for the Propagation of Practical Knowledge Among Educated Women'.

There was an advertisement hanging on the wall:

LADIES' HYGIENIC PADS

Manufactured from sublimated timber fibre

A very comfortable fastening, with the use of a belt, to be worn by ladies during difficult periods. The price of a dozen pads is one rouble. The price of the belt is from 40 kop. to 1 r. 50 kop.

Egorov's House, Pokrovka Street

Anisii sighed and began to mumble: 'You see, the reason I decided to come to you, Miss Nesvitskaya is... well, you see, I've heard that actually you have the highest possible qualifications, although you hold a position that doesn't correspond at all to the learning possessed by such a worthy individual... Of course, not that I have anything at all against the title of midwife ... I didn't mean to belittle or, God forbid, express any doubts, on the contrary in fact...'

He thought he'd done really well, and even managed to blush a little, but Nesvitskaya's response astonished him: she took Anisii firmly by the shoulders and turned his face to the light

'Well now, well now, I know that look around the eyes. Would you be a police spy, then? You've started working with a bit of imagination now, even picked up an imbecile from somewhere. What else do you want from me? Why can't you just leave me in peace? If you're thinking of making something of my illegal practice, then the director knows all about it.' She pushed him away in disgust.

Tulipov rubbed his shoulders - she had a fierce grip. Sonya pressed herself against her brother in fright and began to whine; Anisii stroked her hair.

'Don't you be frightened. The lady's only joking, playing games. She's kind, she's a doctor... Elizaveta Andreevna, you're mistaken about me. I work in the chancellery of His Excellency the Governor-General. In a very modest position, of course, the lowest of the low, so to speak. Tulipov, Provincial Secretary. I have my identification with me, if you'd like me to show you it. Or is there no need?' He spread his arms timidly and smiled shyly.

Excellent! Nesvitskaya felt ashamed, and that was the very way to get a lioness to talk.

Tm sorry, I see them everywhere ... You must understand ...' She picked up a papyrosa from the table with a trembling hand and lit it, but not straight away, only with the third match. So much for the iron doctor.

'I'm sorry I suspected you. My nerves are all shot. And then this Ermolaeva ... Ah, yes, you saved Ermolaeva, I forgot... I must explain myself. I don't know why, but I'd like you to understand

'The reason you want to explain yourself to me, madame,' Anisii answered in his thoughts, 'is because you're a lioness, and I'm acting like a hare. Lionesses get on best of all with timid, defenceless little hares. Psychology, Lizaveta Andreevna.'

But together with his satisfaction, Tulipov also experienced a certain moral discomfort - he was no police spy, but he was still doing detective work and using his invalid sister as a cover. The doctor had been right.

She smoked the papyrosa quickly, in a few puffs, and lit another one.

Anisii waited, fluttering his eyelids pitifully.

'Smoke?' Nesvitskaya pushed the box of papyrosas towards him.

Tulipov generally didn't smoke, but lionesses like it when they can order people about, so he took one, inhaled the smoke and started to cough violently.

'Yes, they're a bit strong,' the doctor said with a nod. 'It's a habit. The tobacco's strong in the North, and in the summer there you can't get by without tobacco - all those mosquitoes and midges.'

'So you're from the North?' Anisii asked naively, clumsily shaking the ash off his papyrosa.

'No, I was born and brought up in St Petersburg. Until the age of seventeen I was my mother's little darling. But when I was seventeen, men in blue uniforms came for me in droshkies. They took me away from my mother and put me in a prison cell.'

Nesvitskaya spoke in short, abrupt phrases. Her hands weren't trembling any more; her voice had become harsh and her eyes had narrowed in anger - but it wasn't Tulipov she was angry with, that was clear.

Sonya sat down on a chair, slumped against the wall and began sniffing loudly - she was exhausted from all these new impressions.

'What did they arrest you for?' the hare asked in a whisper.

'For knowing a student who had once been in a house where revolutionaries sometimes used to meet,' Nesvitskaya said with a bitter laugh. 'There had just been another attempt on the life of the Tsar, and so they hauled in absolutely everybody. While they were getting to the bottom of things, I spent two years in solitary confinement. At the age of seventeen. I don't know how I managed not to go insane. Perhaps I did ... Then they let me out. But to make sure I didn't strike up any inappropriate acquaintances, they sent me into administrative exile - to the village of Zamorenka in the Arkhangelsk province. Under official surveillance. So I have special feelings about blue uniforms.'

And where did you study medicine?' Anisii asked, with a sympathetic shake of his head.

'At first in Zamorenka, in the local hospital. I had to have something to live on, so I took a job as a nurse. And I realised that medicine was the thing for me. It's probably the only thing that makes any sense at all ... Later I ended up in Scotland and studied in the medical faculty, the first woman in the surgical department - they don't let women get ahead too easily there, either. I made a good surgeon. I have a strong hand; from the very beginning I was never afraid of the sight of blood, and I'm not disgusted by the sight of people's internal organs. They're even quite beautiful in their own sort of way'

Anisii was on the edge of his seat. And you can operate?'

She smiled condescendingly: 'I can perform an amputation, and an abdominal operation, and remove a tumour. And instead of that, for all these months ...' She gestured angrily.

What 'instead of that'? Disembowelling streetwalkers in woodsheds?

Possible motives?

Tulipov slyly examined Nesvitskaya's unattractive, even rather coarse face. A morbid hatred of the female body? Very possible. Reasons? Her own physical unattractiveness and uncertain personal situation, being forced to carry out a midwife's duties, work that she did not like, the daily contemplation of patients whose lives as women had worked out happily. It could be almost anything, even including concealed latent insanity as a result of the injustice she had suffered and solitary confinement at a tender age.

All right, let's take a look at your sister. I've been talking too long. It's not even like me.'

Nesvitskaya removed her pince-nez and wearily rubbed the bridge of her nose with her strong fingers, then for some reason massaged the lobe of her ear; and Anisii's thoughts naturally turned to the sinister ear in the box.

How was the Chief getting on? Had he managed to figure out who had sent the 'smopackadj'?

Again it is evening, the blessed darkness concealing me beneath its dusky wing. I am walking along a railway embankment. A strange excitement constricts my chest.

It is surprising how it throws one off balance to see acquaintances from a former life. They have changed, some are even unrecognisable, and as for me, it need hardly be said.

I am troubled by memories. Stupid, unnecessary memories. Everything is different now.

Standing at the crossing, outside the barrier, there is a young girl begging. Twelve or thirteen years old. She is shuddering from the cold, her hands are covered in red goose bumps, her feet are wrapped in some kind of rags. Her face is horrible, simply horrible: suppurating eyes, cracked lips, a runny nose. A miserable, ugly child of humanity.

How can I not pity such a creature? This ugly face can also be made beautiful. And there is really nothing I have to do. It is enough simply to reveal the true Beauty of its gaze.

I follow the girl. The memories are no longer troubling me.

CHAPTER 5

Fellow Students

Holy Week Wednesday, 5 April, afternoon and evening

After despatching his assistant on his errand, Erast Petrovich prepared himself for some intense thinking. The task appeared to be far from simple. Irrational enlightenment would be very welcome here, and so the right place to begin was with meditation.

The Collegiate Counsellor closed the door of his study, sat down on the carpet with his legs crossed and tried to rid himself of all thoughts of any kind - still his vision, shut off his hearing; sway on the waves of the Great Void from which, as on so many previous occasions, there would come the sound, at first barely audible, and then ever more distinct, and finally almost deafening, of the truth.

Time passed. Then it stopped passing. A cool calm began rising unhurriedly within him, from his belly upwards; the golden mist in front of his eyes grew thicker, but then the huge clock standing in the corner of the room churred and chimed deafeningly: bom-bom-bom-bom-bom!

Fandorin came to himself. Five o'clock already? He checked the time on his Breguet, because the grandfather clock could not be trusted - and he was right: it was twenty minutes fast.

Immersing himself in a meditative state for a second time proved harder. Erast Petrovich recalled that at five o'clock that afternoon he was due to take part in a competition of the Moscow Bicycle Enthusiasts' Club, to support the poor widows and orphans of employees of the military department. Moscow's strongest sportsmen and the bicycle teams of the Grenadier Corps were competing. The Collegiate Counsellor had a good chance of repeating his success of the previous year and taking the main prize.

Alas, there was no time now for sports competitions.

Erast Petrovich drove away the inappropriate thoughts and began staring at the pale-lilac pattern of the wallpaper. Now the mist would thicken again, the petals of the printed irises would tremble, the flowers would begin breathing out their fragrance and satori would come.

Something was hindering him. The mist seemed to be carried away by a wind blowing from somewhere on his left. The severed ear was lying there, in the lacquered box on the table. Lying there, refusing to be forgotten.

Ever since his childhood, Erast Petrovich had been unable to bear the sight of tormented human flesh. He had lived long enough, seen all sorts of horrific things, taken part in wars and yet, strangely enough, he had still not learned to regard with indifference the things that human beings did to their own kind.

Realising that the irises on the wallpaper would not breathe out any scent today, Fandorin heaved a deep sigh. Since he had failed to arouse his intuition, he would have to rely on his reason. He sat down at the table and picked up his magnifying glass.

He began with the wrapping paper. It was just ordinary paper, the kind used to wrap all sorts of thing. Nothing to go on there.

Now for the handwriting. The writing was uneven and the letters were large with careless endings to their lines. If you looked closely, there were tiny splashes of ink - the hand had been pressed too hard against the paper. The writer was most probably a man in the prime of life. Possibly unbalanced or intoxicated. But he could not exclude the possibility of a woman with strong emotional and hysterical tendencies. In that regard he had to take into account the flourishes on the O’s and the coquettish hooks on the capital F’s.

The most significant point was that they did not teach people to write like that in the handwriting classes in the grammar schools. What he had here was either someone educated at home, which was more typical of female individuals, or someone who had had no regular education at all. However, there was not a single spelling mistake. Hmm. This required a little thought. At least the writing was a clue.

Next - the velvet box. The kind in which they sold expensive cufflinks or brooches. Inside it there was a monogram: A. Kuznetsov, Kamergersky Way'. That was no help. It was a large jeweller's shop, one of the best known in Moscow. He could make inquiries, of course, but they would hardly come to anything - he could assume that they sold at least several dozen boxes of that kind a day.

The satin ribbon was nothing special. Smooth and red - the kind that gypsy women or merchants' daughters liked to tie their plaits with on holidays.

Using his magnifying glass, Erast Petrovich inspected the powder box (from 'Cluseret No. 6') with especial interest, holding it by the very edge. He sprinkled it with a white powder like talc, and numerous fingerprints appeared on the smooth lacquered surface. The Collegiate Counsellor carefully and precisely blotted them with a special, extremely thin paper. Fingerprints would not be accepted as evidence in court, but even so they would come in useful.

It was only now that Fandorin turned his attention to the poor ear. Judging from the sprinkling of freckles on both sides of the ear, its owner had been ginger-haired. The lobe had been pierced, and very carelessly: the hole was wide and long. Taking that into account, and also the fact that the skin was badly chapped by cold and wind, he could conclude, firstly, that the former owner of the object in question had worn her hair combed upwards; secondly, that she was not a member of the privileged classes; thirdly, that she had spent a lot of time out in the cold without wearing any hat. The final circumstance was especially noteworthy. It was well known that street girls touted their wares with their heads uncovered even during the cold season. It was one of the signs of their trade.

Biting his lip (he still couldn't manage to regard the ear as an object), Erast Petrovich turned the ear over with a pair of tweezers and began examining the cut. It was even, made with an extremely sharp instrument. Not a single drop of congealed blood. Which meant that when the ear was severed the ginger-haired woman had already been dead for at least several hours.

What was that slight blackening on the cut? What could have caused that? Defrosting, that was what! The body had been in an ice-room - that was why the cut was so perfect: when it had been made the tissues had still not completely thawed out.

A prostitute's body placed in an ice-room? What for? What kind of fastidiousness was this? That kind were always taken straight to the Bozhedomka and buried. If they were put in an ice-room, it was either in the medical-faculty morgue on Trubetskaya Street for educational purposes, or in the forensic morgue at Bozhedomka to help with a police investigation.

And now the most interesting question: who had sent him the ear and why?

First - why?

The London murderer had done the same thing the previous year. He had sent Mr Albert Lask, the chairman of the committee for the capture of Jack the Ripper, half of a kidney from the mutilated body of Catherine Eddows, which had been found on 30 September.

Erast Petrovich was convinced that this action had had a double meaning for the killer. The first, obvious meaning was a challenge, a demonstration of confidence in his own invulnerability, as if to say: No matter how hard you try, you'll never catch me. But there was probably a second underlying reason too: the typical masochistic desire of maniacs of this kind to be caught and punished: If you protectors of society really are all-powerful and ubiquitous, if Justice is the father and I am his guilty son, then here's the key for you; find me. The London police had not known how to use the key.

Of course, a quite different hypothesis was also possible. The terrible package had not been sent by the killer, but by some cynical joker who regarded the tragic situation as a pretext for a cruel jest. In London the police had also received a scoffing letter, supposedly written by the criminal. The letter had been signed 'Jack the Ripper', which was actually where the nickname had come from. The English investigators had concluded that it was a hoax - probably because they had to justify the failure of their efforts to find the sender.

There was no point in complicating his task by making it a double one. At this moment it made no difference whether or not it was the killer who had sent the ear. All he needed to do at this moment was find out who had done it. It was very possible that the person who had severed the ear would turn out to be the Ripper. The Moscow trick with the small package differed from the London case in one substantial respect: the entire British capital had known about the murders in the East End, and in principle anybody at all could have joked' in that way. But in this case the details of yesterday's atrocity were only known to an extremely limited circle of individuals. How many of them were there? Very few, even if he included intimate friends and relatives.

And so, what details did he know of the person who had sent the 'small package'?

It was someone who had not studied in a grammar school, but had still received a good enough education to write the phrase 'Collegiate Counsellor' without any mistakes. That was one.

Judging from the box from Kuznetsov's and the powder box from Cluseret, the person involved was not poor. That was two.

This person was not only informed about the murders, but he knew about Fandorin's role in the investigation. That was three.

This person had access to the morgue, which narrowed the circle of suspects still further. That was four.

This person possessed the skills of a surgeon. That was five.

What else was there?

'Masa, a cab. And look lively!'

Zakharov came out of the autopsy room in his leather apron, his black gloves smeared with some brownish sludge. His face was puffy he looked overhung and the pipe in the corner of his mouth had gone out.

Ah, the eyes and ears of the Governor-General,' he muttered instead of a greeting. 'What is it - has somebody else been sliced up?'

'Mr Zakharov, how many prostitutes' bodies do you have in the ice-room?' Erast Petrovich asked curtly.

The forensic expert shrugged: 'On Mr Izhitsin's orders, they now bring in all the streetwalkers who have come to the end of their walk. In addition to our mutual friend Andreichkina, yesterday and today they've brought in another seven. Why - do you want to have a bit of fun?' Zakharov asked with a debauched grin. 'There are some very pretty ones. But probably none to suit your taste. You prefer the giblets, I think?' The pathologist could see perfectly well that Fandorin was not at ease, and he seemed to take pleasure in the fact.

'Show them to me.' The Collegiate Counsellor thrust his chin out stolidly, readying himself for the distressing sight.

The first thing that Fandorin saw in the spacious room lit by electric lights was the wooden shelves covered with glass jars with shapeless objects floating in them, and then he looked at the zinc-covered oblong tables. Projecting from one of them, beside the window, was the black neck of a microscope, and beside it a body was lying flat, with Zakharov's assistant working on it.

Erast Petrovich took a quick glance, saw that the body was male and turned away in relief.

