R. Morris - A Razor Wrapped in Silk

Virginsky ran two steps to catch up with Porfiry. ‘Porfiry Petrovich,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘We cannot, in all conscience, subject her to this.’

‘It’s all right, Pavel Pavlovich.’ Maria’s voice came deep and firm, as if something of the darkness had entered it and given it strength. He thought of her singing in the schoolroom. ‘I must do it.’

‘But you don’t know what it will cost you. You will never be the same after this. What you are about to see, it will enter you and take hold of you, and never let you go.’

‘You wish to spare me. I understand. But I do not wish to be spared.’

‘Pavel Pavlovich.’ Porfiry’s voice was stern as he cut in. ‘You must not presume that everyone will be affected in the same way that you were. Now, please calm yourself. This discussion is not helpful to Maria Petrovna.’

Maria’s presence faded momentarily as she reeled back from their attention. It was as if she could not bear even the feeble glow of the candlelight on her. The force of their dispute, and that she was the subject of it, seemed also to weigh heavily on her.

‘I just want to … get this over with.’ Two bright points glittered in the darkness, then flickered uncertainly before disappearing.

‘Take my arm, Maria Petrovna.’

The glittering points came back, their gleam directed at Porfiry Petrovich. He held out his forearm receptively. Her hand, like a timid creature venturing from its hiding place, bobbed tentatively towards it.

Virginsky felt the pivotal roll of defeat inside him.

*

As they entered the room, the smell of damp intensified, or rather it was overlaid with another smell in a similar register, but sweeter and somehow more insinuating. Professor Bubnov touched a taper to the candle flame and lit an oil lamp suspended from the centre of the ceiling. Its spread of yellow light seemed to take them all by surprise.

There was a glacial chill in the room. The floor was of trodden earth, the walls exposed brick, apart from one wall which was taken up with rows of small, square doors of varnished wood. These doors were numbered from one to twenty four, and had been constructed, Virginsky noted, with evident care and craftsmanship, to precise specifications. The polished brass hinges and fastenings gleamed. A folded stepladder was leaning against this wall.

‘This is where we keep the body parts,’ said Professor Bubnov, placing his candle on a long table in the centre of the room. Virginsky noticed that the surface of the table was stained with blood. ‘Complete cadavers are kept elsewhere. As you may have noticed, the temperature here is several degrees lower than in the corridor, on account of the ice, in which the parts are packed.’

Porfiry addressed himself to Professor Bubnov. ‘We are looking for a boy of about ten years of age. He would not have come to you before, say, the thirteenth of September.’

‘We do keep a record of when we take possession of our cadavers.’ Professor Bubnov took up the candle again and crossed to a desk against one of the brick walls. There was a lamp on this too. He removed the cylindrical glass and lit the wick with unhurried methodical care. Replacing the glass seemed to take an age. At last the professor sat down at the desk, then opened a drawer and took out a ledger book. With the same slow meticulousness, he turned the pages, running his fingers along rows of numbered entries.

Virginsky craned his neck to peer over Professor Bubnov’s shoulder. ‘Does it tell you from whom the bodies were acquired?’

‘As I informed you this morning, we receive them from the police. There is no need to go into any greater detail than that, as all the bodies come from the same source.’

‘Of course,’ granted Virginsky, frowning enquiringly at Porfiry Petrovich. Porfiry smiled and nodded approval.

‘We did receive such a body, number four three six one, a boy, estimated to be around that age. Received, let me see, on the twenty-third of September.’

‘And these letters here,’ said Virginsky, pointing to a column in the entry Professor Bubnov had his finger on. ‘I. P. S.? What do they signify?’

‘Do you wish me to show you the head of this boy?’ There was a note of aggression in the offer. ‘You will be interested to know that it was one of the heads the students were to have worked on this morning.’

‘I see each entry has a set of similar letters in the same place,’ persisted Virginsky. ‘I. I. D., P. P. Ch., S. D. L. They look like initials to me. Some of them occur more than once. This I. P. S., for example, occurs here, here and here.’

‘It is nothing.’

‘But it must mean something.’

Professor Bubnov closed the ledger. ‘I had the heads from this morning’s class placed in compartment seven. The head of four three six one should be with them.’ He turned sharply away from the desk, consigning the ledger and its contents to the past.

Porfiry treated Virginsky to a significant blink. ‘My dear Professor Bubnov,’ he began smoothly. ‘It really would be most helpful for us to know the meaning of those letters. Perhaps you are embarrassed because you do not know.’ This time, his facial contraction was without doubt a wink. Professor Bubnov’s eyes darted slyly, as he calculated his position. ‘Yes, that must be it,’ continued Porfiry. ‘I cannot believe that you would deliberately withhold information from the judicial authorities.’ The professor looked down in embarrassment. ‘In that case, if you need to consult with the person who entered these letters in order to learn from them directly what they signify, and then pass on that information to us later, that would of course be acceptable. Do you not agree, Pavel Pavlovich?’

‘It will be acceptable,’ said Virginsky.

‘And now, professor, if Maria Petrovna is read y …’

Maria Petrovna bowed her head in heavy assent. Her face was ashen. Her lips were compressed and colourless.

Professor Bubnov rattled open the stepladder and positioned it alongside compartment seven, the first from the left on the third row. He climbed to the second step of the ladder and reached out to turn the brass handle. As the door swung open, Virginsky saw that the back of it was lined with a dull grey metal. A wooden panel came half way up the aperture of the door: the front of a deep drawer. A brass handhold had been inlaid into it. Again Virginsky marvelled at the care that had gone into creating these holding bays for dead matter. Above the drawer front, an impenetrable blackness squatted. It seemed to be an entity released by the opening of the door. But it did not burst out with boundless energy; rather, it began a slow, seeping infiltration of the room.

The professor took hold of the brass handle and pulled. An enormous drawer came out smoothly and easily on a well-oiled sliding mechanism. The black entity shrank back with a grumbling murmur.

The tray of the drawer extended more or less the length of a grown man into the room, supported on iron rods along its bottom edges. The professor lifted the long side nearest him, which turned over and dropped, giving him easier access to the contents: six wooden crates, which could easily have contained the lovingly packed-up possessions of a family removing to their dacha for the summer. The boxes possessed the insolent neutrality of inanimate objects. For it seemed a provocation that anything in the universe could remain unmoved by what Virginsky knew those crates in fact contained.

‘Four three six one, here we are,’ said Professor Bubnov, taking hold of the second crate. ‘May I pass this down to one of you gentlemen?’

Virginsky stepped forward to receive the crate. His heart raced as he took it. He felt also the hot blush of shame. What on earth had impelled him to put himself forward with such unthinking alacrity? Whatever else he might argue, he knew that he had wanted to feel the weight of the crate in his hands. He knew also that this was something he couldn’t blame on Porfiry Petrovich.