The Red Coffin (11 page)

Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, Pekkala placed the sliver of lead in the middle and then folded the handkerchief into a bundle before returning it to his pocket.

‘Could it have been suicide?’ asked Kirov.

‘We’ll see.’ Pekkala’s focus returned to the wreckage of Nagorski’s face. He searched for an entry wound. Reaching under the head, fingers sifting through the matted hair, his fingertip snagged on a jagged edge at the base of the skull where the bullet had impacted the bone. Pressing his finger into the wound, he followed its trajectory to an exit point on the right side of the dead man’s face, where the flesh had been torn away. ‘This was no suicide,’ said Pekkala.

‘How can you be sure?’ asked Kirov.

‘A man who commits suicide with a pistol, will hold the gun against his right temple if he is right-handed or against his left temple if he is left-handed. Or, if he knows what he is doing, he will put the gun between his teeth and shoot himself through the roof of the mouth. That will take out the dura oblongata, killing him instantly.’ He pulled the rain cape back over Nagorski’s body, then wiped the gore from his hands on a corner of the cape.

‘How do you get used to it?’ asked Kirov, as he watched Pekkala scrape the blood out from under his finger nails.

‘You can get used to almost anything.’

They left the warehouse, just as three NKVD guards arrived to take charge of Nagorski’s corpse. Standing in the dark, the two men turned up the collars of their coats against a spitting rain.

‘Are you certain Major Lysenkova didn’t spot the bullet wound in Nagorski’s skull?’ asked Pekkala.

‘She barely glanced at the remains,’ replied Kirov. ‘It seemed to me that she just wants this case to go away as fast as possible.’

Just then, a figure appeared from the darkness. It was Maximov. He had been waiting for them. ‘I need to know,’ he said. ‘What happened to Colonel Nagorski?’

Kirov glanced at Pekkala.

Almost imperceptibly, Pekkala nodded.

‘He was shot,’ replied the Major.

The muscles twitched along Maximov’s jaw. ‘This is my fault,’ he muttered.

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Yelena – Mrs Nagorski – she was right. It was my job to protect him.’

‘If I understand things correctly,’ replied Pekkala, ‘he sent you away just before he was killed.’

Maximov nodded. ‘That’s true, but still, it was my job …’

‘You can’t protect a man who refuses to be protected,’ said Pekkala.

If Maximov took comfort in Pekkala’s words, he gave no sign of it. ‘What will happen to them now?’ he asked. ‘To Yelena? To the boy?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Pekkala.

‘They won’t be looked after,’ said Maximov, ‘not now that he is gone.’

‘And what about you?’ asked Pekkala. ‘What will you do now?’

Maximov shook his head, as if the thought had not occurred to him. ‘Just make sure they are looked after,’ he said.

A cold wind blew through the trees, with a sound like the slithering of snakes.

‘We’ll do what we can, Maximov,’ replied Pekkala. ‘Now go home and get some rest.’

‘That man makes me nervous,’ said Kirov, after Maximov had vanished back into the dark.

‘That’s part of his job,’ replied Pekkala. ‘When we get back to the office, I want you to find out everything you can about him. I asked Maximov some questions and he avoided every one of them.’

‘We could bring him in for questioning at the Lubyanka.’

Pekkala shook his head. ‘I don’t think we’d get much out of him that way. The only time a man like that will talk is if he wants to. Just find out what you can from the police files.’

‘Very well, Inspector. Shall we head back to Moscow?’

‘We can’t leave yet. Now that we know a gun was used, we have to search the pit where Nagorski’s body was found.’

‘Can’t it wait until morning?’ moaned Kirov, clutching his collar to his throat.

Pekkala’s silence was the answer.

‘I didn’t think so,’ mumbled Kirov.

Pekkala woke to the sound of someone banging on the door.

At first, he thought one of the shutters must have been dis
lodged by the wind. There was a snowstorm blowing. Pekkala
knew that, in the morning, he would have to dig his way out
of the house.

The banging came again, and this time Pekkala realised some
one was outside and asking to come in.

He lit a match and set the oil lamp burning by his bed.

Once more he heard the pounding on the door.

‘All right!’ shouted Pekkala. He fetched his pocket watch from
the bedside table and squinted at the hands. It was two in the
morning. Beside him, he heard a sigh. Ilya’s long hair covered her
face and she brushed it aside with a half-conscious sweep of her
hand. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘Someone’s at the door,’ Pekkala replied in a whisper, as he
pulled on his clothes, working the braces over his shoulders.

