by Ben Creed
Rossel risked a grin.
‘It is a beautiful song and you play it delightfully, comrade. But there are children trying to sleep on the fourth floor. May I respectfully request that this is your last rendition of the evening?’
The singer reached up and began to take out some of the clips in her hair.
‘If it disturbs the little ones, sure.’
She began to push at the door to close it, but he put the tips of his fingers on the handle.
‘Have you got a name, comrade?’ he asked, wondering why on earth he was asking.
She glanced down at his hand, which, his cheeks colouring slightly, he immediately removed. Then back up at him; her face softened. Relaxing, he took a step backward into the corridor.
The door slammed shut.
15
Friday October 19
The blue hat with the red band and polished steel star was lying on Captain Lipukhin’s desk when Rossel entered the room. Taneyev, Grachev and Lipukhin himself could not take their eyes off it.
The owner of the cap was an MGB colonel who was occupying Lipukhin’s usual seat. He was middle-aged and portly with a florid complexion. His dark but greying hair was a little too long for regulations and swept down over his brow.
Rossel was holding a tin mug of tea. He parked it on a nearby filing cabinet, stood to attention and saluted.
‘Now, at last, we are all here,’ said the colonel.
His tone was clipped and officious, and he looked at them as if they were merely paperwork that he needed to sort, process and file before sitting down to lunch. He nodded at Rossel.
‘I am Colonel Sarkisov, Fifth Main Directorate of the MGB.’ The Fifth was the department tasked with monitoring internal dissent and counter-revolutionary activity. ‘I have been sent here from Comrade Beria’s office to ask about this current case of yours. The bodies on the line.’
‘Comrade Beria?’ Taneyev whispered, looking as though he was about to swallow his tongue.
‘Indeed. I trust you have no objection?’
‘None at all,’ replied Lipukhin hastily. ‘It is a great honour.’
Colonel Sarkisov sat up straight. ‘Not, perhaps, for me. We shall see.’ He picked up a brown leather briefcase from next to his feet on the floor and opened it. Taking out a file, he flicked through its pages, making the occasional note. He was in no hurry whatsoever to resume the conversation.
‘Five bodies,’ he said after a long while. ‘Unusual, is it not?’
The question was not specifically directed at any of the four militia officers. As a result, no one said anything. Every-body understood speech, of any kind, was a high-risk activity in front of a member of the MGB. Sarkisov turned to Grachev.
‘What about you, Sergeant? Do you think this case is unusual?’
Grachev shifted from one foot to the other.
‘In what way do you mean, Comrade Colonel?’
‘The number of bodies, of course. And also, in the way it is being investigated. Or, should I say, not being investigated quickly enough.’
Lipukhin glanced sideways at Rossel but when Rossel looked back, he tried to avoid his gaze. Rossel realised the captain was sensing an opportunity.
‘I . . . if there are issues the MGB have with the way the militia has handled this particular case, Colonel Sarkisov,’ said Lipukhin, ‘then I can only apologise. Station 17 is a small local station; we would not normally have become involved in a case like this. There were, as you must know from my report in the file, unusual circumstances around our call-out, but we will do everything we can to apprehend the murderer. Or, if you would prefer, I will of course be happy to hand over the case and everything we have on it to higher authorities. To be frank, I had assumed someone from MGB would be assigned to the case from the very beginning, given its somewhat extraordinary circumstances and the death of one of your own.’
‘How do you know it was “one of our own,” as you put it?’ asked Sarkisov.
‘A female victim was in the uniform of an officer of state security, comrade, as you will see from the file.’
‘It could be an imposter. A trick?’
‘But comrade,’ said Lipukhin, ‘Who would dare to? Moreover, how would anyone get hold of an MGB uniform, unless . . .’
Lipukhin stopped.
‘Unless?’ asked Sarkisov. He worked his jaw, as if chewing an errant piece of breakfast.
Unless the killer – or killers – were from the MGB itself, was the unspoken line.
