A Razor Wrapped in Silk (16 page)

He looked at his hand and then looked back at the tarnished door handle, as if he had lost something precious in the contact of flesh and gold.

*

All the available resources of the St Petersburg police force were mobilised in the hunt for Captain Mizinchikov, but to no avail. A watch was kept on his apartment, and his known friends and associates were monitored, including fellow officers of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. An interview with the suspect’s father confirmed Bakhmutov’s assessment of the relationship between father and son. As far as General Mizinchikov – a thin, scooped-out man who smelled of cloves – was concerned, his son could ‘go to the devil’, and if he had already, it was a source of neither surprise nor regret to him. He assured Porfiry that he would waste no time in notifying the authorities, should he hear from his son. His eyes as he made this promise were cold and steady, suspiciously guarding even the pain over which he held himself hunched. Porfiry recognised the miser’s ruthlessness; and the miser’s gift for cherishing bitterness. He did not doubt that General Mizinchikov would be as good as his word. He felt a stirring of sympathy for the fugitive.

‘You have a nephew in Moscow, I believe.’

‘I have several nephews, in Moscow and elsewhere. Not to mention nieces. My sisters were notoriously fecund.’

‘I would be grateful if you could supply us with the names
and addresses of these family members, so that we may extend our enquiries to include them.’

‘I shall do better than that. I shall write to them all, commanding them to deny quarter to the criminal. If they wish to expect anything from me, they will follow my example and summon the police the instant he presents himself.’

‘I … am grateful to you. Even so, I would appreciate the names and addresses. And if there is one cousin to whom Konstantin Denisevich is particularly close, perhaps you could indicate that on your list.’

‘Ah, that would be Alexei Ivanovich,’ said General Mizinchikov, after a moment’s reflection. ‘Those two have been firm friends from childhood, though two more opposite characters, it is difficult to imagine. Alyosha is thoughtful, sober, considerate … What he sees in my reprobate son, I cannot imagine.’

‘You have only the one son?’

‘Regrettably, my first born son died in infancy.’

‘I’m sorry. And no daughters?’

‘No. And now I consider myself to have no son either.’

Porfiry was taken aback by the force with which the general made this assertion. ‘Do you not have any residue of fatherly feeling towards Konstantin Denisevich? After all, we do not know for certain that he is this woman’s murderer.’

‘He has deserted his regiment. And brought dishonour on the family name. If he did not kill her, he should have stayed to make his case. He can expect nothing from me.’

‘You will disinherit him?’

‘He has forced me to it.’

‘May I ask in whose favour you will change your will?’

‘It will go to the oldest of my nephews, Alexei Ivanovich.’

‘I see. Now, sir, if I may trouble you for the list. It will help us greatly if we are able to take it away with us.’

*

‘
There
is a murder waiting to happen,’ said Porfiry carelessly, as they descended the gloomy staircase of the Gorokhovaya Street apartment house.

‘Are you serious?’ said Virginsky.

‘Either that or he is the greatest argument for Captain Mizinchikov’s innocence.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘If Mizinchikov really is a murderer, then why he has not long ago dispatched such a father must surely baffle us. It can only be because he has not yet got round to it. Even such placid and indisputably loving sons as you and I, whose fathers are – or were – by comparison paragons of paternal virtue, even we must have felt at times the provocation to parricide. What son has not? How much more strongly must a man in whom the homicidal propensity is already awakened feel it?’

‘I wonder that you can be so flippant, given what you have said about the circumstances of your father’s death.’

They reached the ground floor and stepped out into the drizzle-soaked gloom. ‘I did not kill my father, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I did not mean to suggest that you had.’

Porfiry said nothing. They stood on the front steps considering the bleak prospect before them without enthusiasm. The mist seemed to sap their will to action. Porfiry’s voice came thickly, his words directed to the mist: ‘My father was a good man. In many ways, an extraordinary man. He had a gift. I think I told you that he was a mining engineer. His gift,
however, had nothing to do with that, and in many ways stood at odds with his professional outlook, which you could describe as highly rational. He was an exemplary scientist, except in one particular.’

