‘Yes. There is something there,’ confirmed Virginsky.
Porfiry now transferred his attention to the same area on Svetlana’s neck. ‘And it is here too, on this one.’ A quick glance at the third head confirmed his suspicion. ‘On Artur too. They all have it.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Come here, Pavel Pavlovich.’
Virginsky took a hesitant step closer to Porfiry, his face creased with confusion.
‘If I may for a moment borrow your neck.’ Porfiry raised his hands to Virginsky’s throat and applied a gentle pressure. When he took his hands away, he kept them splayed in the shape they had attained around Virginsky’s neck. ‘Point to the part of the hand which cuts off the air supply.’
Virginsky touched a finger to the tautly stretched tendon between Porfiry’s thumb and forefinger, first of the left, then the right hand.
‘Yes. That is precisely the point that would close down the wind pipe. It would naturally touch the centre of the larynx. This mark …’ Porfiry released his hands from the strangler’s grip and gestured vaguely towards the table, … would appear to be caused by some hard protrusion, just to the right of the fatal point.’ He held up his hands again to study them. ‘It is nevertheless a point at which we would expect considerable pressure to be applied, and whatever caused this mark will have facilitated the constriction of the windpipe.’ Porfiry squeezed closed his thumbs, slowly, tensely. He then clutched the base of his left thumb with the fingertips of his right hand, rotating the hands together. ‘Something here,’ he murmured thoughtfully.
‘A thumb ring.’
The two men were silent in the aftermath of Virginsky’s idea. They seemed reluctant to meet each other’s eye, as if an exchange of looks would lend substance to their private suspicions.
Then Porfiry suddenly released his thumb, as if he did not wish to be caught holding it. When at last he spoke up, his voice was startled and distracted. ‘I will have to make sketches of these marks.’ He touched his lips and nodded. ‘And later we will send a photographer. It is essential that we have an accurate reference to work to. There can be no room for mistakes. We must be certain. We must base our conclusions on precise measurements.’
‘Is it possible though?’
The two men finally dared to look one another in the face.
‘Anything is possible, Pavel Pavlovich,’ said Porfiry, and as if to prove his point he held his stare without blinking until, in fact, Virginsky was compelled to look away.
25 A mysterious communique
After the night’s cold snap it did not surprise Porfiry to find ice on the inside as well as outside of his window in the morning. Through the refractive filter of the frozen layers he had an impression of whiteness and movement outside. He tipped himself up on to his toes and squinted through a patch of the window where the ice was thinnest. Snow fell with determined haste, as if it didn’t know how long it had.
Was it winter already? he wondered.
He wondered too what he could expect from the day and what the day would demand of him. His dreams had taken him so far out of the immediate context of his life that he felt himself bereft without them. He had dreamt of his father, he remembered that much. Then it came to him more specifically that he had dreamt of his father and his father’s younger brother, Uncle Prokofy. In fact, he now remembered, his dreams had been crowded with relatives, the living and the dead. In one, a host of them had been crammed into his apartment for some kind of party. It was clear that the celebration had been in Porfiry’s honour. Was it a birthday party? No, it had not been that. Nor his name day. Strangely, the reason for the party had not been alluded to in the dream, as if out of tact. Only as the dream approached its climax did Porfiry realise that a terrible mistake had been made, and it was all his fault. His relatives were assembled there, he realised, to celebrate his wedding party, and the peculiar delicacy that seemed to affect his guests was due to the fact that so far there was no sign of a bride. Somehow, inadvertently, he had led them to believe that he was marrying Maria Petrovna. But carelessly he had failed to broach the subject with her; hence her absence.
The scenario of his dream was extremely painful to him, both at the time he had dreamt it, and now as he recalled it. He remembered that the tension of the dream had eased suddenly as his sleeping mind had caused all his relatives to disappear, all apart from his cousin Dmitri Prokofich, who had then acted as his manservant. The recollection of the humiliating role in which he had cast his good-hearted cousin provoked a surge of embarrassment in Porfiry. He was ashamed to realise that he had not seen Dmitri Prokofich for many years, indeed not since the affair of the student Raskolnikov, whose friend Dmitri had been. He resolved to look him up at the soonest opportunity, but then remembered the reason for their estrangement. Dmitri Prokofich had married Raskolnikov’s sister.
As far as Porfiry was concerned, that was no grounds for awkwardness, but he had always sensed on Avdotya Romanovna’s part a reserve bordering on aversion. It was clear that even if she did not hold Porfiry responsible for her brother’s fate, she at least found his presence in her home painful, serving as it did to remind her of those difficult times. Not wishing to be the cause of anguish to a blameless woman, he had, over a period of time, slipped out of his cousin’s life. The fact that the affable Dmitri Prokofich had allowed the distance between them to grow confirmed Porfiry’s fears. His cousin’s spirit was so generous and forgiving that he had continued to consider Raskolnikov a friend even after he knew the horrific nature of the student’s crimes. He had continued, in short, to believe in Raskolnikov. And, it seemed, he could not forgive his relative Porfiry Petrovich for his part in bringing Raskolnikov to justice.
Such was human nature, reflected Porfiry. He could not find it in himself to blame Dmitri Prokofich, although he wondered whether his cousin’s servile status in the dream was an attempt on his part to exact revenge. He did not care to pursue this train of thought. The dream did him no credit at all, but that was often the way with dreams.
The sound of someone moving about inside his apartment brought him back to the awoken reality of his life. With a lurching presentiment of doom, he remembered the man he had employed as a servant — almost as a joke, one of his characteristic pranks. But against whom was the prank directed, if not himself? He had brought into his home a stranger, a man he could in no way trust, whose life was now entwined with his own. What if Pavel Pavlovich was right, and Slava — if that indeed was his name — was a Third Section spy?
‘Speak of the grey one and the grey one heads your way,’ said Porfiry as Slava came into the room bearing the breakfast tray.
Slava looked about uncertainly, as if he expected to see someone else in the room. ‘You were talking about me? To whom?’
‘Only to myself. Thinking about you, that is to say.’
Slava laughed nervously.
‘I was merely wondering what on earth possessed me to employ you!’ Porfiry’s face expanded with delight. He began to laugh and could not bring himself to stop laughing for some time.
Slava’s discomfiture intensified. For one moment it looked as though he might drop the tray and bolt from the room. A metallic shudder convulsed the silverware. But he regained his composure quickly. ‘Have I failed to provide satisfaction in the execution of my duties?’
‘Good heavens, what a question!’
‘It is a simple enough question, I believe.’
‘Ah, but it begs another question, does it not? And that is, to whom do you owe those duties?’