The Red Coffin (9 page)

‘Where?’ asked Kirov, still unable to believe what he was hearing.

‘Here in the road, for all I care,’ snapped Lysenkova, ‘but wherever it is, do it now.’ Then she spun on her heel and left them.

‘I guess the rumours are true about her,’ said Kirov, watching Lysenkova as she strode back to the truck.

Maximov turned his head away and spat.

‘Why didn’t you pull rank on her, Inspector?’ Kirov asked Pekkala.

‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ replied Pekkala. ‘The fact that she is here at all means there is more going on than we realise. For now, let’s just see where she leads us.’ He turned to Maximov. ‘Can you take me to Nagorski’s wife?’

Maximov nodded. ‘First we’ll bury Samarin, and then I’ll take you there.’

The three men carried the body a short distance into the woods. Lacking a shovel, they used their hands to claw a grave out of the soft, dark earth. Half an arm’s length from the surface, the hole filled with black liquid seeping from the peaty ground. They had no choice but to lay Samarin in it, arms folded across his chest, as if to hide the tunnel through his heart. The black water swallowed him up. Then they packed the spongy earth on top of his body. When it was done and they climbed to their feet, picking the dirt from under their fingernails, there was barely a trace to indicate that a man had just been buried there.

When Maximov went off to fetch his car, Kirov turned to Pekkala. ‘Why don’t we start by arresting that bastard?’

‘Arrest him?’ asked Pekkala. ‘On what charges?’

‘I don’t know!’ spluttered Kirov. ‘What about cowardice?’

‘You seem to have made up your mind about him very quickly.’

‘Sometimes a moment is all it takes,’ insisted Kirov. ‘I’ve seen him before, you know. He was sitting at the table, that day I went into Chicherin’s restaurant to find Nagorski. I didn’t like the look of him then and I like him even less now.’

‘Did you stop to think that maybe he was right?’

‘Right about what?’

‘About not running into those woods. After all, why did you run?’

Kirov frowned, confused. ‘I ran because you ran, Inspector.’

‘And do you know why I ran,’ asked Pekkala, ‘in spite of the warning Samarin had given us?’

‘No,’ shrugged Kirov, ‘I suppose I don’t.’

‘Neither do I,’ replied Pekkala, ‘so it is only luck that we are standing here instead of lying in the ground.’

Maximov’s car appeared from behind one of the buildings and made its way towards them.

‘I need you to keep an eye on Lysenkova,’ Pekkala told Kirov. ‘Whatever you learn, keep it to yourself for now. And keep your temper, too.’

‘That,’ muttered the young Major, ‘I cannot promise you.’

With Pekkala in the front passenger seat, Maximov drove along a narrow road leading away from the dreary facility.

‘I am sorry about my assistant,’ said Pekkala. ‘Sometimes he does things without thinking.’

‘Seems to me,’ replied Maximov, ‘that he is not the only one. But if you are worried about my feelings, Comrade Inspector, you can save yourself the trouble.’

‘Where are you from, Maximov?’

‘I have lived in many places,’ he replied. ‘I am not from anywhere.’

‘And what did you do before the Revolution?’

‘The same as you, Inspector. I made a living for myself and I managed to survive.’

Pekkala studied the blur of trees flickering past. ‘That’s two questions you have avoided.’

Maximov hit the brakes. The tyres locked and skidded. For a moment, it looked as if they were going to end up in the ditch, but they came to a stop just before the car left the road. Maximov cut the engine. Then he turned to face Pekkala. ‘If you don’t like me avoiding your questions, maybe you should stop asking them.’

‘It’s my job to ask questions,’ said Pekkala, ‘and, sooner or later, you will need to answer them.’

Maximov glared at Pekkala but, as the seconds passed, the anger went out of his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘The only reason I’ve survived as long as I have is by keeping my mouth shut. Old habits die hard, Inspector.’

‘Survival has been difficult for all of us,’ said Pekkala.

‘That’s not what I hear about you. People say you’ve lived a charmed life.’

‘Those are merely stories, Maximov.’

‘Are they? I just saw you walk out of those woods without so much as a scratch.’

‘I was not the only one.’

‘I’m sure Captain Samarin would take comfort in that, if he was still alive. You know, when I was a child, I heard that if a Russian goes into the woods, he becomes lost. But when a Finn steps into the forest,’ he touched his fingertips together and then let them drift apart, like someone releasing a dove, ‘he simply disappears.’

‘Like I told you. Just stories.’

‘No, Inspector,’ he replied. ‘There’s more to it than that. I have seen it for myself.’

