Slava pursed his lips, in an admirable display of self-restraint.
‘And besides,’ continued Virginsky, ‘his theory is patently absurd. It is the typically convoluted theory of an amateur. It ignores the obvious. Mizinchikov’s flight. The blood on his tunic. The letters. The razor found with the letters.’
‘The razor? Yes,’ said Slava. ‘They mentioned that …’
‘In the Gazette?’ wondered Porfiry.
‘I have a theory about the razor,’ confided Slava.
‘Really!’ said Virginsky with exasperation.
‘Please,’ invited Porfiry.
‘I think the razor was put there,’ revealed Slava.
‘Of course. It must have been.’ Porfiry’s tone was subtly mocking.
‘By someone else, I mean.’ Slava’s answer showed that the satire was not lost on him.
‘I see. That is an interesting theory. And who, do you think, put it there?’
‘I have my suspicions,’ was all that Slava would say.
Porfiry bowed, acknowledging his delicacy.
‘Is this the blood?’ said Slava, crossing to Porfiry’s desk to examine the tunic more closely.
‘Put that down,’ snapped Virginsky. ‘You have no authority to touch that.’
Slava held on to the tunic and looked to Porfiry for direction. Porfiry nodded slightly for him to do as Virginsky had said. Only then did Slava place the tunic down.
Virginsky clicked his tongue in disgust.
Porfiry looked again at his neatly bound hand. There seemed to be a hint of despondency in his expression now, as if he regretted that he no longer had cause to meddle with the dressing. He looked uncertainly at Slava and then at Virginsky. The two men were hanging on his next words.
‘It would do us all good to have someone to keep us on our toes, I think.’
‘But Porfiry Petrovich …’
Porfiry shot Virginsky a minatory glance. ‘Now, Pavel Pavlovich, you can make yourself useful to me by delivering this tunic to Dr Pervoyedov and awaiting his findings.’
‘Am I not supposed to be working on the case of the missing boy?’
‘What case is this?’ Slava’s eager enquiry was met with an even sharper look of warning.
20 A vile traffic
‘Pavel Pavlovich, what an unexpected pleasure!’ Dr Pervoyedov eyed the brown paper package under Virginsky’s arm with a covetous gleam. ‘Do you have something for me there?’
Virginsky avoided the doctor’s eye. Indeed, he avoided looking around the pathology laboratory at all, but kept his head bowed, staring fixedly at his feet like a sullen adolescent. But he could not avoid breathing in the formaldehyde-laden air. That pungent smell brought to mind the first time he had set foot in Dr Pervoyedov’s laboratory at the Obukhovsky Hospital. His feet then had been clad in the boots of a dead man, charitably supplied to him by Porfiry Petrovich.
For an instant, Virginsky felt again the vertiginous lurch to which he had succumbed on that occasion.
‘He wants you to examine this for bloodstains.’ Virginsky handed the package over to Dr Pervoyedov, who pulled at the string like a child with a Christmas present. ‘We believe it to be the tunic worn by the murderer of Yelena Filippovna. He wants to know whether it is arterial or venous blood, if indeed it is blood at all.’
‘I imagine he does.’
Dr Pervoyedov studied the stains on the front of the regimental tunic, at one point holding it close to his nose and inhaling. There was one roughly circular burst of rust colour in the middle of the double-breasted facing. It had a dense nucleus about the size of a ten kopek piece, which decayed into a wide areola made up of finer spots. A second stain, a narrow, elongated trail around eight inches in extent, also haloed with spatter, descended from the first at an angle.
‘Interesting,’ said Dr Pervoyedov. ‘Very interesting. Has Porfiry Petrovich offered any opinion regarding these stains?’
‘I believe he is confident that they will prove to be blood. For some reason, he seems to be in doubt as to whether they are arterial or venous. He wished to enter into a wager over it.’
‘A wager!’ cried Dr Pervoyedov delightedly. ‘That is very like Porfiry Petrovich, and to me it suggests that he is in no doubt at all. If I were you, I would not take him up on it.’
‘I have no intention of doing so. I do not gamble. Besides, I dare say we are both of the opinion it is arterial. Such a spray of blood would only occur when an artery is severed. And we know that her throat was cut. The bet is pointless.’
‘You may be right. May I cut a swatch from it? It will aid precision.’
Virginsky pinched his lips dubiously between thumb and forefinger.
‘First I will make a sketch to show the position of the stains. I will then be able to correlate my samples to reference points on the drawing.’
‘Do whatever is necessary, only do it quickly. He has told me to await your results. He little realises that I have other duties to attend to, though they are duties that he himself assigned to me.’
‘Am I right in thinking that a certain frostiness has entered your relations with Porfiry Petrovich?’ Dr Pervoyedov withdrew some sheets of paper and a pencil from a drawer in the bench. ‘I do not believe you have once called him by his name this morning.’
‘I swear that man is becoming more eccentric by the day.’
‘Good heavens!’ Dr Pervoyedov laid out the tunic flat on the bench. ‘I find it hard to credit that there was any distance left for him to travel in the direction of eccentricity.’
‘His latest aberration is to hire a most unsuitable individual as his valet.’
‘But surely that is a private matter?’ Dr Pervoyedov squinted at the tunic as he made the first tentative lines on paper. ‘With all respect, Pavel Pavlovich, I do not see what it has to do with you.’
‘You do not understand. This individual wishes to involve himself in the business of the department. He has theories!’
‘Theories? Oh dear. We do not need more theories.’
‘And Porfiry Petrovich, who by rights ought to send the man away with a flea in his ear, indulges him by listening to these theories.’ Virginsky noted with annoyance the chink of amusement on the physician’s lips. ‘I swear he does it to provoke me. “We all need someone to keep us on our toes,” he says. Looking at me, of course. He is punishing me. That’s why he sent me here this morning.’
‘My goodness!’ Dr Pervoyedov’s face opened in mock alarm. ‘It grieves me to be the instrument of another man’s punishment.’
‘No — I didn’t mean that.’
‘But why should he wish to punish you?’
‘I don’t know. Possibly because I allowed the man wearing this tunic to escape.’
‘I see. That is … regrettable. You might have had your murderer, Pavel Pavlovich.’
‘No, it was not our suspect. It was just a tramp. Possibly one who had found the discarded tunic. Or maybe Captain Mizinchikov had given it to him, in exchange for the tramp’s clothes. I admit it would have helped us to have the tramp. But it was foggy. He threw off the tunic. I went for the tunic and the man disappeared into the fog. It could have happened to anyone.’
Dr Pervoyedov frowned at his sketch. ‘What do you think of that? Have I rendered the stains accurately?’
Virginsky gave an impatient jerk of the head in begrudging assent.
‘Now all that remains is to ink in the sketch.’
‘Can you not do that later? I do not have all day.’
‘No, I must do it now, so that you may witness the accuracy of the finished figure with your signature.’
‘Very well, though it is hardly convenient for me to wait on you. I am not even assigned to the Polenova case. That, I believe, is at the root of why he wishes to punish me. I have been assigned to the case of a missing boy. Indeed, I have been told that my participation in that case was specifically requested by an interested party. That seems to have put Porfiry Petrovich’s nose out of joint. I would not be surprised if there is not some element of professional jealousy involved here. But really, he has no grounds for complaint. He brought it on himself. He failed to investigate the case when it was first brought to his attention — by me, I would have you know. Now she has chosen me and he doesn’t like it.’