FIFTEEN

The bomb exploded before dawn, and by the time Ryzhkov dragged himself out of bed and got to the little house off Baltiskaya Street, it was all over but the cleaning up.

It had detonated by accident just as a terrorist had been ascending the steps from a second bomb factory, only a few streets away from the one the Okhrana had been watching. The terrorist, or terrorists (no one knew exactly) had been blown into a fine spray of flesh that had spattered the walls of surrounding buildings; a few dozen windows had been shattered by the blast. The front of a little rooming-house had been knocked off its foundations, collapsed, and immediately caught fire.

No one knew if this second bomb factory had any connection with the group that were now being arrested by the St Petersburg gendarmes, the anarchists taken by surprise, caught asleep in their various boltholes, enfeebled by the noxious fumes in their ‘laboratory’.

Now Ryzhkov and Hokhodiev stood in the background, trying not to gag as Baron Colonel Tuitchevsky, commander of the local Okhrana bureau, strode through the devastation, with a grave and embarrassed expression on his face, angry and worried that he would be blamed for overlooking the second set of terrorists. Clearly he was looking for any excuse he could find; a way to treat the explosion as a great victory would be best, but failing that, someone else’s career was going to have to go. Eventually Tuitchevsky came around to Ryzhkov, shook his hand, but completely ignored Hokhodiev, who just stood there calmly, having seen it all before a million times.

It could have been much, much worse; only one bystander had been killed, no one important, only a newsboy who had the misfortune to be standing outside on the corner in the early hours waiting to pick up his papers for the day. He was blown into the street and died quickly from the concussion. There were fragments of Russian Word floating about the street, or turning into soggy mush from the water the firemen had soaked everything with. Now they were rolling up their hoses and smoking cigarettes.

‘Oh, God . . .’ Ryzhkov heard Hokhodiev mutter behind him, and he turned to see a thickset woman running up. She went from gendarme to gendarme tugging on their lapels trying to find her son, but no one knew where he was, perhaps they had already taken him away.

From the neighbours Ryzhkov learned something of the ownership of the building. It was a property managed by a banking firm as it turned out, undoubtedly purchased for speculative purposes by a rich investor. Hokhodiev telephoned and informed a bank clerk and they promised they would send someone out right away; the basement was leased to a family named Popov the clerk said. They had only rented a few days before and had paid up to the end of the month.

Ryzhkov walked around in the soggy embers and peered down the stone stairwell into the flooded basement. ‘Popov’ would undoubtedly prove to be an alias. He wondered if there were any other bodies down there and how long it would take the police to sift through the wreckage.

‘What I cannot fathom—’ Colonel Tuitchevsky was complaining behind him, ‘—is why we had no indication, no indication at all. We followed them, your people were listening to the others, yes? But you say you didn’t hear anything did you?’ His eyes were narrowed and he had focused on Ryzhkov. ‘Where’s Zezulin? I thought he was in charge of this entire case? Why isn’t he here?’

‘I don’t know, Colonel. We were all called from our station, so . . . Perhaps he is en route,’ Ryzhkov said. In reality Zezulin had probably slept through any telephone call he would have received in the early morning.

‘Well, we were told about the one set of bombers, now it turns out there were two. I suppose Zezulin simply missed it entirely, eh?’

‘I really couldn’t say, Colonel. There were several telephone calls from the other site, from the bakery. Perhaps some were made to this group. We really have no way of knowing.’

‘Hmmph . . .’ Tuitchevsky looked at him for a moment, the trace of a smile. He could see as well as anyone when someone was protecting his boss. ‘Well, don’t worry. I’ll get to the bottom of things,’ he said. Tuitchevsky kicked a charred window frame with his shiny boot. In fact no one would ever know what had happened. The explanation had gone up in smoke. ‘What is that?’ The window frame had slid down a hill of debris and Tuitchevsky was bending down to look at something gleaming in the cinders.

‘It’s a hand.’

‘Good God!’ Tuitchevsky abruptly took a step back. ‘There’s a ring,’ said Ryzhkov bending closer, taking out his handkerchief. ‘See the corrosion? That’s probably from the chemicals.’

‘The hand of the bomber?’ Tuitchevsky’s eyebrows had shot up.

‘Perhaps.’

Now the colonel came closer and squatted down over the relic. From the dark hairs and blunt nails, the hand had once belonged to a man. There was a thick band around the ring finger, too tarnished to tell if it was gold or silver. ‘The hand of the bomber . . .’ Tuitchevsky breathed wonderingly. And when Ryzhkov turned he saw that Tuitchevsky was smiling.

‘I want this,’ Tuitchevsky said in a hushed voice, almost amazed at himself. ‘I want this for my collection. There ought to be a way to preserve it, don’t you think?’

‘I . . . I really don’t know. I suppose . . . but we need it first.’

‘Yes,’ Tuitchevsky said reaching out and touching the hand for the first time, turning it over to examine the calloused palm, the shredded flesh at the wrist. ‘It’s beautiful, in a way. I mean, it is beautiful, you can’t deny that, eh?’

