Porfiry sprang to open the door, blowing smoke back over his shoulder, courteously away from Slava’s face. ‘Ah, there you are. I am afraid that Pavel Pavlovich and I have been urgently called away. You may drink the tea for us, if you wish.’
Suspicion compressed Slava’s face. ‘But you have only just asked for it.’
‘Such is the nature of our work, I’m afraid. Now be a good fellow and take it back to the kitchen, where you may drink it at your leisure.’
‘Where will you be?’ To soften the peremptoriness of his demand, Slava added: ‘Should anyone ask, that is.’
‘No one will ask,’ said Porfiry flatly. ‘And if they should, you are at liberty to say you do not know.’
Slava hesitated, apparently reluctant to go back into Porfiry’s apartment as he had been instructed. He seemed to fear it would place him at a disadvantage.
Porfiry made a shooing gesture with both hands.
Slava closed one eye, sighting Porfiry with the other. At last, he began to back away, though without turning his back on the magistrate, all the time viewing him through a single eye.
‘Good man,’ said Porfiry cheerfully, as he closed the door on him. He then hurried back to his desk and swept the note, the thread and the photographs into a green case file. ‘I think perhaps we should put this beyond the reach of prying eyes.’ He placed the folder in a drawer in his desk, which he locked, pocketing the key. Next he replaced Yelena’s ring in its box, which he held out to Virginsky. ‘Now, Pavel Pavlovich, if you would be so good as to return this ring to the police evidence room, I shall meet you back here in five minutes. There is something I must retrieve from my room before we go.’
*
This object turned out to be a curious conical hat made from beige felt, decorated with applique flowers. It was now the only item of clothing that Porfiry was wearing, apart from a pair of hemp sandals and a simple wooden crucifix around his neck.
He made the sign of the cross with the clump of leafy birch twigs in his right hand and stepped into the steam room. He felt his skin liquefy immediately. The wall of heat was almost impenetrable. He had to push himself into it, his whole body rebelling against the madness of that intention. The kick of his heart quickened alarmingly; each pounding thump another moment of his life ticked off. He looked down at his body forlornly. His chest sagged and the skin of his belly strained under the pressure of his paunch. Sweat clung to the translucent down of his body, made visible against the vibrant pink glow of his skin. He turned his head towards Virginsky. Nudity revealed the younger man’s latent athleticism. He was taller, leaner, physically stronger than Porfiry had ever been.
The steam room was quiet but not empty. Porfiry indicated a corner as far away as possible from any others.
They laid their hired towels out on the tiled bench that ran around the wall and sat down at right angles to one another.
‘Why are we here, Porfiry Petrovich?’ Virginsky posed the question with wry indulgence.
‘To sweat.’ Porfiry blinked rapidly. The sweat was flooding his eyes. The hot steam, too, made it difficult to see. ‘The salutary properties of the banya are well-known. I myself particularly value the steam vapour’s efficacy in clearing excess catarrh from my chest and nasal passages. At this time of year, I am prone to pneumonia. Only the banya can keep it at bay. In addition, the heat is cleansing spiritually as well as bodily. I feel the pores of my soul opening up.’ Porfiry closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through both nostrils. ‘Ideas and influences flow more freely through me. And, of course, there is the fact that one is naked. As a newborn babe.’
‘In a pointed hat.’
‘Ha! Naked, one is more aware of one’s humanity.’ With a grunt of exertion, Porfiry cracked the birch whisk down across his distended belly. The pain of the blow melted into the pain of the heat. He felt the boundary of his body open up even more, in an almost transcendent sense of physical dissolution. His wince relaxed into a blissful smile. ‘One feels the dirt and detritus of everyday life slip away. The mind is freed. The body restored. On top of all this, I find it has a palliative effect on my haemorrhoids.’
Virginsky gave a sly smile. ‘So … it was not to get away from Slava?’
Porfiry’s lips puckered out to kiss the steam. He licked the sweat dripping from his upper lip. ‘I can think here,’ was all he conceded. He laid his head back against the wall, eyes closed as he flicked his shoulders lazily with the whisk.
‘Do you not think, Porfiry Petrovich, that the arrival of the note obliges us to involve the Third Section? It does, after all, give the case a political aspect.’
Porfiry’s eyes flashed open. He shook the birch twigs towards Virginsky, striking him lightly on the chest.
‘Well?’ insisted Virginsky, evidently not satisfied with Porfiry’s response.
‘In my experience, the Third Section needs no invitation to involve itself in cases. We will be hearing from them soon enough. If Slava is indeed a spy, he will already have alerted his superiors to all that he knows — and possibly more. He suspects that I am excluding him now from our deliberations. This will provoke a change of strategy from them. I expect an overt intervention. We have come here to buy ourselves a little time.’
‘Do you not ever ask yourself whom are we fighting, Porfiry Petrovich?’
‘I am not fighting anyone,’ said Porfiry. There was a note of wounded innocence in the assertion. ‘There is a lot to consider here, Pavel Pavlovich. Are we really prepared to accuse Yelena Filippovna of murdering three children to whom she has the most tangential of connections, on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence?’
‘You saw the marks. You saw the ring. It is not fanciful. That bruise is a precise imprint of the emblem on her ring — which she wore twisted round in such a way as to inflict just such a bruise.’
‘But the woman is dead. She cannot defend herself against the charge. And as yet, we have no motive.’
‘We must … speak to Maria Petrovna.’ Virginsky’s eyes darted uneasily, as if even he shrank from what he was suggesting.
Porfiry sighed. ‘Even to voice such allegations to someone who was a friend of the deceased is brutal.’
‘Frankly I am surprised at your fastidiousness, Porfiry Petrovich. You have never baulked at brutality before.’
Porfiry met this accusation with a look of mild rebuke. ‘But she is dead, Pavel Pavlovich!’ he insisted.
‘What difference does that make?’
‘She cannot be saved. We can only pray for her soul.’
‘With all respect, it is not our job to concern ourselves with saving people, Porfiry Petrovich. We must only uncover the truth and set in motion whatever judicial process arises from that truth. We are not concerned with souls.’
‘Perhaps you are right.’ Porfiry felt suddenly light-headed. ‘But what if she is innocent!’ He made the cry plaintively. ‘The note does not accuse her directly.’
‘Now it is you who are making a specious assumption, Porfiry Petrovich. You are assuming that whoever wrote the note knows who killed the children. But we cannot even be certain that they are referring to the same dead children. The note speaks only of children killed by the oppressive machine. That could just as easily refer to children dying of malnutrition, unnecessary disease, or factory accidents.’
‘If whoever wrote the note fulfils his promise, we are facing a bloodbath — in which all the victims will be highborn.’
‘A revolution, in other words.’
Porfiry stirred the vaporous air in front of his face with the birch whisk, as if to see more clearly.
‘If Yelena Filippovna did not kill these children then someone else did. Someone wearing a Romanov ring. Possibly — it is not beyond the bounds of possibility — a member of the Imperial Family. Perhaps you now regret allowing the Tsarevich the opportunity to make his escape to the Crimea?’