‘Go on,’ prompted Virginsky.

‘He was able to heal people. Perhaps he was what we would call a faith healer, though he never referred to his gift in those terms.’ Porfiry started walking, taking the first turning into Sadovaya Street. It took Virginsky a moment to catch him up.

‘Indeed, he hardly ever referred to his gift at all, certainly not in polite circles. It was almost as if it embarrassed him. It seemed to undermine everything that he had spent his life building up. He feared, I think, that if his superiors found out about his gift, it would be the end of him professionally. He never spoke even about his faith, but I am convinced he was a believer, otherwise how would he be able to do it?’

Virginsky did not attempt an answer.

‘I know, I know,’ said Porfiry, meeting a point that had not been raised. ‘That begs an interesting question. Would God choose to work His miracles through a non-believer? Indeed, would that not produce more compelling evidence of his existence, at least for the non-believer concerned? But I ask you, is God really in the business of proving or disproving his own existence?’

‘You know my opinions on the subject of God.’

‘At any rate,’ continued Porfiry, as if he had not heard Virginsky’s terse interjection, ‘my father could not fail to believe in his own gift, however inconvenient and possibly even frightening it was for him to do so. People would come to our house, peasants for the most part. They would present themselves at the tradesmen’s door. My father would have them come in, take them to his study and sit them down. He
would talk to them quietly and calmly. And at the end of ten minutes’ chat about the harvest, or the frost, or whatever newfangled machinery their master was intending to introduce, he would lay his hands on their afflicted area, and they would go away somewhat eased in their pain.’ Porfiry gave a chuckle. ‘He was deeply loved. Many hundreds came to the funeral, all the old peasants whose stiff joints he had loosened. He knew his limitations and that was his secret.’ After a pause he added: ‘It’s difficult to live up to such a father.’

‘I’m sure he was proud of you.’

‘No. I am sure that he was not. And I don’t blame him. At the time of his death, I was not a son to be proud of. I was young, a student of law like you once were, at the university here in Petersburg. I was living beyond my means. You could say I had fallen in with a bad lot, or perhaps I was the bad lot others had fallen in with. At any rate, I spent my leisure time in expensive dissipation. My letters home were a constant stream of reproaches, relieved only by selfish and manipulative demands for money.’

Virginsky cast a quick sidelong glance at Porfiry but said nothing.

‘There was one among my fellows who happened to come from Pinsk, which is near to my home village of Dostoeve. I would not say he was a friend of mine. It was merely the accident of originating from the same region that threw us together. He was a strange individual and it was unnerving to be in the same room as him, especially alone. He had a way of looking at you and not looking at you at the same time. But more than that he awoke a powerful frisson of unease in me, almost a revulsion. Perhaps this was my own debased version of my father’s gift in operation. My father traced his family to
Siberia, you know. Sometimes it amuses me to imagine a tribal shaman amongst our ancestors.’

‘I have no doubt of it,’ said Virginsky wryly.

‘This fellow student of mine was the son of the local priest and had heard about my father. He seemed fascinated by my father and would often ask me questions about him. To my shame, I saw this as an opportunity to vent my spleen over what I saw as my father’s unjustified parsimony. “So your father is a wealthy man?” he would ask. “Oh, yes. He has pots of money,” I think I may even have replied.’

Virginsky bowed his head, tactfully silent.

‘Well, something unpleasant happened at the university, a disciplinary matter, and he was expelled. He returned to his home village. Soon after, he made a point of seeking out my father. He pretended some affliction, knowing this would gain him admittance. But it was he who laid hands upon my father. He strangled him. I imagine that as he tightened his grip around my father’s neck he demanded to know where the money was hid. He may even have said something like, “I know you have money. Your son told me.”’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Well, there was no money. My father’s fears concerning his career had proven true. His superiors, learning of his healing activities, had presented him with an ultimatum. Give up the charlatanry, as they termed it, or give up his position. Of course, there was more to it than disapproval of his miraculous gift, which they claimed brought the department into disrepute. Professional jealousy played a part too. My father tried to stop, he really did. But the people kept coming to him, and how could he turn them away? This was the excuse his enemies needed and he was relieved of his post.’

