The White Russian

5

T he city police department was housed in a grand, classical building situated on Ofitserskaya Ulitsa- Officers Street -not far from the Mariinskiy Theatre. Pavel was waiting for him by the gate and the pair strolled in through the side arch of the courtyard, past a group of horses being exercised in a tight circle. Behind them, men from the transport department had already hauled out sleds and carriages from the garage, ready to be hitched up.

Ruzsky led the way into the lobby. It was warmer in here, but gloomy and run-down, blue and gold paint peeling from its walls.

Directly ahead of them was the duty desk, then the incident room and the narrow stone steps leading down to the cells. To the right, behind a closed door, was the senior officers’ mess. Ruzsky stepped into the constables’ mess opposite, where small groups of men gossiped, sipping tea or perhaps vodka from steel cups. Few lamps were lit in the vaultlike room, and the warm air was thick with the smell of tobacco smoke, wet leather, and wool. The three constables who’d been out on the ice earlier sat on a bench in the corner, smoking. One had his boots off and was rubbing the circulation back into his toes.

The men got immediately to their feet. “I should have introduced myself out on the ice,” Ruzsky said. “Investigator Ruzsky.”

They thrust out their hands and announced their names in turn, with an eagerness borne of the fact that service here earned an exemption from the front.

“You searched well,” Ruzsky said.

They did not reply. They were just boys, and looking into their faces made him feel old. He hesitated, wishing he had something more to say, then turned and walked back into the hallway. He didn’t recognize the constable at the duty desk either, and Pavel didn’t bother to introduce him as he pulled across the report book. “Anyone missing last night or this morning?” he asked. A glass-fronted cabinet behind the desk was filled with rifles and revolvers.

“No, sir.” The man had a wide, flat face. He wasn’t from Petersburg. Probably one of his parents was from the Far Eastern provinces.

“They must have some form of identification on them,” Ruzsky said.

“They haven’t,” Pavel responded. “I’ve just been down to check. We have two nameless victims.”

Ruzsky watched his partner flick back through the pages. “Would you get us the missing persons book?” Pavel asked.

The desk clerk went into the room behind, running his hand along the rows of files.

Pavel slammed the incident book shut. Ruzsky leaned back against the desk, examining the posters on the wall. He moved closer. Alongside the grainy police photographs of wanted men, there was a caricature of Rasputin dancing alongside the Tsar and a half-naked Empress. Next to the Tsar sat his English cousin George. The caption read, “Little Father plays with Georgie, little Mother lies with Grigory.”

Alongside the poster was a row of photographs of Rasputin’s body. The first was a close-up of his face, which looked as if it had been rubbed in soot. There appeared to be a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The other two showed the priest’s frozen corpse, with its legs and hands bound, arms raised above his head.

“I thought you told me we never got called to the scene,” Ruzsky said.

“The photographer arrived first. By the time I got there, Anton had handed jurisdiction to the Okhrana.”

Ruzsky frowned at his friend, who seemed nervous or embarrassed, his eyes evasive. Last night, he’d told Ruzsky that the constables had called the Okhrana direct-indeed they’d had a mild altercation over it. The Tsar’s secret police normally dealt only with sedition and terrorism and the ruthless suppression of opposition to the Tsar. This was the first time they had ever taken direct control of a murder case.

“You think Anton should have fought for the investigation?”

“No.”

“But you still had a look?”

Pavel didn’t answer and Ruzsky turned back to the photographs. “This was taken by Great Petrovsky Bridge.”

“Yes.”

“So it’s true he was still alive when they threw him into the river. His arms are like that because he was trying to escape when his body froze?” Rumors had even reached Tobolsk about the manner of Rasputin’s death-that he had been almost impossible to kill, and had still been breathing after being shot, bound, and thrown into the ice.

“I don’t know,” Pavel said.

“And you weren’t curious?”

Pavel stared at the photographs, without responding.

“We should have insisted on making it our investigation,” Ruzsky said easily.

“There was no investigation. The dogs on the streets knew who had done it. If the relatives of the Tsar want to murder his wife’s lover, then who are we to get involved?”

“You don’t really believe that they were lovers?”

Pavel shrugged. “People do. I got called out to an incident-about a year after you left. It was at one of the new gypsy restaurants. He was drunk.”

“Rasputin?”

“Yes. Somebody telephoned to complain and I happened to be working late. When I arrived he was dancing in the middle of the restaurant, boasting of how he could make the Empress dance like this…” Pavel shoved his hips forward. “Then he dropped his trousers and started waving his penis at the spectators.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“On my son’s life.”

