In less than a decade Rasputin had become a legend. He was thought to be a holy wanderer who could speak directly with God, a creature with unlimited sexual appetites who could cure illnesses with a simple caress. Everyone in the capital knew that if you wanted something – a posting to a particular ministry, special attention paid to your proposals, consideration when it was time to hand out military decorations – anything at all, you would need Rasputin as an ally. His favour was a necessity in order to ensure a successful career, his wrath could obliterate a cabinet minister in a single morning.
Thus, when their rotation came around Pyotr Ryzhkov and his men dutifully trailed Rasputin back and forth across the city. It amounted to a series of sleepless nights that only ended when Blue Shirt fell into his bed in the company of a final prostitute he would select from the group waiting at the entrance to his building. It was boring unless you enjoyed watching the upper crust humiliate themselves at the feet of a con artist, an exercise which Ryzhkov had long since ceased to find amusing.
His memory of the street gradually came back – apartments over shops down at the corner of Sadovaya, a couple of shabby wooden houses and a little warehouse up on the market end of the street – Peplovskaya. The only thing disturbing the peace of the street was the noise coming out of the Apollo Bindery.
‘Look at this,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Oh, yes, all you need is the money and you can buy a little taste of heaven…’ Hokhodiev joined him as he walked along beside the carriages. Painted on their sides were the crests of some of Russia’s most powerful families. At the head of the queue, the black troika of Prince Yusupov, behind it a carriage inscribed with the gold filigreed crest of the House of Orlovsky. A flaming fortress indicated the Evdaev family, next was the gleaming Renault of Prince Cantacuzène.
‘Well, they must be sewing together some extremely rare books. A very literate clientele, by the looks of it…’
‘High flying, even for our friend,’ Hokhodiev said. ‘You want me to get the numbers?’
‘Oh, yes, whatever the circumstances we must complete our paperwork. Do you have enough space in your book?’ The carriages and motorcars continued for the length of the street past the bordello, vehicles belonging to an assortment of devotees, perverts, aristocrats, power-mad debauchees of every stripe.
‘If I run out of pages, maybe I’ll go up and buy a new one from the management, eh?’ Hokhodiev laughed and walked away down to the start of the queue.
Ryzhkov stood in the centre of the street, fiddled for his watch and checked the time. Nearly four in the morning. The sky above him was a pearly white tinged with streaks of yellow. From above one of the prostitutes was crying out in pretend-orgasm. The chauffeurs looked over and he shook his head and they laughed. Down at the end of the street he watched Kostya gathering the meaningless licence numbers.
‘No point,’ he said. He sighed and headed back to their carriage, the most unkempt vehicle on the street. ‘No point whatsoever…’
Dima came back with rolls and a pot of tea. When Ryzhkov took a drink he flinched. ‘Are you all right?’ Dudenko asked, his narrow face frowning.
‘Oh, it’s just this tooth, it’s started up again. I’m fine.’ He took a sip from the glass of tea that Dudenko gave him. The heat brought another jolt of pain to his jaw.
‘You should do something about that, an infection can lead to serious illness, eh?’
‘Yes, yes, yes…’ He held the hot liquid on his jaw and waited for the pain to go away.
They sat in their shabby little carriage and shared out the food among themselves. Muta took the opportunity to fall asleep with the reins in his hand. After a few minutes Hokhodiev returned, opened the door of the carriage, sat on the step and smoked. They talked about the schedule for the next day. It should have been the end of a hellish week of Blue Shirt surveillance, but the Tsar was in the capital and the three of them were to augment the Imperial Guard at the Marinsky Theatre. What that meant was – less sleep all around.
Dudenko gathered their glasses and had taken only a few steps down the pavement when they heard the screams.
There was a sudden crashing that came from the end of the street. All the drivers and chauffeurs looked up. It sounded like one or two women – angry. A man’s voice, lower. Something crashed into splinters and shards.
‘What…what is this? Tell me he hasn’t gone and got into something stupid…’ Ryzhkov stood up in the carriage. Muta woke up and his pony took a nervous step forward. There was another long scream from the upstairs of the building.
‘It’s down there –’ Dudenko stooped and placed the glasses on the pavement, stood and peered down the street. Ryzhkov could see the drivers at the end of the queue looking at something masked by the edge of the building.
‘Something going on in the lane down there,’ Hokhodiev said.
Ryzhkov jumped out of the carriage, ran across the cobbles and down to the corner of the bindery. There at the beginning of the lane a group of drivers were standing still, serious expressions on their faces. In the distance sounded the shrill blast of a police whistle. He rounded the corner and saw what he first took for a bundle of clothes tossed on to the pavement.
And then –
One of the drivers had covered her with a jacket, but it was too small and Ryzhkov could see the fan of her blonde hair across the stones. Reflexively he moved closer and one of the drivers reached out to stop him. He shook the man off and held his Okhrana disc up for them to see. From the back of the building the cooks and servants had come running out. An old man was standing over the girl, rubbing his hands on his apron.
‘She fell…’ the old man said in a weak voice. He looked at them as if he hoped someone would help him find a better explanation for the dead child on the cobbles, for the sparkling wreath of broken glass all around them. ‘Yes, she fell, excellency,’ the old man said again. ‘From up there someplace –’ The old man pointed to the windows above them, and they all craned their necks trying to see up to the top floors of the building and the yellow sky beyond.
He walked forward and pulled the jacket off her, brushed the long blonde hair away from her face. An angel, was the first thing he thought of. An angel tumbled right out of the heavens.
Pale white body, tall for her age, he thought. Wearing a little night-dress that clung to her, a gossamer wrapper that had ridden up, making it look as if she were dancing. Leaping, with her arms to the sky, a pink satin ribbon around her waist, celebrating something that she’d never seen before. A long smear of blood down both of her legs, but nothing else. The long blonde hair wreathed around her, half-undone. All that was missing were the wings.
He pulled her hair back a little and, looking closely, saw marks around her neck. Rubbed, raw. Her face was smiling, almost. Only a little blood at the corner of her mouth. You might mistake it for lipstick gone awry.
Her eyes were open; eyes rimmed with dark orbs of kohl, rouge that had been brushed on, too dark for her skin. Skin pale as milk. An angry gash on her forehead that hadn’t bled very much, he thought. Her clear blue eyes open and staring out at the glass like diamonds sparkling all around.
‘Pyotr…’ he heard Hokhodiev behind him. ‘We have to find him and get out of here, eh?’
Behind him there were more whistles and the drivers scurried aside to let a St Petersburg Police Ambulance manoeuvre into the narrow lane. Ryzhkov pulled his eyes from the girl and saw three officers had run up from the other end of the alley.
‘Hey…Blue Shirt, Blue Shirt, Blue Shirt…’Hokhodiev prompted, giving him a little tug. He realized now that he was standing over her in a daze, staring at all of them, the officers, the servants, the drivers who had