'A deep firearms wound to the top of the head, Mr Zakharov, that's all,' the assistant said with a nasal twang, gazing curiously at Erast Petrovich, who was an almost legendary character in and around police circles.

'They brought that one in from Khitrovka,' Zakharov explained. 'But your little chicks are all over there, in the ice-room.' He pushed open a heavy metal door that breathed out a dense, chilly, repulsive stench. A switch clicked and the matte-glass globe on the ceiling lit up.

The doctor pointed. 'There are our heroines, on that side,' he said to Fandorin, who was feeling numb.

The initial impression was not at all horrific. Ingres's painting The Turkish Bath. A solid tangle of naked women's bodies, smooth lines, lazy immobility. Except that the steam was not hot, but frosty, and for some reason all the odalisques were lying down.

Then the details struck his eyes: the long crimson incisions, the blue patches, the sticky, tangled hair.

The forensic expert patted one of them, who looked like a mermaid, on her blue neck. 'Not bad eh? From a brothel. Consumption. In fact, there's only one violent death here: the one over there, with the big breasts; someone stove her head in with a rock. Two of them are suicides. Three of them died of hypothermia - froze to death when they were drunk. They bring them all in, no matter what. Teach a fool to pray and he won't know when to stop. But what's that to me. I don't have to do all that much.'

Erast Petrovich leaned down over one woman, thin, with a scattering of freckles on her shoulders and chest. He threw the long ginger hair back from the pitifully contorted, sharp-nosed face. Instead of a right ear the dead woman had a cherry-red hole.

'Well, who's been taking liberties here?' Zakharov asked in surprise and glanced at the tag attached to the woman's foot. 'Marfa Sechkina, sixteen years old. Ah, I remember: poisoned herself with phosphorous matches. Came in yesterday afternoon. But she still had both her ears, I remember that very well. So where's her right one got to?'

The Collegiate Counsellor took a powder box out of his right pocket, opened it without speaking and thrust it under the pathologist's nose.

Zakharov took the ear with a steady hand and held it against the cherry-red hole.

'That's it! So what does this mean?'

'That is what I would like you to tell me.' Fandorin held a scented handkerchief to his nose, feeling the nausea rising in his throat, and said: 'Come on, let's talk out there.'

They walked back into the autopsy room which now, despite the presence of the dissected corpse, Erast Petrovich found almost cosy.

'Three qu-questions. Who was here yesterday evening? Who have you told about the investigation and my participation in it? Whose writing is this?'

The Collegiate Counsellor set down the wrapping paper from the 'smopackadj' in front of Zakharov. He felt it necessary to add: 1 know that you did not write it -1 am familiar with your handwriting. However, I trust you appreciate the significance of this correspondence?'

Zakharov turned pale; he had clearly lost any desire to play the clown.

Tm waiting for an answer, Mr Zakharov. Shall I repeat the questions?'

The doctor shook his head and squinted at Grumov, who was pulling something greyish-blue out of the corpse's gaping belly with exaggerated zeal. Zakharov gulped and his Adam's apple twitched in his neck.

'Yesterday evening my colleagues from the old faculty called to see me. They were celebrating the anniversary of a certain ... memorable event. There were seven or eight of them. They drank some medical spirit here, in memory of the old student days ... It's possible that I might have blurted out something about the investigation - I don't exactly remember. Yesterday was a heavy day, I was tired, and the drink soon went to my head.' He stopped.

'The third question,' Fandorin reminded him: 'whose handwriting is it? And don't lie and tell me you don't know. The handwriting is quite distinctive.'

Tm not in the habit of lying!' Zakharov snapped. And I recognise the writing. But I'm not a police informer; I'm a former Moscow student. You find out for yourself, without me.'

Erast Petrovich said in an unpleasant voice: 'You are not only a former student, but a current forensic medical expert, who has taken an oath. Or have you forgotten which investigation we are talking about here?' And then he continued in a very quiet, expressionless voice: 'I can, of course, arrange for the handwriting of everyone who studied in the same faculty as you to be checked, but that will take weeks. In that case your honour among your comrades would not suffer, but I would make sure that you were tried and deprived of the right to work in the state service. You've known me for some years already, Zakharov. I always mean what I say'

Zakharov shuddered, and the pipe slid from left to right along the slit of his mouth. 'I'm sorry, Mr Court Counsellor, but I can't. Nobody would ever shake my hand again. Never mind the government service, I wouldn't be able to work in any area of medicine at all. But I'll tell you what ...' The forensic expert's yellow forehead gathered into wrinkles. 'Our revels are continuing this evening. We agreed to meet at seven at Burylin's place. He never completed the course, like many of our company in fact; but we get together from time to time ... I've just completed a job here; Grumov can finish up everything else. I was just about to have a wash, get changed and go. I have an apartment here. At the public expense, attached to the cemetery office. It's most convenient ... Well, if you like, I can take you with me to Burylin's place. I don't know if everyone who was here yesterday will come, but the person you're interested in will definitely be there, I'm certain of that ... I'm sorry, but that's all I can do. A doctor's honour.'

It was not easy for the pathologist to speak in such a plaintive manner; he was not accustomed to it, and Erast Petrovich decided to temper justice with mercy and not press him any harder. He merely shook his head in astonishment at the peculiarly elastic ethics of these people's esprit de corps: a man could not point out someone he had studied with as a likely killer, but there was no problem in bringing a detective along to a former fellow-student's house.

'You are complicating my task, but very well, let it be so. It's after eight already. Get changed and let's go.'

For most of their journey (and it was a long journey, to Yak-imanka Street), they rode in silence. Zakharov was as gloomy as a storm cloud and he replied to questions reluctantly, but Fandorin did at least learn something about their host.

He was called Kuzma Sawich Burylin. He was a manufacturer, a millionaire from an old merchant family. His brother, who was many years older, had taken up the eunuch faith of the skoptsy. He had 'cut off his sin' and lived like a hermit, building up his capital. He had intended to 'purge' his younger brother as well, when he reached the age of fourteen, but on the very eve of the 'great mystery' the elder brother had died suddenly, and the youth had not only remained completely intact, but inherited an immense fortune. As Zakharov remarked acidly, a retrospective fear and the miraculous preservation of his manhood had marked Kuzma Burylin's life ever since. For the rest of his life he was doomed to demonstrate that he was not a eunuch, and he often went to excess in the process.

'Why did such a rich man join the medical faculty?' asked Fandorin.

'Burylin has studied all sorts of things - both here and abroad. He has a curious and unstable mind. He doesn't need a diploma, so he has never finished any course anywhere, but he was thrown out of the medical faculty'

'What for?'

'There was good cause,' the forensic expert replied vaguely. 'You'll soon see for yourself what kind of individual he is.'

The illuminated entrance to Burylin's house, which faced the river, could be seen from a distance. It was the only house glowing with bright lights of different colours on the dark merchants' embankment, where they went to bed early during Lent and did not use any light unless they needed to. It was a big house, built in the absurd Mauritanian Gothic style: with little pointed turrets, chimeras and gryphons, but at the same time it had a flat roof and a round dome above the conservatory, even a watch-tower shaped like a minaret.

There was a crowd of idle onlookers outside the decorative gates, looking at the gaily illuminated windows and talking among themselves disapprovingly: an obscenity like this on Holy Week Wednesday during the last week of the forty days of Lent! The muffled whining of gypsy violins drifted out of the house over the silent river, together with the jangling of guitars and jingling of little bells, peals of laughter and an occasional low growling.

They walked in and handed their outer garments to the doormen, and Erast Petrovich was surprised to see that beneath his tightly buttoned black coat, the forensic expert was wearing a white tie and tails.

Zakharov smiled crookedly at his glance of amazement. 'Tradition.'

They walked up a broad marble staircase. Servants in crimson livery opened tall gilded doors, and Fandorin saw before him a spacious hall, its floor covered with palms, magnolias and other exotic plants in tubs. It was the latest European fashion - to make your drawing room look like a jungle. 'The hanging gardens of Semiramis' it was called. Only the very rich could afford it.

The guests were distributed in leisurely style among the paradisiacal groves. Like Zakharov, everyone was in white tie and tails. Erast Petrovich's dress was dandyish enough - a beige American j acket, a lemon-yellow waistcoat, and a pair of trousers of excellent cut with permanent creases - but in this black-and-white congregation he felt like a Yuletide masker. Zakharov could at least have warned him what kind of clothes he was going to change into.

But then, even if Fandorin had come in tails, he still would not have been able to lose himself among the guests, because there were very few of them - perhaps a dozen. For the most part gentlemen of respectable and even prosperous appearance, although they were not at all old - about thirty, or perhaps a little older. Their faces were flushed from drinking, and some even looked a little confused - evidently for them this kind of merrymaking was not the usual thing. At the far end of the hall Fandorin could see another pair of gilded doors, which were closed, and from behind them he could hear the clatter of dishes and the sounds of a gypsy choir practising. A banquet was evidently in preparation inside.

The newcomers had arrived at the high point of a speech being given by a bald gentleman with a paunch and a gold pince-nez.

'Zenzinov - he was the top student. He's a full professor already,' Zakharov whispered, and Fandorin thought he sounded envious.

"... recalling our old pranks from those memorable days. That time, seven years ago, it fell on Holy Week Wednesday too, like today'

For some reason the professor paused for a moment and shook his head bitterly. 'As they say: Out with your eye for remembering the past, but if you forget, out with both. And they also say: It will all work out in the end. And it has worked out. We've got old, turned fat and flabby. Thanks to Kuzma for still being such a wild man and occasionally shaking up us boring old disciples of Aesculapius.'

At that point everyone began laughing and cackling, turning towards a man who was sitting in an armchair in a stately pose with one leg crossed over the other and drinking wine from an immense goblet. Evidently he was Kuzma Burylin. An intelligent, jaundiced-looking face of the Tatar type - with broad cheekbones and a stubborn chin. His black hair was stuck up in a short French crop.

'It may have worked out for some, but not for everyone,' said a man with long hair and a haggard face, who did not look like the others. He was also wearing tails, but they were obviously not his own, and instead of a starched white shirt, he was definitely wearing a false shirt-front. 'You got away scot-free, Zenzinov. Of course, you were the faculty favourite. Others weren't so lucky. Tomberg became an alcoholic. They say Stenich went crazy. Sotsky died a convict. Just recently I keep thinking I see him everywhere. Take yesterday, for instance ...'

'Tomberg took to drink. Stenich went crazy, Sotsky died and Zakharov became a police corpse-carver instead of a doctor,' their host interrupted the speaker unceremoniously. However, he was looking not at Zakharov but at Erast Petrovich, and with distinct hostility.

'Who's this you've brought with you, Egorka, you English swine? Somehow I don't remember this bright spark as one of our medical brotherhood.'

Then the forensic expert, the Judas, demonstratively moved away from the Collegiate Counsellor and declared, as if everything were perfectly normal: 'Ah, this, gentlemen, is Erast Petrovich Fandorin, a very well-known individual in certain circles. He works for the Governor-General on especially important criminal cases. He insisted that I bring him here. I could not refuse - he is my superior. In any case, please make him welcome’

The members of the brotherhood began hooting indignantly. Someone leapt out of his chair. Someone else applauded sarcastically.

'What the hell is this!'

'These gentlemen have gone too far this time!'

'He doesn't look much like a detective.'

These comments, and similar ones that assailed him from all sides, made Erast Petrovich blench and screw up his eyes. This business was taking an unpleasant turn. Fandorin stared hard at the perfidious forensic expert, but before he could say anything, the master of the house had dashed across to his uninvited guest in a couple of strides and taken him by the shoulders. Kuzma Sawich's grasp proved to be very powerful; there was no way to wriggle out of it.

'In my house there's only one superior: Kuzma Burylin,' the millionaire roared. 'Nobody comes here without an invitation, especially detectives. And anyone who does come will regret it later.'

'Kuzma, do you remember that bit in Count Tolstoy' the long-haired man shouted, 'how they tied a constable to a bear and threw them in the river! Let's give this fop a ride too. And it will be good for your Potapich; he's been getting a bit dozy'

Burylin threw his head back and laughed loudly. 'Oh, Filka, you delightful soul, that's what I value about you: your imagination. Hey! Bring Potapich here!'

Several of the guests who were not yet completely drunk tried to reason with their hosts, but two burly lackeys had already brought in a shaggy bear in a muzzle from the dining room, leading it on a chain. The bear was growling in annoyance and did not want to come; he kept trying to sit down on the floor, and the lackeys dragged him along, with his claws scraping along the highly polished parquet. A palm in a tub was overturned and went crashing to the floor, scattering lumps of earth.

'This is going too far! Kuzma!' Zenzinov appealed. 'After all, we're not boys any longer. You'll have to face the repercussions! In any case, I'm leaving if you don't stop this!'

'He's right,' some other reasonable individual chimed in, in support of the professor. 'There'll be a scandal, and nobody needs that.'

'Well, you can go to the devil then!' Burylin barked. 'But remember, you clyster tubes, I've engaged Madam Julie's establishment for the whole night. We'll go without you.'

After he said that, the voices of protest immediately fell silent.

Erast Petrovich stood there calmly. He did not say a word and did not make the slightest attempt to free himself. His blue eyes gazed without any expression at the wild merchant.

The master of the house gave brisk instructions to his lackeys. 'Turn Potapich's back this way, so he won't maul the detective. Have you brought the rope? And you turn your back this way, you state minion. Afonya, can Potapich swim?'

'Why of course, Kuzma Sawich. In summer he's very fond of splashing about at the dacha,' a lackey with a forelock replied merrily.

'Well then, he can splash about a bit now. The water must be cold, it's only April. Well, why are you being so stubborn!' Burylin shouted at the Collegiate Counsellor. 'Turn round!'

He clutched Erast Petrovich's shoulders with all his strength, trying to turn his back to the bear, but Fandorin did not budge an inch, as if he were carved out of stone. Burylin pushed and strained against him. His face turned crimson and the veins stood out on his forehead. Fandorin carried on calmly looking at his host, with just the faintest hint of a mocking smile in the corners of his mouth.

Kuzma Sawich grunted for a little longer but, realising that it looked extremely stupid, he removed his hands and gazed in astonishment at this strange official. The hall went very quiet.

'You're the one I want to see, my dear fellow,' said Erast Petrovich, opening his mouth for the first time. 'Shall we have a talk?'

He took the manufacturer's wrist between his finger and thumb and strode off rapidly towards the closed doors of the banqueting hall. Fandorin's fingers clearly possessed some special power, because his corpulent host grimaced in pain and minced after the man with black hair and white temples. The lackeys froze on the spot in bewilderment, and the bear slowly sat down on the floor and shook its shaggy head idiotically.

Fandorin looked back from the doorway. 'Carry on enjoying yourselves, gentlemen. Meanwhile Kuzma Sawich will explain a few things to me.'

The last thing Erast Petrovich noticed before he turned his back to the guests was the intense gaze of forensic medical expert Zakharov.

The table that was laid in the dining hall was a marvel to behold. The Collegiate Counsellor glanced in passing at the piglet dozing blissfully, surrounded by golden rings of pineapple, and the frightening carcass of the sturgeon in jelly, at the fancy towers of the salads, the red claws of the lobsters, and remembered that his unsuccessful meditation had left him without any dinner. Never mind, he comforted himself. Confucius said: 'The noble man satisfies himself by abstaining.'

In the far corner he could see the scarlet shirts and shawls of the gypsy choir. They saw the master of the house, and the elegant gentleman with a moustache leading him by the hand, and broke off their singing in mid-word. Burylin waved his hand at them in annoyance, as if to say: Stop staring, this is none of your business.

The female soloist, covered in necklaces of coins and ribbons, misunderstood his gesture and began singing in a chesty voice:

He was not her promised one, He was not her husband ...

