Special Assignments (25 page)

Any other man would make her his lawful wife without thinking twice. And he'd count himself lucky. But he didn't say anything out loud; he didn't dare.

'Signs of sexual intercourse?' the Chief asked intently, paying no attention to Tulipov's facial expression.

'Zakharov had difficulty in determining that. Even though the ground was frozen, some time had still passed. But there's something more important than all that!'

Anisii paused for effect and moved on to the main point. He told Erast Petrovich how on his instructions they had opened up the so-called 'ditches' - the common graves for the bodies without names. In all they had inspected more than seventy corpses. On nine of the bodies - and one of them was a man -there had been clear signs of savage abuse. The general picture was similar to today's: someone with a good knowledge of anatomy and access to a surgical instrument had severely mutilated the bodies.

'The most remarkable thing, Chief, is that three of the mutilated bodies were taken from last year's ditches!' Anisii declared, and then modestly added: 'I ordered them to dig up the ditches for November and December just to make sure.'

Erast Petrovich had listened to his assistant very attentively, but now he suddenly leapt up off his chair: 'December, you say, and November! That's incredible!'

'I was indignant about it too. How about our police, eh? A monster like that active all these months in Moscow, and we don't even hear a word about it! If it's a social outcast who gets killed, then it's none of the police's business - they just bury them and forget about them. You know, Chief, in your place I think I'd really give Yurovsky and Eichmann what for.'

But the Chief seemed upset about something else. He walked quickly across the room and back again and muttered: 'It couldn't have happened in December, let alone in November! He was still in London then!'

Tulipov blinked. He didn't understand what London had to do with anything - Erast Petrovich had not yet acquainted him with his theory about the Ripper.

Fandorin blushed as he recalled the insulted look he had given Prince Dolgorukoi earlier when the Governor had said that his Deputy for Special Assignments was rarely mistaken.

It seemed that Erast Petrovich was sometimes mistaken, and seriously so.

The delightful decision has been realised. Only God's providence could have helped me to implement it so soon.

The whole day was filled with a feeling of rapture and invulnerability –following yesterday's ecstasy.

Rain and slush, there was a lot of work in the afternoon, but I don't feel tired at all. My soul is singing, longing for open space, to wander through the streets and waste plots of the neighbourhood.

Evening again. I am walking along Protopopovsky Lane towards Kalanchevka Street. There's a woman standing there, a peasant woman, haggling with a cabby. She doesn't strike a deal, the cabby drives off and she's standing there, shuffling her feet in confusion. I look and see she has a huge, swollen belly. Pregnant, seven months at least. I feel my heart start to race: there it is, it has found me.

I walk closer - everything is right. Exactly the sort I need. Fat, with a dirty face. Her eyebrows and eyelashes have fallen out - she must have syphilis. It is hard to imagine a creature further removed from the concept of Beauty.

I start talking to her. She's come from the village to visit her husband. He's an apprentice in the Arsenal. I say the Arsenal is not far and promise to show her the way. She is not afraid, because today I am a woman. I lead her through the waste lots towards the Immerovsky horticultural establishment. It is dark and deserted there. While we are walking, the woman complains to me about how hard it is to live in the country. I sympathise with her.

I lead her to the river bank and tell her not to be afraid, there is great joy in store for her. She looks at me stupidly. She dies silently. There is only the whistle of the air from her throat and the gurgling of her blood.

I am impatient to lay bare the pearl within and I do not wait until the spasms have ceased.

Alas, a disappointment awaits me. When I open the incised womb with hands trembling in sweet anticipation, I am overcome by disgust.

The living embryo is ugly and nothing at all like a pearl. It looks exactly like the little monsters in jars of alcohol in Professor Lints's faculty: a little vampire just like them. It squirms and opens its mousy little mouth. I toss it away in disgust.

The conclusion: man, like a flower, must mature in order to become beautiful. It is clear now why I have never thought children beautiful: they are dwarfs with disproportionately large heads and underdeveloped reproductive systems.

The Moscow detectives have begun to stir - yesterday's decoration has finally made the police aware of my presence here. It's funny. I am more cunning and stronger; they will never unmask me. 'What an actor is going to waste,' said Nero. That applies to me.

But I throw the body of the woman and her mouse into the pond. There is no point in stirring things up unnecessarily, and the decoration was not satisfactory.

CHAPTER
3

The 'smopackadj’

Holy Week Wednesday, 5 April, morning

From first thing in the morning Erast Petrovich locked himself away in his study to think, and Tulipov set out once again for the Bozhedomka - to have the October and September ditches opened up. He had suggested it himself: they had to determine when the Moscow killer had started his activities. The Chief had not objected. 'Why not?' he had said; 'You go,' but he was somewhere miles away, lost in thought - deducing.

It turned out to be dreary work, far worse than the previous day. The corpses that had been buried before the cold weather were severely decomposed and it was more than anyone could bear to look at them, let alone breathe the poisoned air. Anisii did puke a couple of times after all; he couldn't help himself.

'You see,' he said, with a sickly smile at the watchman, 'I still can't grow those calluses

'There are some as can't never grow them,' the watchman replied, shaking his head sympathetically. 'It's hardest of all for them to live in this world. But God loves them too. There you are now, mister, take a drop of this liquor of mine

Anisii sat down on a bench, drank the herbal infusion and chatted for a while with the cemetery philosopher about this and that; listened to his stories; told him about his own life -that mellowed his heart a little - and then it was back to digging the ditch.