‘Someone could have made it,’ Sarkisov added. ‘A skilled tailor, employed by a member of the criminal class. Perhaps you should have investigated this possibility? Perhaps you should have interrogated some clothes factories, some tailors, some theatrical costume designers? Perhaps you should have requested information from the Ministry for State Security itself? In short, comrades, there has been a distinct lack of progress, of legwork, of a revolutionary spirit of duty towards Soviet justice.’
And it is this lack of revolutionary spirit inside an insignificant police station in a district of Leningrad looking into five murders that has brought Colonel Sarkisov of the Fifth Directorate of the MGB, a man who begins his day with briefings to Beria and Stalin, all the way here to bawl us out, thought Rossel.
‘We are working under difficult circumstances, Comrade Colonel,’ Lipukhin began.
‘Difficult circumstances?’ Sarkisov sneered. ‘I am glad you were not one of our military commanders during the war, Captain.’
Perhaps Comrade Sarkisov could be persuaded to give some more indications as to the reasons for his presence here, thought Rossel.
He stepped forward, treading on a squeaky floorboard as he did so. The noise echoed around the room.
‘I believe the circumstances to which Captain Lipukhin refers are a shortage of personnel, given the arrest of the entire local militia department in the district where the crime was committed and the further difficulty in procuring the services of one of Leningrad’s pathologists for more than five minutes,’ Rossel said. ‘Which in turn may be to do with the nefarious conspiracy of doctors, apparently including pathologists, we read about in our newspapers. It is not easy for mere militia officers to determine a person’s identity when they have no face, teeth and fingers. Or perhaps I missed that part of training?’
Sarkisov’s thin blue lips turned upwards at the corners. The smile looked exactly like what it was: a strategic expression that he needed to practise a lot more if he were to come close to making it in any way convincing. He closed the file and put it back into the briefcase.
‘You have a tendency to insolence, Lieutenant. The NKVD officer who interrogated you, after your arrest in May of 1942, made the same observation. It took Major Nikitin some time, I believe, to properly convince you of the need to pay proper respect to the essential role played in Soviet justice by the organs of state security.’
Major Nikitin. For the first time, Rossel heard the name of his torturer, the man who had ended his musical career. The Chekist bastard who had taken his fingers. Major Nikitin. He bit his lip and stored the name away in his brain just as neatly as Sarkisov had tucked the file away in his briefcase.
That was his first thought. His second was that Comrade Sarkisov had not come to Leningrad without doing his homework.
‘But you were fortunate, is that not so?’ Sarkisov’s smile widened. ‘A month later, the chance of rehabilitation presented itself. For thousands, Lieutenant Rossel, the Sinyavino Offensive was a meat grinder. For you, your time with the 2nd Shock Army was an opportunity for redemption.’
Rossel felt everyone’s eyes on him.
‘You fought in the Sinyavino Offensive?’ Grachev said with a look of disbelief.
‘Many people did,’ Rossel answered.
‘But very few of them lived to tell the tale,’ Sarkisov broke in. ‘Although it seems you have not been telling your comrades much about your past – both distinctions and indiscretions. Understandable, if regretta
ble. Comrades, before you is a man who in the early stages of the siege was denounced by a concerned citizen – concerned, according to the record, over his disdain for, even hostility towards, the Soviet state – and yet who was given the chance to rehabilitate himself on the battlefield in Leningrad’s hour of need. In other circumstances, had his status not decreed otherwise, he might have been awarded a medal. Or two. Instead, he was grateful to seize with, if I may put it like this, both hands, the opportunity to wipe the slate clean.’
Rossel felt his face colouring. Over six years he had worked his way from private to lieutenant while managing to reveal almost nothing about his past to his colleagues. Pointed comments about his gloved hands had been deflected early on with vague references to the war. Grachev was a braggart but most survivors were guarded about their experiences and Rossel had managed to brush off any enquiries with the habitual reticence of the veteran. As a young violinist, the spotlight had been nothing to fear. As the ghost of Vosstaniya Street, it was toxic.