The choir took up the tune in low voices, at only a quarter of full volume.

He brought his little darling Into the timbered chamber...

Erast Petrovich released the millionaire's hand and turned to face him. 'I received your package. Should I interpret it as a confession?'

Burylin rubbed his white wrist. He looked at Fandorin curiously. "Well, you really are strong, Mr Collegiate Counsellor. You wouldn't think so to look at you ... What package? And a confession to what?'

'You see, you know my rank, although Zakharov didn't mention it today. You severed that ear; nobody else could have done it. You've studied medicine, and you visited Zakharov yesterday with your fellow students. He was certain that whoever else was here today, you would be. Is this your writing?' He showed the manufacturer the wrapping paper from the 'smopackadj'.

Kuzma Sawich glanced at it and laughed. 'Who else's? How did you like my little present? I told them to be sure to deliver it in time for dinner. Didn't choke on your bouillon, did you? No doubt you called a meeting and constructed hypotheses? Yes, I admit it, I like a joke. When the alcohol loosened Egorka Zakharov's tongue yesterday, I played a little prank. Have you heard about Jack the Ripper in London? He played a similar kind of trick on the police there. Egorka had a dead girl lying on the table - ginger-haired she was. I took a scalpel when he wasn't looking. I lopped off her ear, wrapped it in my handkerchief and slipped it in my pocket. His description of you was far too flowery, Mr Fandorin, you were this and you were that, and you could unravel any tangled thread. Well, Zakharov wasn't lying: you are a curious individual. I like curious individuals, I'm one myself.' The millionaire's narrow eyes glinted cunningly. 'I tell you what. You forget this little joke of mine - it didn't work anyway - and come along with us. We'll have a right royal time. Let me tell you in secret that I've thought up a most amusing wheeze for my old friends, the little doctors. Everything's all ready at Madam Julie's. Moscow will break its sides laughing when it finds out about it tomorrow. Come along with us, really. You won't be sorry'

At this point the choir suddenly broke off its slow, quiet song and roared out as loud as it could:

Kuzya-Kuzya-Kuzya-Kuzya,

Kuzya-Kuzya-Kuzya-Kuzya,

Kuzya-Kuzya-Kuzya-Kuzya,

Kuzya-Kuzya-Kuzya-Kuzya,

Kuzya, drain your glass!

Burylin merely glanced over his shoulder, and the roaring stopped.

'Do you often go abroad?' Fandorin asked, apropos of nothing.

'This is the palace I often come to,' said his host, apparently not surprised by the change of subject. 'But I live abroad. I've no need to sit polishing the seat of my pants in the office here - I've got capable managers; they do things without me. In a big business like mine, there's only one thing you need: to understand people. Choose the right people and you can lie back and take it easy, the work does itself.'

'Have you been in England recently?'

'I often go to Leeds, and to Sheffield. I have factories there. I drop into the exchange in London. The last time was in December. Why do you ask about England?'

Erast Petrovich lowered his eyelids a little in order to soften the glint in his eyes. He picked a speck of dust off his sleeve and said emphatically: 'I am placing you under arrest for mutilating the body of the spinster Sechkina. Only administrative arrest for the time being, but in the morning there will be a warrant from the Public Prosecutor. Your appointed representative must deposit your bail no later than midday tomorrow. You are coming with me, and your guests can all go home. The visit to the bordello is cancelled. It's not good to bring such respectable d-doctors into disgrace like that. And you, Burylin, will enjoy a right royal time in the cells.'

*

As a reward for saving the girl, I was sent a dream last night.

I dreamed I was standing before the Throne of the Lord.

'Sit on my left hand,' the Father of Heaven said to me. 'Rest, for you bring people joy and release, and that is heavy work. They are foolish, my children. Their views are inverted: they see black as white and white as black, woe as happiness, and happiness as woe. When in my mercy I summon one of them to Me in their childhood, the others cry and pity the one I have summoned instead of feeling joy for him. When I let one of them live to a hundred years, until his body is weak and his spirit is extinguished as a punishment and a warning to the others, they are not horrified by his terrible fate, but envy it. After a bloody battle, those I have turned away rejoice, even if they have received injuries, while they pity those who have fallen, summoned by Me to appear before My face, and secretly even despise them for their failure. But they are the truly fortunate, for they are already with Me, the unfortunates are those who remain. What am I to do with people, tell Me, you kind soul? How am I to bring them to their senses?' And I felt sorry for the Lord, vainly craving the love of his foolish children.

CHAPTER 6

The Triumph of Pluto

Holy Week Thursday, 6 April

Today it fell to Anisii's lot to work with Izhitsin.

Late the previous evening, after an 'analysis' in the course of which it was determined that they now had more suspects than they required, the Chief had walked around the study for a while, clicked his beads and said: 'All right, Tulipov. We'll have to sleep on it. You go and rest; you've done more than enough running about for one day'

Anisiii had expected the decision to be: put Stenich, Nesvitskaya and Burylin under secret observation, check all their movements for the last year and perhaps also set up some kind of investigative experiment. But no, the unpredictable Chief had come to a different conclusion. In the morning, when Anisii, shivering in the dreary drizzle, arrived at Malaya Nikitskaya Street, Masa handed him a note:

I am disappearing for a while. I shall try to come at this business from the other side. In the meantime, you work with Izhitsin. I am afraid he might botch things up with his excessive zeal. On the other hand, he may not be a very pleasant character, but he is tenacious, and he could just dig something up.

EF

Well, did you ever? And just what 'other side' could that be?

The pompous investigator was not easy to find. Anisii phoned the Public Prosecutor's office and they told him: 'He was called out by the Department of Gendarmes.' He called the Department of Gendarmes and they replied: 'He went out on urgent business that can't be discussed over the telephone.' The duty officer's voice sounded so excited that Tulipov guessed it had to be another murder. And a quarter of an hour later a messenger arrived from Izhitsin - it was the constable, Linkov. He had called at the Collegiate Counsellor's and not found him in, so he'd come round to Tulipov on Granatny Lane.

Linkov was terribly agitated. 'It's an absolute nightmare, Your Honour,' he told Anisii. 'The brutal murder of a juvenile. It's terrible, terrible ...' He sniffed and blushed, evidently embarrassed by his own sensitivity.

Anisii looked at the ungainly, scrawny-necked policeman and saw straight through him: literate, sentimental, and no doubt he liked reading books; joined the police out of poverty, only this rough work wasn't for him, the poor lamb. Tulipov would have been the same if not for his fortunate encounter with Erast Petrovich.

'Come on, Linkov,' said Anisii, deliberately addressing the constable in a formal, polite tone. 'Let's go straight to the morgue; that's where they'll take her anyway'

Deduction is a great thing. His calculation proved to be correct. Anisii had been sitting talking to Pakhomenko in his watchman's hut for no more than half an hour, enjoying a chat about life with the agreeable fellow, when three droshkies drove up to the gates, followed by a blind carriage with no windows, the so-called 'corpse-wagon'.

Izhitsin and Zakharov got out of the first droshky a photographer and his assistant got out of the second, two gendarmes and a senior constable got out of the third. No one got out of the carriage. The gendarmes opened its shabby doors with the peeling paint and carried out something short on a stretcher, covered with a tarpaulin.

The medical expert was dour, chewing on his eternal pipe with exceptional bitterness, but the investigator seemed to be in lively spirits, almost even glad about something.

When he caught sight of Anisii, his face dropped: 'A-ah, there you are. So you already got wind of this? Is your chief here too?'

But when it turned out that Fandorin was not there and would not be coming, and so far his assistant did not really know anything, Izhitsin's spirits rose again. 'Well, now things will really start moving,' he told Tulipov, rubbing his hands energetically. 'So, it's like this. At dawn today the railway line patrolmen on the Moscow-Brest transfer line discovered the body of a juvenile female vagrant in the bushes close to the Novotikhvinsk level crossing. Zakharov has determined that death occurred no later than midnight. It's not very pretty, I warn you, Tulipov, it was an incredible sight!' Izhitsin gave a brief laugh. 'Just imagine it: the belly, naturally, had been completely gutted and the entrails hung all around on the branches, and as for the face ...'

'What, another bloody kiss?' Anisii exclaimed excitedly.

The investigator burst out laughing and couldn't stop, he was helpless with laughter - obviously it was nerves.

'Oh, you'll be the death of me,' he said eventually, wiping away his tears. 'Fandorin and you and that kiss of yours. Please forgive my inappropriate merriment. When I show you, you'll understand. Hey, Silakov! Stop! Show him her face!'

The gendarmes put the stretcher down on the ground and turned back the edge of the tarpaulin. Anisii was expecting to see something particularly unpleasant: glassy eyes, a nightmarish grimace, the tongue lolling out of the mouth, but there was none of that. Under the tarpaulin there was some kind of black-and-red baked pudding with two round blobs: white, with a small dark circle in the centre.

What is it?' Tulipov asked in surprise, feeling his teeth starting to chatter of their own accord.

'Seems like our joker left her without any face at all,' Izhitsin explained with morose humour. 'Zakharov says the skin was slit along the hair line and then torn off, like the peel off an orange. There's a kiss for you. And, best of all, now she can't be identified.'

Everything was still swimming and swaying in front of Anisii's eyes. The investigator's voice seemed to be coming from somewhere far in the distance.

Anyway, the secret's out now. Those rogues of patrolmen have blabbed to everyone they could. One of them was taken away in a faint. The rumours were already spreading round Moscow in any case. The Department of Gendarmes is flooded with reports of a killer who's decided to wipe out women completely. This morning they reported everything to St Petersburg, the whole truth, nothing kept back. The minister himself, Count Tolstoy is coming. So there you have it. Looks like heads are going to roll. I don't know about you, but I'm quite fond of mine. Your chief can go on playing his game of deduction as long as he likes; he's safe enough, he has protection in high places. But I'll crack this one without deduction, by sheer determination and energy. This is no time for snivelling, I reckon.'

Tulipov turned away from the stretcher, gulped to dispel the murky veil that was clouding his eyes, and filled his lungs as full of air as he could. That was better.

Izhitsin couldn't be allowed to get away with that 'snivelling', and Anisii said in a flat, expressionless voice: 'My chief says determination and energy are good for chopping firewood and digging vegetable patches.'

'Exactly my dear sir.' The investigator waved to the gendarmes to carry the body into the morgue. 'I'll damn well dig up the whole of blasted Moscow, and if it gets a bit messy, the result will justify it. If I don't get a result, my head's going to roll anyway. Have you been detailed to keep an eye on me, Tulipov? Do that then, but keep your comments to yourself. And if you feel like submitting a complaint, be my guest. I know Count Tolstoy; he appreciates determination and turns a blind eye to minor points of legality if liberties are taken in the interests of the case.'

'I have had occasion to hear that sort of thing from policemen, but such views sound rather strange coming from an official of the Public Prosecutor's Office,' said Anisii, thinking that was exactly what Erast Petrovich would have told Izhitsin if he had been in Anisii's place.

However, when the investigator simply shrugged off this dignified and restrained reprimand with a gesture of annoyance, Tulipov changed to an official tone of voice: 'Would you please stick closer to the point, Mr Court Counsellor. What is your plan?'

They went into the forensic medical expert's office and sat down at the desk, since Zakharov himself was working on the body in the autopsy theatre.

'Well, all right then,' said Izhitsin, giving this man he outranked a superior glance. 'So let's put our thinking caps on. Who does our belly-slasher kill? Streetwalkers, vagrants, beggars - that is, women from the lower depths of the city, society's discarded garbage. So now, let's remember where the killings have taken place. Well, there's no way to tell where the nameless bodies in the ditches were brought from. We know well enough that in such cases our Moscow police don't take too much trouble over the paperwork. But on the other hand, we do know where the bodies we dug out of the named graves came from.'

Izhitsin opened an exercise book with an oilcloth cover.

'Aha, look! The beggar Marya Kosaya was killed on the eleventh of February on Maly Tryokhsvyatsky Lane, at Sychugin's dosshouse. Her throat was cut, her belly was slit open, her liver is missing. The prostitute Alexandra Zotova was found on the fifth of February in Svininsky Lane, lying in the road. Again with her throat cut and her womb missing. These two are obvious clients.'

The investigator walked across to the police map of the city that was hanging on the wall and began jabbing at it with a long, pointed finger: 'So, let's take a look. Tuesday's Andreichkina was found just here, on Seleznyovskaya Street. Today's little girl was found by the Novotikhvinsk level crossing, right here. From one crime scene to the other it's no more than a verst. And it's the same distance to the Vypolzovo Tatar suburb as well.'

'What has the Tatar suburb got to do with anything?' Tulipov asked.

'Later, later,' said Izhitsin, with another impatient gesture. 'Just hold your horses... Now the two old bodies. Maly Tryokhsvyatsky Lane - that's there. And there's Svininsky Lane. All in the same patch. Three hundred, maybe five hundred steps from the synagogue in Spasoglinishchevsky Lane.'

'But even closer to Khitrovka,' Anisii objected. 'Someone gets killed there every day of the week. That's no surprise: it^?s a hotbed of crime.'

'They get killed all right, but not like this! No, Tulipov, this smacks of something more than plain Christian villainy. I can sense a fanatical spirit at work in all these paunchings. An alien spirit. Orthodox folks get up to lots of beastly things, but nothing like this. And don't start with all that nonsense about the London Ripper being Russian and now he's come back for some fun and games in the land of his birth. That's rubbish! If a Russian can travel round cities like London, it means he comes from the cultured classes. And why would an educated man go rummaging in the stinking guts of some Manka Kosaya? Can you picture it?'

Anisii couldn't picture it and he shook his head honestly.

"Well then, you see. It's so obvious. You have to be a crackpot theoretician like your chief to abandon common sense for abstract intellectual postulates. But I, Tulipov, am a practical man.'

'But what about the knowledge of anatomy?' Anisii asked, dashing to his chief's defence. And the professional use of a surgical instrument? Only a doctor could have committed all these outrages!'

Izhitsin smiled triumphantly. 'That's where Fandorin is wrong! That hypothesis of his stuck in my throat from the very start. It doesn't hap-pen,' he said, hammering home every syllable. 'It simply doesn't happen, and that's all there is to it. If a man from respectable society is a pervert, then he'll think up something a bit more subtle than these abominations.' The investigator nodded in the direction of the autopsy room. 'Remember the Marquis de Sade. Or take that business last year with the notary Shiller - remember that? He got this bint blind drunk, stuck a stick of dynamite up her, you know where, and lit the fuse. An educated man - you can see that straight away; but a monster, of course. But only some low scum is capable of the loathsome abominations we're dealing with here. And as for the knowledge of anatomy and the surgical skill, you'll see that's all very easily explained, you know-alls.'

The investigator paused, raised one finger for dramatic effect and whispered: A butcher! There's someone who knows anatomy as well as any surgeon. Every day of the week he's separating out livers and stomachs and kidneys as neat and tidy as you like, every bit as precise as the late surgeon Pirogov. And a good butcher's knives are as sharp as any scalpel'

Tulipov said nothing. He was shaken. The obnoxious Izhitsin was right! How could they have forgotten about butchers?

