by Boris Akunin
'Your Excellency, he is a famous English murderer who kills streetwalkers in London,' the District Prosecutor explained in his pompous fashion.
'If you will permit me, Your Excellency, I will explain in detail.'
Erast Petrovich took a notebook out of his pocket and skimmed through several pages.
The Prince cupped one hand round his ear, Vedishchev put on a pair of spectacles with thick lenses and Izhitsin smiled ironically.
'As Your Excellency no doubt remembers, last year I spent several months in England in connection with a case with which you are familiar: the disappearance of the correspondence of Catherine the Great. Indeed, Vladimir Andreevich, you even expressed your dissatisfaction at my extended absence. I stayed in London longer than absolutely necessary because I was following very closely the attempts of the local police to find a monstrous killer who had committed eight brutal murders in the East End in the space of eight months, from April to December. The killer acted in a most audacious fashion. He wrote notes to the police, in which he called himself "Jack the Ripper" and on one occasion he even sent the commissioner who was in charge of the case half of a kidney that he had cut out of one of his victims.'
'Cut out? But what for?' the Prince asked in amazement.
'The Popper's outrages had a tremendously distressing effect on the public, but not simply because of the murders. In a city as large and ill-favoured as London there is naturally no shortage of crimes, including those that involve bloodshed. But the manner in which the Ripper despatched his victims was genuinely monstrous. He usually cut the poor women's throats and then disembowelled them, like partridges, and laid out their entrails in a kind of nightmarish still life.'
'Holy Mother of God!' Vedishchev gasped and crossed himself.
'The abominations you speak of!' the Governor said with feeling: 'Well then, did they not catch the villain?'
'No, but since December the distinctive murders have ceased. The police have concluded that the criminal has either committed suicide or ... left England.'
'And what else would he do except come to see us in Moscow?' said the Head Police Master, with a sceptical shake of his head. 'But if that is the case, finding and catching an English cut-throat is child's play'
Why are you so sure that he is English?' Fandorin asked, turning to the general. All the murders were committed in the slums of London, the home of many immigrants from the continent of Europe, including Russians. Indeed, in the first instance the English police suspected immigrant doctors.'
And why doctors in particular?' Izhitsin asked.
'Because in every case the internal organs were extracted from the victims with great skill, with excellent knowledge of anatomy and also almost certainly with the use of a surgical scalpel. The London police were absolutely convinced that Jack the Ripper was a doctor or a medical student.'
Public Prosecutor Kozlyatnikov raised a well-tended white finger and the diamond ring on it glinted.
'But what makes you think that the spinster Andreichkina was killed and mutilated by the Ripper from London? As if we had no murderers of our own? Some son of a bitch got so tanked up on drink he didn't know what he was doing and imagined he was fighting some dragon or other. We have any number of those.'
The Collegiate Counsellor sighed and replied patiently: 'My dear sir, you've read the report from the forensic medical expert. No one in a drunken fury can dissect so precisely, and use "a cutting tool of surgical sharpness". That is one. And also, just as in the East End cases, there are none of the signs of sexual debauchery which are usual in crimes of this kind. That is two. The most sinister point is the imprint of a bloody kiss on the victim's cheek, and that is three. All of the Ripper's victims had that imprint - on the forehead, on the cheek, sometimes on the temple. Inspector Gilson, from whom I learned this detail, was not inclined to attach any importance to it, since the Ripper had plenty of other freakish whims. However, from the limited amount of information that forensic science possesses on maniacal murderers, we know that these fiends attach great significance to ritual. Serial killings with the features of manic behaviour are always based on some kind of "idea" that prompts the monster into repeatedly killing strangers. While I was in London, I tried to explain to the officers in charge of the investigation that their main task was to guess the maniac's "idea" and the rest was merely a matter of investigative technique. There can be no doubt at all that the typical features of Jack the Ripper's ritual and that of our Moscow murderer are identical in every respect.'