Ilya propped herself up on one elbow. ‘It’s the middle of the
night!’

Pekkala did not reply. After doing up the buttons of his shirt
he walked into the front room, carrying the lamp. Reaching out
to the brass door knob, he suddenly paused, remembering that
he had left his revolver on the chest of drawers in the bedroom.
Now he thought about going to fetch it. No good news ever came
knocking at two o’clock in the morning.

The heavy fist smashed against the wood. ‘Please!’ said a
voice.

Pekkala opened the door. A gust of freezing air blew in,
along with a cloud of snow which glittered like fish scales in the
lamplight.

Before him stood a man wearing a heavy sable coat. He had
long, greasy hair, piercing eyes and a scruffy beard which gave
him a slightly pointed chin. In spite of the cold, he was sweating.
‘Pekkala!’ wailed the man.

‘Rasputin,’ growled Pekkala.

The man stepped forward and fell into Pekkala’s arms.

Pekkala caught the stench of onions and salmon caviar on
Rasputin’s breath. A few of the tiny fish eggs, like beads of am
ber, were even lodged in the man’s frozen beard. The sour reek
of alcohol oozed from his pores. ‘You must save me!’ moaned
Rasputin.

‘Save you from what?’

Rasputin mumbled incoherently, his nose buried in Pekkala’s
shirt.

‘From what?’ repeated Pekkala.

Rasputin stood back and spread his arms. ‘From myself!’

‘Tell me what you are doing out here,’ demanded Pekkala.

‘I was at the church of Kazan,’ said Rasputin, unbuttoning his
coat to reveal a blood-red tunic and baggy black breeches tucked
into a pair of knee-length boots. ‘At least I was until they threw
me out.’

‘What did you do this time?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Nothing!’ shouted Rasputin. ‘For once, all I did was sit there.
And then that damned politician Rodzianko told me to leave.
He called me a vile heathen!’ He clenched his fist and waved it
in the air. ‘I’ll have his job for that!’ Then he slumped down into
Pekkala’s chair.

‘What did you do after they threw you out?’

‘I went straight to the Villa Rode!’

‘Oh, no,’ muttered Pekkala. ‘Not that place.’

The Villa Rode was a drinking club in Petrograd. Rasputin
went there almost every night, because he did not have to pay
his bills there. They were covered by an anonymous numbered
account which, Pekkala knew, had actually been set up by the
Tsarina. In addition, the owner of the Villa Rode had been paid
to build an addition on to the back of the club, a room which
was available only to Rasputin. It was, in effect, his own private
club. The Tsarina had been persuaded to arrange this by members
of the Secret Service, who were tasked with following Rasputin
wherever he went and making sure he stayed out of trouble. This
had proved to be impossible, so a safe house, in which he could
drink as much as he wanted for free, meant at least that the Secret
Service could protect him from those who had sworn to kill him
if they could. There had already been two attempts on his life:
in Pokrovsky in 1914 and again in Tsaritsin the following year.
Instead of frightening him into seclusion, these events had only
served to convince Rasputin that he was indestructible. Even if the
Secret Service could protect him from these would-be killers, the
one person they could not protect him from was himself.

‘When I was at the Villa,’ continued Rasputin, ‘I decided I
should file a complaint about Rodzianko. And then I thought
– No! I’ll go straight to the Tsarina and tell her about it myself.’

‘The Villa Rode is in Petrograd,’ said Pekkala. ‘That’s nowhere
near this place.’

‘I drove here in my car.’

Pekkala remembered now that the Tsarina had given Rasputin
a car, a beautiful Hispano-Suiza, although she had forgotten to
give him any lessons on how to drive it.

‘And you think she would allow you in at this time of night?’

‘Of course,’ replied Rasputin. ‘Why not?’

‘Well, what happened? Did you speak to her?’

‘I never got the chance. That damned automobile went
wrong.’

‘Went wrong?’

‘It drove into a wall,’ he gestured vaguely at the world outside,
‘somewhere out there.’

‘You crashed your car,’ said Pekkala, shaking his head at the
thought of that beautiful machine smashed to pieces.

‘I set out on foot for the palace, but I got lost. Then I saw your
place and here I am, Pekkala. At your mercy. A poor man begging
for a drink.’

‘Someone else has already granted your request,’ replied
Pekkala. ‘Several times.’