‘What have you seen?’ asked Pekkala.

‘I was there, that day on the Nevski Prospekt, where I know for a fact you should have died.’

It was a summer evening. Pekkala had spent the day trying to
find a birthday present for Ilya, wandering up and down the
arcade of shops in the Passazh – a glass-roofed corridor, lined
with expensive jewellers, tailors and vendors of antiques.

For hours, he had paced back and forth in front of the Passazh
windows, steeling himself to enter the cramped shops where he
knew he would immediately be set upon by sales attendants.

Three times, he had abandoned the arcade and fled across
the Nevski Prospekt to the huge produce market known as the
Gostiny Dvor. The floors were strewn with sawdust, wilted
cabbage leaves and discarded sales receipts scribbled on cheap grey
notepad paper. Trucks pulled up on to the wide, cobblestoned
delivery area and porters in blue tunics with silver buttons, their
hands bound with scraps of cloth as protection against the splin
tery wooden crates, unloaded vegetables and fruit.

Inside the vast, cold, echoing hall of the Gostiny Dvor, sur
rounded by vendors chanting out their lists of goods and the soft
murmur of footsteps shuffling through the sawdust, Pekkala sat on
a barrel in a café frequented by the porters, sipping a glass of tea
and feeling his heart unclench after the stuffiness of the Passazh.

The last train to Tsarskoye Selo would be leaving in half an
hour. Knowing that he could not go home empty-handed, he
steeled himself for another trip to the Passazh. It’s now or never,
Pekkala thought.

A minute later, on his way out of the hall, he noticed a man
standing by one of the pillars at the exit. The man was watching
him and trying not to make it obvious. But Pekkala could always
tell when he was being watched, even if he could not see who was
doing the watching. He felt it like a static in the air.

Pekkala glanced at the man as he walked past, noting the
stranger’s clothing – the knee-length coat made of wool, grey like
the feathers of a dove, the slightly out-of-fashion Homburg hat,
rounded at the top and with an oval brim that sheltered his
eyes so that Pekkala could not see them. He had an impressive
moustache, which grew down to the line of his jaw, and a small,
nervous-looking mouth.

But Pekkala was too preoccupied with Ilya’s birthday present
to think much more about it.

Outside, the evening sky, which would not darken until mid
night at this time of year, shimmered like an abalone shell.

He had almost reached the exit when he felt something nudge
him in the back.

Pekkala spun around.

The man in the Homburg hat was standing there. He was
holding a gun in his right hand. It was a poorly made automatic
pistol, of a type manufactured in Bulgaria, which often showed
up at crime scenes, since it was cheap and easy to purchase on the
black market.

‘Are you who I think you are?’ asked the man.

Before Pekkala could come up with a reply, he heard a loud
clapping sound.

Sparks erupted from the cylinder of the gun. The air became
hazy with smoke.

Pekkala realised he must have been shot, but he felt neither
the impact of the bullet, nor the burning, stinging pain which,
he knew, would quickly change to a numbness radiating out
through his whole body. Astonishingly, he felt nothing at all.

The man was staring at him.

Only then did Pekkala notice that everything around him had
come to a standstill. There were people everywhere, porters, shop
pers with string bags, vendors behind their barricades of produce.
And all of them were staring at him.

‘Why?’ he asked the man.

There was no reply. A look of terror spread across the man’s
face. He set the gun against his own temple and pulled the trigger.

With the sound of that gunshot still ringing in Pekkala’s ears,
the man fell in a heap on to the ground.

Then, where there had been silence only a second before, a
wall of noise surrounded him. He heard the guttural cries of
panicked men, shouting useless commands. A woman grabbed
him by the shoulders. ‘It’s Pekkala!’ she shrieked. ‘They’ve killed the
Emerald Eye!’

Carefully, Pekkala began to undo his coat. The act of unfas
tening the buttons felt suddenly unfamiliar, as if this was the first
time he had ever done such a thing. He opened his coat, then
his waistcoat and finally his shirt. He prepared himself for the
sight of the wound, the terrible whiteness of punctured flesh, the
pulsing flow of blood from an arterial break. But the skin was
smooth and unbroken. Not trusting his eyes, Pekkala ran his
hands over his chest, certain that the wound must be there.

‘He’s not hurt!’ shouted a porter. ‘The bullet did not even touch
him.’

‘But I saw it!’ shouted the woman who had grabbed Pekkala’s
shoulders.

‘There is no way he could have missed!’ said the porter.

‘Perhaps the gun wasn’t working!’ said another man, a fish
monger in an apron splashed with guts and scales. He bent down
and picked up the weapon.