'But even so, it's just too fantastic,' said General Yurovsky with a shake of his head. 'For Jack the Ripper to disappear from London and turn up in a woodshed on Samotechnaya Street... And then, you must agree, cancelling the sovereign's visit just because some prostitute has been killed ...'
Erast Petrovich's patience was clearly almost exhausted, because he said rather sharply: 'Permit me to remind Your Excellency that the case of Jack the Ripper cost the head of London's police his job, and the Home Secretary also lost his position, because they refused for too long to attach any importance to the murders of "some prostitutes or other". Even if we assume that we now have our own, home-grown Ivan the Ripper, that does not improve the situation. Once he has tasted blood, he won't stop. Just imagine the situation if the killer hands us another present like today's during the Emperor's visit! And if it comes out that it is not the first such crime? The old capital will have a fine Easter Sunday.'
Prince Dolgorukoi crossed himself in fright and General Yurovsky raised a hand to unbutton his gold-embroidered collar.
'It is a genuine miracle that this time we have managed to hush up such a fantastic case.' The Collegiate Counsellor ran his fingers over his foppish black moustache, seeming preoccupied. 'But have we really managed it?'
A deadly silence fell.
'Do as you wish, Prince,' Vedishchev said from behind his door, 'but he's right. Write to our father the Tsar. Tell him this and that, and there's been a bit of a muddle. It's to our own detriment, but for the sake of Your Majesty's peace of mind we humbly request you not to come to Moscow.'
'Oh, Lord.' The Governor's voice trembled pitifully
Izhitsin stood up and, gazing loyally at his exalted superior, suggested a possible way out: 'Your Excellency, could you not refer to the exceptionally high water? As they say, the Lord of Heaven must take the blame for that.'
'Well done, Pizhitsin, well done,' said the Prince, brightening up. 'You have a good head. That's what I shall write. If only the newspapers don't manage to ferret out this business of the mutilation.'
Investigator Izhitsin glanced condescendingly at Erast Petrovich and sat down, but not in the same way as before, with half a buttock on a quarter of the stool, but fully at his ease, as an equal among equals.
However, the expression of relief that had appeared on the Prince's face was almost immediately replaced by dismay.
'It won't do any good! The truth will come out anyway. If Erast Petrovich says this won't be the last atrocity, then it won't be. He is rarely mistaken.'
Fandorin cast an emphatically quizzical glance at the Governor, as if to say: Ah, I see, so there are times when I am mistaken!'
At this point the Head Police Master began breathing heavily through his nose, lowered his head guiltily and said in a deep voice: 'I don't know if it's the last case or not, but it probably isn't the first. I am to blame, Governor; I didn't attach any importance to it, I did not wish to bother you over trifles. But today's murder looked too provocative altogether, and so I decided to report it to you in view of the Emperor's visit. However, I recall now that in recent times brutal murders of streetwalkers and female vagrants have probably been on the increase. During Shrovetide, I think it was, there was a report of a female beggar found on Seleznevskaya Street with her stomach slashed to ribbons. And before that, at the Sukharev Market, they found a prostitute with her womb cut out. We didn't even investigate the case of the beggar - there was no point - and we decided th
e prostitute's ponce had mutilated her in a drunken fit. We took the fellow in, but he still hasn't confessed; he's being stubborn.'
Ah, General Yurovsky how could you?' said the Governor, throwing his hands in the air. 'If we had launched an investigation straight away and set Erast Petrovich on the case, perhaps we might have already caught this villain! And we wouldn't have had to cancel His Highness's visit!'
'But Your Excellency, who could have known? - there was no deliberate deception. You know yourself what the city is like, and the people are blackguards; there's something of the kind every single day! I can't bother Your Excellency with every petty incident!' the General said, almost whining in his attempt to justify himself, and he looked round at the Public Prosecutor and the investigator for support, but Kozlyatnikov was gazing sternly at the chief of police and Izhitsin shook his head reproachfully, as if to say: 'This is not good.'
Collegiate Counsellor Fandorin interrupted the General's lament with a curt question: "Where are the bodies?'