‘The sacrifice of the officer that stands before you,’ continued the colonel, ‘earned him the right to be accepted for further service to the Motherland in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Militia – though we might not call it that any longer, I am not sure – enrolling in, it says here, late 1946. And he is already a lieutenant. Promotion comes fast to those who fulfil their responsibilities and whose loyalty, though sorely tested, is no longer in doubt. Probably. But back to the matter in hand. Your erstwhile colleague, Junior Sergeant Gerashvili, is helping us with our enquiries on a related matter at the moment.’
So she had been arrested.
‘A related matter?’ said Rossel.
‘An instance of fraud. We believe she may have fabricated some entries into the sales ledgers of a noted jewel merchant in Passazh.’
‘But why would Lidia – why would she do that? She is an exemplary junior officer. She wouldn’t make up evidence.’ Rossel’s voice was too loud. ‘Many would, but not Gerashvili, comrade. It is barely credible.’
‘What you can, or cannot, bring yourself to believe is of no consequence here, Comrade Lieutenant,’ answered Sarkisov. ‘All that matters is revolutionary justice. And it is clear to me that, in an attempt to further her career, Gerashvili created evidence which she hoped would facilitate a prestigious arrest. One of the nurses she shared a room with at her apartment is a reliable informant who has confirmed to us that Gerashvili was dissatisfied with her role as the archive clerk here at Vosstaniya Street and felt she could, I gather, “better herself”. A very bourgeois sentiment. Many important Party members have purchased items from that shop. She sought to blackmail them with fabricated information. The jeweller, Djilas, had agreed to be her accomplice in exchange for her overlooking some of his less official business activities. The man was a black-marketeer. It took a little time but, eventually, he confessed as much. We suspect others were involved. We will soon discover just how far this plot spreads.’
Rossel was about to protest Gerashvili’s innocence again but before he could, Lipukhin leaned forward.
‘In your phone call, you said this was a matter related to the murders, Comrade Colonel. How so?’
Sarkisov picked up his briefcase and stood.
‘Treachery, of course. If Lieutenant Rossel’s vigilance is anything to go by, you have all been keeping a close eye on the newspapers. Both these murders and Gerashvili’s jewellery scheme are the work of agitators and fifth columnists. How else could it be that acts of such depravity have taken place in the USSR? How could you have permitted it? This is not America, gentlemen, where due to the iniquitous exploitative social structures of capitalism people starve on the streets of New York, Chicago and Washington and, as a result, homicide is commonplace.’
He picked up his cap and put it back on. There was a plastic paperweight on Lipukhin’s desk. A present his sister had bought him from a seaside holiday in Khosta on the Black Sea. It had a white sailing ship sealed inside it and Sailing Club of Khosta was written on its base.
Sarkisov pointed at the paperweight.
‘Complete dump, Khosta – I went there once for a military conference. Not a decent plate of food to be had in the whole town. Nothing to eat but ukha all week – they’d had a delivery of pike, and I hate pike. I couldn’t wait to get back to Leningrad.’
He picked up the paperweight with his left hand and then tossed it into the air, catching it with his right.
‘The coming celebrations in honour of the opening of the Road of Life are only a few weeks away. Leningrad will be welcoming many of the very highest-ranking members of the Party as honoured guests. Stalin himself, I am told by Comrade Beria, is anxious that all troublesome matters of law enforcement, state security and Soviet justice are cleared up long before then. I will give you a few more days, no more, to make some progress on this case, comrades. These spies and traitors – whoever you think may have committed these terrible crimes . . . Consult your own records and you may find, I’m sure, that some of your usual suspects may well be implicated. Well then, round them up, have them confess. A simple honest confession is, as you know, the key component of our unsurpassable Soviet justice system, so extract one. Solve the case and let us all move on. That is the message I have brought for you.’
Colonel Sarkisov tucked a small strand of his long hair under the rim of his bright blue cap. Then dropped the paperweight onto the desk.
‘Like I say, comrades, Khosta is a dump. But I can think of worse places. And so, I reckon, can you.’
*
As soon as Colonel Sarkisov left the building, it started.
‘You bastard,’ Grachev hissed at him. ‘I always knew you were suspect. Denounced, interrogated, sent to die, and you would have done us a favour if you’d blown your fucking brains out. And now this. You stuck-up, kulak scum.’