Izhitsin was pleased by Anisii's reaction. And now, about my plan.' He went up to the map again. 'Seems we have two focal points. The first two bodies were found over here, the last two - over here. What reason the criminal had for changing his area of activity we don't know. Perhaps he decided it was more convenient to commit murder in the north of Moscow than in the central district: waste lots, shrubs and bushes, not so many houses. To be on the safe side, I'm regarding all the butchers who live in either of the regions that interest us as possible suspects. I already have a list.' The investigator took out a sheet of paper and put it on the desk in front of Anisii. 'Only seventeen names in all. Note the ones that are marked with a six-pointed star or a crescent moon. This is the Tatar suburb, here in Vypolzovo. The Tatars have their own butchers, and real bandits they are. Let me remind you that it's less than a verst from the suburb to the shed where Andreichkina was found. It's the same distance to the railway crossing where the little girl's body was found. And here' - the long finger shifted across the map - 'in the immediate proximity of Tryokhsvyatsky and Svininsky Lanes, is the synagogue. That's where the kosher meat-carvers are, the filthy Yid butchers who kill the cattle in that barbarous fashion of theirs. Have you ever seen how it's done? Very much like the work of our good friend. Now do you get a whiff of where the case is heading?'

To judge from the pompous investigator's flaring nostrils, it was heading for a sensational trial, serious honours and breath-takingly rapid promotion.

'You're a young man, Tulipov. Your future's in your own hands. You can cling to Fandorin and end up looking stupid. Or you can work for the good of the cause and then I won't forget you. You're a smart lad, an efficient worker. I need helpers like you.'

Anisii was about to open his mouth to put the insolent fellow in his place, but Izhitsin was already carrying on with what he was saying: 'Of the seven butchers who interest us, four are Tatars and three are Yids. They're at the top of the list of suspects. But to avoid any reproaches of prejudice, I'm arresting the lot. And I'll give them a thorough working over. I have the experience for it, thank God.' He smiled rapaciously and rubbed his hands together. 'So right then. First of all I'll start by feeding the heathen scum salt beef, because they don't observe the Orthodox fast. They won't eat pork, so I'll order them to be given beef: we respect other people's customs. I'll give the Orthodox butchers a bit of salted herring. I won't give them anything to drink. Or let them sleep either. After they've been in for a night, they'll start howling, and in the morning, to make sure they don't get too bored, I'll call them out by turn and my lads will teach them a lesson with their "sticks of salami". Do you know what a "stick of salami" is?'

Tulipov shook his head, speechless.

A most excellent little device: a stocking stuffed with wet sand. Leaves no marks, but it makes a great impression, especially applied to the kidneys and other sensitive spots.'

'But Mr Izhitsin, you're a university graduate!' Anisii gasped.

'Exactly and that's why I know when to stick to the rules and when the interests of society allow the rules to be ignored.'

And what if your theory's wrong and the Ripper isn't a butcher after all?'

'He's a butcher, who else could he be?' Izhitsin said with a shrug. "Well, I've explained things convincingly enough, haven't I?'

And what if it's not the guilty party that confesses, but the one with the weakest spirit? Then the real murderer will go unpunished!'

By this stage the investigator had become so insolent that he actually slapped Anisii on the shoulder: 'I've thought of that too. Of course, it won't look too good if we go and string up some Moshe or Abdul and then in three months or so the police discover another disembowelled whore. But this is a special case, bordering on a crime against the state - the Emperor's visit has been disrupted! And therefore, extreme measures are permissible.' Izhitsin clenched his fist so tight that his knuckles cracked. 'One of them will go to the gallows, and the rest will be exiled. By administrative order, with no publicity. To cold, deserted places where there aren't too many people to carve up. And even there the police will keep an eye on them.'

Anisii was horrified by the determined investigator's 'plan', although it was hard to deny the effectiveness of such measures. With a visit from the terrifying Count Tolstoy in the offing, the top brass would probably be frightened enough to approve the initiative, and the lives of a host of innocent people would be trampled into the dust. How could he prevent it? Ah, Erast Petrovich, where are you when you're needed?

Anisii gave a grunt, waggled his celebrated ears, mentally requested his chief's forgiveness for acting without due authority and told Izhitsin about the previous day's investigative achievements. Just so he wouldn't get too carried away, let him be aware that, apart from his butchers, there were other, more substantial theories.

Leontii Izhitsin listened attentively without interrupting even once. His tense, nervous face first turned crimson, then began to turn pale, and at the end it came out in blotches, and his eyes had a drunken look.

When Tulipov finished, the investigator licked his thick lips with a whitish tongue and slowly repeated: A nihilist midwife? An insane student? A madcap merchant? Right, right...' Izhitsin leapt up off his chair and started running round the room and ruffling up his hair, doing irreparable damage to his perfect parting.

'Excellent!' he exclaimed, halting in front of Anisii. 'I'm very glad, Tulipov, that you have decided to collaborate openly with me. What secrets can there be between colleagues, after all; we're all doing the same job!'

Anisii felt a cold tremor run through his heart - he should have kept his mouth shut.

But there was no stopping the investigator now: All right, let's try it. I'll still arrest the butchers anyway, of course, but let them sit in cells for the time being. First let's get to work on your medicos.'

'How do you mean - "get to work"?' Anisii asked in panic, remembering the male nurse and the midwife. 'With the "salami stick"?'

'No; this class of people requires a different approach.'

The investigator thought for a moment, nodded to himself and put forward a new plan of action: 'Right then, this is what we're going to do. There's a different method for educated people, Tulipov. Education softens a man's soul, makes it more sensitive. If our belly-slasher comes from good society, then he's some kind of werewolf. During the day he's normal, like everyone else, and at night, in his criminal frenzy, it's as if he's possessed. That's where we'll catch him. I'll take the dear people in when they're normal and present them with the werewolf's handiwork. We'll see how their sensitive souls stand up to the sight. I'm sure the guilty party will break down. He'll see by the light of day what his alter ego gets up to and give himself away -he's bound to. That's psychology, Tulipov. Let's hold an investigative experiment.'

For some reason Anisii suddenly remembered a story his mother used to tell him when he was a child, keening in the plaintive voice of Petya-Petushka, the cock from the fairy-tale: 'The fox carries me off beyond the blue forests, beyond the high mountains, into her deep burrows ...'

Chief, Erast Petrovich, things are looking bad, very bad.

Anisii did not participate in the preparations for the 'investigative experiment'. He stayed put in Zakharov's office, and in order not to think about the blunder he had committed, he began reading the newspaper lying on the desk - ploughing through it indiscriminately.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE EIFFEL TOWER COMPLETED

Paris. Reuters News Agency informs us that the gigantic and entirely useless structure of iron rods with which the French intend to astound visitors to the Fifteenth World Fair has finally been completed. This dangerous project is causing justified anxiety among the inhabitants of Paris. How can this interminable factory chimney be allowed to tower over Paris, dwarfing all the marvellous monuments of the capital with its ridiculous height? Experienced engineers express concern about whether such a tall and relatively slim structure, erected on a foundation only a third of its own height, is capable of withstanding the pressure of the wind.

A SWORD DUEL

Rome. The whole of Italy is talking about a sword duel that took place between General Andreotti and Deputy Cavallo. In the speech that he gave last week to veterans of the Battle of Solferino, General Andreotti expressed concern about Jewish dominance of the newspaper and publishing world of Europe. Deputy Cavallo, who is of Jewish origin, felt insulted by this entirely justified assertion and, speaking in parliament, he called the general a 'Sicilian ass', as a result of which the duel took place. In the second skirmish Andreotti was slightly wounded in the shoulder by a sword, after which the duel terminated. The opponents shook hands.

MINISTER'S ILLNESS

St Petersburg. The Minister of Railways, who fell ill with pneumonia a few days ago, is somewhat improved: he has no more chest pains. The patient passed the night comfortably. He is fully conscious and aware of his surroundings.

Anisii even read the advertisements: about a cooling glycerine powder, about a cream for galoshes, about the latest folding beds and nicotine-filtering cigarette holders. Overcome by a strange apathy, he spent a long time studying a picture with the following caption: The patented smell-free powder-closet using the system of mechanical engineer S. Timokhovich. Cheap and meets all the requirements of hygiene, can be located in any room in the home. At Adadurov's house near Krasnye Voroty you can observe the powder-closet in action. Can be rented out for dachas.'

After that he simply sat there and stared despondently out of the window.

Izhitsin, on the other hand, was a whirlwind of energy. Under his personal supervision they brought additional tables into the autopsy room, so that there were thirteen of them in all. The two gravediggers, the watchman and the constables carried three identified bodies out of the ice-room on stretchers, one of them the juvenile vagrant. The investigator gave several instructions for the bodies to be laid out this way or that way - he was striving for the maximum visual effect. Anisii simply shuddered when he heard Izhitsin's piercing, commanding tenor through the closed door:

'Where are you moving that table, you dolt! On three sides, I said, on three sides!' Or even worse: 'Not like that! Not like that! Open her belly up a bit wider! So what if it is all frozen together; use the spade, the spade! Right, now that's good.'

The prisoners were brought shortly after two in the afternoon, each one in a separate droshky with an armed guard.

Through the window Tulipov saw them bring the first one into the morgue - a round-faced man with broad shoulders in a crumpled black tailcoat and a white tie that had slipped to one side - he could assume that he was the manufacturer Burylin, who hadn't managed to get home since being arrested the day before. About ten minutes later they brought Stenich. He was wearing a white coat (he must have come straight from the clinic) and glaring around like a trapped animal. Soon after that they brought in Nesvitskaya. She walked between two gendarmes with her shoulders held back and her head high. The midwife's face was contorted by an expression of hatred.

The door creaked and Izhitsin came into the office. His face was agitated and flaming red - a genuine theatrical entrepreneur on an opening night.

'For the moment our dear guests are waiting in the front office, under guard,' he told Anisii. 'Take a look and see if this is all right.'

Tulipov stood up listlessly and went into the dissection theatre.

In the middle of the wide room there was an empty space, surrounded on three sides by tables. Lying on each of them was a dead body covered by a tarpaulin. Standing along the walls behind the tables were the gendarmes, the constables, the grave-diggers and the watchman: two men for each body. Zakharov was sitting on a chair beside the end table, wearing his perpetual apron and with his eternal pipe in his mouth. The forensic expert's face looked bored, even sleepy. Grumov was loitering behind him and a little to one side, like a wife with her ever-loving in a lower-middle-class photograph, except that he didn't have his hand on Zakharov's shoulder. The assistant had a dejected look - evidently the quiet man wasn't used to such large crowds in this kingdom of silence. The room smelled of disinfectant, but beneath the harsh chemical smell there was a persistent undercurrent: the sweet stench of decomposition.

On a separate, smaller table at one side there was a heap of paper bags. The prudent Izhitsin had provided for anything -somebody might easily be sick.

'I'll be here,' said Izhitsin, indicating the spot. 'They're here.

At my command these seven will take hold of one cover with their right hand and another cover with their left hand, and pull them off. It's a remarkable sight. You'll see it soon for yourself. I'm sure the criminal's nerves won't stand up to it. Or will they?' the investigator asked in sudden alarm, surveying his stage setting sceptically.

'They won't stand up to it,' Anisii replied gloomily. 'Not one of the three.'

His eyes met Pakhomenko's and the watchman gave him a sly wink, as if to say: Don't get upset, lad, remember that callus.

'Bring them in!' Izhitsin barked, turning towards the doors and then, hastily running into the centre of the room, he assumed a pose of stern inflexibility, with his arms crossed on his chest and one foot slightly advanced, his narrow chin jutting forward and his eyebrows knitted together.

They brought in the prisoners. Stenich immediately fixed his eyes on the terrible tarpaulins and tugged his head down into his hunched shoulders. He didn't even seem to notice Anisii and the others. Nesvitskaya, however, was not even slightly interested in the tables. She glanced round everybody there, rested her gaze on Tulipov and laughed contemptuously. Anisii blushed painfully. The captain of industry stood beside the table with the paper bags, leaning on it with one hand, and began turning his head this way and that curiously. Zakharov winked at him and Burylin nodded gently.

'I'm a forthright man,' Izhitsin began in a dry, piercing voice, emphasising every word. 'So I'm not going to beat about the bush here. In recent months there have been a number of brutal, monstrous murders in Moscow. The investigating authorities know for certain that these crimes were committed by one of you. I'm going to show you something interesting and look into your souls. I'm an old hand at detective work; you won't be able to fool me. So far the killer has only seen his or her own handiwork by night, while in the grip of insanity. But now you can see how lovely it looks by the light of day. All right!'

He waved his hand, and the tarpaulin shrouds seemed to slide to the floor by themselves. Linkov certainly spoiled the effect slightly - he tugged too hard, and the tarpaulin caught on the corpse's head. The dead head fell back on to the wooden surface with a dull thump.

It really was a spectacular sight. Anisii regretted he hadn't turned away in time, but now it was too late. He pressed his back against the wall, took three deep breaths, and it seemed to have passed.

Izhitsin did not look at the bodies. He stared avidly at the suspects, moving his eyes from one to the other in rapid jerks: Stenich, Nesvitskaya, Burylin; Stenich, Nesvitskaya, Burylin. And again, and again.

Anisii noticed that, although Senior Constable Pribludko was standing there motionless and stony-faced, the ends of his waxed moustache were quivering. Linkov was standing there with his eyes squeezed tight shut and his lips were moving - he was obviously praying. The gravediggers had expressions of boredom on their faces - they'd seen just about everything in their rough trade. The watchman was looking at the dead women in sad sympathy. His eyes met Anisii's and he shook his head very slightly, which surely meant: Ah, people, people, why do you do such things to each other? This simple human gesture finally brought Tulipov round. Look at the suspects, he told himself. Follow Izhitsin's example.

The former student and former madman Stenich was standing there cracking the knuckles of his slim fingers, with large beads of sweat on his forehead. Anisii would have sworn it was cold in there. Suspicious? No doubt about it!

But the other former student, Burylin, who had severed the ear, seemed somehow too calm altogether: he had a mocking smile hovering on his face and his eyes were glittering with evil sparks. No, the millionaire was only pretending that it all meant nothing to him - he'd picked up a paper bag from the table and was holding it against his chest. That was called an 'involuntary reaction' - the Chief had taught Anisii to take note of them in his very first lesson. A lover of the high life like Burylin could easily develop a thirst for new, intense sensations simply because he was so surfeited.

Now the woman of iron, Nesvitskaya, the former prison inmate, who had learned to love surgical operations in Edinburgh. An exceptional individual - you simply never knew what an individual like that was capable of and what to expect from her. Just look at the way her eyes blazed.

And the 'exceptional' individual immediately confirmed that she really was capable of acting unpredictably.

The deathly silence was shattered by her ringing voice: 'I know who your target is, Mister Oprichnik,' Nesvitskaya shouted at the investigator. 'How very convenient. A "nihilist" in the role of a bloodthirsty monster! Cunning! And especially spicy, because it's a woman, right? Bravo, you'll go a long way! I knew what kind of crimes your pack of dogs is capable of, but this goes far beyond anything I could have imagined!' The female doctor suddenly gasped and clutched at her heart with both hands, as if she'd been struck by sudden inspiration. 'Why it was you! You did it yourselves! I should have realised straight away! It was your executioners who hacked up these poor women -why not? you've got no pity for "society's garbage"! The fewer of them there are, the simpler it is for you! You scum! Decided to play at Castigo, did you? Kill two birds with one stone, eh? Get rid of a few vagrants and throw the blame on the "nihilists"! Not very original, but most effective!' She threw her head back and laughed in scornful hatred. Her steel-rimmed pince-nez slid off and dangled on its string.

'Quiet!' Izhitsin howled, evidently afraid that Nesvitskaya's outburst would ruin his psychological investigation. 'Be silent immediately! I won't allow you to slander the authorities.'

'Murderers! Brutes! Satraps! Provocateurs! Scoundrels! Destroyers of Russia! Vampires!' Nesvitskaya shouted, and it was quite clear that her reserve of insults for the guardians of law and order was extensive and would not soon be exhausted.

'Linkov, Pribludko, shut her mouth!' the investigator shouted, finally losing all patience.

The constables advanced uncertainly on the midwife and took her by the shoulders, but they didn't seem to know how to go about shutting the mouth of a respectable-looking lady.

