David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

‘Of course,’ said Mikhail.

‘Now then, Major, let me just explain the rules now we’re in charge.’ Powerscourt laughed what he hoped was a bloodthirsty laugh. The Major seemed to find it difficult to talk. ‘All you have to do is to tell us what happened to Mr Martin. Then everything stops. Possibly including you. I haven’t decided on that yet. But what you need to understand is that there are a number of ways in which we could help you talk, and there are a number of us to do it. The sergeant,’ Powerscourt pointed to the six feet four inches of the man from the Black Watch, ‘is very keen to see what happens with one of your knouts on a bare back. Death perhaps by whip. Ricky, our expert marksman here, is anxious to see what happens when people are pelted with stones from different distances. Death maybe by stoning. A biblical death for you, Major. Johnny Fitzgerald is a great believer in the sticks or canes you keep in the corner of the room. Another death by beating. I, believe it or not, Major, believe in the pistol as the means of making you talk. I have made a rough count of the number of bullets available here for this particular gun and I have so far counted fifty-four. I am curious to see how many wounds the human body can sustain before it actually dies.’

There was a sort of gurgle from the chair. Ricky’s stone had certainly left its mark.

‘So,’ said Powerscourt, pointing his pistol absent-mindedly into the middle of Shatilov’s wounded face, ‘let us begin. Why don’t we start with the moment Mr Martin was brought here at about a quarter to ten in the evening. Why don’t you take it on from there, Major?’

There was another gurgle from the Major. Powerscourt turned the pistol to the ground and fired it six inches from Shatilov’s left foot. The noise was deafening. The two soldiers twitched in their ropes as if they thought they might be next.

‘Perhaps that might help your concentration.’ Mikhail was sounding very fierce as he translated the ferocious Powerscourt, the Powerscourt hungry for wounds and thirsty for blood.

There was another gurgle. Powerscourt now placed the barrel of the gun in the middle of Shatilov’s bloody mouth. He could feel the teeth rattling inside. ‘I don’t have to use all the fifty-four bullets, Major. I could kill you now, rather like, I suspect, you killed Mr Martin and took his body away. Now it’s my turn to count to ten. You’d better start talking before I get to ten, Major, or your mouth will disappear. Probably not quite enough to kill you as long as I avoid what passes for your brain. One, two, three . . .’

There was a lot of rustling about in the Shatilov chair. He was trying to shake his head.

‘Four, five, six . . .’

Shatilov’s hands were tied behind his back so he could not point. ‘I think he’s trying to ask you to take the gun out of his mouth, sir,’ said Mikhail.

Powerscourt peered closely at the Major. ‘Seven,’ he said. He withdrew his gun from Shatilov’s mouth. ‘Eight.’

‘It was all an accident,’ Shatilov began, the words slurred and heavy as if he were drunk, and Powerscourt thanked God he hadn’t had to reach ten. He wasn’t at all sure what he would have done.

‘I don’t want to know whether you think it was an accident or not, Major. I’m sure the scribes and Pharisees would have described Christ’s death on the cross as an accident, given half a chance. Just tell me when and how things happened.’

The Major looked at Powerscourt with pleading eyes. Please don’t kill me, they seemed to be saying. Powerscourt was remaining pitiless for the time being. His quest was nearly over.

‘The man Martin,’ Shatilov began, ‘was brought to me here after his interview with the Tsar. He refused to tell me what their discussions were about. He said it was a matter for diplomats, not for secret policemen who weren’t intelligent enough to be employed by the Okhrana.’ That tribute to the intelligence of his staff would have pleased Derzhenov, Powerscourt thought. But he doubted it would have gone down too well in this room with the scarred Major.

‘So what did you do when Mr Martin refused to tell you the nature of his conversations?’ Powerscourt was dangling his gun ostentatiously in the general direction of the Major’s private parts.

‘Well,’ said the Major, glancing down anxiously, ‘we – we thought – we decided to take measures to persuade him to talk.’

Powerscourt took a brief walk up to the end of the table and back, gun in hand, always pointing at Shatilov. ‘What measures?’ he shouted, his face a few inches from the Major.

There was a long gap. Powerscourt wondered if he should start counting again. ‘We beat him,’ whispered the Major.

‘With what?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘The whip.’ Shatilov was virtually inaudible now.

‘Ordinary whip? Or Russian whip?’

‘Russian whip.’ The Major began to whimper now, like an injured child.

Powerscourt hadn’t finished yet. ‘When you say we, Major, do you mean you yourself, or your men or a combination of the two? And if you try to tell a lie I shall pull every last tooth out of your head.’

‘It was me,’ said Shatilov, trying unsuccessfully to rock in his chair.

‘And how long did it go on for?’ asked Powerscourt, feeling waves of pity suddenly for Roderick Martin, owner of Tibenham Grange, lover of Tamara Kerenkova, one of the brightest stars in the bright firmament of the Foreign Office, passing away here under the vicious care of a Russian sadist. He remembered somebody telling him years before that above a certain number of lashes, was it fifty or was it eighty, a victim of the knout would be sure to die. Certainly that death would be a welcome relief.

‘Until he died,’ Shatilov whispered, trying to draw back from Powerscourt.

‘And how long did that take?’ asked Powerscourt sadly, certain that some pedant in the Foreign Office would want to know the answer.

‘Less than half an hour. Maybe twenty minutes? The man must have had a weak heart or something.’

Powerscourt narrowly avoided the temptation to shoot all the Major’s teeth out, one by one. He was nearly finished.

‘And what did you do with his body?’

‘We dumped it on the Nevskii Prospekt and told the police to make a note. Then we put the body through a hole in the ice.’

Somewhere out in the Gulf of Finland, Powerscourt thought, a mutilated body was floating with the fishes. Maybe the weals on Martin’s back might have eased a little after their passage through the salt water. Even now, he felt sure, there would still be enough wounds on the battered corpse to tell whoever might find him, be they Balt or Finn or Estonian, that this man did not have an easy passage to the other side. Martin had served his King and country well. He had kept faith to the end, even at the cost of the most terrible pain. Now Powerscourt understood why they had never known how Martin had died, whether he had been shot or strangled. Shatilov could not let the police report say he had been tortured to death.

Somehow, Mikhail seemed to sense that the interrogation was at an end.

‘What are you going to do with him, Lord Powerscourt? This disgrace here.’ He nodded contemptuously at the figure of Shatilov, whimpering like one who thinks his last hour has come.

‘What indeed?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Part of me would like to kill him here and now. He murdered a compatriot of mine in the most horrible way. He is an appalling human being. I don’t think he deserves to live. But I can’t kill him. I’m not a Russian court or a Russian judge or a Russian court martial, though God knows what any of those would do with him. I’m not a Lord High Executioner.’

‘But your mission here, Lord Powerscourt, the quest to find out what happened to Mr Martin, the nature of his conversations with the Tsar, you know all that now. Your work here is done, is that so?’