‘May I not at least speak to him?’
‘No, you may not!’
Porfiry bowed his head meekly in the force of the Tsar’s reaction.
The Tsar softened his tone to say: ‘But I will talk to the Tsarevich. If anything arises from our conversation that I feel concerns you, you may rest assured that I will bring it to your attention.’
‘You will have my sincere gratitude, Your Majesty.’
‘And now, I really must not keep my Foreign Minister waiting a moment longer.’
33 Justice is delivered
That night was not a restful one for Porfiry. His note to Verkhotsev, which he had completed and dispatched upon his return from the Winter Palace, had prompted a laconic and not particularly reassuring response: You are safe for now. He will not strike yet.
Perhaps Verkhotsev was right, although Porfiry struggled to understand on what evidence he based the assertion. Perhaps it was simply the fact that Slava had not acted so far and, being as yet oblivious of the latest body, had no fresh pretext for an attack. It was reasonable to assume that he would continue to bide his time.
Even so, it was hard to relax.
Porfiry had considered confiding his fears to Nikodim Fomich, who as chief of the Haymarket District Police Bureau would have been in a position to make arrangements for his safety. However, since Salytov’s disclosures, Porfiry had sensed a distance grow in his heart between himself and his friend. He could dismiss Salytov’s allegations as malicious slander, prompted by a desire to bring others down with him. But still, suspicion lingered.
At the same time, Porfiry was inclined to see Verkhotsev’s eagerness to provoke an attack as foolhardy in the extreme. It was now clear that the Third Section officer was acting according to his own agenda, and could therefore be added to the growing list of people Porfiry could not trust.
He slept fitfully, sitting bolt upright at the slightest noise. He had never realised how voluble his apartment could be. Like unseen nocturnal creatures, the cooling pipes and contracting boards stirred into querulous life with a chorus of cracks and clicks. From the adjoining apartments, both those above and those around his, came answering sounds, even more obscure and disturbing, the susurrations, shuffles and thumps of one part of the darkness calling out to another. As he drifted in and out of sleep, these sounds looped into the anxious thoughts that his mind turned over endlessly, providing a dark, sub-musical overture to his dreams, which that night were of hidden figures moving about in impenetrable blackness.
Was it in a dream or in a wakeful moment that he first heard the footsteps? As soon as he heard them he was alert, his whole body strained to listen. There was a curious duality to the tension that wracked him. Release would only come when he heard the footsteps again; their erratic suspension became unbearable. At the same time, their recurrence would signal the fulfilment of his fears. Someone — Slava? — was moving against him.
There it was again, distinctly, unmistakably, the clip of a shoe heel followed by the prolonged groan of a floorboard. But if Slava meant to creep up on him, why was he wearing shoes? Another footfall followed the last, and then another. Porfiry was able to place them as coming from Slava’s room, the room from which for so many years Zakhar’s snores had emanated. It seemed Slava was pacing his room. Perhaps he was simply an insomniac, who needed to wear himself out with exercise before he could think of lying down. If so, it was strange that Porfiry had failed to notice his servant’s night-time habits before now.
Porfiry eased himself up slowly, careful not to set the bedsprings quaking. But even the creaking of his bones sounded deafening. He cocked his head, staring into a particulate swirl of darkness, as if he expected something of it. And then it came. The click of Slava’s bedroom door opening.
Porfiry felt his heart make a bolt for it, only to crash into the restraining cage of his ribs.
He heard Slava’s door grumble and yowl. The footsteps now were on the landing.
Porfiry was suddenly a child again, lying in the dark listening to the relentless thud of Baba Yaga climbing the stairs. He could not say what age he was when he had finally realised that Baba Yaga’s footsteps were nothing more than the pulse of blood beating in his ear.
But the footsteps he heard now were not a trick of anatomy. There was a real man, a man he believed was intent on harming him, stalking his apartment. The footsteps approached his door. Porfiry counted them. One, two, three, four. A pause. Then came steps five and six.
Slava was standing right outside his door now. Porfiry held his breath. He heard the twisting grind of shoe leather on wood. The footsteps receded, one, two, three, four, five, six — stronger, quicker, without hesitation. They carried on the length of the hall, to the front door, the public entrance of Porfiry’s apartment that gave onto the communal stairs. He heard that door open and close. Slava’s footsteps on the stairs resonated through the slumbering building as he bounded down, then burst out into the night.
Porfiry breathed out noisily and lay back down. Who was this man he had admitted into his life?
Somehow, against his will, he fell asleep.
*
Next morning, the Gazette carried the following account:
Fourth child murdered
St Petersburg, Thursday
The body of Innokenty Zimoveykin, 13, was discovered within the precincts of the Baird Shipbuilding and Machine Works, where he was employed as a labourer. This brings to four the number of child murders perpetrated in the city in recent weeks, death in each case being rendered by strangulation. All four children were pupils at the Rozhdestvenskaya Free School. A source within the Department for the Investigation of Criminal Causes has revealed that investigators have now discounted the theory that the crimes were carried out by Yelena Filippovna Polenova, herself the victim of a murderous attack, and confess themselves baffled by the presence of the same distinctive mark on the latest victim’s neck as found on the necks of all the previous victims.
‘A shabby piece of reporting,’ adjudged Porfiry, folding the newspaper down onto his desk. He had one eye on Slava who was clearing away his empty coffee pot. He had breakfasted in his chambers, ostensibly to get an early start on the day’s work, but more truthfully because his apartment was suddenly alien and inhospitable to him; overnight he had become the outsider in it. Perhaps unwisely, he had eaten the breakfast that Slava had put in front of him. But exhausted and hungry after his troubled night, his body’s needs had taken over and he had forgotten that he no longer trusted the food Slava brought him. Besides, if Slava really was a revolutionary assassin in waiting, it was unlikely that he would choose such a cowardly means of dispatch as poison. The point of a political murder, surely, was that it should be bloody, bold and spectacular. Cold comfort perhaps for Porfiry, but at least it meant that he could eat heartily until the blow was struck.
Porfiry’s suspicions must have shown on his face, for he noticed that Slava flushed under the magistrate’s steady gaze.
‘Why do you say that?’ said Slava antagonistically. ‘Is it not factually correct?’
‘It claims that we have confessed to being baffled. I have made no such confession. In fact, I strenuously refute it.’
‘So, you know who killed these children?’
‘Ah, to say that we do not yet know who killed them is not the same as to say we are baffled. We are pursuing a line of investigation that I am confident will result in the arrest of the murderer.’
‘May I ask on what you base your confidence?’
‘No you may not. May I ask you where you went last night, and in the middle of the night to boot? I heard you leave the apartment.’