'Damn you, you animal!' Nesvitskaya howled, looking into Izhitsin's eyes. 'You'll die a pitiful death; your own intrigues will kill you!'

She threw up her hand, pointing one finger directly at the pompous investigator's face, and suddenly there was the sound of a shot.

Izhitsin jumped up in the air and bent over, clutching his head. Tulipov blinked: how was it possible to shoot anyone with your finger?

There was peal of wild laughter. Burylin waved his hands in the air and shook his head, unable to control his fit of crazy merriment. Ah, so that was it. Apparently, while everyone was watching Nesvitskaya, the prankster had quietly blown up a paper bag and then slammed it down against the table.

'Ha-ha-ha!' The captain of industry's smothered laughter soared up to the ceiling in an inhuman howling.

Stenich!

'I can't sta-a-and it!' the male nurse whined. 'I can't stand anymore! Torturers! Executioners! Why are you tormenting me like this? Why? Lord, why, why?' His totally insane eyes slid across all of their faces and came to a halt, gazing at Zakharov, who was the only person there sitting down - sitting there silently with a crooked smile, his hands thrust into the pockets of his leather apron.

'What are you laughing at, Egor? This is your kingdom, is it? Your kingdom, your witch's coven! You sit on your throne and rule the roost! Triumphant! Pluto, the king of death! And these are your subjects!' He pointed to the mutilated corpses. 'In all their grace and beauty!' And then the madman started spouting rubbish that made no sense at all. 'Throw me out, unworthy! And you, you, what did you turn out to be worthy of? What are you so proud of? Take a look at yourself! Carrion crow! Corpse-eater! Look at him, all of you, the corpse-eater! And the little assistant? What a fine pair! One crow flies up to another; one crow says unto the other: "Crow, where can we dine together?'" And he started trembling and burst into peals of hysterical giggling.

The corners of the forensic expert's mouth bent down in a grimace of disapproval. Grumov smiled uncertainly.

A wonderful 'experiment', thought Anisii, looking at the investigator clutching his heart, and the suspects: one shouting curses, one laughing, one giggling. Well, damn you all, gentlemen.

Anisii turned and walked out. Phew, how good the fresh air was.

He called into his own apartment on Granatny Lane to check on Sonya and have a quick bowl of Palasha's cabbage soup, and then went straight to the Chief's house. What he was most anxious to learn about was what mysterious business Erast Petrovich had been dealing with today.

The walk to Malaya Nikitskaya Street was not very long -only five minutes. Tulipov bounded up on to the familiar porch and pressed the bell-button. There was no one there. Well, he supposed Angelina Samsonovna must be at church or in the hospital, but where was Masa? He felt a sharp stab of alarm: what if, while Anisii was undermining the investigation, the Chief had needed help and sent for his faithful servant?

He wandered back home listlessly. There were kids dashing about in the street and shouting. At least three of the urchins, the wildest, had black hair and slanting eyes. Tulipov shook his head, remembering that Fandorin's valet had the reputation of a sweetheart and a lady-killer among the local cooks, maids and laundrywomen. If things carried on like this, in ten years' time the entire district would be populated with Japanese brats.

He came back again two hours later, after it was already dark. Delighted to see light in the windows of the outhouse, he set off across the yard at a run.

The lady of the house and Masa were at home, but Erast Petrovich was absent, and it turned out that there hadn't been any news from him all day long.

Angelina didn't let her visitor go. She sat him down to drink tea with rum and eat eclairs, one of Anisii's great favourites.

'But it's the fast,' Tulipov said uncertainly, breathing in the heavenly aroma of freshly brewed tea, laced with the strong Jamaican drink. 'How can I have rum?'

'Oh, Anisii Pitirimovich, you don't observe the fast anyway' Angelina said with a smile. She sat facing him, with her cheek propped on her hand. She didn't drink any tea or eat any eclairs. 'The fast should be a reward, not a deprivation. That's the only kind of fast the Lord needs. If your soul doesn't require it, then don't fast, and God be with you. Erast Petrovich doesn't go to church, he doesn't acknowledge the statutes of the Church, and it's all right - there's nothing terrible in that. The important thing is that God lives in his heart. And if a man can know God without the Church, then why coerce him?'

Anisii could hold back no longer, and he blurted out what had been on his mind for so long: 'Not all the statutes of the Church should be avoided. Even if it's not important to you, then you can think about the feelings of people close to you. Or else, well, see how it turns out. Angelina Samsonovna, you live according to the law of the Church, you observe all the rites, sin would never even dare come anywhere near you, but in the eyes of society ... It's not fair, it's hurtful...'

He still wasn't able to say it directly and he hesitated, but clever Angelina had already understood him.

'You're talking about us living together without being married?' she asked calmly, as if it were a perfectly ordinary topic of conversation. 'Anisii Pitirimovich, you mustn't condemn Erast Petrovich. He has proposed to me twice, all right and proper. I was the one who didn't want it.'

Anisii was dumbstruck. 'But why not?'

Angelina smiled again, only this time not at Anisii, but at some thoughts of her own. 'When you love, you don't think about yourself. And I love Erast Petrovich. Because he's very beautiful.'

'Well that's true,' said Tulipov with a nod. A more handsome man would be hard to find.'

'That's not what I meant. Bodily beauty is not enduring. Smallpox, or a burn, and it's gone. Last year, when we were living in England, there was a fire in the house next door. Erast Petrovich went in to drag a puppy out of the flames and he got singed. His clothes were burned, and his hair. He had a blister on his cheek, his eyebrows and eyelashes all fell out. He was a really fine sight. His whole face could have been burned away. Only genuine beauty is not in the face. And Erast Petrovich really is beautiful.'

Angelina pronounced the last with special feeling, and Anisii understood what she meant.

'But I'm afraid for him. He has been given great strength, and great strength is a great temptation. I ought to be in church now: it's Great Thursday today, the commemoration of the Last Supper; but, sinner that I am, I can't read the prayers that I'm supposed to. I can only pray to our Saviour for him, for Erast Petrovich. May God protect him - against human malice, and even more against soul-destroying pride.'

At these words Anisii glanced at the clock and said anxiously: 'I must confess I'm more concerned about the human malice. It's after one in the morning and he's still not back. Thank you for the refreshments, Angelina Samsonovna; I'll be going now. If Erast Petrovich shows up, please be sure to send for me.'

As he walked home, Tulipov thought about what he'd heard. On Malaya Nikitskaya Street a saucy girl came dashing up to him under one of the gas lamps - a broad ribbon in her black hair, her eyes made up, her cheeks rouged.

'Good evening to you, interesting sir. Would you care to treat a girl to a little vodka or liqueur?' She raised and lowered her painted eyebrows and whispered passionately: And I'd be very grateful to you, handsome sir. I'd give you a time to remember for the rest of your life

Tulipov felt an ache somewhere deep inside him. The streetwalker was good-looking - very good-looking, in fact. But since the last time he had given in to temptation, at Shrovetide, Anisii had renounced venal love. He felt awful afterwards, guilty. He ought to marry, but what could he do with Sonya?

Anisii replied with paternal sternness: 'You shouldn't be wandering the streets at night. You never know, you might run into some crazy murderer with a knife.'

But the saucy girl wasn't bothered in the slightest. 'Oh, such concern. I don't reckon I'll get killed. We're watched - the boyfriend keeps an eye on us.'

And yes, there on the other side of the street, Anisii could see a silhouette in the shade. Realising he'd been spotted, the ponce came over unhurriedly, at a slovenly stroll. He was a very stylish specimen: beaver-fur cap pulled down over the eyes, fur coat hanging dashingly open, a snow-white muffler covering half his face and white spats as well.

He began speaking with a drawl, and a gold-capped tooth glinted in his mouth. 'I beg your pardon, sir. Either take the young lady or be on your way. Don't go wasting a working girl's time.'

The girl looked adoringly at her protector, and that angered Tulipov even more than her pimp's insolence.

'Don't you go telling me what to do!' Anisii said angrily. 'I'll drag you down to the station in no time.'

The ponce turned his head quickly to the left and the right, saw that the street was empty and inquired with an even slower, more menacing drawl: 'You sure the dragger won't come unstuck?'

Ah, so it's like that, is it?' Anisii grabbed the rogue by his collar with one hand, and took his whistle out of his pocket with the other. There was a police constable's post round the corner on Tverskaya Street, and it was only a stone's throw to the gendarme station.

'Run for it, Ineska, I'll handle this!' the gold-toothed scoundrel said.

The girl immediately picked up her skirts and set off as fast as her legs would carry her, and the brazen ponce said in Erast Petrovich's voice: 'Stop blowing that thing, Tulipov. You've deafened me.'

The constable, Semyon Sychov, ran up, puffing and panting like a horse jangling its harness.

The Chief held out a fifty-kopeck piece to him: 'Good man, you're a fast runner.'

Semyon Lukich didn't take the money from the suspicious-looking man and glanced quizzically at Anisii.

'Yes, it's all right, Sychov, off you go my friend,' Tulipov said in embarrassment. 'I'm sorry for bothering you.'

Only then did Semyon Sychkov take the fifty kopecks, salute in a highly respectful manner and set off back to his post.

'How's Angelina - is she not sleeping?' Erast Petrovich asked, with a glance at the bright windows of the outhouse.

'No, she's waiting for you.'

'In that case, if you don't object, let's take a walk and have a little talk.'

'Chief, what's this masquerade in aid of? In the note it said you were going to approach things from the other side. What "other side" is that?'

Fandorin squinted at his assistant in clear disapproval. 'You're not thinking too well, Tulipov. "From the other side" means from the side of the Ripper's victims. I assumed that the women of easy virtue that our character seems to have a particular hatred for might know something we don't. They might have seen someone suspicious, heard something, g-guessed something. So I decided to do a bit of reconnaissance. These people aren't going to open up to a policeman or an official, so I chose the most appropriate camouflage. I must say that I've enjoyed distinct success in the role of a ponce,' Erast Petrovich added modestly. 'Several fallen creatures have volunteered to transfer to my protection, which has caused dissatisfaction among the competition - Slepen, Kazbek and Zherebchik.'

Anisii was not in the least surprised by his chief's success in the field of procuring - he was a really handsome fellow, and tricked out in full Khitrovka-Grachyovka chic too. Speaking aloud, he asked: 'Did you get any results?'

'I have a couple of things,' Fandorin replied cheerfully. 'Mamselle Ineska, whose charms, I believe, did not leave you entirely indifferent, told me an amusing little story. One evening a month and a half ago, she was approached by a man who said something strange: "How unhappy you look. Come with me and I'll bring you joy." But Ineska, being a commonsensical sort of girl, didn't go with him, because as he came up, she saw him hide something behind his back, and that something glinted in the moonlight. And it seems a similar kind of thing happened with another girl, either Glashka or Dashka. There was even blood spilt that time, but she wasn't killed. I'm hoping to find this Glashka-Dashka.'

'It must be him, the Ripper!' Anisii exclaimed excitedly. 'What does he look like? What does your witness say?'

'That's just the problem: Ineska didn't get a look at him. The man's face was in the shadow, and she only remembered the voice. She says it was soft, quiet and polite. Like a cat purring.'

And his height? His clothes?'

'She doesn't remember. She admits herself that she'd taken a drop too much. But she says he wasn't a gent and he wasn't from Khitrovka either - something in between.'

Aha, that's already something,' said Anisii, and he started bending down his fingers. 'Firstly it is a man after all. Secondly, a distinctive voice. Thirdly, from the middle classes.'

'That's all nonsense,' the Chief said abruptly. 'The killer can quite easily change clothes for his n-nocturnal adventures. And the voice is suspicious. What does "like a cat purring" mean? No, we can't completely exclude a woman.'

Tulipov remembered Izhitsin's reasoning. 'Yes, and the place! Where did he approach her? In Khitrovka?'

'No, Ineska's a Grachyovka lady, and her zone of influence takes in Trubnaya Square and the surrounding areas. The man approached her on Sukharev Square.'

'Sukharev Square fits too,' said Anisii, thinking. 'That's just ten minutes' walk from the Tatar suburb in Vypolzovo.'

All right, Tulipov, stop.' The Chief himself actually stopped walking. 'What has the Tatar suburb to do with all this?'

Now it was Anisii's turn to tell his story. He began with the most important thing - Izhitsin's 'investigative experiment'.

Erast Petrovich listened with his eyes narrowed. He repeated one word: 'Custigo?'

'Yes, I think so. That's what Nesvitskaya said. Or something like it. Why, what is it?'

'Probably "Castigo", which means "retribution" in Italian,'

Fandorin explained. 'The Sicilian police founded a s-sort of secret order that used to kill thieves, vagrants, prostitutes and other inhabitants of society's nether regions. The members of the organisation used to lay the blame for the killings on the local criminal communities and carry out reprisals against them. Well, it's not a bad idea from our midwife. You could probably expect that from Izhitsin.'

When Anisii finished telling him about the 'experiment', the Chief said gloomily: 'Yes, if one of our threesome is the Ripper, it won't so easy to catch him - or her - now. Forewarned is forearmed.'

'Izhitsin said that if none of them gave themselves away during the experiment, he'd order them to be put under open surveillance.'

And what good is that? If there are any clues, they will be destroyed. Every maniac always has something like a collection of souvenirs of sentimental value. Maniacs, Tulipov, are a sentimental tribe. One takes a scrap of clothing from the corpse, another takes something worse. There was one barbaric murderer, who killed six women, who used to collect their navels -he had a fatal weakness for that innocent part of the body. The dried navels become the most important clue. Our own "surgeon" knows his anatomy, and every time one of the internal organs is missing. I surmise that that the killer takes them away with him for his collection.'

'Chief, are you sure the Ripper has to be a doctor?' Anisii asked, and he introduced Erast Petrovich to Izhitsin's butcher theory, and at the same time to his incisive plan.

'So he doesn't believe in the English connection?' Fandorin said in surprise. 'But the similarities with the London killings are obvious. No, Tulipov, this was all done by one and the same person. Why would a Moscow butcher go to England?'

'But even so, Izhitsin won't give up his idea, especially now, after his "investigative experiment" has failed. The poor butchers have been sitting in the lock-up since midnight. He's going to keep them there till tomorrow with no water and not let them sleep. And in the morning he's going to get serious with them.'

It was a long time since Anisii had seen the Chief's eyes glint so menacingly.

Ah, so the plan is already being implemented?' the Collegiate Counsellor hissed through his teeth. 'Well then, I'll wager you that someone else will end up without any sleep tonight. And without a job too. Let's go, Tulipov. We'll pay Mr Pizhitsin a late visit. As far as I recall, he lives in a public-service apartment in the Court Department building. That's nearby, on Vozdvizhenskaya Street. Quick march, Tulipov, forward!'

Anisii was familiar with the two-storey building of the Court Department, where unmarried and seconded officials of the Ministry of Justice were accommodated. It was built in the British style, reddish brown in colour, with a separate entrance to each apartment.

They knocked at the doorman's lodge and he stuck his head out, half-asleep and half-dressed. For a long time he refused to tell his late callers the number of Court Counsellor Izhitsin's flat - Erast Petrovich looked far too suspicious in his picturesque costume. The only thing that saved the situation was Anisii's official cap with a cockade.

The three of them walked up the steps leading to the requisite door. The doorman rang the bell, tugged on his cap and crossed himself. 'Leontii Andreevich has a very bad temper,' he explained in a whisper. 'You gentlemen take responsibility for this.'

'We do, we do,' Erast Petrovich muttered, examining the door closely. Then he suddenly gave it a gentle push and it yielded without a sound.