Ruzsky shook his head. He had met the peasant priest only once, just before the war, after the imperial favorite had appeared at the police department late at night, drunk, claiming incomprehensible threats on his life.

The constable shuffled back with the book and pushed it across the desk. There had been no entries for more than a week. “I suppose it is too early for anyone to have missed them,” Ruzsky said.

He turned around and led Pavel past the entrance to the armory and up to the first floor. The door to Anton’s office at the top of the stairs was shut, the corridor dark. To their right were the administrative offices-finance, the records library, constables and senior officers’ administration-but Ruzsky flicked on the light and turned left to the Criminal Investigation Division.

Their office was small-far too cramped for the number of people who worked here-a series of wooden cubicles arranged around a group of desks in the center reserved for the secretaries and the junior constables on attachment. Vladimir ’s cubicle had the words Investigator, Street Crime inscribed in the door. Next came Sarlov, under the heading Pathology, then Maretsky under Modus Operandi, and finally the corner office that Ruzsky and Pavel had shared for many years with the words Chief Investigator/Deputy Chief Investigator, Murder inscribed heavily in black. Ruzsky pushed open the door of his cubicle, flicked on the wall light, took off his coat, and threw it onto the stand in the corner. He removed his gloves and bashed the last of the snow from his boots before sitting down at his desk.

“See, I tidied up,” Pavel said.

Ruzsky was gratified that no one had occupied his desk, but it was obvious that Pavel had simply spread the mess during his absence and swept it up and dumped it back on his own desk prior to his return. “You’re a pig,” Ruzsky responded.

Pavel took a piece of chalk and wrote the date at the top of the blackboard on the wall beside him. Underneath, in capitals, he scrawled NEVA BODIES. He turned around. “A great start.”

He moved to the city map next to it, took a black pin from its edge, and placed it in the center of the river Neva. “Black for murder, red for muggings, green for random street violence, orange for anti-Jewish violence. Vladimir puts his up. It’s a kind of competition. We get five points per pin to Vladimir ’s one. We ran out of pins so many times last year, I got bored of it, but today we can begin again…”

“Did you call Sarlov?”

“Yes.”

“He said he was on his way?”

Pavel raised an eyebrow. “This is Sarlov we’re talking about. He didn’t say anything.”

Pavel straightened, turned, and walked out of the office. A few moments later, Ruzsky heard the door to the toilets at the end of the corridor bang shut. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the roll of banknotes taken from the dead man’s jacket, and put it in one of his drawers.

He sat down. In the center of the desk was a piece of wood with a carved inscription carrying the words of the oath all soldiers and officers of the Imperial Army swore to the Tsar. I promise and do hereby swear, it read, before Almighty God, before his Holy Gospels, to serve His Imperial Majesty, the supreme Autocrat, truly and faithfully, to obey him in all things, and to defend his dynasty, without sparing my body, until the last drop of my blood.

It had been given to Ruzsky by his brother as a joke. In the light of the carnage at the front, it no longer appeared funny.

Ruzsky pulled over his “in” tray and took out the only item that had been placed within it. It was a clipping from the newspaper Novoe Vremia.

He glanced over it. The article had been written by the liberal Maklakov and it compared Russia to an automobile being driven at breakneck speed toward a precipice by a mad chauffeur whose passengers were too scared to attempt to seize control of the steering wheel.

Ruzsky opened the central drawer of his desk and was surprised to find that his old notebook was still there. He opened it and flicked through the notes of his last case, that of the ill-fated girl from Sennaya Ploschad. He turned over a fresh page and wrote Neva Murders.

One of the office telephones rang and Ruzsky got up to answer it.

“Ruzsky.”

There was a confused pause, then the caller spoke.

“Ruzsky? Is it really you? It’s Veresov.”

Ruzsky was heartened by the pleasure he detected in Veresov’s voice. He was a small, studious man who occupied the tiny fingerprint bureau, located, much to his chagrin, in the basement, between the canteen and the cells.

“You’re back,” Veresov said.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

Veresov was silent. “Not the best of times to return to,” he said.

There was a moment’s silence. “I have the dagger,” Veresov continued. “Is it criminal suspects only?”

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t have automatic access to the Okhrana’s files of political suspects anymore. If I have to apply to work through their records as well, it’s going to take twice as long.”

“I thought we shared files?”

“New regulations.”

