by R. N. Morris
‘You will inform me as soon as the official response comes in.’
‘My my, it seems this weather is affecting everyone’s -’
‘In the meantime, I wish to send a telegram to the Caucasus,’ said Porfiry sharply, cutting in on Zamyotov’s pert remark. He handed Zamyotov a slip of paper. ‘The details are here. You will arrange it.’ Just at this point, there was a blazing outburst from Salytov. ‘Something must be done about that man,’ said Porfiry, turning his back on Zamyotov.
‘Nikodim Fomich, what on earth is the matter?’
It almost seemed as though another man was sitting in the chief superintendent’s place. The features of this double bore some superficial resemblance to those of the good-natured, almost buffoonish man Porfiry knew. He had always considered Nikodim Fomich to be handsome, and yet a wrathful, snarling ugliness was deep-etched into the face before him now. Porfiry couldn’t help wondering if this was the true Nikodim Fomich. In the shock of seeing his friend like this, his own ill temper was forgotten.
‘He’s done it again.’
‘He?’
‘Who else? Salytov.’
‘Ah! It is Salytov that I have come to speak to you about. Have you heard the uproar that he is creating in the receiving hall?’
‘Not again? He is quite incorrigible. After this other trouble, I would have thought he might prefer to exercise a little restraint.’
‘What other trouble?’
‘The boy from the confectioner’s,’ said Nikodim Fomich with heavy distaste. ‘Salytov will not let go of the idea that he is in some way responsible for the Meyer poisonings. He persists in the idea that he is a political agitator. For whatever reason, he has been persecuting the boy. Without my authorisation, of course. We have received a complaint from the boy’s employer. You know that Ballet’s supplies confectionery to the Imperial Court? Salytov is threatening to close down the shop again. Imagine!’
‘The man is a loose cannon,’ exclaimed Porfiry, ‘as I have had occasion to remark on numerous occasions.’
‘Indeed. And one day he will go off in our faces.’ Nikodim Fomich shook his head gravely.
‘What will you do?’
‘I have already reprimanded him, but it seems to make no difference. He shows no contrition, rather almost open defiance, bordering on insubordination. I am intending to put it all in a report. It will go before the disciplinary board.’
‘They say you needn’t be afraid of a barking dog,’ said Porfiry. ‘But I’m not so sure. Let’s hope that the board views the matter with sufficient gravity.’
‘I fear this may be the extinguishing of old Firecracker.’
‘It is not as if he hasn’t been warned,’ said Porfiry, rather primly. He took out a cigarette and lit it. He welcomed the stimulative effects of the smoke, familiar and manageable when compared to the formless agitation of the day that he hoped to banish. He studied the end of his cigarette, then flashed a sly, almost shamefaced look at Nikodim Fomich. ‘However . . .’ he began, then broke off. ‘No, no, it’s too ridiculous.’
‘What?’ snapped Nikodim Fomich.
‘What if there is something in it, though?’ said Porfiry. He gave every impression of being appalled by the suggestion he had just made.
‘Are you mad?’ Nikodim Fomich’s expression darkened even more. ‘Or is this another of your pranks, Porfiry Petrovich?’
‘I’m quite serious, and, as far as I am able to say, sane. I rejected Ilya Petrovich’s idea previously because the simpler explanation seemed to be that Dr Meyer was responsible for the deaths of his wife and son. Now, as you know, that does not seem likely. The investigation has opened out. We cannot afford to rule out any line of enquiry.’
‘But surely it is preposterous! A revolutionary cell at a confectioner’s! ’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry I mentioned it.’ Porfiry continued smoking. He licked his upper lip apprehensively. ‘But what if this Tolya and his associates were, at some time in the future, able to poison the chocolates of the Imperial household?’
‘I have to warn you, Porfiry Petrovich, that I am in no mood for such jokes.’
‘And what if that happened and we were found to have ignored Salytov’s warnings?’ Porfiry insisted.
‘But I thought you were pursuing the possibility of a connection between the Meyer poisoning and the Setochkin case?’ Nikodim Fomich’s voice was strained with exasperation. ‘Were you not interested in the link provided by this mysterious guest? I rather thought you believed him to be the murderer in both cases. Is he then linked to the confectioner’s too? Is he a political agitator? How do the deaths of Raisa and Grigory Meyer and Colonel Setochkin further his cause?’
‘I don’t know. At present we know nothing about him. He is as unquantifiable as the X on one side of an algebraic equation. I feel very strongly that this figure is significant. But I cannot prove it. Therefore, it is reasonable to consider every possibility.’
‘And yet you have ruled out Meyer.’
‘Dr Meyer did not murder his wife and child. I can tell you that from having talked to the man. On the other hand, I can tell you nothing about the Uninvited One, other than the fact that he visited a brothel fourteen years ago in the company of Ruslan Vladimirovich Vakhramev, on which occasion he had sex with Raisa Meyer. But I have not looked into his eyes. I have not listened to the timbre of his voice. I do not even know his name, though I know where to look for it.’