'Not locked!' the doorman gasped. 'That Zinka, his maid -she's a real dizzy one. Nothing between the ears at all! You never know: we could easily have been burglars or thieves. Nearby here in Kislovsky Lane there was a case recently

'Sh-sh-sh,' Fandorin hissed at him, and raised one finger.

The apartment seemed to have died. They could hear a clock chiming, striking the quarter-hour.

'This is bad, Tulipov, very bad.'

Erast Petrovich stepped into the hallway and took an electric torch out of his pocket. An excellent little item, made in America: you pressed a spring, electricity was generated inside the torch and it shot out a beam of light. Anisii wanted to buy himself one like it, but they were very expensive.

The beam roamed across the walls, ran across the floor and stopped.

'Oh, God in Heaven!' the doorman squeaked in a shrill voice. 'Zinka!'

In the dark room the circle of light picked out the unnaturally white face of a young woman, with motionless, staring eyes.

'Where's the master's bedroom?' Fandorin asked abruptly, shaking the frozen doorman by the shoulder. 'Take me there! Quickly!'

They dashed into the drawing room, from the drawing room into the study and through the study to the bedroom that lay beyond it.

Anybody might have thought that Tulipov had seen more than enough contorted dead faces in the last few days, but this one was more repulsive than anything he'd seen so far.

Leontii Andreevich Izhitsin was lying in bed with his mouth wide open.

The Court Counsellor's eyes were bulging out so incredibly far that they made him look like a toad. The beam of yellow light rushed back and forth, briefly illuminated some dark heaps of something around the pillow and darted away. There was a smell of decay and excrement.

The beamed moved back to the terrible face. The circle of electric light narrowed and became brighter, until it illuminated only the top of the dead man's head.

On the forehead there was the dark imprint of a kiss.

It is astounding what miracles my skill can perform. It is hard to imagine a creature more repulsively ugly than that court official. The ugliness of his behaviour, his manners, his speech and his revolting features was so absolute that for the first time I felt doubt gnawing at my soul: could this scum really be as beautiful on the inside as all the rest of God's children?

And yet I managed to make him beautiful! Of course the male structure is far from a match for the female, but anybody who saw investigator Izhitsin after the work on him was completed would have had to admit that he was much improved in his new form.

He was lucky. It was the reward for his vim and vigour; and for making my heart ache with longing with that absurd spectacle of his. He awoke the longing-and he satisfied it.

I am no longer angry with him; he is forgiven. Even if because of him I have had to bury the trifles that were dear to my heart - the flasks in which I kept the precious mementoes that reminded me of my supreme moments of happiness. The alcohol has been emptied out of the flasks, and now all my mementoes will rot. But there is nothing to be done. It had become dangerous to keep them. The police are circling round me like a flock of crows.

It's an ugly job - sniffing things out, tracking people down. And the people who do it are exceptionally ugly. As if they deliberately choose that kind: with stupid faces and piggy eyes and crimson necks, and Adam's apples that stick out, and protruding ears.

No, that is perhaps unjust. There is one who is ugly to look at, but not entirely beyond redemption. I believe he is even rather likeable.

He has a hard life.

I ought to help the young man. Do another good deed.

CHAPTER 7

A Stenographic Report

Good Friday, 7 April

'... dissatisfaction and alarm. The sovereign is extremely concerned about the terrible, unprecedented atrocities that are being committed in the old capital. The cancellation of the Emperor's visit for the Easter service in the Kremlin is a quite extraordinary event. His Majesty has expressed particular dissatisfaction at the attempt made by the Moscow administration to conceal from the sovereign the series of murders, which, as it now appears, has been going on for many weeks. Even as I was leaving St Petersburg yesterday evening in order to carry out my investigation, the latest and most monstrous killing of all took place. The killing of the official of the Public Prosecutor's Office who was leading the investigation is an unprecedented occurrence for the entire Russian Empire. And the blood-chilling circumstances of this atrocity throw down a challenge to the very foundations of the legal order. Gentlemen, my cup of patience is overflowing. Foreseeing His Majesty's legitimate indignation, I take the following decision of my own volition and by virtue of the power invested in me

The rain of words was heavy, slow, intimidating. The speaker surveyed the faces of those present gravely - the tense faces of the Muscovites and the stern faces of those from St Petersburg.

On the overcast morning of Good Friday an emergency meeting was taking place in Prince Vladimir Andreevich Dolgorukoi's study, in the presence of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Count Tolstoy, and members of his retinue, who had only just arrived from the capital.

This Orthodox champion of the fight against revolutionary devilment had a face that was yellow and puffy; the unhealthy skin sagged in lifeless folds below the cold, piercing eyes; but the voice seemed to be forged of steel - inexorable and imperious.

'... by the power I possess as minister, I hereby dismiss Major-General Yurovsky from his position as the High Police Master of Moscow,' the Count rapped out, and a sound halfway between a gasp and a groan ran through the top brass of the Moscow police.

'I cannot dismiss the district Public Prosecutor, who serves under the Ministry of Justice; however, I do emphatically recommend His Excellency to submit his resignation immediately, without waiting to be dismissed by compulsion

Public Prosecutor Kozlyatnikov turned white and moved his lips soundlessly, and his assistants squirmed on their chairs.

'As for you, Vladmir Andreevich,' the minister said, staring steadily at the Governor-General, who was listening to the menacing speech with his eyebrows knitted together and his hand cupped to his ear, 'of course, I dare not give you any advice, but I am authorised to inform you that the sovereign expresses his dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the city entrusted to your care. I am aware that in connection with your imminent sixtieth anniversary of service at officer's rank, His Highness was intending to award you the highest order of the Russian Empire and present you with a diamond casket decorated with the monogram of the Emperor's name. Well, Your Excellency, the decree has been left unsigned. And when His Majesty is informed of the outrageous crime that was perpetrated last night

The Count made a rhetorical pause and total silence fell in the study. The Muscovites froze, because the cold breeze of the end of a Great Age had blown though the room. For almost a quarter of a century the old capital had been governed by Vladimir Andreevich Dolgorukoi; the entire cut of Moscow public-service life had long ago been adjusted to fit His Excellency's shoulders, to suit his grasp, that was firm yet did not constrain the comforts of life. And now it looked as if the old warhorse's end was near. The High Police Master and the Public Prosecutor dismissed from their posts without the sanction of the Governor-General of Moscow! Nothing of the kind had ever happened before. It was a sure sign that Vladimir Andreevich himself was spending his final days, or even hours, on his high seat. The toppling of the giant could not help but be reflected in the lives and careers of those present, and therefore the difference between the expressions on the faces of the Muscovites and those on the faces of the Petersburgians became even more marked.

Dolgorukoi took his hand away from his ear, chewed on his lips, fluffed up his moustache and asked: And when, Your Excellency, will His Majesty be informed of the outrageous crime?'

The minister narrowed his eyes, trying to penetrate the hidden motive underlying this question that appeared so simple-minded at first glance.

He penetrated it, appreciated it and laughed very quietly: As usual, from the morning of Good Friday the Emperor immerses himself in prayer, and matters of state, apart from emergencies, are postponed until Sunday. I shall be making my most humble report to His Majesty the day after tomorrow, before the Easter dinner.'

The Governor nodded in satisfaction. 'The murder of Court Counsellor Izhitsyn and his maid, for all the outrageousness of this atrocity, can hardly be characterised as a matter of state emergency. Surely, Minister, you will not be distracting His Imperial Highness from his prayers because of such a wretched matter? That would hardly earn you a pat on the back, I think?' Prince Dolorukoi asked with the same naive air.

'I will not.' The upward curls of the minister's grey moustache twitched slightly in an ironical smile.

The Prince sighed, sat upright, took out a snuffbox and thrust a pinch into his nose. 'Well, I assure you that before noon on Sunday the case will have been concluded, solved, and the culprit exposed. A ... a ... choo!'

A timid hope appeared on the faces of the Muscovites.

'Bless you,' Tolstoy said morosely. 'But please be so good as to tell me why you are so confident? The investigation is in ruins. The official who was leading it has been killed.'

'Here in Moscow, my old chap, highly important investigations are never pursued along one line only' Dolgorukoi declared in a didactic tone of voice. And for that purpose I have a special deputy, my trusted eyes and ears, who is well known to you: Collegiate Counsellor Fandorin. He is close to catching the criminal and in a very short time he will bring the case to a conclusion. Is that not so, Erast Petrovich?'

The Prince turned grandly towards the Collegiate Counsellor, who was sitting by the wall, and only the sharp gaze of the Deputy for Special Assignments could read the despair and entreaty in the protruding, watery eyes of his superior.

Fandorin got to his feet, paused for a moment and declared dispassionately: 'That is the honest truth, Your Excellency. I actually expect to close the case on Sunday'

The minister peered at him sullenly. 'You "expect"? Would you mind giving me a little more detail? What are your theories, conclusions, proposed measures?'

Erast Petrovich did not even glance at Count Tolstoy, but carried on looking at the Governor-General.

'If Vladimir Andreevich orders me to, I will give a full account of everything. But in the absence of such an order, I prefer to maintain confidentiality. I have reason to suppose that at this stage in the investigation increasing the number of people who are aware of the details could be fatal to the operation.'

'What?' the minister exploded. 'How dare you? You seem to have forgotten who you are dealing with here!'

The gold epaulettes on shoulders from St Petersburg trembled in indignation. The gold shoulders of the Muscovites shrank in fright.

'Not at all.' And now Fandorin looked at the high official from the capital. 'You, Your Excellency are an adjutant-general of the retinue of His Majesty, the Minister of Internal Affairs and Chief of the Corps of Gendarmes. And I serve in the chancellery of the Governor-General of Moscow and so do not happen to be your subordinate by any of the aforementioned lines. Vladimir Andreevich, is it your wish that I should give a full account to the minister of the state of how affairs stand in the investigation?'

Prince Dolgorukoi gave his subordinate a keen look and evidently decided that he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. 'Oh, that will do. My dear minister, my old chap, let him investigate as he thinks best. I vouch for Fandorin with my own head. Meanwhile, would you perhaps like to try a little Moscow breakfast? I have the table already laid.'

'Well, your head it is, then,' Tolstoy hissed menacingly. As you will. On Sunday at precisely twelve thirty, everything will be included in my report in the presence of His Imperial Majesty. Including this.' The minister got up and stretched his bloodless lips into a smile. "Well now, Your Excellency, I think we can take a little breakfast.'

The important man walked towards the door. As he passed Collegiate Counsellor Fandorin, he seared him with a withering glance. The other officials followed him, avoiding Erast Petrovich by as wide a margin as possible.

'What are you thinking of, my dear fellow?' the Governor whispered, hanging back for a moment with his deputy. 'Have you taken leave of your senses? That's Tolstoy himself! He's vengeful and he has a long memory. He'll hound you to death; he'll find the opportunity. And I won't be able to protect you.'

Fandorin replied directly into his half-deaf patron's ear, also in a whisper: 'If I don't close the case before Sunday, neither you nor I will be here much longer. And as for the Count's vengeful nature, please do not be too concerned. Did you see the colour of his face? He won't be needing that long memory of his. Very soon he will be called to report, not to His Imperial Highness, but to a higher authority, the supreme one.'

'We all have to tread that path,' said Dolgorukoi, crossing himself devoutly. "We only have two days. You pull out all the stops, my dear chap. You'll manage it, eh?'

'I decided to provoke the wrath of that serious gentleman for a very excusable reason, Tulipov. You and I have no working theory. The murder of Izhitsin and his maid Matiushkina changes the whole picture entirely'

Fandorin and Tulipov were sitting in a room for secret meetings located in one of the remote corners of the Governor-General's residence. The strictest instructions had been given that no one was to disturb the Collegiate Counsellor and his assistant. There were papers lying on the table covered in green velvet, and His Excellency's personal secretary was on continuous duty in the reception room outside the closed door, with a senior adjutant, a gendarme officer and a telephone operator with a direct line to the chancellery of the (now, alas, former) High Police Master, the Department of Gendarmes and the district Public Prosecutor (as yet still current). All official structures had been ordered to afford the Collegiate Counsellor the fullest possible cooperation. The Governor-General had taken the care of the formidable minister on his own shoulders - so that he would get in the way as little as possible.

Frol Vedishchev, Prince Dolgorukoi's valet, tiptoed into the study - he'd brought the samovar. He squatted modestly on the edge of a chair and waved his open hand through the air as if to say: I'm not here, gentlemen detectives; don't waste your precious attention on such small fry.

'Yes,' sighed Anisii, 'nothing's clear at all. How did he manage to reach Izhitsin?'

"Well that's actually no great puzzle. It happened like this Erast Petrovich strode across the room and took his beads out of his pocket with an accustomed gesture.

Tulipov and Vedishchev waited with bated breath.

'Last night, some time between half past one and two, someone rang the doorbell of Izhitsin's apartment. The doorbell is connected to the bell in the servant's room. Izhitsyn lived with his maid, Zinaida Matiushkina, who cleaned the apartment and his clothes and also, according to the statements of servants in the neighbouring apartments, fulfilled other duties of a more intimate character. However, it would seem that the deceased did not allow her into his bed and they slept separately. Which, by the way, corresponds perfectly to Izhitsin's well-known convictions concerning the "c-cultured" and "uncultured" classes. On hearing the ring at the door, Matiushkina threw on her shawl over her nightdress, went out into the entrance hall and opened the door. She was killed on the spot, in the entrance hall, by a blow to the heart with a sharp, narrow blade. Then the killer walked quietly though the drawing room and the study into the master's bedroom. He was asleep, there was no light - that was clear from the candle on the bedside table. The criminal appears to have managed without any light, a f-fact which is quite remarkable in itself, since, as you and I saw, it was absolutely dark in the bedroom. Izhitsin was lying on his back, and with a blow from an extremely sharp blade, the killer severed his trachea and his artery. While the dying man wheezed and clutched at his slit throat (you saw that his hand and the cuffs of his nightshirt were covered in blood), the criminal stood to one side and waited, drumming his fingers on the top of the secretaire.'

Anisii thought he was already used to everything, but this was too much, even for him. 'Oh come on, Chief, that's too much -the bit about the fingers. You told me yourself that when you're reconstructing a crime you mustn't fantasise.'

'God forbid, Tulipov; this no fantasy' Erast Petrovich said with a shrug. 'Matiushkina really was a careless maid. There is a layer of dust on the top of the secretaire, and it has been marked by the numerous repeated impacts of fingertips. I checked the prints. They are a little blurred, but in any case they are not from Izhitsin's fingers ... I shall omit the details of the disembowelment. You saw the result of that procedure.'

Anisii shuddered and nodded.

'Let me draw your attention once again to the fact that, during the ... dissection, the Ripper somehow managed without any light. He obviously possesses the rare gift of being able to see in the dark. The criminal left without hurrying: he washed his hands in the washbasin and cleaned up the marks of his dirty feet in the rooms and the entrance hall with a cloth, and very thoroughly too. In general, he did not hurry. The most annoying thing is that everything indicates that you and I reached Vozdvizhenskaya Street only about a quarter of an hour after the killer left.' The Collegiate Counsellor shook his head in vexation. 'Those are the facts. Now for the questions and the conclusions. I will start with the questions. Why did the maid open the door to the visitor in the middle of the night? We don't know, but there are several possible answers. Was it someone they knew? If it was, then who knew them - the maid or the master? We don't know the answer. It is possible that the person who rang simply said that they had brought an urgent message. In his line of work Izhitsin must have received telegrams and documents at all times of the day and night, so the maid would not have been surprised. To continue. Why was her body not touched? And - even more interestingly - why was the victim a man, the first in all this time?'

'Not the first,' Anisii put in. 'Remember, there was a male body in the ditch at Bozhedomka too.'

It seemed like a useful and pertinent remark, but the Chief merely nodded 'yes, yes', without acknowledging Tulipov's retentive memory.