They had come to Stolyarny Lane. The corner of the department building was like the prow of a ship breaking through the mist. The two men instinctively halted beneath it, allowing Porfiry to finish telling his story.

‘His dismissal had occurred months before the visit from my murderous fellow student. My father had not informed me of his change in fortune, out of pride, or perhaps for fear of worrying me. When I returned for his funeral, I found the letters I had written placed neatly in a drawer in his study. I was never able to ask his forgiveness. I stole them away and burnt them, in my shame. The boy who had killed him was easily caught and quickly confessed. It was not about the money, not really. His fascination with my father had crossed over into a dangerous obsession. He believed, or so he claimed, that my father’s gift came from the devil and that a voice had told him to kill him. As is often the case, he seems to have been driven by a whole range of motivations, some of which contradicted others. He was exiled to Siberia, ironically the source of my father’s powers, and has no doubt grown old in a labour camp.’

There was a moment of silence. Virginsky’s expression, though, was strained with impatience. There was evidently something on his mind. ‘Porfiry Petrovich, what did you mean earlier when you talked about your own version of your father’s gift?’

‘I can always tell.’

‘What?’

‘The killers. As soon as I meet them. I experience the same frisson. It was like that with the student Raskolnikov. Of course, being a rationalist like my father, I do nothing until I have gathered the evidence.’

‘You once suspected me of murder.’

‘Did I?’

‘You arrested me.’

Porfiry looked up at the department building. ‘Shall we go inside? We have work to do.’ It was a moment before he led the way inside.

*

In the days following, autumn took hold in earnest. The shifting mists that chased along the canals became bolder. They filled the parks and avenues with a weightless flood, and bound the days together under a fine mesh of monotony. The city was concealed in layers of lace. Another city took its place, a city of imagined buildings and inhabitants, of voices disembodied from their speakers, of footsteps without feet, of ghostly carriages and phantom houses. This was a city in which secrets loomed larger than palaces, in which an unaccustomed licence was suddenly at large. It was now possible to smoke in the street without provoking a policeman’s reprimand. This was a city, in short, in which anything was possible. Whatever man could imagine, for good or evil, could take shape in the St Petersburg fog.

Aglaia Filippovna continued to drift in and out of a coma, almost as if there were some link between her and the fog, as if the fog were claiming her for one of its own. On one occasion, alerted to her return to consciousness, Porfiry and Virginsky hurtled dangerously through the enshrouded streets to the palace on the Fontanka, but by the time they got to her, Aglaia Filippovna was in the throes of an epileptic seizure.

Princess Naryskina was once again in attendance. Indeed, it seemed as though she had not moved from her position by the bed. Her gaze was lit by the same static energy, which seemed to feed off the spasms and distress of the invalid.

It seemed to Porfiry that the disease was another, stronger being that had taken possession of Aglaia. He thought of a dog he had once seen shake a rat to death in its jaws. He imagined the disease as an invisible predator, and the poor frail girl as the prey caught between its teeth.

After the fit had passed, she slept, under the weight of a tremendous exhaustion. She came to briefly an hour or so later, but Dr Müller forbade them from mentioning the death of Yelena Filippovna, for fear of provoking a further attack. She seemed to have no recollection of the events of the night of the benefit gala and spoke of her sister in the present tense, as if still alive.

‘Where is Yelena? Why does she not come to see me?’

‘You must rest now.’

Aglaia Filippovna wrenched herself upright, then fell back more exhausted than before. She closed her eyes and they thought that they had lost her again. But her hands fidgeted convulsively on top of the counterpane. She enclosed the thumb of her right hand inside the fist of her left and twisted her hands against one another, as if she were turning a screw at the base of her thumb. Her voice throbbed faintly, her lips barely moving. ‘Yelena is to be married, you know.’