The words were out – Grachev knew words, said loud enough, were all it took to daub you from head to foot in treachery. It was another name Grachev had for Rossel – ‘our kulak lieutenant’. A landowner, oppressor, exploiter. A whispered insult. But not whispered today. A class enemy because he could walk upright, read books and deal with prostitutes without raping them, which in Grachev’s world was beyond comprehension.
The sergeant wasn’t finished.
‘First, you send Gerashvili to do a man’s job and bring the blue-hats down on our heads and then, when they turn up – an MGB major from Beria’s office, fuck your mother – you give them some lip, when we – all of us – are the ones who will pay. It turns out you knew one of the victims, which is a nice detail, and one I’m sure the MGB will make hay with once we’re all nailed to the floor of the Bolshoi Dom. Just who do you think you are?’
Lipukhin, standing next to his desk, watched, crouched, ready to step between them. Taneyev just watched. It was the most prudent thing to do.
Grachev and Rossel were eyeball to eyeball now. Rossel took a fractional step backward. Grachev leered, sensing surrender, and followed, pushing his face into Rossel’s. Nothing, he believed, could stop Senior Sergeant Grachev, who had fought a path from the burning craters of Stalingrad right the way to the Reichstag and would have had the skulls of dead Germans dangling from his backpack if there had been room to buckle them all on. The keeper of his own legend, Grachev had spun enough tales of wartime heroism for every junior in the station to hold his combat skills in awe. Some of the rougher ones over the years had worshipped him, emulating with enthusiasm his ways of extracting compliance from men and women in the cells. He’d had his factions, had Grachev. At times they’d bordered on insurgency. Nothing could topple him.
Especially not this musical cripple with his missing fingers and poncey manners.
Grachev pushed his face into Rossel’s. Swung his fist. The lieutenant stepped nimbly to one side, dodged the blow, and hit him.
Now the sergeant rasped in earnest, his grey teeth bared and his eyes wide, but his left knee had buckled for a split second.
Then
the right fist followed up.
Grachev staggered but kept to his feet.
Say it again, thought Rossel, staring him down. Say it, he whispered inside his head, enraged by Grachev’s contempt.
‘Say it again,’ he shouted.
The sergeant’s fat, sneering lips framed the word but nothing came out. Then the hero of Stalingrad grimaced and shook his head.
He straightened up and stalked over to the door.
‘Stay where you are, Sergeant,’ shouted Lipukhin. ‘You haven’t been dismissed.’
Grachev muscled his squat frame through the door.
Then slammed it behind him.
*
Lipukhin put the radio on. It wheezed and crackled before finding a rousing march to blare out.
Taneyev had immediately sought permission to follow the sergeant. Lipukhin waved a hand at him and he was gone.
‘He’ll denounce you, Revol. If he didn’t fight, that means he’s plotting something.’
Lipukhin reached for a matchbox and shook it.
‘We are safe for only a few more days,’ said Rossel. ‘Beria’s henchman has just ordered us to solve this case. Our orders now come directly from the Politburo.’
‘Shit,’ said Lipukhin, lighting a cigarette and shaking his head as he blew out the match. ‘Is that a good thing?’
The captain sank into his chair.
‘Were you really in the Sinyavino Offensive?’ Lipukhin asked.
‘For a time.’
‘I didn’t think many had survived that.’
Rossel shrugged. ‘There weren’t many left when it ended. That is undeniable.’
‘Fuck your mother.’ Lipukhin struggled to strike a match. ‘What did Sarkisov mean by a “chance at redemption”?’
‘The comrade major may have become confused by the passage of time,’ said Rossel. ‘In May 1942, as his records indicate, I was indeed brought in for questioning. Although some of that questioning was fairly robust, it ended without warning when the Red Army emptied the jails and sent us into battle. Some of us were even given weapons. A few of those who survived were rehabilitated. Unusually, the Chekists didn’t have much say in the matter. If I recall rightly, my interrogator was disappointed to see me go. But those were desperate times.’