‘And where is that?’
‘I have received from the Ministry of Education a list of the private boarding schools in Moscow. We have sent for their records for the years Golyadkin would have been of high-school age. Given that his age when he died this year was forty-seven, I have asked for the records for the years between 1833 and 1845.’
‘But that will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And how will you know the name when you see it?’
‘I am not sure that I will. Unless the name occurs in some other context related to one or other of these cases.’
‘And if you find such a recurrence, you will have found your murderer?’
‘Possibly. At the very least, I will have found another connection. ’
‘Or another meaningless coincidence. Allow me to remind you of something, Porfiry Petrovich. One usually solves algebraic equations through the exercise of logic, not wild guesswork.’
‘But, in criminal investigations, logic is only one of the tools that we may use.’
‘Surely you are not advocating the use of guesswork too?’
‘Not guesswork,’ said Porfiry, placing the cigarette to his lips. After exhaling, he continued: ‘I would not call it that. But sometimes one is drawn towards certain irrational ideas. One must explore them.’
‘What other random coincidences are you investigating?’
‘None, for the moment. And I am not sure that I agree quite with your description of coincidences as random. I have often found that when such an individual as the Uninvited One begins his work, connections, correspondences and, yes, coincidences, begin to occur. They are merely the outward manifestations - the symptoms, if you will - of a murderous pathology visiting itself on the social organism. Of course, the danger is that one sees a pattern where there is none. How is one to distinguish the significant from the contingent? For example, Dr Meyer visited a lunatic asylum at which Tolya’s mother was once an inmate. Perhaps, as Pavel Pavlovich would have me believe, that is the connection I should be pursuing. However, one must be methodical. Investigate one possibility, rule it out, then move on to the next.’
‘In other words, this is all you have to go on.’ The chief superintendent’sshoulders began to shake in mirthless laughter.
‘I’m glad to see that your humour has improved, Nikodim Fomich.’
‘There is nothing like the misfortune of others to cheer one up.’
Porfiry frowned, as if hurt by his friend’s easy callousness. ‘Regarding Lieutenant Salytov, perhaps we should assign resources to investigate
the confectioner’s on an authorised basis? A round-the-clock surveillance of the suspect individuals might be advisable.’
‘He acted without my authorisation! That would be to reward him. Really you are quite impossible, Porfiry Petrovich. You come in here up in arms against him, and now here you are taking his side.’
‘One must be flexible. Of course, we could simply communicate his suspicions to the Third Section and allow them to take over.’
‘Do you really wish to involve those snakes?’
‘If there is a secret plot against the state, they are the correct office to deal with it.’
‘I don’t like them. They make me nervous.’
‘Why, Nikodim Fomich? Surely you have nothing to fear from them?’
‘No more than you, Porfiry Petrovich.’ Nikodim Fomich gave his friend a wounded look. ‘I disapprove of their methods. There is too much reliance on dirty tricks.’
‘They would claim that their methods are necessary, especially since the assassination attempt on our beloved Tsar. They are fighting the enemies of our way of life, men - and women - who have shown themselves prepared to stop at nothing.’
‘Yes, yes, I understand all that. Even so . . .’
‘Perhaps you will find that you have no choice. Once this goes before the disciplinary board, they may well decide that Salytov’s suspicions require further investigation. Indeed it could possibly end in a commendation for him.’
‘You cannot be serious, Porfiry Petrovich?’
Porfiry shrugged. ‘Who knows what view they will take of the matter.’
‘Then what do you suggest I do?’
‘You must do whatever you feel is necessary.’
‘I do so hate it when you say that, Porfiry Petrovich.’ Nikodim Fomich seemed once again to have been possessed by his bad-tempered double. He resolutely avoided Porfiry’s eye.
9
Golyadkin’s classmates
As Martin Meyer’s foot pressed down on the first board of the veranda, the empty dacha groaned in protest. The veranda had been cleaned, the wrought-iron chairs set right and replaced around the marble-topped table. Polina. Meyer’s glance skimmed across the table towards the door, as if expecting it to open, wife and son coming out to meet him. But, of course, he had to cross the devastated space himself and place his own hand on the door to open it.
As he entered the interior of the dacha, an alien silence confronted him. It was as if the house had stopped breathing. The silence unsettled him; he felt it as something malign and unfathomable. He cast his gaze about as if looking for it. And then, he saw it - or rather the source of it: the grandfather clock, which stood, unwound, untended, a film of dust dulling its cherry wood surface; dumbstruck, emanating the silence that judged him.
He stood unmoving in the centre of the room, listening. At last, he began to hear the small sounds that possessed the dacha in the absence of humanity: the scratching of mice, the scuttling of insects, the clicks and creaks of the timbers adjusting to the sun’s transit through the day. The wooden cottage acted like a sounding box, picking up and amplifying these sounds until he, in the centre of it, shook with their reverberations.