'Where else would they be but at the Bozhedomka? That's where they bury all the dissolutes, idlers and people without passports. If there are any signs of violence, they take them to the police morgue first, to Egor Zakharov, and after that they ship them over to the cemetery there. That's the procedure.'
'We have to carry out an exhumation,' Fandorin said, with a grimace of disgust. 'And with no delay. Check the records at the morgue to see which female individuals have recently - let's say, since the New Year - been brought in with indications of violent death. And exhume them. Check for similarities in the picture of the crime. See if there have been any similar incidents. The ground has not thawed out yet, the c-corpses ought to be perfectly preserved.'
The Public Prosecutor nodded: 'I'll issue instructions. You deal with this, Izhitsin. And how about you, Erast Petrovich -would you not care to be present? It would be most desirable to have your participation.'
Izhitsin grinned sourly - apparently he did not consider the Collegiate Counsellor's participation to be so very desirable.
Fandorin suddenly turned pale - he had remembered his recent shameful attack of nausea. He struggled with himself for a moment, but failed to master his weakness: ‘I’ll assign m-my assistant Tulipov to help Izhitsin. I think that will be adequate.'
The heavy job was finished after eight in the evening, by the light of flaming torches.
As a finishing touch, the ink-black sky began pouring down a cold, sticky rain and the landscape of the cemetery, which was bleak in any case, became dismal enough to make you want to fall face down into one of the excavated graves and sleep in the embrace of mother earth - anything not to see those puddles of filth, waterlogged mounds of soil and crooked crosses.
Izhitsin was giving the orders. There were six men digging: two of the constables who had been at the scene of the crime, kept on the investigation in order not to extend the circle of people who knew about the case, two long-serving gendarmes and two of the Bozhedomka gravediggers, without whom they would not have been able to manage the job. First they had thrown the thick, spongy mud aside with their spades and then, when the metal blades struck the unthawed ground, they had taken up their picks. The cemetery's watchman had showed them where to dig.
According to the list, since January of the current year, 1889, the police morgue had taken delivery of fourteen bodies of women bearing signs of 'death from stabbing or cutting with a sharp instrument'. Now they had extracted the dead women from their wretched little graves and dragged them back into the morgue, where they were being examined by Dr Zakharov and his assistant Grumov, a consumptive-looking young man with a goatee that looked as if it was glued on and a thin, bleating voice that suited him perfectly.
Anisii Tulipov glanced inside once and decided not to do it again - it was better out in the open air, under the grey April drizzle. However, after an hour or so, chilled and thoroughly damp, and with his sensibilities blunted somewhat, Anisii sought shelter again in the autopsy room and sat on a little bench in the corner. He was discovered there by the watchman Pakhomenko, who felt sorry for him and took him back to his hut to give him tea.
The watchman was a capital fellow with a kind, clean-shaven face and jolly wrinkles radiating from his clear, child-like eyes to his temples. Pakhomenko spoke the language of the people - it was fascinating to listen to, but he put in a lot of Ukrainian words.
"Working in a graveyard, you need a callous heart,' he said in his quiet voice, with a compassionate glance at the exhausted Tulipov. Any folk will grow sick and weary if they're shown their own end every day: Look there, servant of God, you'll be rotting just like that. But the Lord is merciful: he gives the digger calluses on his hand so he won't wear the flesh down to the bone, and them as is faced with human woes, he gives them calluses on their hearts too. So as their hearts won't get worn away. You'll get used to it too, mister. At first I was afraid - green as burdock I was; but here we are, supping our tea and gnawing on our bread. Never mind, you'll get used to it in time. Eat, eat...'
Anisii sat for a while with Pakhomenko, who had been around in his time and seen all sorts of things in all sorts of places. He listened to his leisurely yarns - about worshipping at holy places, about good people and bad people - and felt as if he had been thawed out somehow and his will had been strengthened. Now he could go back to the black pits, the rough wood coffins and the grey shrouds.
It was talking to the garrulous watchman and home-grown philosopher that gave Anisii the idea that redeemed his useless presence at the cemetery with interest. It happened like this.