‘Of course it works!’ The porter gestured at the dead man.
‘There is the proof!’

Around the head of the corpse grew a halo of blood. The
Homburg lay upturned beside him, like a bird’s nest knocked out
of a tree. Pekkala’s eyes fixed on the tiny bow of silk used to join
the two ends of the leather sweatband.

‘Let me see that,’ the porter tried to take the gun from the
fishmonger.

‘Be careful!’ snapped the fishmonger.

As their fingers closed on the gun, it went off. The bullet
smacked into a pyramid of potatoes.

The two men yelped and dropped the gun.

‘Enough!’ growled Pekkala.

They stared at him with bulging eyes, as if he were a statue
come to life.

Pekkala picked up the gun and put it in his pocket. ‘Go find
me the police,’ he said quietly.

The two men, released from his freezing stare, scattered in
opposite directions.

Later that night, having made his report to the Petrograd
police, Pekkala found himself in the Tsar’s study.

The Tsar sat behind his desk. He had been going through
papers all evening reading by the light of a candle set into a
bronze holder in the shape of a croaking frog. He insisted on
reading all official documents himself and used a blue pencil to
make notes in the margin. It slowed down the process by which
any matters of the state could be accomplished, but the Tsar pre
ferred to handle these things personally. Now he had set aside his
documents. He rested his elbows on the desk and settled his chin
upon his folded hands. With his soft blue eyes, the Tsar regarded
Pekkala. ‘Are you sure you are all right?’

‘Yes, Majesty,’ replied Pekkala.

‘Well, I’m not, I don’t mind telling you,’ replied the Tsar.
‘What the hell happened, Pekkala? I heard some madman shot
you in the chest, but the bullet vanished in mid-air. The police
checked out the gun. Their report indicates that it is functioning
perfectly. The whole city is talking about this. You should hear the
absurdities they’re uttering. They believe you’re supernatural. By
tomorrow, it will be all over the country. Any idea who this man
was, or why he was trying to kill you?’

‘No, Majesty. He was carrying no identification. His body had
no distinctive marks, no tattoos, scars or moles. All the labels had
been removed from his clothes. Nor does he match the description
of anyone currently wanted by the police. It is likely we will never
know who he was, or why he attempted to kill me.’

‘I was afraid you were going to say that,’ said the Tsar. He sat
back in his chair, letting his eyes wander across the gold-leafed
titles of the books upon his shelves.’So we’ve got no answers at all.’

‘We do have one,’ replied Pekkala, placing something on the
desk before the Tsar – a crumpled knot of grey the size of a robin’s
egg.

The Tsar picked it up. ‘What’s this? Feels heavy.’

‘Lead.’ The candle flame trembled. A thread of molten wax
poured into the frog’s open mouth.

‘Is this the bullet?’ He studied it with one eye closed, like a
jeweller appraising a diamond.

‘Two bullets fused together,’ replied Pekkala.

‘Two?’ asked the Tsar. ‘And where did you get them?’

‘I removed them from the skull of the dead man.’

The Tsar dropped the bullets back on to the desk. ‘You could
have told me that before.’ He took out a handkerchief and wiped
his fingers.

‘While the police were examining the gun,’ explained Pekkala,
‘I decided to examine the body. It was not the gun that mal
functioned, Majesty. It was the bullet.’

‘I don’t understand,’ the Tsar frowned. ‘How does a bullet
malfunction?’

‘The bullet he fired at me contained the wrong amount of gun
powder. The weapon was of poor quality, as was the ammunition
that came with it. When the gun discharged, the cartridge ejected,
but it only drove the bullet into the barrel, where it became stuck.
Then next time he pulled the trigger, a second bullet smashed
into the first …’

‘And both bullets went into his head at the same time.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Meanwhile, the world thinks you’re some kind of sorcerer.’ The
Tsar brushed his fingers through his beard. ‘Have you informed
the police about this discovery of yours?’

‘Not yet. It was late by the time I had finished my investiga
tion. I will inform the Petrograd chief first thing in the morning.
He can then make an announcement to the public.’

‘Now, Pekkala.’ The Tsar rested his fingertips on the desk top,
like a man about to begin playing a piano. ‘I want you to do
something for me.’

‘And what is that, Majesty?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I want you to do nothing.’ He gestured towards the door,
beyond which lay the vast expanse of Russia. ‘Let them believe
what they want to believe.’

‘That the bullet disappeared?’

The Tsar picked up the piece of lead and dropped it in the
pocket of his waistcoat. ‘It has disappeared,’ he said.