And now the conclusions. The maid was not killed for the "idea". She was killed simply because, as a witness, she had to be disposed of. And so we have a departure from the "idea" and the murder of a man - and not just any man, but the man leading the investigation into the Ripper. An energetic, cruel man who would stop short at nothing. This is a dangerous turn in the Ripper's career. He is no longer just a maniac who has been driven insane by some morbid fantasy. He is now prepared to kill for new reasons that were previously alien to him -either out of the fear of exposure or c-confidence in his own impunity'

A fine business,' Vedishchev's voice put in. 'Streetwalkers won't be enough for this killer now. The terrible things he'll get up to! And I see you gentlemen detectives don't have a single clue to go on. Vladimir Andreevich and I will obviously be moving out of here. The devil take the state service - we could have a fine life in retirement - but Vladimir Andreevich won't be able to bear retirement. Without any work to do he'll just shrivel up and pine away. What a disaster, what a disaster

The old man sniffed and wiped away a tear with a big pink handkerchief.

'Since you're here, Frol Grigorievich, sit quietly and don't interrupt,' Anisii said sternly. He had never before taken the liberty of talking to Vedishchev in that tone, but the Chief had not finished his conclusions yet; on the contrary he was only just coming to the most important part, and then Vedishchev had stuck his oar in.

'However, at the same time, the departure from the "idea" is an encouraging symptom,' Fandorin said, immediately confirming his assistant's guess. 'It is evidence that we have already got very close to the criminal. It is now absolutely clear that he is someone who is informed about the progress of the investigation. More than that, this person was undoubtedly present at Izhitsin's "experiment". It was the investigator's first active move, and vengeance followed immediately. What does this mean? That in some way he himself was not aware of, Izhitsin annoyed or frightened the Ripper. Or inflamed his pathological imagination.'

As if in confirmation of this thesis, Erast Petrovich clicked his beads three times in a row.

'Who is he? The three suspects from yesterday are under surveillance, but surveillance is not imprisonment under guard. We need to check whether any of them could have evaded the police agents last night. To continue. We ourselves must personally investigate everybody who was present at yesterday's "investigative experiment". How many men were there in the morgue?'

Anisii tried to recall. 'Well, how many ... Me, Izhitsin, Zakharov and his assistant, Stenich, Nesvitskaya, that, what's his name, Burylin, then the constables, the gendarmes and the men from the cemetery. I suppose about a dozen, or maybe more, if you count everybody'

'Count everybody, absolutely everybody' the Chief instructed him. 'Sit down and write a list. The names. Your impressions of each one. A psychological portrait. How they behaved during the "experiment". The most minute details.'

'Erast Petrovich, I don't know all of their names.'

'Then find out. Draw up a complete list for me; our Ripper will be on it. That is your task for today; get on with it. And meanwhile I'll check whether any member of our trio could have made a secret nocturnal outing.'

It's good to work with clear, definite instructions, when the task is within your ability and its importance is obvious and beyond all doubt.

From the residence the Governor's swift horses carried Tulipov to the Department of Gendarmes, where he had a talk with Captain Zaitsev, the commander of the mobile patrol company, about the two commandeered gendarmes, asking if he'd noticed anything strange about their characters, about their families and their bad habits. Zaitsev began to get alarmed, but Anisii reassured him. He said it was a top-secret and highly important investigation that required special supervision.

Then he drove to Bozhedomka. He called in to say hello to Zakhkarov, only it would have been better if he hadn't. The unsociable forensic specialist mumbled something unwelcoming and buried his nose in his papers. Grumov was not there.

Anisii also visited the watchman to find out about the grave-diggers. He didn't give the Ukrainian any explanations, and the watchman didn't ask any questions - he was a simple man, but he had a certain understanding and tact.

He went to see the gravediggers too, ostensibly to give them a rouble each as a reward for assisting the investigation.

He formed his own judgement about both of them. And that was it. It was time to go home and write out his list for the Chief.

When he finished the extensive document, it was already dark. He read it through, mentally picturing each person on it and trying to figure out if he fitted the role of a maniac or not.

The gendarme sergeant-major Siniukhin: an old trooper, a face of stone, eyes like tin - God only knew what he had in his soul.

Linkov. To look at, he wouldn't hurt a fly, but he made a very strange kind of constable. Morbid dreams, wounded pride, suppressed sensuality - there could be anything.

The gravedigger Tikhin Kulkov was an unpleasant character, with his haggard face and pockmarked jaw. What a face that man had - if you met someone like that in a deserted spot, he'd slit your throat without even blinking.

Stop! He'd slit your throat all right, but how could his gnarled and crooked hands manage a scalpel?

Anisii glanced at his list again and gasped. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and his throat went dry Ah, how could he have been so blind? Why hadn't he realised it before? It was as if his eyes had been blinded by a veil. It all fitted! There was only one person in the entire list who could be the Ripper!

He jumped to his feet and dashed off, just as he was, without his cap or his coat, to see the Chief.

Masa was the only person in the outhouse: Erast Petrovich was out and so was Angelina, praying in the church. Yes, of course, today was Good Friday: that was why the church bells were tolling so sadly - for the procession of the Holy Shroud.

Ah, such bad luck! And there was no time to lose! Today's inquiries at Bozhedomka had been a mistake - he must have guessed everything! But perhaps that was for the best? If he'd guessed, then he'd be feeling anxious now, making moves. He had to be tracked down! Friday was almost over; there was only one day left!

Only one consideration made him doubt the correctness of his inspiration, but there was a telephone in the house on Malaya Nikitskaya Street and that helped him resolve it. In the Meshchanskaya police district, which included Bozhedomka, Provincial Secretary Tulipov was well known and, despite the late hour, the reply to the question that was bothering him was given immediately.

The first thing Anisii felt was sharp disappointment: 31 October - that was too early. The last definite London killing had taken place on 9 November, so his theory didn't hold together. But today Tulipov's head was working quite remarkably well - if only it was always like this - and the catch was easily resolved.

Yes, the body of the prostitute Mary Jane Kelly had been discovered on the morning of 9 November, but by that time Jack the Ripper was already crossing the Channel! That killing, the most revolting of them all, could have been his farewell 'gift' to London, committed immediately before his departure for the continent. Anisii could check later to find out what time the night train left over there.

After that the whole thing simply fitted together by itself. If the Ripper left London on the evening of 8 November - that is, on 27 October in the Russian style - then he ought to have arrived in Moscow on precisely the thirty-first!

The mistake he and the Chief had made was that, when they checked the police passport offices, they had limited themselves to December and November and not taken the end of October into consideration. That accursed confusion of the two styles of date had thrown them off the track.

And that was it. The theory fitted down to the last jot and title.

He went back home for a moment: to put on something warm, get his 'Bulldog' and grab a quick bite of bread and cheese - there was no time to have a real supper.

While he was chewing, he listened to Palasha reading the Easter story from the newspaper to Sonya, syllable by syllable. The imbecile was listening intently, with her mouth half open. But who could tell if she really understood very much?

'In the provincial town of N,' Palasha read slowly, with feeling, last year on the eve of the glorious resurrection of Christ, a criminal escaped from the jail. He waited until all the townsfolk had gone to the churches for matins and crept into the apartment of a certain rich old woman who was respected by all, but who had not gone to the service because she was not well, in order to kill her and rob her.'

'Ooh!' said Sonya. My goodness, thought Anisii, she understands. And a year ago she wouldn't have understood a thing; she'd have just dozed off.

At the very moment when the murderer was about to rush at her with an axe in his hand' - the reader lowered her voice dramatically - 'the first stroke of the Easter bell rang out. Filled with an awareness of the solemn holiness of that moment, the old woman addressed the criminal with the Christian greeting: "Christ is arisen, my good man!" This appeal shook the sinner to the very depths of his soul; it illuminated for him the deep abyss into which he had fallen and worked a sudden moral renewal within him. After several moments of difficult internal struggle, he walked over to exchange an Easter kiss with the old woman and then, breaking into uncontrollable sobbing

Anisii never learned how the story ended, it was time for him to rush away.

About five minutes after he had dashed off at breakneck speed, there was a knock at the door.

'Oh that crazy man,' Palasha said with a sigh; 'he's probably forgotten his gun again.'

She opened the door and saw that it wasn't him. It was dark outside - she couldn't see the face, but he was taller than Anisii. A quiet, friendly voice said: 'Good evening, my dear. Look, I wish to bring you joy'

When the essential work had been completed - after the scene of the crime had been inspected, the bodies photographed and taken away, there was nothing left to do. And that was when Erast Petrovich began feeling really bad. The detectives had left and he was sitting alone in the small drawing room of Tulipov's modest apartment, gazing in a torpor at the blotches of blood on the cheerful bright-coloured wallpaper, and still he couldn't stop himself trembling. His head felt as empty as a drum.

An hour earlier Erast Petrovich had returned home and immediately sent Masa to fetch Tulipov. Masa had discovered the bloodbath.

At this moment Fandorin was not thinking of kind, affectionate Palasha, or even meek Sonya Tulipova, who had died a terrible death that could not possibly be justified by God or man. In the grief-stricken Erast Petrovich's head there was one short phrase hammering away over and over again: He won't survive this, he won't survive this, he won't survive this. There was no way that poor Tulipov could ever survive this shock. He would never see the nightmarish picture of the vicious mutilation of his sister's body, never see her round eyes opened wide in amazement; but he knew the Ripper's habits, and he would easily be able to imagine what Sonya's death had been like. And that would be the end of Anisii Tulipov, because no normal man could possibly survive something like that happening to people who were near and dear to him.

Erast Petrovich was in an unfamiliar state quite untypical of him: he could not think what to do.

Masa came in. Snuffling, he dragged in a rolled-up carpet and covered the terrible blotches on the floor, then he set about furiously scraping off the bloodstained wallpaper. That was right, the Collegiate Counsellor thought remotely, but it hardly did any good.

After a while Angelina also arrived. She put her hand on Erast Petrovich's shoulder and said: Anyone who dies a martyr's death on Good Friday will be in the Kingdom of Heaven, at the side of Christ.'

'That is no consolation to me,' Fandorin said in a dull voice, without turning his head. And it will hardly be any consolation to Anisii.'

But where was Anisii? It was already the middle of the night, and the boy hadn't slept a single wink last night. Masa said he'd called round without his cap, in a great hurry. He hadn't said anything or left a note.

It didn't matter: the later he turned up, the better.

Fandorin's head was absolutely empty. No surmises, no theories, no plans. A day of intensive work had produced very little. The questioning of the detectives who were keeping Nesvitskaya, Stenich and Burylin under surveillance, together with his own observations, had confirmed that, with a certain degree of cunning and adroitness, any one of the three could have slipped away and come back unnoticed by the police spies.

Nesvitskaya lived in a student hostel on Trubetskaya Street that had four exits or entrances, and the doors carried on banging until the dawn.

Following his nervous fit, Stenich was holed up in the Assuage My Sorrows clinic, to which the detectives had not been admitted. There was no way to check whether he had been sleeping or wandering round the city with a scalpel.

The situation with Burylin was even worse: his house was immense, with sixty windows on the ground floor, half of them concealed by the trees of the garden. The fence was low. It wasn't a house: it was a sieve, full of holes.

It turned out that any one of them could have killed Izhitsin. And the most terrible thing of all was that Erast Petrovich, convinced of the ineffectiveness of the surveillance, had cancelled it altogether. This evening the three suspects had had complete freedom of action!

'Don't despair, Erast Petrovich,' said Angelina. 'It's a mortal sin, and you especially have no right. Who else will find the killer, this Satan, if you just give up? There is no one apart from you.'

Satan, Fandorin thought listlessly. Ubiquitous, could be anywhere, anytime, slip in through any opening. Satan changed faces, adopted any appearance, even that of an angel.

An angel. Angelina.

Freed from the control of his torpid spirit, his brain, so accustomed to forming logical constructions, obligingly joined the links up to form a chain.

It could even be Angelina - why couldn't she be Jack the Ripper?

She had been in England the previous year. That was one.

On the evenings when all the killings had taken place, she had been in the church. Supposedly. That was two.

She was studying medicine in a charitable society and already knew how to do many things. They taught them anatomy there too. That was three.

She was an odd individual, not like other women. Sometimes she would give you a look that made your heart skip a beat -but you couldn't tell what she was thinking about at such moments. That was four.

Palasha would have opened the door for her without thinking twice. That was five.

Erast Petrovich shook his head in annoyance, stilling the idling wheels of his insistent logic machine. His heart absolutely refused to contemplate such a theory, and the Wise One had said: 'The noble man does not set the conclusions of reason above the voice of the heart.' The worst thing was that Angelina was right: apart from him there was no one else to stop the Ripper, and there was very little time left. Only tomorrow. Think, think.

But his attempts to concentrate on the case were frustrated by that stubborn phrase hammering in his head: He won't survive this, he won't survive this.

The time dragged on. The Collegiate Counsellor ruffled up his hair, sometimes began walking around the room, twice washed his hands and face with cold water. He tried to meditate, but immediately abandoned the attempt - it was quite impossible!

Angelina stood by the wall, holding her elbows in her hands, watching with a sad insistence in her huge grey eyes.

Masa was silent too. He sat on the floor with his legs folded together, his round face motionless, his thick eyelids half-closed.

But at dawn, when the street was wreathed in milky mist, there was the sound of hurrying feet on the porch, a determined shove made the unlocked door squeak open, and a gendarme officer came dashing into the room. It was Smolyaninov, a very capable, brisk young second lieutenant, with black eyes and rosy pink cheeks. 'Ah, this is where you are!' Smolyaninov said, glad to see Fandorin. 'Everybody's been looking for you. You weren't at home or in the department, or on Tverskaya Street! So I decided to come here, in case you were still at the scene of the murders. Disaster, Erast Petrovich! Tulipov has been wounded. Seriously. He was taken to the Mariinskaya Hospital after midnight. We've been looking for you ever since they informed us; just look how much time has gone by ... Lieutenant-Colonel Svershinsky went to the hospital immediately and all his adjutants were ordered to search for you. What's going on, eh, Erast Petrovich?'

Report by Provincial Secretary A. P. Tulipov Personal Assistant to Mr E.P. Fandorin Deputy for Special Assignments of His Excellency the Governor-General of Moscow

8 April 1889, half past three in the morning

I report to your Honour that yesterday evening, while compiling the list of individuals suspected of committing certain crimes of which you are aware, I realised that it was absolutely obvious that the crimes indicated could only have been committed by one person, to whit, the forensic medical expert Egor Willemovich Zakharov.

He is not simply a doctor, but an anatomical pathologist -that is, cutting out the internal organs from human bodies is his standard, everyday work. That is one.

Constant association with corpses could have induced in him an insuperable revulsion for the whole human race, or else, on the contrary, a perverted adoration of the physiological arrangement of the human organism. That is two.

At one time he was a member of the Sadist Circle of medical students, which testifies to the early development of depraved and cruel inclinations. That is three.

Zakharov lives in a public-service apartment at the police forensic morgue at Bozhedomka. Two of the murders (of the spinster Andreichkina and the unidentified beggar girl) were committed close to this place. That is four.

Zakharov often goes to England to visit his relatives, and he was there last year. The last time he came back from Britain was on 31 October last year (11 November in the European style) - that is, he could quite easily have committed the last of the London murders that was undoubtedly the work of Jack the Ripper. That is five.

Zakharov is informed of the progress of the investigation, and in addition, of all the people involved in the investigation, he is the only one who possesses surgical skills. That is six.

I could carry on, but it is hard for me to breathe and my thoughts are getting confused ... I had better tell you about recent events.

