Stephen Miller - A Game of Soldiers

And then –

One of the drivers had covered her with a jacket, but it was too small and Ryzhkov could see the fan of her blonde hair across the stones. Reflexively he moved closer and one of the drivers reached out to stop him. He shook the man off and held his Okhrana disc up for them to see. From the back of the building the cooks and servants had come running out. An old man was standing over the girl, rubbing his hands on his apron.

‘She fell …’ the old man said in a weak voice. He looked at them as if he hoped someone would help him find a better explanation for the dead child on the cobbles, for the sparkling wreath of broken glass all around them. ‘Yes, she fell, excellency,’ the old man said again. ‘From up there someplace –’ The old man pointed to the windows above them, and they all craned their necks trying to see up to the top floors of the building and the yellow sky beyond.

He walked forward and pulled the jacket off her, brushed the long blonde hair away from her face. An angel, was the first thing he thought of. An angel tumbled right out of the heavens.

Pale white body, tall for her age, he thought. Wearing a little night-dress that clung to her, a gossamer wrapper that had ridden up, making it look as if she were dancing. Leaping, with her arms to the sky, a pink satin ribbon around her waist, celebrating something that she’d never seen before. A long smear of blood down both of her legs, but nothing else. The long blonde hair wreathed around her, half-undone. All that was missing were the wings.

He pulled her hair back a little and, looking closely, saw marks around her neck. Rubbed, raw. Her face was smiling, almost. Only a little blood at the corner of her mouth. You might mistake it for lipstick gone awry.

Her eyes were open; eyes rimmed with dark orbs of kohl, rouge that had been brushed on, too dark for her skin. Skin pale as milk. An angry gash on her forehead that hadn’t bled very much, he thought. Her clear blue eyes open and staring out at the glass like diamonds sparkling all around.

‘Pyotr…’ he heard Hokhodiev behind him. ‘We have to find him and get out of here, eh?’

Behind him there were more whistles and the drivers scurried aside to let a St Petersburg Police Ambulance manoeuvre into the narrow lane. Ryzhkov pulled his eyes from the girl and saw three officers had run up from the other end of the alley.

‘Hey…Blue Shirt, Blue Shirt, Blue Shirt…’Hokhodiev prompted, giving him a little tug. He realized now that he was standing over her in a daze, staring at all of them, the officers, the servants, the drivers who had crowded into the lane.

‘Yes,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘Let’s find him and get him out.’

He started back on to Peplovskaya Street, his heart beating like a racehorse, Dima running ahead. Rounding the corner they saw a gallery of men in formal dress and varying states of intoxication leaving the building, pushing their way towards their carriages as quickly as possible. Men with money. No blood on any of them. None of the gendarmes was doing anything.

Right in front of him there was an angry shriek and Ryzhkov saw a young woman being pulled away from the gate. She was strong and she fought her way down the steps and out to where the men were trying to escape. There was the crack of a whip and a carriage bolted away in front of her; at the last moment someone jerked her out of the path of the wheels and she stumbled and fell into the gutter.

She got up. ‘No, no… no !’ Slapped her way free of the gendarmes, and started running down the pavement towards the lane. ‘ Murder! ’ she called with her face lifted to the high windows of the building. And then the police were upon her, wrenching her arm back so that her face contorted in pain.

On the entrance stairs a uniformed officer from the Life Guards was in conversation with a clutch of police. He was laughing, his hand extended to offer the overawed policemen cigarettes from his silver case. The madam of the house was there on his arm, her dazzling red hair piled up with feathers, a beaded dress with a décolletage that provided an easy view of her ample bosom. She was smiling through it all as she wished everyone goodnight.

Behind them Ryzhkov saw Hokhodiev and Dudenko pushing Rasputin out of the foyer towards the street. A little mob of aristocrats were jammed up there, all patting each other on the back and moaning their goodbyes.

‘Let them through!’ Ryzhkov growled at a gendarme sergeant who was smiling and bowing and apologizing for the situation. The man’s eyes suddenly went wide with fear and he backed up two steps when Ryzhkov held up his disc. Suddenly the knot of pleasure-seekers parted and Rasputin was right in front of him.

‘Unfortunately, we must be leaving, Holy One,’ Ryzhkov said, trying to take the sarcasm out of his voice as he reached out and grabbed Rasputin by his satin shirt. The man smelled of tobacco, body odour, and lavender perfume.

‘But, I thought we were here for the music?’ Rasputin was saying to the woman behind him. Ryzhkov had Rasputin by the shoulder and steered him down the steps towards his carriage. There was an enthusiastic chorus of goodbyes and blessings for a safe journey. The guards officer watched them go, smiling faintly.

‘What happened in there, Holy One?’ Ryzhkov asked Rasputin.

‘I don’t know. We haven’t even started and boom it’s all for nothing.’ He seemed genuinely perplexed by the whole thing. Hokhodiev looked over at Ryzhkov and shrugged. ‘But there’s always another party going on somewhere. Who knows? It’s probably for the best, eh?’ Rasputin said.

‘Perhaps, Holy One. Go, now …’ They pushed Rasputin into his carriage and the driver flicked his whip. Around them the policemen were helping the guests on their way. He and Hokhodiev stood there for a moment, looking down at the end of the building, both of them thinking about the girl. He didn’t want to go back down there.

‘Whoever did it has had lots of time to get out,’ Hokhodiev said quietly.

‘Yeah, yeah…’ Ryzhkov took a sharp breath, shook himself like a dog. His fingers had cramped around the knife he carried in his trouser pocket.

‘But Blue Shirt certainly was under control. I found him at the table, just like a gentleman.’

‘He has a sixth sense.’

‘Exactly, he can sniff trouble. He knows , I’m telling you…’ Hokhodiev frowned, put a big hand on Ryzhkov’s shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Yes…’ he said, but he wasn’t and they both knew it. A St Petersburg police officer was a few paces away and Ryzhkov walked over, flashed his disc. ‘Hey, who owns this place?’ The lieutenant shrugged, gave a thin smile and pointed to the sign over the portico. ‘Well, this isn’t a book factory, there’s obviously some kind of apartments up there. What about those?’

The lieutenant was still smiling. ‘Yes, a Finnish gentleman has leased the entire building. Unfortunately, he’s not on the premises. Tonight appears to be a private party, some friends of his.’ The young officer shrugged. He wasn’t going to give Ryzhkov much help no matter what service he was from.

‘Hey, who’s paying you off, pal?’ Hokhodiev stepped forward to intimidate the gendarme, but the lieutenant didn’t budge.

‘It’s a suicide, from what I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘Some little vertika tail-twister jumped out of one of the windows around the corner.’ They all looked down to the lane. ‘It happens more and more,’ the lieutenant said with a sad smile.

Suicide. Ryzhkov thought about it for a moment, tried to put it together with what he had seen in the lane. Maybe suicide was becoming fashionable, but he hadn’t realized that children were doing it. The whole thing was a lie, transparent as the dead girl’s dress. He turned and looked at the officer for a moment, gave him a smile of his own. ‘Sleep tight, little fellow,’ he said and walked back towards the alley.