Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

‘Let me ask you again, Dobson, where does one draw the line beyond which the means cannot be justified by the ends?’

Easing his heavy frame from the chair, the correspondent reached across the desk for another cigarette, lit it and inhaled a long thoughtful stream of smoke: ‘Are you suggesting one is obliged to draw a different line in Russia?’

‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Of course one has to be guided by conscience…’ Dobson paused to flick a little ash from his cigarette, ‘but perhaps we can be forgiven for taking a few more liberties with the truth in this country. It would be quite impossible to change anything for the better otherwise.’

When Hadfield visited Department 10 the following day, things had already changed markedly for the better. Most of the men had been moved to other wards, but those that remained were in beds, the floors were clean, the rooms well lit and workmen were fitting glass to the windows. Warder Ryabovsky had been replaced by two large and efficient-looking middle-aged women in blue uniforms who were dispensing Hadfield’s prescription of potassium bromide and morphine to the patients. Some of the men were sitting on benches in the sunshine, watching a work gang cutting back the brambles and burdock in the garden. The story of the ‘English doctor’s’ triumph was already known throughout the hospital and military doctors he had never met stopped him in the corridors to offer their congratulations. He took particular care to ensure a favourable report reached his uncle by visiting his aunt and cousin during the day when the general was at his ministry. ‘But he will want to hear all about it,’ his aunt said, holding his hand between hers. ‘How on earth did you manage to persuade the hospital?’ In reply, Hadfield was fulsome in his praise for the superintendent — ‘a most reasonable and caring man’.

His aunt pressed him to join the family for a carriage ride into the countryside on the Sunday, but he made his excuses. Although he had resolved more than once not to go to the clinic, he went to some lengths to be sure he had no other commitments. He was still debating the wisdom of his promise to Anna in the droshky that afternoon as it rattled and swayed across the Nikolaevsky Bridge, and even while he stood in the fine summer rain before St Boris and St Gleb, waiting for his guide. The boy with red hair who had met him on his first visit was his silent companion again. After twenty minutes weaving through the streets of the district, they reached the clinic at last to find a crowd gathered about the entrance. His guide drew him by the sleeve round the throng to where Anna was standing a little apart. She glanced up at him as he approached, then away without a word, the intense frown that never left her for long troubling her brow. A frosty sort of welcome, Hadfield thought, and particularly galling after a week in which she had often been in his thoughts. He stared at her for a moment, hoping she would register the frustration in his face, but her attention was fixed on the circle of men. Turning to follow her gaze, he caught a glimpse of what he took to be a man kneeling, crumpled forward at their feet, and he pushed forward, parting the shoulders of the men in front of him: ‘I’m a doctor.’ The circle began to close, heads straining to see what the gentleman was doing. A woman was shouting at them to step back and as he sank beside the slumped figure he was conscious of Anna standing above him.

‘Can you hear me?’ he asked, and he shook the man gently. But it took only a few seconds for Hadfield to realise he was never going to hear anything in this world again. By a quirk of fate the man had collapsed to his knees as if in prayer. Too late for that, Hadfield thought, lifting his head to look into his lifeless brown eyes. Early forties, grizzled beard, florid face, his mouth a little open, revealing black and broken teeth, a dribble of blood at the corner. A broad man reduced in death to a malodorous ball.

‘No one wants to touch him,’ said Anna in a low voice.

Hadfield looked up to find her bending close. ‘Do you know who he is?’

‘They say he’s a drunk, a vagrant,’ she said hesitantly. ‘He’s been seen loitering in the district, sleeping rough.’

‘Well, why on earth doesn’t someone move him or call the police?’ He realised at once that this was a foolish question to ask.

‘It’s bad luck.’

There was a murmur of assent from those close by.

‘For God’s sake! Do you believe that?’

‘Of course not,’ said Anna. The colour rising in her neck and cheeks suggested this was a half truth.

‘We can’t leave him here for people to step over. You and you,’ said Hadfield, pointing at two men in the crowd, ‘help me, will you?’

It took an hour of bullying and coaxing in equal measure before they were able to persuade willing souls to help them move the body into the school. And in that hour a waiting room packed with the sick and anxious began to empty.

‘It’s him,’ said Anna when they were alone, and she nodded at the corpse on the table before them. ‘It’s bad luck to be in the same building.’

‘Superstitious nonsense. I’m going to look at him. He wasn’t struck down by a devil.’

‘Does it matter what he died of?’

The wariness in her voice surprised him: ‘Well, for one thing it’s important to know if it was something infectious. You can leave this to me if you like?’

‘No,’ she said firmly.

‘Here…’ He tossed her a surgical mask.

It took only a few minutes for Hadfield to be sure they were in no danger of catching a disease. Beneath the dead man’s jacket, his shirt was stained with a ragged circle of congealed blood. A thin blade had been driven into his heart.

‘Murdered,’ Hadfield muttered, ‘and by someone who knew what he was doing.’ He turned to look at Anna: ‘Are you all right?’

Her gaze was fixed on the seeping wound in the vagrant’s chest. He watched her lift a trembling hand to her lips where it hovered uncertainly. She looked pale, her eyes large and glittering, the pupils dilated.

‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’ He touched her elbow gently. ‘Do you recognise him?’

She turned quickly, suddenly aware of his hand on her arm. ‘No. No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ve never seen him before.’

‘I’m sorry. It was crass of me to ask you to help…’

‘No, it’s quite all right,’ she said. ‘I am used to the dead.’ She was her brisk matter-of-fact self again.

There were precious few patients left to see, and within an hour the waiting room was empty but for the school dvornik dozing on a bench, his shoulders wedged into the angle between two walls.

‘Did the crowd know our man was murdered?’ Hadfield asked as he slipped back into his jacket.

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘The waiting room will be full again next week.’

They covered the body with a dirty blanket and left it in the surgery for the priests. Tearing a leaf of paper from his journal, Hadfield began writing a note. ‘I’m going to tell them he was murdered. I’ll leave my address. I don’t expect the police will bother to contact me but they may want…’

‘No.’ She took an urgent step towards him and snatched at the paper.

‘What on earth—’

She stood over him tugging at the top edge of the note, but he had it firmly anchored to the table with his fist and after a few seconds she let go.

‘Let me have it!’ Her jaw was set, the colour high in her cheeks, that same deep, stubborn frown on her face. ‘Please.’

‘Certainly not,’ he said quietly. ‘Not until you explain yourself, Miss Kovalenko.’

She took a deep breath and turned reluctantly away. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’