The number 447 turned out to be for the administration department at the headquarters of the North Russia Maritime and Customs Police. Ruzsky called the operator and was eventually put through to the correct department at the bureau, but the wrong individual. The man said the office he required was on the floor below, but that he could not recall the number.
More than ten minutes later, Ruzsky finally spoke to someone in the maintenance department of the Bureau for Railway Building and Maintenance. Despite it having been impressed upon him that this was a criminal investigation, the man said he was too busy to check the detailed maps that were kept on the top floor. He conceded, when Ruzsky would not let the matter drop, that he believed it was a road crossing on the line out to Tsarskoe Selo, but he could not be certain. Everyone in the department was stretched to breaking point, he said, ensuring the lines were in working order for the war effort, and he did not have time to pursue the matter further.
When Ruzsky tried to ask again, the call was terminated.
He stared at the telephone after replacing the receiver.
A moment later they heard rapid footsteps on the stairs and along the corridor. A constable appeared in the doorway, a sheepskin cap in his hands, his hair damp with sweat.
They waited while he caught his breath.
“Another body, sir,” he gasped. “A woman.”
49
R uzsky flew down the stairs, the constable alongside him. “A woman?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Young?”
“I-”
“Twenty? Thirty? Older?”
“Something like that, sir, yes.”
Ruzsky ran out into the street toward the droshky waiting opposite. They had lost Pavel, but he did not wait. “Where?” he demanded of the constable as the young man got in beside him.
“Vyborg side,” the man shouted at the driver. “By the Finland Station.”
The driver cracked his whip and the sled began to move. “Go via the quay,” Ruzsky instructed him.
The man did not look around, nor did he query the instruction. Only likhachy drivers were usually allowed to take their charges along the Palace Embankment. Ruzsky glanced back over his shoulder and saw Pavel running out of the building. The big detective hailed another sled. He had two more constables with him.
Ruzsky swung back to his companion. “She was dark?” he demanded. “Dark hair? Long, dark hair?”
“Yes, sir. I believe so.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes… yes.” He did not seem at all certain. “She had a knife, through her…” He pointed at his eye.
Ruzsky faced the front.
It could not be her. But his heart threatened to break out of his chest and his forehead prickled with sweat.
The sled hurtled past the Admiralty and the facade of the Winter Palace. They swung onto the Alexandrovsky Bridge.
“Whereabouts?” Ruzsky heard himself shout. “Tell me where exactly.”
“I’ll show you, sir,” the constable responded, equally agitated. “I’ll show you.”
They were over the bridge now and hurtling down the broad, tree-lined avenue, toward the spire of the Finland Station.
“Here,” the constable shouted at the driver, pointing toward a narrow side street between the tenements. “Here.”
The man slowed the horses and then wheeled them into the alley and down toward a tall, dark building surrounded by armed men.
Ruzsky leapt from the sled before it had ground to a halt.
Ten or more Okhrana agents, armed with rifles, stood in a semicircle around the entrance. The queue outside the bakery opposite stared at the scene in awed silence.
Ruzsky strode toward the officer in charge. “Chief Investigator Ruzsky,” he said, “city police.”
The man’s broad, bearded face was unyielding. “We’ve instructions to let no one through.”
“A murder has been reported by my constables,” Ruzsky said.
The other sled drew up and Pavel strode over. He produced his identification papers. “Deputy Chief Investigator Miliutin,” he said. The man remained unmoved.
The two groups faced each other. Ruzsky slipped his hand into his jacket, grasping the handle of his revolver. The silence was broken by the screech of an engine and then a loud clank as a train shunted inside the Finland Station.
Ruzsky seized his moment.
“You… stop,” the officer shouted, but Ruzsky had already broken into a run, darting through the entrance, past a mound of garbage.
“Wait,” he heard Pavel shout. He half expected a shot.
Ruzsky pounded up the stairs. The stench of urine and decay brought tears to his eyes. The walls glistened with water. He tried to focus only the steps ahead of him. He turned the last corner.
There was a man ahead, bent over the body.
Ruzsky saw one slim leg twisted at an impossible angle, a long leather boot.
Prokopiev straightened and turned to face him. A knife protruded from the dead woman’s cheek.
“Sandro, I-”
It was not her.
It was Olga.
Christ, it was not her.
Ruzsky leaned against the wall as he tried to recover his breath. Inside his overcoat, he was soaked in sweat, his throat dry and palms clammy. The Okhrana officer caught up with him and bellowed in his ear, but Ruzsky was oblivious.
“All right, all right,” Prokopiev shouted. He waved the man away, and Pavel, who stood behind. “I’ll deal with him.”
Prokopiev faced Ruzsky, his hands thrust into his pockets, waiting for the others to withdraw.
Ruzsky tried to control his breathing. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Prokopiev examined him as a gamekeeper might a cornered animal, but, as Ruzsky came to his senses, he realized that something had changed in the man.
Ivan Prokopiev appeared tired, and in those dark, intense eyes, there was a hint, if not of humanity, then at least of irony, or weary disillusion. “Are you all right, Chief Investigator?” he asked. “You do not look well.”
When the others had retreated out of earshot, Prokopiev took out a silver cigarette case and offered it to Ruzsky. “Did you think it was someone else?” Prokopiev asked as his match flared.
They smoked in silence. Prokopiev glanced at his boots. They had been newly polished. “I heard about your father,” he said. “I’m sorry for that.”
Ruzsky did not respond. He took a pace toward the body, but Prokopiev raised his hand. “Don’t go any closer,” he said, smoke bleeding through his mouth and nostrils.
Ruzsky examined the dead woman. The hilt of the knife bore a striking resemblance to the one they had discovered on the Neva.
“You know who she is?” Ruzsky asked.
Prokopiev shrugged.
“Might I take a look?”
Ruzsky inched forward and this time Prokopiev made no move to stop him.
Olga had fallen awkwardly, her body twisted. Her assailant had been waiting in the shadows of the doorway and her face, never beautiful, was savagely distorted.
Ruzsky squatted, an arm resting upon his knee. He reached forward to touch the skin of what remained of her cheek. She had been dead some time.
He examined the knife. It was an ancient, simple weapon with an iron handle, but no inscription that Ruzsky could see.
There were three stab wounds: one in the left cheek, another in the mouth, and a third directly through the center of the eye. He didn’t need Sarlov to tell him that the killer had been tall. The wounds were deep. A pool of congealed blood had frozen on the stone floor around her head. Her remaining eye was fixed upon him. It appeared to be as filled with hatred for Ruzsky and his kind as it had been when she was alive.