Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

Fandorin paused significantly. State Counsellor Eichmann started and was about to protest, but Prince Dolgorukoi gestured for him to remain silent.

'It seems I need not have bothered you, my dear fellow,' Dolgorukoi said amiably to Eichmann. 'Why don't you go and keep up the pressure on your pickpockets and swindlers, so that on Easter Sunday they break their fast at home in Khitrovka and, God forbid, don't show their noses outside. I am relying on you.'

Eichmann stood up and bowed without speaking, smiled with just his lips at Erast Petrovich and went out.

The Collegiate Counsellor sighed in the realisation that he had now acquired a lifelong enemy in the person of the head of Moscow's Criminal Investigation Department, but this case really was horrific, and no unnecessary risk could be justified.

'I know you,' said the Governor, looking anxiously at his trusted deputy. 'If you say "one", it means there will be a "two". Speak out; don't keep us on tenterhooks.'

'I greatly regret, Vladimir Andreevich, that the sovereign's visit will have to be cancelled,' Fandorin said in a very low voice, but this time the Prince heard him perfectly.

'How's that - "cancelled"?' he gasped.

The other individuals present reacted more violently to the Collegiate Counsellor's brash announcement.

'You must be out of your mind' exclaimed Head Police Master Yurovsky.

'It's absolutely incredible!' bleated the Prosecutor.

The Investigator for Especially Important Cases did not dare to say anything out loud, because his rank was too low to permit the taking of such liberties, but he did purse his plump lips as if he were outraged by Fandorin's insane outburst.

'What do you mean - cancelled?' Dolgorukoi repeated in a flat voice.

The door leading to the inner chambers opened slightly, and the valet's face emerged halfway from behind it.

The Governor began speaking with extreme agitation, hurrying so much that he swallowed syllables and even entire words: 'Erast Petrovich, it's not the first year... you... idle words... But cancel His Majesty's visit? Why, that's a scandal of unprecedented proportions! You've no idea what effort I ... For me, for all of us, it's

Fandorin frowned, wrinkling his high, clear forehead. He knew perfectly well how long Dolgorukoi had manoeuvred and intrigued in order to arrange the Emperor's visit, and how the hostile St Petersburg 'camarilla' had plotted and schemed against it - they had been trying for twenty years to unseat the cunning old Governor from his enviable position! His Majesty's Easter impromptu would be a triumph for the Prince, sure testimony to the invincibility of his position. And next year His Excellency had a highly important anniversary: sixty years of service at officer's rank. With an event like that he could even hope for the Order of St Andrew. How could he suddenly turn around and ask for the trip to be cancelled!

'I understand all th-that, Your Excellency, but if it is not cancelled, things will be even worse. This case of mutilation is not the last.' The Collegiate Counsellor's face became more sombre with every word that he spoke. 'I am afraid that Jack the Ripper has moved to Moscow'

Once again, as several minutes earlier, Erast Petrovich's declaration provoked a chorus of protests.

'What do you mean - not the last?' the Governor-General asked indignantly.

The Head Police Master and the Public Prosecutor spoke almost with a single voice: 'Jack the Ripper?'

Izhitsin gathered his courage and snorted. 'Stuff and nonsense!'

'What ripper's that?' Frol Vedishchev croaked from behind his little door in the natural pause that followed.

'Yes, yes, who is this Jack?' His Excellency gazed at his subordinates in obvious displeasure. 'Everybody knows; I'm the only one who hasn't been informed. It's always the same with you.'

'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.'