“Well,” Ruzsky said. “It doesn’t look like a political case. Start with your own files.”

“ Petrograd or Empire-wide?”

“Start with St. Petersburg, then Moscow, then work through the other cities.”

Ruzsky put the mouthpiece back on its hook and it rang again immediately.

“It’s Sarlov. You can come down now.”

Sarlov’s laboratory was next to Veresov’s fingerprint bureau in the basement and it was equally damp and even more tiny. Sarlov always complained about this, but Ruzsky thought the pathologist enjoyed the fact that it forced detectives to stand too close to the bodies.

There was a bright lamp in the ceiling and the two victims lay side by side on a steel table beneath it. The table had been designed for one, and the man’s body looked as if it was about to tumble onto the floor.

Sarlov had a mask across his face and wore a white apron spattered with blood. He had a small saw in his right hand. “Ruzsky,” he said, surprise in his voice. “I didn’t know you were back. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Did you see Rasputin’s body?” Ruzsky asked, ignoring his question.

“No.”

“Is it true he was still alive when they put him in the river?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you doctors talk?”

“Sometimes.” He leaned over the man’s body and raised the saw.

“Please, Sarlov,” Pavel said. “Not now.”

“You can see for yourself. There’s not much to tell you. I’ll give you a full report upstairs when I’m finished.” Sarlov leaned back and pulled down his mask. “The man was in his early forties, died around three A.M. Between three and four. Severe loss of blood from the stab wounds. Seventeen in all. Look at him.”

Ruzsky realized he had been consciously not looking at either of the victims, but he forced himself to do so now. The man was bulkier than he’d imagined, a thick pelt of hair running from his chest to his waist. His body had been punctured repeatedly, but his face looked less distorted now that the wounds had been cleaned. He’d not been a handsome man, Ruzsky thought; his cheeks were too fleshy and nose too broad. The girl, by contrast, was prettier than she’d appeared. She had a neat face, with a petite nose and long eyelashes. She’d been stabbed only once, precisely, in the center of her chest. She was naked and Ruzsky instinctively wanted to reach forward and cover her up.

“So?” Pavel asked.

“They were followed from behind,” Ruzsky said. “And yet stabbed from the front.”

“I can certainly tell you they were stabbed from the front,” Sarlov responded.

“The man has no marks on his arms, so the first blow must have been sudden and unexpected. He was caught unawares.”

“Very good, Ruzsky. I’m pleased to see provincial life has not dulled your powers of observation.” Sarlov’s eyes twinkled with laughter. He liked to hide his affection beneath a manner that was alternately curmudgeonly and playful.

“Who was killed first?” Ruzsky asked, failing to return the smile. He knew the game. He was supposed to be the butt of their humor-now more than ever.

Sarlov shook his head. “I don’t know. Common sense dictates it must have been the man.”

“One of them was expecting this to happen,” Ruzsky went on, “because neither ran. Perhaps the girl was killed first, but the man was expecting it, so he stood and watched. Then the murderer turned unexpectedly on him.”

“And stabbed him seventeen times?” Pavel asked.

“Have you found anything on them, Sarlov?”

“No. Their pockets have been cleared out.”

“But nobody took the money.”

Sarlov shrugged.

“Have you found any clues at all?”

The doctor shook his head. “The man has had some dental work. It’s gold foil treatment, very elaborately performed. That is not to say it couldn’t have been done by a dentist here, just that it is more likely to have been done somewhere else. Europe, or maybe America. Somewhere like New York.”

“A foreigner, then?”

“His shirts have no markings, and the labels from his jacket and overcoat have been removed. His underpants were Russian, his boots made to measure, probably somewhere in the Empire, I couldn’t tell you where.”

“The man was the real target,” Ruzsky said.

“Perhaps.”

“Why else would he have been stabbed seventeen times?”

“He was certainly no Rasputin. I should think he was dead after the first blow.”

“Anything else?”

“No. Oh, yes. I almost missed this. Look here, on his shoulder.”

Ruzsky and Pavel examined the man’s skin. He had a small, branded black star there.

“What does that mean?” Pavel asked.

“I have no idea,” Sarlov said.

“Have you seen anything like it before?”

“No.”

Ruzsky noticed the pile of clothes on the far end of the shelf. The man’s clothes were stiff with dried blood. His overcoat was thick and, Ruzsky thought, expensive. There was nothing in the inside pocket and the outline where the label had been was clearly visible. He pulled the pocket out, but there was nothing there, except a little dirt.