As evening was coming on, some time after six, they carried the last of the fourteen corpses into the morgue. The cheerful Izhitsin, who had prudently dressed for the occasion in hunting boots and rubberised overalls with a hood, called the soaking-wet Anisii over to summarise the results of the exhumation.
In the autopsy room Tulipov gritted his teeth, reinforced the calluses on his heart and it was all right: he walked from one table to the next, looked at the revolting deceased and listened to the expert's summaries.
'They can take these three lovelies back: numbers two, eight and ten,' said Zakharov, pointing casually with his finger. 'Our staff have got something confused here. I'm not the one to blame. I only dissect the cases that are under special supervision; otherwise it's Grumov who pokes about inside them. I think he's a bit too fond of the hard stuff, the snake. And when he's drunk, he writes whatever comes into his head in the conclusions.'
'What are you saying, Egor Willemovich?' Zakharov's goat-bearded assistant protested resentfully. 'If I do occasionally indulge in strong drink, it's only a drop, to restore my health and my shattered nerves. Honestly you should be ashamed.'
'Get away with you,' the gruff doctor said dismissively to his assistant and continued with his report. 'Numbers one, three, seven, twelve and thirteen are also not in our line either. The classic "jab in the side" or "slashed gizzard". Neat work, no excessive cruelty. Better take them away as well.' Egor Willemovich puffed a blast of strong tobacco smoke out of his pipe and lovingly patted a macabre blue woman on her gaping belly. 'But I'll keep this Vasilisa the Beautiful and the other four. I have to check how precisely they were carved, how sharp the knife was and so on. At first I'd hazard a guess that numbers four and fourteen were our friend's handiwork. Only he must have been in a hurry, or else someone frightened him off and stopped the fellow from properly finishing off the work he loves.' The doctor grinned without parting his teeth, which were gripping the pipe that protruded from them.
Anisii checked the numbers against the list. It all fitted: number four was the beggar Maria Kosaya from Maly Tryokhsvyatsky Lane. Number fourteen was the prostitute Zotova from Svininsky Lane. The same ones that the Head Police Master had mentioned.
For some reason the fearless Izhitsin was not satisfied with the pronouncements of the expert and started to check, almost sticking his nose into the gaping wounds and asking detailed questions. Anisii envied his s
elf-possession and felt ashamed of his own uselessness, but he couldn't think of anything for himself to do.
He went outside into the fresh air, where the diggers were having a smoke
'Well, mister, was it worth all the digging?' asked Pakhomenko. 'Or are we going to dig some more?'
'There's no more digging to do,' Anisii responded gladly. 'We've dug them all up. It's strange, really. In three months in the whole of Moscow only ten streetwalkers were killed. And the newspapers say our city is dangerous.'
'Ha! Ten he says,' the watchman snorted. 'That's just how it looks. They're just the ones with names. But we stack the ones they bring us without names in the ditches?'
Anisii's heart started beating faster. 'What ditches?'
'What?' Pakhomenko asked in amazement. 'You mean the doctor didn't tell you? Come on, you can look for yourself.'
He led Anisii to the far side of the cemetery and showed him a long pit with a thin layer of earth sprinkled over the top.
'That's the April one. Just the beginning. And there's the March one, already filled in.' He pointed to a long mound of earth. And there's the February one, and there's the January one. But before that I can't tell; I wasn't here then. I've only been working here since Epiphany - I came here from the Optinaya Hermitage, from pilgrimage. Before me there was a Kuzma used to work here. I never saw him myself. At Christmas this Kuzma broke his fast with a bottle or two, tumbled into an open grave and broke his neck. That was the death God had waiting for him: You've been watching over graves, servant of God, so now you can die in one. The Lord likes to joke with us in the graveyard. We're like his yard-keepers. The gravedigger Tishka at Srednokrestny—'
'So do they bury a lot of nameless women in the ditches?' Anisii asked, interrupting the talkative fellow. He had completely forgotten his damp boots and the cold.