David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

Powerscourt and Mikhail Shaporov did not speak on their long march down the bureaucratic corridor from Room 467. They did not speak in the foul-smelling lift. They acknowledged the greeting of the man with one arm who noted the time of their departure. Only when they were outside the grip of the Interior Ministry, walking beside the Fontanka Canal on their way back to the British Embassy, did Mikhail Shaporov break the silence.

‘That’s a bit of a bombshell, isn’t it, Lord Powerscourt. Have you any idea what it means?’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘At this moment, I have absolutely no idea.’ It was now, Mikhail told Natasha afterwards, that he first realized what a lot of experience Powerscourt had, and what a devious mind. ‘It could mean that he had a mistress in the city. It could mean that he had an illegitimate child or children here in St Petersburg that he came to visit. He didn’t have any back in England after all. Maybe he was being blackmailed by a St Petersburg blackmailer and he had to come and hand over the payments in person. Maybe he was a secret diplomatic conduit between the British Government and the Tsar. Maybe he was a double agent of the Okhrana, come to Mother Russia for the confession of sins and the resumption of vows of fidelity to an alien power. Maybe he was all of those, though I have to say I think that’s unlikely. But I tell you this, Mikhail. Whichever one of those he was, or some other kind of person, we’re bloody well going to find out.’

Mikhail Shaporov and Natasha Bobrinsky were sitting in the Old Library in one of the Shaporov palaces on Millionnaya Ulitsa, Millionaires’ Row, not far from the Hermitage and the Winter Palace. They had exchanged chaste, rather middle-aged kisses at the railway station and were now respectably seated on opposite sides of a small table, drinking tea. Natasha thought Mikhail looked very grown up and sophisticated after his time in London. He thought she was more enchanting than ever.

‘What brings you back to St Petersburg so soon?’ she began. ‘I was very pleased to get your note, Mikhail, but I didn’t expect to see you for months. How long are you going to be here for?’

The young man smiled. ‘I don’t know how long I’m going to be here for. It’s rather a fantastic story, how I came to be here.’

‘Do tell.’ The girl was leaning closer to him. ‘I adore fantastic stories.’

‘I’m here as an interpreter for an English investigator called Lord Francis Powerscourt who has been sent by the British Foreign Office to find out about a man called Martin.’

‘Why,’ said Natasha quickly, ‘do they need to send the two of you all the way here from London? Why don’t they just ask Mr Martin what they want to know?’

‘That would be a bit difficult, Natasha.’ Mikhail was resisting the temptation to smile. ‘You see, Mr Martin can’t say anything very much any more. Mr Martin is dead. To be more precise, Mr Martin was murdered. They found his body on the Nevskii Prospekt.’

‘Did they indeed?’ said the girl, reluctant to display too much excitement in the face of death. ‘But why you, Mikhail? How did you come to be selected? Have you made a habit of consorting with Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr Watson in the fogs of Baker Street?’

‘Alas, no,’ said the young man, ‘the answer is much more prosaic. My father has some dealings with this British Foreign Office. It was all organized through him. No doubt he will expect some favour in return some day. Maybe they thought he might be able to help here. Come to think of it, that would have been rather clever of them.’

‘And how is your translating, Mikhail? Do you go round talking to very important and exciting people?’

‘I wouldn’t quite put it like that,’ he replied. ‘So far we’ve been to a police station, a couple of morgues, a little restaurant that served cabbage soup – he liked that, by the way, my Lord Powerscourt, he said it reminded him of Ireland – and a Third Assistant Deputy Under Secretary in the Administrative Division of the Interior Ministry. That was so exciting we’re going back again early next week.’

‘And what’s he like, this Lord Powerscourt? Is he frightfully handsome and clever? Would he be a suitable catch for me, Mikhail?’

‘I think you need a younger man than Lord Powerscourt, Natasha,’ said Mikhail in his most worldly voice. ‘Young but with considerable experience of the world, lived abroad, well read, well spoken, that sort of thing. I could say more about him but I’ll save it for later if I may. Lord Powerscourt is in his forties, married with four children, lives in Chelsea, a fashionable part of London and has exquisite manners. Beneath it all I think he cares very much for the poor dead Mr Martin and the bereaved Mrs Martin. And one last thing, he’s extremely clever, though he doesn’t show it. I only realized that earlier this afternoon.’

Mikhail remembered his conversation with Powerscourt and telling Natasha about Martin and asking her to keep her ears open.

‘So does anybody know yet why this poor man was killed?’ Natasha was rather thrilled that her young man – well, he was nearly her young man, a couple of kisses at railway stations were only an inadequate hors d’oeuvre in her view – should be engaged on such a mission.

‘That’s just the point, Natasha,’ said Mikhail Shaporov, wondering what word would best describe her dark eyes, now glittering with excitement. ‘At first the police told the British Embassy he was dead. Now they’re denying all knowledge of him. They’re saying he wasn’t here this time, but that he came here earlier last year and the year before and the year before that. It’s all very confusing.’

‘How very difficult for everybody,’ said Natasha, frowning slightly. ‘And what was he meant to be doing here, the late Mr Martin who isn’t in the morgues or the Interior Ministry?’

‘That’s another secret. Only the British Prime Minister knows the nature of his mission to St Petersburg. The Secretary at the British Embassy, the man who knows where all the bodies are buried according to Lord Powerscourt, he doesn’t know. The British Ambassador has no idea. Neither Lord Powerscourt nor I know either. We’re all in the dark.’

‘It’s all very exciting,’ said Natasha. ‘I wish I could do something to help.’

Mikhail rose suddenly from his chair and walked rapidly up and down the room. Ancient leather-bound volumes marched along the walls in order of date of publication and country of origin and watched his passing. The Old Library in this Shaporov palace was filled with European history and literature in the languages the books were written in. The New Library was for Russian works. Mikhail had reached Dante in a particularly elegant binding from a Venetian publishing house when he turned to face Natasha once more.

‘Don’t go walking up and down like that, Mikhail,’ she pleaded. ‘It makes me think you don’t care for me. I much preferred it when you were on the other side of this table.’

The young man laughed. ‘Sorry about that, Natasha,’ he said, returning to his seat. ‘I was just wondering if I ought to tell you something or not.’

‘What sort of something?’ she said, her eyes bright with the fun of it all. ‘Are you teasing me?’

‘No, I’m not teasing you,’ he said. ‘It really is quite serious. Lord Powerscourt and I think there is a chance, only a slight chance, that Mr Martin’s mission may be connected to the Tsar in some way. Something to do with foreign policy in some form or other. The Tsar’s meant to be in charge of all that sort of thing.’

‘But something so secret that even the British Ambassador doesn’t know about it?’

‘Something so secret even the British Foreign Secretary doesn’t know about it, Natasha.’