The jacket was made of thick, dark wool, probably of cheap Russian manufacture, since the stitching appeared primitive. He turned all the pockets inside out, but again found nothing. He examined the boots for a moment. They were old and worn down and if the maker’s name had ever been visible in the sole, it had long since faded.

Ruzsky pushed the pile to one side and turned to the girl’s clothes. He was struck immediately by their quality. The seams were immaculately stitched. He started with her corset, but then picked up the dress and saw the tiny label sewn into the hem.

“Pavel,” he said. “Tell one of the constables to go down to the Nevsky and bring Madame Renaud here, whatever her objections.”

“Why?”

“Because my wife’s expensive taste in dresses has finally served a purpose.”

Ruzsky made his way upstairs to the first floor. He saw that Anton’s office door was ajar. Anton had always come to work on Saturday mornings. It was a ritual. He was bent over a drawer, searching for something. The desk itself was covered, as always, in loose papers. On the wall, below a white clock, was a picture of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. The bookcase was full of leather-bound volumes, some Anton’s own work.

Anton straightened. He had his glasses in his hand and spun them slowly.

“You’re in early,” Ruzsky said.

Anton looked at him for a moment more and then came toward him. “My boy,” he said, gripping his shoulders and looking into his eyes. “How wonderful to have you back. Come, let’s celebrate.”

Anton reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of vodka. As he filled two glasses, a large mop of dark hair hung over his forehead, the gray now visible at his temples. His face exuded the warmth of a loving father, his manner the absentmindedness and eccentricity of the college professor he had once been.

Anton pushed one glass across the desk and raised the other. He looked carefully at his protégé. “Fantastic to have you back.”

They drank. Ruzsky almost choked. “Christ.”

“I know, it is dreadful.”

“It’s worse than dreadful.”

“The city is an island, cut off from decent vodka.”

“I should have brought you some from Tobolsk.”

Anton raised his eyebrows. “Better keep your voice down. It’s still illegal, you know.”

Ruzsky smiled. “I’m sure prohibition has been observed to the letter, especially inside this building.”

Anton took another slug. “It’s been an excellent idea which, as the chief of the city police, I have, of course, fully supported. It has made a huge contribution to improving the general level of sobriety.” Anton refilled his glass.

Ruzsky took a pace closer to look at the photograph on Anton’s desk. It was of the five of them-Ruzsky, Pavel, Anton, Vladimir, and Maretsky. “Good God,” Anton said. “A proper reunion is in order. Where is Pavel?” He picked up the telephone earpiece. “Professor Maretsky,” he told the operator, then: “Maretsky. Anton. Come around, will you, I’ve got a surprise. And bring Vladimir.” Anton listened. “What about Sarlov?” He shook his head. “All right, just get over here.”

Anton put down the receiver and refilled both glasses.

“Pavel will be back in a minute.” Ruzsky threw the vodka to the back of his throat, shook his head once, and put the glass down. He picked up the photograph and looked at the faces that stared back at him, one a much younger version of his own.

“You were a baby then,” Anton said.

“So were you.”

Ruzsky stared at the photograph. The words Criminal Investigation Division, St. Petersburg City Police Department and the year-1900-had been written by hand across the bottom of it. Ruzsky took out his cigarette case and pushed it toward Anton, who removed one and shunted it back.

“Have you seen her?” Anton asked. Ruzsky saw the warmth and affection that shone in his friend’s eyes.

“Irina? No.”

“I wasn’t talking of Irina.” Anton was smiling. “I saw you together, don’t forget. That night at the Mariinskiy.”

Ruzsky did not answer. He wondered how his feelings could have been so transparent.

“One of the dancers told me she kept a photograph of you on her dressing table after you went.”

Ruzsky felt his face flush with embarrassment and pleasure as he thought of Maria.

Anton stretched his legs. “So?”

Ruzsky shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“I know that you will say that I should not, but I cannot help feeling in some way responsible for this mess.”

Ruzsky sucked heavily on his cigarette. Irina had been one of Anton’s students.

“Pavel has been filling me with the usual gloom,” Ruzsky said, anxious to change the subject.

Anton leaned forward again. “This time he’s right. I never imagined that the Tsar’s absence would be a handicap, but since he ran off to the front to try and win the war single-handedly, it has gotten worse. It is like being on a ship headed for an iceberg with a madman at the controls.”

“I got the article.”

“Yes, but the worst of it is that the woman is at the steering wheel. That’s what’s frightening.”