Only it was all in vain. They didn't find anything new that was of use to the investigation in the old ditches. Zakharov said acidly: A bad head gives the legs no rest, but it would be all right if it were only yours that suffered, Tulipov. Are you not afraid the gendarmes will accidentally tap you on the top of your head with a pick? And I'll write in my report, all in due order: the Provincial Secretary brought about his own death: he stumbled and smashed his bad head against a stone. And Grumov will witness it. We're sick and tired of you and your rotten flesh. Isn't that right, Grumov?'

The consumptive assistant bared his yellow teeth and wiped his bumpy forehead with his soiled shirt. He explained: 'Mr Zakharov is joking.' But that was all right: the doctor was a cynical, coarse man. What offended Anisii was having to suffer mockery from the repulsive Izhitsin.

The pompous investigator had rolled up at the cemetery at first light - somehow he'd got wind of Tulipov's operation. At first he'd been alarmed that the investigation was proceeding without him, but then he'd calmed down and turned cocky.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'you and Fandorin have some other brilliant ideas? Maybe you'd like to dig in the pits while I lead the investigation?'

And the rotten swine left, laughing triumphantly.

In sum, Tulipov returned to Malaya Nikitskaya Street empty-handed. He walked listlessly up on to the porch and rang the electric bell.

Masa opened the door, in a white gymnastic costume with a black belt and a band bearing the word for 'diligence' round his forehead. 'Hello, Tiuri-san. Le's do renshu.'

What - renshu, when he was so tired and upset he could barely even stand?

'I have an urgent report to give the Chief,' Anisii said, trying to be cunning, but Masa was not to be fooled.

He jabbed his finger at Tulipov's protruding ears and declared peremptorily: 'When you have urgen' repor you have goggrin' eye and red ear, annow eye small and ear aw white. Take off coat, take off shoes, put on trousers and jacket. We goin' run and shout.'

Sometimes Angelina would intercede for Anisii - she was the only one who could resist the pressure from the damned Japanese - but the clear-eyed lady of the house was nowhere to be seen, and the oriental tyrant forced poor Tulipov to change into his gymnastics suit right there in the hallway

They went out into the yard. Jumping from foot to foot on the chilly ground, Anisii waved his hands around, yelled 'O-osu' to strengthen his prana and then the humiliation began. Masa jumped up on his shoulders from behind and ordered him to run in circles round the yard. The Japanese was not very tall, but he was stocky and solidly built, and he weighed four and a half
poods
at the very least. Somehow Tulipov managed to run two circles and then began to stumble.

But his tormentor spoke into his ear:
Gaman! Gaman!'
That was his favourite word. It meant 'Patience'.

Anisii had enough
gaman
for another half-circle, and then he collapsed. But not without an element of calculation: he collapsed right in front of a large dirty puddle so that this accursed eastern idol would go flying over his head and take a little swim. Masa went flying over the falling man's head all right, but he didn't come down with a splash in the puddle; he just put his hands down into it, then pushed off with his fingers, performed an impossible somersault in the air and landed on his feet on the far side of the watery obstacle.

He shook his round head in despair and said: Awri, go wash.'

Anisii was gone in a flash.

When his assistant reported in the study (after washing off the mud, changing his clothes and brushing his hair), Fandorin listened attentively. The walls were hung with Japanese prints, weapons and gymnastic equipment. Although it was already past midday, the Collegiate Counsellor was still in his dressing gown. He was not disappointed in the least by the lack of any result; in fact he even seemed rather glad. In any case, he did not express any particular surprise.

When his assistant stopped speaking, Erast Petrovich walked across the room, toying with his beloved jade beads and pronounced the phrase that always made Anisii's heart skip a beat: All right,
1
-let us think about this.'

The Chief clicked a small sphere of green stone and swayed the flaps of his dressing gown.

'Don't think that your little trip to the cemetery has been wasted,' he began.

On the one hand it was pleasant to hear this; on the other hand the phrase 'little trip' hardly seemed an entirely accurate description of the torture Anisii had suffered that morning.

'To be quite sure, we had to check if there were incidents involving the disembowelling of victims prior to November. When you told me yesterday that two mutilated corpses had been found in the common grave for December and in the November grave, at first I began to doubt my theory about the Ripper moving to Moscow.'

Tulipov nodded, since the previous day he had been given a detailed account of the bloody history of the British ogre.

'But today, having reviewed my London notes, I came to the conclusion that this hypothesis should not be abandoned. Would you like to know why?'

Anisii nodded again, knowing perfectly well that just at the moment his job was to keep quiet and not interrupt.

'Then by all means.' The Chief picked a notebook up off the table. 'The final murder attributed to the notorious Jack took place on the twentieth of December on Poplar High Street. By that time our Moscow Ripper had already delivered plenty of his nightmarish work to the Bozhedomka, which would seem to exclude the possibility that the English and Russian killers might be subsumed in the same person. However, the prostitute Rose Millet, who was killed on Poplar High Street, did not have her throat cut, and there were none of our Jack's usual signs of savagery. The police decided that the murderer had been frightened off by passers-by who were out late. But in the light of yesterday's discovery, I am willing to surmise that the Ripper had absolutely nothing to do with this death. Possibly this Rose Millet was killed by someone else, and the general hysteria that had gripped London following the previous killing led people to ascribe a new murder of a prostitute to the same maniac. Now for the previous murder, committed on the ninth of November.'

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.