The White Russian (5 page)

His father had instructed him to make sure that Ilusha did not play on the ice now that spring was upon them. And even if he had not been there at the moment his little brother had made those fateful steps, even if he could have claimed that it was not his fault and that he had heard the cry and run to the lake and dived in and done his best to save him, there was no one who blamed Ruzsky more than he blamed himself.

He should have gone with Ilusha.

It was snowing heavily when Ruzsky emerged, but he didn’t take this or his surroundings in, until he had reached the corner of the Nevsky Prospekt. He stood on the street corner opposite the Alexander Garden, now, in winter, just dark, skeletal trees reaching for the sky, and tilted his face upward.

He tasted the flakes as they fell.

A detachment of soldiers in long greatcoats marched past him, then wheeled right onto the Nevsky. Ruzsky recognized them as members of the Semenovsky Regiment, though they hardly did justice to its reputation. They looked scruffy and marched without any of the precision that would have accompanied them before the war, when no regiment had moved anywhere in Petersburg unless immaculately turned out and in perfect order.

Ruzsky thought for a moment of the painted soldiers he had kept neatly in boxes in his attic room in the house in Millionnaya Street. He wondered if they were still there, and if Michael played with them, also. The contrast with the St. Petersburg of his childhood was pervasive. It was the first day of the New Year, but he was certain there would be no reception in the great halls of the Winter Palace.

Aside from the soldiers, the capital’s main thoroughfare was almost deserted. Two private sleds waited outside the Wolf and Beranger Café and, beyond them, a motor car was clanking noisily in his direction.

Ruzsky pulled out his pocket watch. It was not yet ten o’clock in the morning; the city was only slowly coming to life.

He continued noticing that this section of the city had borne few physical changes. The huge windows of Alexandre’s were packed with scarves of woven Persian silk, jade, ivory, leather goods of all descriptions, and jewels beyond the imagination of most passersby. Druce’s, the famed magasin anglais, still had Harris Tweed and English soaps in its smaller windows, and Cabassue’s had fine French silk ties and linen along with fashionable botinky, the low-cut velvet boots with rubber soles so favored by the rich. All the stores had signs declaring “English spoken” or “Ici on parle français,” though, of course, they had all lost the once common “Man spricht Deutsch.”

Ruzsky stopped dead. He had reached Wolff’s, the capital’s largest bookstore and his favorite as a child. The latest casualty lists from the front were posted in the window. The names stretched for column after column.

He read through them all.

Ruzsky turned around, deep in thought. Beyond the shop, tucked into the corner of the wall, was a bearded Circassian in traditional sheepskin coat, his wares-mostly silver bangles and brooches-spread out on a colored rug.

The man was clutching the cape around him, head bent. These traders were a commonplace sight in summer on the Nevsky, but Ruzsky had never before seen one here in winter.

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.