The convulsion released him from his fearful immobility. He walked the length of the room, each footfall a hammerblow on the past, irreversible. His steps took him only to the piano, the lid still lifted, the album of folk songs open on the music rest. The keyboard seemed to possess a strange resilience; he had the feeling that the keys would not yield to his touch were he to lay his fingers on them. But a kind of horror prevented him from trying. The instrument had always been hers, and so much represented her that it had taken on the significance of her remains. To press a key would have felt like a desecration. He did not have the right, no one had, he least of all. Besides, he couldn’t play, had no feeling for music at all.
He stood over the keyboard, looking down at it, willing it to sound of its own accord. Then, unexpectedly, his hand reached out and he pressed a key in the centre of the keyboard. His touch was gentle. The note it produced, faltering and awed. He pressed again, more firmly, on the same key. The inhuman brightness of the note this time appalled him. A terrible pressure welled inside him, an expanding force in his chest. Then the tears came. They fell on to the piano keys. It was almost as if he expected them to depress the keys and cause the hammers to strike, with such a heavy, laden force did he imagine his tears falling. But, of course, this remained a sentimental fantasy. The tiny puddles spread, weightless, noiseless, on the ivory.
With the clock’s ticking suspended, it seemed that he existed outside time. There was a strange sense too of squaring up to the future. How long it was before he turned his back on the piano, he could not say. Nor how long it took him to cross the room and enter his study. It seemed that he was moving through a more viscous element than he was used to, one charged with hostility.
He could tell immediately that the room had been interfered with. They had been there, riffling through his papers. The lid of the escritoire was open, the drawer pulled out. He pulled it further and it fell out of his hands on to the floor with a hooligan clatter. Meyer’s hands shot up to cover his ears. His body writhed in an evasive flinch. But there was nothing to evade, except the noise and its aftermath. When that had finally died, he sank to a crouch to sort the debris. With the new slowness that characterised all his movements now, the infinite patience of a man without purpose, he put the scattered papers back into the drawer. The realisation came upon him gradually: they had taken all the photographs. The blank that was his marriage, his family, his life, was complete. They had even, he discovered, taken the one recourse left to him, the small bottle that would allow him to cover one blankness, agonising and self-aware, with another, blissful and oblivious.
They had left him with nothing.
‘Yes, come in, Pavel Pavlovich,’ said Porfiry, looking up from behind his desk. He winced a perfunctory smile. ‘I have a task for you.’ He shook a thick sheaf of papers for Virginsky to take. ‘These have just come in from Moscow. They are the lists of relevant pupils from all the private boarding schools in Moscow.’
Virginsky took the sheets almost reluctantly. There was something self-conscious about his movements as he scanned them. He said nothing.
‘I wish you to look for the name Golyadkin on the lists,’ continued Porfiry. ‘And to draw up a secondary list of all the boys who were ever in the same class as him. It should not be so difficult. There will be a certain amount of re-duplication as the pupils move up the years.’
‘Of course.’
‘An investigation may progress in a number of ways. There will always be times when our work is more laborious than otherwise. A crime is often solved when a connection is made between the victim and the perpetrator. Very rarely do these connections leap out at us. We must go looking for them.’
Virginsky nodded but seemed reluctant to move away and begin the task. ‘Porfiry Petrovich,’ he said at last, tentatively.
‘Yes? What is it?’
‘My father knew Setochkin.’
‘I see.’ Porfiry Petrovich sat up sharply. ‘Why did you not tell me this before?’
Virginsky could not answer, except by colouring deeply.
‘Or let me put it another way, why are you telling me now?’
‘I felt sure there was nothing in it. I wished to protect my father from unnecessary inconvenience.’
‘How very thoughtful of you. However, something has changed your mind?’
‘There is another connection you should be aware of. One that may make the first seem less coincidental.’
Porfiry inclined his head, waiting, his expression severe.
‘My father went to school in Moscow. He was a pupil at a private boarding school, the Chermak Private High School. His age is such that his name will be on these lists.’
‘I see.’ Porfiry nodded thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps you should start with this Chermak School. You will then set your mind at rest straig
htaway.’
‘And what if I find the name Golyadkin there? In the same class as my father, even?’
‘That would be interesting. At any rate, I would very much like to meet your father, if you do not think it would inconvenience him too much.’
‘Porfiry Petrovich, I am very much aware that in attempting to fulfil my duties as a son, I may well have neglected those of my office. I have done wrong. I would prefer to receive your reprimand than your sarcasm.’
‘Pavel Pavlovich, I do not blame you. After all, there are some coincidences that are simply coincidences. I suspect this is one of them. There are so many connections now in the cases before us that I fear we have created a veritable net of them. If we are not careful, it will entrap us.’ Porfiry looked around him, with a vaguely menacing air.