After not finding Erast Petrovich at home, I decided there was no time to be lost. The day before I had been at Bozhedomka and spoken with the cemetery workers, which could not have escaped Zakharov's notice. It was reasonable to think that he would feel alarmed and give himself away somehow or other. To be on the safe side I took my gun with me - a Bulldog revolver that Mr Fandorin gave me as a present on my name day last year. That was a wonderful day, one of the best days in my life. But that has nothing to do with this case.

And so, about Bozhedomka. I got there by cab at ten o'clock in the evening; it was already dark. In the wing where the doctor has his quarters there was a light in one window, and I was glad that Zakharov had not run away. There was not a soul around. A dog started barking - they keep a dog on a chain by the chapel there - but I quickly ran across the yard and pressed myself against the wall. The dog went on barking for a while and then stopped. I put a crate by the wall (the window was high off the ground) and cautiously glanced inside. The lighted window was where Zakharov has his study. Looking in, I saw there were papers on the desk and the lamp was lighted. And he was sitting with his back to me, writing something, then tearing it up and throwing the pieces on the floor. I waited there for a long time, at least an hour, and he kept writing and tearing the paper up, writing and tearing it up. I wondered if I should arrest him. But I didn't have a warrant, and what if he was just writing some nonsense or other, or adding up some accounts? At seventeen minutes past ten (I saw the time on the clock), he stood up and went out of the room. He was gone for a long time. He started clattering something about in the corridor, then it went quiet. I hesitated about climbing inside to take a look at his papers, became agitated and let my guard down. Someone struck me in the back with something hot and I banged my forehead against the window sill as well. And then, as I was turning round, there was another burning blow to my side and one to my arm. I had been looking at the light, so I could not see who was there in the darkness, but I hit out with my left hand as Mr Masa taught me to do, and with my knee as well. I hit something soft. But I was a poor student for Mr Masa; I shirked my lessons. So that was where Zakharov had gone to from the study. He must have noticed me. When he started back to avoid my blows, I tried to catch up with him, but after I'd run a little distance, I fell down. I got up and fell down again. I took out my Bulldog and fired three shots into the air. I thought perhaps one of the cemetery workers would come running. I should not have fired. That probably only frightened them. I should have used my whistle. I didn't think of it; I was not feeling well. After that I do not remember very much. I crawled on all fours and kept falling. Outside the fence I lay down to rest and I think I fell asleep. When I woke up, I felt cold - very cold, although 1 had all my warm things on; I had especially put on a woolly jumper under my coat. I took out my watch and looked at it. It was already after midnight. That's it, I thought, the villain has got away. It was only then I remembered about my whistle. I started blowing it. Soon someone came, I could not see who. They carried me. Until the doctor gave me an injection, I was in a kind of mist. But now it's better, you can see. I'm just ashamed of letting the Ripper get away. If only I had paid more attention to Mr Masa. I tried to do my best, Erast Petrovich. If only I'd listened to Mr Masa. If only ...

POSTSCRIPT

At this point the stenographic recording had to be halted, because the injured man, who spoke in a lively and correct fashion at first, began rambling and soon fell into a state of unconsciousness, from which he never emerged. Dr K. I. Mobius was also surprised that Mr Tulipov had held on for so long with such serious wounds and after losing so much blood. Death occurred at approximately six o'clock in the morning and was recorded in the appropriate manner by Dr Mobius.

Lieutenant-Colonel of the Gendarmes Corps Sverchinsky Stenographed and transcribed by Collegiate Registrar Arietti

A terrible night.

And the evening had begun so marvellously. The imbecile turned out wonderfully well in death - a real feast for the eyes. After this masterpiece of decorative art, it was pointless to waste any time on the maid, and I left her as she was. A sin, of course, but in any case there would never have been the same staggering contrast between external ugliness and internal Beauty.

My heart was warmed most of all by the awareness of a good deed accomplished: not only had I shown the youth the true face of Beauty, I had also relieved him of a heavy burden that prevented him from making his own life more comfortable.

And then it all finished so tragically.

The good young man was destroyed by his own ugly trade - sniffing things out, tracking people down. He came to his own death. I am not to blame for that.

I felt sorry for the boy and that led to sloppy work. My hand trembled.

The wounds are fatal, there is no doubt about that: I heard the air rush out of a punctured lung, and the second blow must have cut through the left kidney and the descending colon. But he must have suffered a lot before he died. This thought gives me no peace. I feel ashamed. It is inelegant.

CHAPTER 8

A Busy Day

Holy Week Saturday, 8 April

The investigative group loitered at the gates of the wretched Bozhedomka Cemetery in the wind and the repulsive fine drizzle: Senior Detective Lyalin, three junior detectives, a photographer with a portable American Kodak, the photographer's assistant and a police dog-handler with the famous sniffer-dog Musya, known to the whole of Moscow, on a lead. The group had been summoned to the scene of the previous night's incident by telephone and given the strictest possible instructions not to do anything until His Honour Mr Collegiate Counsellor arrived, and they were now following their instructions strictly - doing nothing and shivering in the chilly embrace of the unseasonable April morning. Even Musya, who was so damp that she looked like a reddish-brown mop, was in low spirits. She lay down with her long muzzle on the soaking earth, wiggled her whitish eyebrows dolefully and even whined quietly once or twice, catching the general mood.

Lyalin, an experienced detective and a man who had been around a lot in general, was inclined by nature to scorn the caprices of nature and he wasn't bothered by the long wait. He knew that the Deputy for Special Assignments was in the Mariinskaya Hospital at that moment, where they were washing and dressing the poor wounded body of the servant of God Anisii, in recent times the Provincial Secretary Tulipov. Mr Fandorin was saying goodbye to his well-loved assistant; he would make the sign of the cross and then dash over to Bozhedomka in no time. It was only a five-minute journey anyway, and he presumed that the Collegiate Counsellor's horses were a cut above the old police nags.

No sooner had Lyalin had this thought than he saw a four-in-hand of handsome trotters with white plumes hurtling towards the wrought-iron gates of the cemetery. The coachman looked like a general, all covered in gold braid, and the carriage was resplendent, with its gleaming wet black lacquer and the Dolgorukoi crest on the doors.

Mr Fandorin jumped down to the ground, the soft springs swayed, and the carriage drove off to one side. It was evidently going to wait.

The newly arrived Chief was pale-faced and his eyes were burning brighter than usual, but Lyalin's keen eyes failed to discern any other signs of the shocks and sleepless nights that Fandorin had endured. On the contrary, he actually had the impression that the Deputy for Special Assignments' movements were considerably more sprightly and energetic than usual. Lyalin was about to offer his condolences, but then he looked a little more closely at His Honour's compressed lips and changed his mind. Extensive police experience had taught him it was best to avoid snivelling and just get on with the job.

'No one's been in Zakharov's apartment without you, according to instructions received. The employees have been questioned, but none of them has seen the doctor since yesterday evening. They're waiting over there.'

Fandorin glanced briefly in the direction of the morgue building, where several men were waiting, shifting from one foot to the other. 'I thought I made it clear: don't do anything. All right, let's go.'

Out of sorts, Lyalin decided. Which was hardly surprisingly in such sad circumstances. The man was threatened with the ruin of his career and now there was this upsetting business with Tulipov.

The Collegiate Counsellor ran lightly up on to the porch of Zakharov's wing and pushed at the door. It didn't yield - it was locked.

Lyalin shook his head - Dr Zakharov was a thorough man, very neat and tidy. Even when he was making good his escape he hadn't forgotten to lock the door. A man like that wouldn't leave any stupid tracks or clues.

Without turning round, Fandorin snapped his fingers and the senior detective understood him without any need for words. He took a set of lock-picks out of his pocket, chose one that was the right length for the key, twisted and turned it for a minute or so, and the door opened.

The Chief walked swiftly round all the rooms, throwing out curt instructions as he went; his usual mild stammer had disappeared somehow, as if it had never existed. 'Check the clothes in the wardrobe. List them. Determine what is missing ... Put all the medical instruments, especially the surgical ones, over there, on the table ... There was a rug in the corridor - see that rectangular mark on the floor. Where has it gone to? Find it! What's this, the study? Collect all the papers. Pay especially close attention to fragments and scraps.'

Lyalin looked around and didn't see any scraps. The study appeared to be in absolutely perfect order. The agent was amazed once again by the fugitive doctor's strong nerve. He'd tidied everything up as neatly as if he were expecting guests. What scraps would there be here?

But just then the Collegiate Counsellor bent down and picked up a small, crumpled piece of paper from under a chair. He unfolded it, read it, and handed it to Lyalin.

'Keep it.'

There were only three words on the piece of paper:

'longer remain silent'.

'Start the search,' Fandorin ordered and went outside.

Five minutes later, having divided up the sectors of the search among the detectives, Lyalin looked out of the window and saw the Collegiate Counsellor and Musya creeping through the bushes. Branches had been broken off and the ground had been trampled. That must be where the late Tulipov had grappled with the criminal. Lyalin sighed, crossed himself and set about sounding out the walls of the bedroom.

The search did not produce anything of great interest. A pile of letters in English - evidently from Zakharov's relatives: Fandorin glanced through them rapidly but didn't read them; he only paid attention to the dates. He jotted something down in his notebook, but didn't say anything out loud.

Detective Sysuev distinguished himself by discovering another scrap of paper, a bit bigger than the first, in the study, but its inscription was even less intelligible: 'erations of esprit de corps and sympathy for an old com'.

For some reason the Collegiate Counsellor found this bit of nonsense interesting. He also looked very closely at the Colt revolver discovered in a drawer of the writing desk. The revolver had been loaded quite recently - there were traces of fresh oil on the drum and the handle. Then why hadn't Zakharov taken it with him, Lyalin wondered? Had he forgotten it, then? Or deliberately left it behind? But why?

Musya disgraced herself. Despite the mire, she went dashing after the scent pretty smartly, but then a massive, shaggy dog came flying out from behind the fence and started barking so fiercely that Musya squatted down on her hind legs and backed away, and after that it proved impossible to shift her from that spot. They put the watchman's dog back on its chain, but Musya had lost all her spirit. Sniffer-dogs are nervous creatures; they have to be in the right mood.

'Which of them is which?' Fandorin asked, pointing through the window at the cemetery employees.

Lyalin began reporting: 'The fat one in the cap is the supervisor. He lives outside the cemetery and has nothing to do with the work of the police morgue. Yesterday he left at half past five and he came this morning a quarter of an hour before you arrived. The tall consumptive-looking one is Zakharov's assistant; his name's Grumov. He's just got here from home recently as well. The one with his head lowered is the watchman. The other three are labourers. They dig the graves, mend the fence, take out the rubbish and so on. The watchman and the labourers live here and could have heard something. But we haven't questioned them in detail, since we were told not to.'

The Collegiate Counsellor talked with the employees himself.

He called them into the building and first of all showed them the Colt: 'Do you recognise it?'

The assistant Grumov and the watchman Pakhomenko testified (Lyalin wrote in his notes) that they were familiar with the weapon - they had seen it, or one just like it, in the doctor's apartment. However, the gravedigger Kulkov testified that he had never seen any 'revolvert' close up, but the previous month he had gone to watch the 'doctur' shooting rooks, and he had done it very tidily: every time he fired, rooks' feathers went flying.

The three shots fired last night by Provincial Secretary Tulipov had been heard by the watchman Pakhomenko and the labourer Khriukin. Kulkov had been in a drunken sleep and the noise had not wakened him.

Those who had heard the shots said they'd been afraid to go outside - how could you tell who might be wandering about in the middle of the night? - and they apparently had not heard any cries for help. Soon afterwards Khriukin had gone back to sleep, but Pakhomenko had stayed awake. He said that shortly after the shooting a door had slammed loudly and someone had walked rapidly towards the gates.

'What, were you listening then?' Fandorin asked the watchman.

'Of course I was,' Pakhomenko replied. 'There was shooting. And I sleep badly at nights. All sorts of thoughts come into my head. I was tossing and turning until first light. Tell me, pan general, has that young lad really passed away? He was so sharp-eyed, and he was kind with simple folk.'

The Collegiate Counsellor was known always to be polite and mild-mannered with his subordinates, but today Lyalin could barely recognise him. The Chief gave no reply to the watchman's touching words and showed no interest at all in Pakhomeno's nocturnal thoughts. He swung round sharply and spoke curtly over his shoulder to the witnesses: 'You can go. No one is to leave the cemetery. But you, Grumov, be so good as to stay'

Well, he was like a totally different man.

The doctor's assistant blinked in fright as Fandorin asked him:

'What was Zakharov doing yesterday evening? In detail, please.'

Grumov shrugged and spread his hands guiltily: 'I couldn't say. Yesterday Egor Willemovich was badly out of sorts; he kept cursing all the time, and after lunch he told me to go home. So I went. We didn't even say goodbye - he locked himself in his study'

"After lunch" - what time is that?' After three, sir.'

"After three, sir",' the Collegiate Counsellor repeated, shaking his head for some reason, and clearly losing all interest in the consumptive morgue assistant. 'You can go.'

Lyalin approached the Collegiate Counsellor and delicately cleared his throat. 'I've jotted down a verbal portrait of Zakharov. Would you care to take a look?'

Fandorin didn't even glance at the excellently composed description; he just waved it away. It was rather upsetting to see such a lack of respect for professional zeal.

'That's all,' Fandorin said curtly. 'There's no need to question anyone else. You, Lyalin, go to the Assuage My Sorrows Hospital in Lefortovo and bring the male nurse Stenich to me on Tverskaya Street. And Sysuev can go to the Yakimanka Embankment and bring the factory-owner Burylin. Urgently'

'But what about the verbal portrait of Zakharov?' Lyalin asked, his voice trembling. 'I expect we're going to put him on the wanted list, aren't we?'

'No, we're not,' Fandorin replied absent-mindedly, and strode off rapidly towards his wonderful carriage, leaving the experienced detective totally bemused.

Vedishchev was waiting in the Collegiate Counsellor's office on Tverskaya Street. 'The final day' Dolgorukoi's 'grey cardinal' said sternly instead of saying hello. We have to find that crazy Englishman. Find him and then report it, all right and proper. Otherwise you know what will happen.'

And how do you come to know about Zakharov, Frol Grigorievich?' Fandorin asked, although he didn't seem particularly surprised.

"Vedishchev knows everything that happens in Moscow'

'We should have included you in the list of suspects, then. You put His Excellency's cupping jars on and even let his blood, don't you? So practising medicine is nothing new to you.' The joke, however, was made in a flat voice and it was clear that Fandorin was thinking about something quite different.

'Poor old Anisii, eh?' Vedishchev sighed. 'That's really terrible, that is. He was a bright lad, our shorty. He should have gone a long way, from all the signs.'

'I wish you would go to your own room, Frol Grigorievich,' was the Collegiate Counsellor's reply to that. He was clearly not inclined to indulge in sentimentality today.

The valet knitted his grey eyebrows in a frown of annoyance and changed to an official tone of voice: 'I have been ordered to inform Your Honour that the Minister of the Interior left for St Petersburg this morning in a mood of great dissatisfaction and before he left he was being very threatening. I was also ordered to inquire if the inquiry will soon be closed.'

'Soon. Tell His Excellency that I need to carry out just two more interrogations, receive one telegram and make a little excursion.'

'Erast Petrovich, in Christ's name, will you manage it before tomorrow?' Vedishchev asked imploringly. 'Or we're all done for.'

Fandorin had no time to reply to the question, because there was a knock at the door and the duty adjutant announced: 'The prisoners Stenich and Burylin have been delivered. They are being kept in separate rooms, as ordered.'

'Bring Stenich in first,' Erast Petrovich told the officer, and pointed the valet towards the door with his chin. 'This is the first interrogation. That's all, Frol Grigorievich - go, I have no more time.'