He would show Porfiry Petrovich. He would bring Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov in alone.
But more than anything, it was Salytov’s fear that persuaded him to stay.
He could hear footsteps in the ground floor apartment now. In a moment he could be dead.
The door cracked open. The glow of an oil lamp held at chest height flared upward, illuminating a single dark eye, set deep beneath a sprawling, highly animated eyebrow.
“Govorov?” The hoarseness of his own voice surprised Salytov.
“Upstairs.” The eyebrow wriggled as if from the effort of producing the word. A waft of pickled cucumber came with it.
“Show me.”
The eyebrow plummeted heavily. The movement expressed angry refusal.
“I am a police officer. It will be better for you if you cooperate.”
The door swung inward, allowing the halo of light to spread across the hall. The oil lamp was held by a short, balding man of about fifty. The first thing Salytov looked at was his eyebrows. He was impatient to dispel a superstitious sense of evil. Seeing them in the context of the full person only partially reassured him. He remained disturbed by their apparent unruliness and independence. He had to force himself to take in the rest of the man’s face. His skin was sallow, features Asiatic, his face skeletally gaunt beneath high, sharp cheekbones. A large bald head tapered acutely into a pointed beard, like an inverted onion dome.
“I don’t want any trouble,” said the man. “This is a respectable house.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You are?”
“Leonid Simonovich Tolkachenko. I am the yardkeeper here.”
“You have keys to all the apartments?”
“Yes.”
“Bring them.”
The light went with Tolkachenko as he withdrew. Salytov felt Govorov’s presence fill the darkness.
“What has he done?” said Tolkachenko sternly, returning with the bobbing light and the keys.
“It’s no concern of yours,” said Salytov to the caretaker’s back as he followed him up the creaking stairs.
“I knew it would end badly,” Tolkachenko threw over his shoulder.
“What are you talking about?”
“I told him it had to stop.”
“What?”
“He brought girls here. He denied it. But I saw them and heard them. He tried to sneak them up the stairs. But I know the creak and groan of every step. And there is a board outside his door that calls out to me.”
They reached the first landing. Tolkachenko pointed to the door on the right and nodded. Salytov gestured for him to open the door.
The flat was in darkness.
Tolkachenko cast the lamp’s unfocused glow about the room. “He’s not here.” Tolkachenko seemed surprised. “He was here.” The caretaker crossed to the window and held up the lamp to look out. He tested the window and found it locked. “How strange.”
“Perhaps he slid down the banister,” said Salytov, grinning in the darkness. “Bring the light over here,” he added sharply. He was aware of an undefined dark shape hovering at shoulder height. “Give me that!” He took the lamp and allowed its flare to wash over the shape, which he was able to identify as a camera on its tripod. “So this is where he takes the photographs,” muttered Salytov. In that instant he hated Govorov. His desire to catch him and see him punished-for something, he didn’t care what-solidified.
The swing of the sputtering oil lamp gradually revealed the room as a series of unrelated fragments: a sofa draped in a satin throw, a table littered with breadcrumbs and dirty crockery, an unmade bed, an open escritoire, a shelf of books, and propped up beneath it, a seven-stringed gypsy guitar. The escritoire demanded closer examination. Even at a distance Salytov recognized its contents as more of the genre of photographs he had confiscated from the tavern owner. In fact, it contained multiple copies of the same photograph. It was that girl again, the prostitute who had been brought in for stealing the hundred rubles. She was lying naked on Govorov’s sofa, her arms behind her head, her legs at right angles to each other, one knee sticking straight up, the other pointing out. Salytov felt his mouth contract with dehydration, sticking slightly to his teeth. The insistence of the image, repeated on every card he looked at, was dizzying.
“Filthy whore,” commented Tolkachenko, with a heavy swallow. “And to think, all this has been going on above my head. Wait till I see Govorov.”
“Say nothing. Do not arouse his suspicions. Do you understand? He may well be dangerous. This is a murder investigation. The moment he returns, send word to me. I am Lieutenant Ilya Petrovich Salytov of the Haymarket District Police Bureau. The Stolyarny Lane station.”
“I know it. Not that I have ever been in trouble with the police,” added Tolkachenko quickly.
“What hours does he keep, this Govorov?”
“It is hard to say. He is not what you would call a regular gentleman. Sometimes he sleeps all day. Sometimes he is out all night.”
Salytov crossed to the shelf of books. The volumes were all roughly the same size and shape, all in the same maroon cloth binding. He scanned the titles: Hareem Tales, The Adventures of a Rake, Pandora’s Awakening, White Slaves, A Sojourn in Sodom, The Gentleman’s Privilege, The Whip and the Whipped, The Pleasure of Purple (Being a Sequel to The Whip and the Whipped), Flesh and Blood, She Gave Herself to Gypsies, One Thousand and One Maidenheads, The Monk and the Virgins. Each one bore the imprint Priapos.
Salytov gave an emphatic nod of triumph. It was not for the benefit of the caretaker, to whom he had nothing to prove, and whose presence he had anyway forgotten. He was imagining that he was showing the books to Porfiry Petrovich.
The Hotel Adrianople
The drozhki sped north across the Neva over the Dvortsovy Bridge. The driver stood to whip the horse, a bay stallion. The beast’s neck arched and writhed. Its back rippled beneath glistening skin. Steam rose from its flanks. It turned its face sideways into the sharp oncoming air. Under the driver’s cries, the horse’s snorts, and the constant jangle of the harness bells, Porfiry Petrovich could hear the hiss of the runners over the smooth ice. He folded down his fur collar so that the moisture from his breath would not dampen it.
It was good to be sitting in an open drozhki wrapped in furs, hurtling into the coldest, clearest day of the winter so far.
“Fools,” muttered Salytov.
Porfiry turned to see what had provoked the remark. Salytov’s gaze was locked onto a wooden sledding hill built on the frozen river. It was Saturday morning, and the thrill-seekers rushed four abreast up the steps of the great tower. Their shrieks as they came down the other side hung high in the emptied air. It was mostly boys and young men, but there were some girls there too, their faces flushed and intent on excitement. Porfiry smiled. He felt vicariously the stomach lurch and the soul’s vertiginous untethering.
He did not feel inclined to push Salytov for the source of his misanthropy. “You did well, Ilya Petrovich,” he commented instead, shouting over the noises of transit. The sledding hill was behind them now, though the yelps of pleasure and fear could still be heard.
Salytov did not reply. His expression was hidden from Porfiry.
“Finding Govorov’s lodging was a breakthrough.”
“It was nothing but methodical old-fashioned police work. A lead was bound to come eventually. It came sooner rather than later. I was lucky.” Salytov did not face Porfiry as he shouted his reply. The investigator had to strain to catch his words.
“You know as well as I do, you make your own luck in this game.”
Salytov grunted.
“Of course, the question raised by your discovery is, why should a man who has permanent lodgings in Spassky Lane take a hotel room on the Bolshoi Prospect?”