“Do you still attend the weekly meetings at the Interior Ministry?”

“Yes.”

“What do the Okhrana say?”

“We don’t need them to tell us what is going on. Stand in a line for bread. You’ll get the idea.”

Anton came around the desk and leaned against it. “I took a look at the bodies,” he said.

“And?”

“People are desperate, but this kind of savagery… Have you identified the victims?”

“No. Their bodies have been systematically stripped.”

Anton looked up. His eyes were washed out and bloodshot. There was deep concern there. “It troubles me. At this time, right out there on the ice, in front of the palace, in the very heart of the city.”

Ruzsky wondered what lay beneath Anton’s concern. “I don’t think the location was chosen for its symbolic value, if that is what you mean.”

Anton toyed with his eyeglasses.

“I don’t understand what you’re driving at,” Ruzsky said.

“These are complicated times, Sandro.”

“What has that to do with us?”

Anton sighed. “It’s a time for caution. The Progressives and even some members of the government have been writing to senior generals at headquarters to demand the Empress be arrested on her next visit to the front line, and sent to the Crimea. I’ve heard that some of your contemporaries at the yacht club discuss in hushed tones whether it would be justifiable to assassinate the Tsar.”

“And what has that to do with us?”

“Nothing, I just want you to be aware.”

“Of what?”

“No one operates in a vacuum, that’s all.”

Ruzsky did not see what Anton was driving at. “And our friend Vasilyev?”

“The chief of the Okhrana sits in his office playing the loyal police chief. The plotters’ letters are opened, their contents divulged to the Empress. She in turn writes to her husband and demands another round of ministers be sacked and sent into exile. We call it ministerial leapfrog. At a meeting yesterday, the latest bulletin to be sent up to Tsarskoe Selo was pushed around the table. It contained extracts from a letter written by the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna to a leading member of the Duma, demanding that the Empress be… annihilated.”

Ruzsky did not answer. Maria Pavlovna was one of the most senior members of the Romanov family and what Anton was telling him was not khvost gossip. “Pavel tells me Vasilyev tolerates no opposition,” he said, memories of his confrontation with the city’s secret police chief three years ago still fresh.

“You have to question the currency of a regime that relies for its survival on such a man.”

“You exaggerate.”

“No.”

“And he is rewarded for his loyalty?”

“Yes, but you’re missing the point. Vasilyev is not stupid. Think about it for a minute. Some of these strikes… what lies behind them? Are the Okhrana up to their old tricks? We know they have provocateurs in these factories and strike committees. Is Vasilyev deliberately stirring up trouble so that whichever group of revolutionaries he favors can seize power under the guise of saving the Empire?”

“The incorruptible Vasilyev? Devoted servant to the Tsar?”

Pavel appeared in the doorway. “What’s this, a wedding reception?”

Maretsky was half a step behind him. “Professor,” Ruzsky said, unable to conceal his pleasure. Maretsky stepped forward and offered himself for a bear hug, and Ruzsky ducked into it as he would have done to his son. Maretsky gripped him tight, then took a pace back, unsteady and misty-eyed for a moment, before he sat down next to Anton. His legs didn’t quite reach the floor and he looked like a child in an adult’s chair. His face was round, a few wispy strands of gray hair protruding from the top of his shirt belying an otherwise almost feminine appearance. He wore a gray jacket and shorter boots than was the fashion.

“You look thinner,” Maretsky told him. “Don’t they have food out there?”

“Which is more than can be said for you, Maretsky,” Pavel said.

“How was Tobolsk?”

“Cold and boring.”

“Is it true they eat each other when they get hungry?”

“More or less.”

Anton clinked his glass against the metal vodka bottle and then poured out a measure for each of them. He pushed the glasses across the table and they all raised them together. “Older, wiser,” he said, looking at them meaningfully. “But still here.”

They drained their glasses.

An awkward silence followed. Their attempt to pretend that nothing had changed only served to reinforce the fact that something had. Maretsky-even Anton, or was he imagining that?-seemed almost wary of him.

“How is Irina?” Maretsky asked.

“She’s fine, thank you. Or so I believe.”

Maretsky frowned. “She survived Tobolsk?”

“Just about.”

“I’m surprised she went. My wife wouldn’t have.”

“It’s surprising,” Ruzsky said, “what guilt can make you do.”

They were silent once more.

Ruzsky heard Madame Renaud’s haughty voice at the other end of the corridor.