David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

‘So what do the people who would be in the Lords or Commons, or the Congress in Washington, do here? Where do their political energies go?’

‘That’s a very good question, Powerscourt. I wish I knew the answer.’ De Chassiron screwed his monocle in for another brief inspection of the wine list. ‘Some of them campaign for reform and so on. Some may even join one or two of the more extreme left wing sects that spring up all the time. They gamble. Quite often they gamble huge fortunes away. They fornicate with other people’s wives. Then they fornicate with yet other people’s wives. There’s a great deal of that going on. The wives must get worn out. The cynics say that Tolstoy wasn’t writing fiction when he described the affair between Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky. Some of them drink. That’s usually in addition to, rather than a replacement for, the fornication with the wives of others and the reckless gambling. Sometimes they retire to their estates in the country. Lots of these people own properties the size of a small English county, for Christ’s sake. Not many last out though in the rural idyll. Prolonged exposure to the theft and violence of the peasantry sends them back to the cities. There’s a story, probably apocryphal, about one aristocrat who retired to the country to read all of Dostoevsky and improve his soul. After three novels he blew his brains out. People said it was Petersburg’s Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment who pushed him over the edge.’

Powerscourt found it hard to see how any of these varied activities could lead to the death of an English diplomat. ‘What about the violence?’ he said. ‘What about all these assassination attempts? Could they have anything to do with Martin’s death?’

‘The French Ambassador, Powerscourt, the wisest foreigner in the city, says this is a society at war with itself. There could easily, in his view, be a civil war or a revolution here. Nothing is stable. The Tsar is both symbol and cause of so many problems. Symbol because he stands for nearly three hundred years of autocratic rule, and the autocratic principle will not permit him to share power with any council or elected assembly. He is a terrible administrator but if any minister he appoints manages to do the job properly he is fired because he puts the Tsar in a bad light. Then you get more toadies and the trouble starts all over again. He and his family are more or less prisoners in that palace of theirs out in the country. The security people won’t let them go anywhere else in case they’re blown up. In Tsarskoe Selo, at least, they’re safe because they’re guarded by thousands of soldiers and police twenty-four hours a day. It’s gilded, their cage, it’s very gilded, but it’s still a cage.’

A surly-looking waiter had removed their plates. De Chassiron had ordered another bottle of Chablis and was contemplating the menu. ‘I can recommend the cranberry mousse, Powerscourt,’ he said finally, placing the order before his guest had a chance to reply.

‘Then there’s this bloody war,’ he continued, staring intently at the demented wallpaper. ‘They’re going to lose it and there’ll be the most enormous fuss. Imagine Mother Russia being defeated by the Japanese, little better than savages in the view of most of Russian society, small inferior yellow savages at that. It’ll be a terrible blow to the imperial prestige when they lose to the little yellow chaps with their ridiculous moustaches. They say the Tsar was one of the most eager campaigners for war.’

‘Do you think that could have had anything to do with Martin’s mission?’ asked Powerscourt, rather enjoying his crash course in Russian politics. ‘Could they have been asking for help with the war? A naval alliance or something like that?’

‘It’s possible,’ said de Chassiron, ‘but why all the bloody secrecy? It’s not as if His Nibs is going to take a sled down the Nevskii Prospekt and shout the news aloud to all comers. I wonder, I haven’t told anybody else this, and it’s only a theory, but I wonder if it didn’t have to do with security. Once the Okhrana are involved everything gets much more complicated and much more secretive than it need be.’

‘The Okhrana are the secret police?’ Powerscourt was hesitant.

‘Indeed,’ said de Chassiron, settling the bill. ‘They’ve almost certainly noted your arrival and will check your movements all the time you are here. They are the most suspicious, the most paranoid organization in the world. And they will, almost certainly, follow us all the way back to the Embassy.’

Next day Mikhail Shaporov presented himself at a quarter to nine in the morning at the British Embassy. He was wearing a grey suit with a pale blue shirt and looked as though he might have been a young lawyer dressing in a conservative fashion to avoid prejudicing the judge by his tender years.

Powerscourt waved a piece of paper at him. ‘I’m told this is a report from the Nevskii police station informing the Ambassador that they have found a British national in their possession. I should say a dead British national.’

Mikhail read it quickly. ‘That is correct, Lord Powerscourt. And we have an appointment to see the policeman who wrote it at nine fifteen? Come, it is not far. I presume that nobody has succeeded in extracting the body from this police station? Indeed, it is probably no longer there. It may be in one of the morgues. I have the addresses of the two most likely in these parts.’

‘That was very intelligent of you, Mikhail,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I am impressed.’

‘I’m afraid it’s not me you have to thank for it, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Mikhail with a smile, ‘it’s my father. He’s lived here almost all of his life. He may have bribed many policemen in his time, I do not know.’

The police station was a nondescript three-storey building behind the Fontanka Canal. A collection of drunks, sleeping, comatose or dead, were sprawled across the hallway inside the front door. Their beards were long and unkempt, their hair was matted, their clothes were filthy. A powerful smell of dirt and damp and human waste rose strongly from them. Powerscourt noticed that the young man paid them absolutely no attention. This was the background of his life, a sight he had seen so often he hardly noticed it. Perhaps it was the background to the lives of all the citizens of this city, lost souls given up to vodka to escape the pain of their daily lives, drink-sodden refugees from the tensions of everyday existence in St Petersburg who sprawled across the floors of its police stations until they were granted the temporary consolation of a cell.

Powerscourt saw that Mikhail had opened a conversation with the fat policeman behind the desk.

‘He’s new here,’ he said to Powerscourt, ‘he’s gone to make inquiries. That could mean a couple of minutes or a couple of days. They don’t care how they treat people at all, the local police. Not like in London.’

Just then a door at the far end of the hall opened and two burly policemen emerged. They began dragging the drunks through the doorway into some unknown territory behind.

‘Cells?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Maybe,’ said Mikhail, ‘maybe they’re just throwing them back on to the streets now it’s daylight. This lot may have been brought in during the night to stop them freezing to death. Even here they don’t like corpses lying about in the streets first thing in the morning. Doesn’t look too good in the shadow of the Winter Palace if winter’s victims are stretched out in front of it, dead from the winter cold. Bad for business. Might upset a passing Grand Duchess.’

The fat policeman had returned. Once more Mikhail engaged him in conversation. After a couple of minutes he gestured to Powerscourt. ‘I’m getting nowhere, Lord Powerscourt. I think you need to let him have it. Sent by Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, all that sort of stuff, big guns, heavy artillery.’