Ryzhkov shook his head. For a moment he thought he was going to faint. Dizzy, knocked out from lack of sleep, from an overdose of absurdity.

‘If you say so.’

‘I do,’ Tuitchevsky said quietly. ‘I do say so.’

When they finally got in their carriage they passed the woman again. She was sitting on the kerb, rocking back and forth, clutching a blue cloth cap in her hand. Another child was standing beside her, too young to understand, one hand on her mother’s shoulder. It only took a few moments to drive past her and neither of them said anything about it.

Ryzhkov dropped Hokhodiev off and continued on with Tuitchevsky’s hand to the Military Hospital so that the ring could be removed and cleaned. It turned out to be a common silver band. An assistant took fingerprints from the hand so that Ryzhkov could take them back to the External branch’s Records Division.

Bondarenko came in right at the end of it. The grisly nature of the project seemed to catch his interest. ‘Well . . . it’s a wedding band, or perhaps an engagement present. Not of great quality, I’d say. There is a jeweller’s mark beside the inscription. It’s somewhat worn. You might be able to find something via the fingerprints, and at the Records Division there is an extensive library of jeweller’s marks.’ He used a pair of tweezers to put the ring back in its envelope.

‘Thank you, Doctor. Ah . . . Colonel Tuitchevsky wants, for some reason . . . well, he’s asked me to enquire if the hand itself could be preserved somehow? Is that possible?’ Bondarenko had suddenly lost his good humour. He frowned.

‘Preserved?’

‘Yes . . . I don’t know . . .’

‘I’m not a taxidermist,’ Bondarenko said, offended. ‘Tell him it’s absolutely out of the question.’ Bondarenko abruptly turned away and retreated into his labyrinth, shaking his head and muttering curses under his breath.

Upstairs in the lobby Ryzhkov borrowed a telephone to check in with 17 Pushkinskaya and got an excited Izachik on the line. ‘Monsieur Zezulin has found out about this morning’s events and wishes everyone to come in, sir, and also for you there is a message from’— a pause—‘an Inspector Schliff.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, sir. He asks you to meet him at the front of the Haymarket, sir.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes sir. He seemed to think it was important.’

The boy sat across the room. It was a large dusty open space, where rows of seamstresses had once worked. The fine wood floor had holes drilled through it that had been puttied over when they removed the machines but never repaired.

‘He says he only wants to speak to you.’

‘How did he know about me?’ Ryzhkov asked.

‘I’ve been passing the word around. He heard somehow, went out and telephoned in. He’s scared that he’s in trouble,’ Schliff said quietly, not quite whispering.

‘I can’t imagine he could get in worse trouble than in this place.’

‘He’s not worried about trouble with us, just with the old man that owns him,’ Schliff said. ‘See, if you go investigating in places like this, if you want to get anywhere, you have to stand between the pimp and the bird. I spent a little on him, just so you know.’

‘How much?’

‘A twenty.’

‘All right,’ Ryzhkov said. He had no way to tell if Schliff was just lining his own pockets. It didn’t matter. It was the price of doing business; he would put in a request when Zezulin was asleep.

They walked across the open room. The boy looked up at them. He was about twelve years of age—or maybe he was older and just looked younger. Schliff had already told him that the boys were forced to move on when they got older. Either sold to individuals, or the homosexual brothels, or, if they were very handsome, to more luxurious establishments that catered to wealthy female clients. Any one of those choices was considered lucky. If they failed to land a position in one of the bordellos a life on the street was the only other possibility. It was the great dividing line in the life of a prostitute. The boy looked at him steadily.

‘This is Teodor,’ said Schliff. ‘Teodor, this is Inspector Ryzhkov. He’s investigating the murder of a vertika that happened recently. Tell him about your friend.’

‘First I tell you, then I have to tell him,’ the boy complained.

‘Fine, stop whenever you want to.’

‘You’re looking for an old man. White hair, big side-whiskers like that?’ The boy put his hands up to show them.

‘Yes.’

‘He likes to squeeze girls?’

‘We think so, yes.’

‘He killed this other girl?’

‘That’s right.’

The boy looked at both of them for a moment. Making up his mind. He was older than twelve, Ryzhkov decided. Or maybe just old before his time.

‘There was a guy that killed my wife,’ Teodor said quietly.

‘Your wi—’ Ryzhkov started but Schliff put his hand on his arm. ‘Keep going,’ he told the boy.

‘She went to this place and was with a grandfather, an old one like you said. She came back, they brought her back, she was sick when she came back, and then she died that night. She had something break up here from when he squeezed her.’

‘Can you tell us where she was that night, who sent for her?’ Ryzhkov asked quietly. The boy gave a tight smile, shook his head, then looked up at Schliff.

‘No, no. Fine, Teo. You can stop. We don’t want you to get in any trouble.’

The boy looked back across to the door. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.

‘Anything you can tell us, Teodor . . .’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Go and look in that cupboard.’ The boy pointed across to the end of the big garret room where cupboards and open shelving had been built-in to store bolts of fabric. ‘Not that one, the one over against the roof.’

Ryzhkov opened the little cupboard. There was a box of wooden bobbins, some scraps of paper. Everything was covered in dust and mouse shit.

