‘The Okhrana are the secret police?’ Powerscourt was hesitant.
‘Indeed,’ said de Chassiron, settling the bill. ‘They’ve almost certainly noted your arrival and will check your movements all the time you are here. They are the most suspicious, the most paranoid organization in the world. And they will, almost certainly, follow us all the way back to the Embassy.’
Next day Mikhail Shaporov presented himself at a quarter to nine in the morning at the British Embassy. He was wearing a grey suit with a pale blue shirt and looked as though he might have been a young lawyer dressing in a conservative fashion to avoid prejudicing the judge by his tender years.
Powerscourt waved a piece of paper at him. ‘I’m told this is a report from the Nevskii police station informing the Ambassador that they have found a British national in their possession. I should say a dead British national.’
Mikhail read it quickly. ‘That is correct, Lord Powerscourt. And we have an appointment to see the policeman who wrote it at nine fifteen? Come, it is not far. I presume that nobody has succeeded in extracting the body from this police station? Indeed, it is probably no longer there. It may be in one of the morgues. I have the addresses of the two most likely in these parts.’
‘That was very intelligent of you, Mikhail,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I am impressed.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not me you have to thank for it, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Mikhail with a smile, ‘it’s my father. He’s lived here almost all of his life. He may have bribed many policemen in his time, I do not know.’
The police station was a nondescript three-storey building behind the Fontanka Canal. A collection of drunks, sleeping, comatose or dead, were sprawled across the hallway inside the front door. Their beards were long and unkempt, their hair was matted, their clothes were filthy. A powerful smell of dirt and damp and human waste rose strongly from them. Powerscourt noticed that the young man paid them absolutely no attention. This was the background of his life, a sight he had seen so often he hardly noticed it. Perhaps it was the background to the lives of all the citizens of this city, lost souls given up to vodka to escape the pain of their daily lives, drink-sodden refugees from the tensions of everyday existence in St Petersburg who sprawled across the floors of its police stations until they were granted the temporary consolation of a cell.
Powerscourt saw that Mikhail had opened a conversation with the fat policeman behind the desk.
‘He’s new here,’ he said to Powerscourt, ‘he’s gone to make inquiries. That could mean a couple of minutes or a couple of days. They don’t care how they treat people at all, the local police. Not like in London.’
Just then a door at the far end of the hall opened and two burly policemen emerged. They began dragging the drunks through the doorway into some unknown territory behind.
‘Cells?’ said Powerscourt.
‘Maybe,’ said Mikhail, ‘maybe they’re just throwing them back on to the streets now it’s daylight. This lot may have been brought in during the night to stop them freezing to death. Even here they don’t like corpses lying about in the streets first thing in the morning. Doesn’t look too good in the shadow of the Winter Palace if winter’s victims are stretched out in front of it, dead from the winter cold. Bad for business. Might upset a passing Grand Duchess.’
The fat policeman had returned. Once more Mikhail engaged him in conversation. After a couple of minutes he gestured to Powerscourt. ‘I’m getting nowhere, Lord Powerscourt. I think you need to let him have it. Sent by Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, all that sort of stuff, big guns, heavy artillery.’
‘I am afraid, Constable,’ Powerscourt began, ‘that I find your position very unsatisfactory.’ He heard Mikhail’s translation coming out just behind his own. ‘I am here as a representative of the British Foreign Office and the British Prime Minister. I wish to speak to the police inspector named here,’ Mikhail waved the document at the policeman as he spoke, ‘who reported the death of a British diplomat to the British Ambassador some days ago. It is imperative that I speak to him.’
Mikhail translated, his emphases more vigorous in Russian than Powerscourt’s had been in English. Powerscourt wondered if the man knew where Great Britain was. Did he know where Kazakhstan was? Or Georgia?
There was another burst of Russian. ‘We have no knowledge of this inspector here,’ said Mikhail. ‘My superiors instruct me to tell you that this must be a mistake.’
‘No,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it is you who are mistaken. This inspector made a report to the British Embassy itself. We are not mistaken. I demand to see the senior policeman here.’
Powerscourt noticed that the gap between his words in English and Mikhail’s in Russian was getting shorter. Maybe when he’s back in practice he really will be simultaneous, he thought. Powerscourt regarded this as a truly wondrous feat, akin to those of people who could unlock the hidden theorems of mathematics.
Very reluctantly the fat policeman retired to the inner quarters in search of a senior officer. Mikhail was looking at the paper once more. ‘It couldn’t be clearer, Lord Powerscourt. The inspector is reporting the police discovery of the dead Martin at one thirty in the morning of Thursday December the 23rd. It’s as clear as a bell.’
Suddenly Powerscourt had a terrible thought. They hadn’t dumped Martin in the hall along with the drunks, had they? Left him there for hours until rigor mortis had set in? That was not a comforting thought to take back to London and the home of the widow Martin and the parents Martin. They might never sleep again.
There was a shout from the desk. The fat policeman had been replaced by an even fatter one with a red beard and a disagreeable air of menace about him.
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Mikhail began translating. ‘How dare you come in here and waste police time. There is no officer here of that name. There never has been. Forging official documents is a serious offence in our country. The penalties can be up to ten years’ imprisonment. Now, I suggest you get out of here and don’t come back.’
With that he banged his fist on the table and pointed to the door. Powerscourt was not very impressed.
‘Thank you for your suggestions, Inspector. We have an appointment with the Interior Ministry. We shall certainly raise with them our treatment at your hands. We also have an appointment at the Foreign Ministry where the displeasure and dismay of my government will be conveyed in the strongest possible terms. All we wish at this juncture is the chance to speak with your inspector who wrote this report, complete with your very own stamp on it.’ With that, in a sudden burst of inspiration, Powerscourt picked up the stamp on the desk, moistened it in the pad beside it and made another mark on the other side of their document. It was identical to the mark already there.
‘See?’ Powerscourt went on. ‘This stamp is the same as the one already on the report. Surely even you can see that proves it is genuine.’
The signs were pretty bad. ‘May have to beat the retreat rather sharpish, Lord Powerscourt,’ Mikhail was whispering, pulling Powerscourt back from the desk. ‘This character is going to lose his temper, he’s going to go up like Krakatoa.’
Mikhail told Powerscourt afterwards that he thought the inspector was going to have a heart attack. The veins in his neck stood out. His face grew redder and redder. His breathing became very heavy.
‘Just get this into your heads,’ he shouted. ‘There is no policeman here of that name. There is no policeman in St Petersburg of that name. There was no body of an Englishman found on the Nevskii Prospekt. I do not know who has been feeding you with forgeries. I suggest you take them home. And now, get out of my police station before I lock you in the cells and throw away the key.’ With that he left his desk and began advancing towards them with his great fist raised.