‘Reach back in the corner up at the top and there’s a nail that sticks out.’

‘All right.’ He felt back into the cupboard where the shelving joined the rafters.

‘If you pulled on that nail you might find something. It wouldn’t be my fault.’

Ryzhkov tugged on the little nail and the board that formed the back wall of the cupboard teetered out and pivoted so that he could slide it away. Inside there was a tin box, about the size of a tea-box, and a black velvet handbag of high quality.

‘Just take the bag, leave the other, and put it back, eh?’ the boy said. Schliff had taken a few steps across the floor but the boy stopped him. ‘You stay and watch the door. Everything I’ve got is in there.’

In the purse was a cheap gold-plated bracelet, a man’s tie clip with some sort of stone set in its centre, several postcards, a photograph of a woman in a rather ordinary dress, and a man’s empty leather wallet.

‘That’s all her things she left me.’

‘She had light fingers, your wife did?’ Schliff was smiling at the boy.

‘We were saving up to go away,’ the boy said flatly. Ryzhkov looked at him for a moment and then opened the wallet.

Schliff took the bag, walked over and examined it under the light from the window. Looked at the portrait of the woman. ‘That her mother?’ he asked, but the boy didn’t say anything.

Inside the wallet Ryzhkov saw a small pocket for business cards, a worn yellow slip that indicated a St Petersburg residency permit. It was one of the old permits, all the newer ones had photographs and were supposed to be stamped . . . a name written across the top line in steel-pointed cursive script: Lavrik, Oleg Karlovich. With an address on Liteiny Prospekt. Not big money, but enough, he thought.

The boy was watching him. ‘Got what you want?’ ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘You can keep it. I only held on to it hoping that one day I might run into him, you know?’ The boy’s eyes were steady as a knife’s edge.

‘You might be able to get something for the bracelet.’ Schliff said, closing the catch on the bag.

‘I don’t think so. It’s something she found when she was little,’ he said.

‘Do you want a smoke?’ Schliff asked.

‘I’m not supposed to unless they offer,’ he said flatly. ‘She had a box, with some clothes. I gave those to some of the girls. Eva wanted the combs and her ribbons. There is a letter inside from her mother maybe, but I don’t know. It might be someone else’s mother.’

Ryzhkov tucked the bag with its souvenirs back inside the rafters, fumbled in his pocket and came out with a ten-rouble note. A lot. ‘Here . . . this is something for your savings.’ He held the note out for the boy. Schliff reached out first and took it away, dug in his pocket and came up with a five and some coins. ‘Your boss, the old man will ask you if we paid, won’t he?’ Schliff said, looking at Ryzhkov.

‘Yeah, I’ll have to give him something. He’ll want to know everything. I don’t care about the money. If you can get him, that will be enough.’ Steady eyes looking at him.

Ryzhkov nodded. ‘Take it anyway. If he gives you any trouble, get in touch with me through Inspector Schliff here, and I’ll protect you,’ Ryzhkov said. He took out his Okhrana disc and showed it to the boy. ‘Do you know what this means?’ he asked.

The boy looked at the flat circle of metal, with its worn double-eagle and the engraved numerals, and then up to Ryzhkov.

‘It means you think you can protect me,’ he said.

By midnight Ryzhkov was sitting in an izvolchik with the canopy raised so that he could watch the front of Baron Oleg Karlovich Lavrik’s city house. The files had not come over from the General Staff building, that would have to wait for morning, but he had looked up the address in the Petersburg directory, and verified that he still lived there.

The Liteiny house was high and narrow. Probably six or seven bedrooms. No stables or courtyard. They must travel everywhere by hired carriage. No one had come or gone from the time he had arrived, just after six in the evening. Lights came on and went off. There was a tail of smoke from the chimneys. He moved around the building and watched from different angles, but no one raised the corner of a curtain. Lamps were on in the upper bedrooms until after ten and then one after the other were snapped off. Two people were living there, he thought. Two people in two different bedrooms; if there were servants they would have rooms at the back.

He watched the darkened house for a half-hour more. The street was quiet. An ordinary Thursday evening with the air getting colder and colder. A little sheen of ice in the wet gutters. A crispness to the air. He decided there was no point in spending the night watching. He would turn up a photograph of Baron Lavrik, take it to Vera and her friend and if they could put Lavrik in the Iron Room, then he’d request a protocol to formally investigate the man, find his accomplice, and hopefully send them both to jail.

He was suddenly tired. Tired, as if he had finished a great test or examination of some kind. His mind wandered, playing games. He would bring in Madame Hillé once he had the protocols. She’d give up Lavrik if it meant losing her residency permit and her yellow card or jail; he’d withhold her passport so she couldn’t run, get a case together that could go before a court. Maybe he could make things right, or at least a little better.

It was cold now and he decided to go home. The air was thick with the moisture that had risen from the canals and the river.

The weather was changing.

There would be a chilly fog in the morning. A stinking yellow blanket that would greet Petersburg’s citizens when they woke; a poisonous veil that would hover over the pavements, making it impossible to read the street signs, and concealing everything from view.