Rasputin was no longer listening. He had discovered one of
the salmon eggs in his beard. He plucked it out and popped it
in his mouth. His lips puckered as he chased the egg around the
inside of his cheek. Then suddenly his face brightened. ‘Ah! I see
you already have company. Good evening, teacher lady.’

Pekkala turned to see Ilya standing at the doorway to the
bedroom. She was wearing one of his dark grey shirts, the kind
he wore when he was on duty. Her arms were folded across her
chest. The sleeves, without their cufflinks, trailed down over
her hands.

‘Such a beauty!’ sighed Rasputin. ‘If your students could only
see you now.’

‘My students are six years old,’ Ilya replied.

He waggled his fingers, then let them subside on to the arms of
the chair, like the tentacles of some pale ocean creature. ‘They are
never too young to learn the ways of the world.’

‘Every time I feel like defending you in public,’ said Ilya, ‘you
go and say something like that.’

Rasputin sighed again. ‘Let the rumours fly.’

‘Have you really crashed your car, Grigori?’ she asked.

‘My car crashed by itself,’ replied Rasputin.

‘How,’ asked Ilya, ‘do you manage to stay drunk so much of
the time?’

‘It helps me to understand the world. It helps the world to
understand me as well. Some people make sense when they’re
sober. Some people make sense when they’re not.’

‘Always speaking in riddles.’ Ilya smiled at him.

‘Not riddles, beautiful lady. Merely the unfortunate truth.’
His eyelids fluttered. He was falling asleep.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ said Pekkala. He grasped the chair and
jerked it around, so the two men were facing each other.

Rasputin gasped, his eyes shut tight.

‘What’s this I hear,’ asked Pekkala, ‘about you advising the
Tsarina to get rid of me?’

‘What?’ Rasputin opened one eye.

‘You heard me,’ said Pekkala.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Never mind who told me.’

‘It is the Tsarina who wants you dismissed,’ said Rasputin, and
suddenly the drunkenness had peeled away from him. ‘I like you,
Pekkala, but there is nothing I can do.’

‘And why not?’

‘Here is how it works,’ explained Rasputin. ‘The Tsarina asks
me a question. And I can tell from the way she asks it whether she
wants me to say yes or no. And when I tell her what she wants to
hear, it makes her happy. And then this idea of hers becomes my
idea, and she runs off to the Tsar, or to her friend Vyrubova or to
whomever she pleases, and she tells them I have said this thing.
But what she never says, Pekkala, is that it was her idea to begin
with. You see, Pekkala, the reason I am loved by the Tsarina
is that I am exactly what she needs me to be, in the same way
that you are needed by the Tsar. She needs me to make her feel
she is right, and he needs you to make him feel safe. Sadly, both
of those things are illusions. And there are many others like
us, each one entrusted to a different task – investigators, lovers,
assassins, each one a stranger to the other. Only the Tsar knows
us all. So if you have been told that I wish you to be sent away,
then yes. It is true.’ He climbed unsteadily out of the chair and
stood weaving in front of Pekkala. ‘But it is only true, because the
Tsarina desired it first.’

‘I think you’ve preached enough for one night, Grigori.’

Rasputin smiled lazily. ‘Good night, Pekkala.’ Then he waved
at Ilya, as if she were standing in the distance and not just
on the other side of the room. As he moved his hand back
and forth, a bracelet gleamed on his wrist. It was made of
platinum, and engraved with the Royal crest: another gift from
the Tsarina. ‘And good night, beautiful lady whose name I have
forgotten.’

‘Ilya,’ she said, more with pity than with indignation.

‘Then good night, beautiful Ilya.’ Rasputin spread his arms
and bowed extravagantly, his greasy hair falling in a curtain over
his face.

‘You can’t go out there now,’ Pekkala told him. ‘The storm has
not let up.’

‘But I must,’ replied Rasputin. ‘I have another party to attend.
Prince Yusupov invited me. He promised cakes and wine.’

Then he was gone, leaving a stench of sweat and pickled
onions hanging in the air.

Ilya stepped into the front room, her bare feet avoiding the
slushy puddles which had oozed out of Rasputin’s boots. ‘Every
time I’ve seen that man, he has been drunk,’ she said, wrapping
her arms around Pekkala.

‘But he’s never as drunk as he appears,’ replied Pekkala.

Two days later, Pekkala arrived in Petrograd just in time to
see Rasputin fished out of the Malaya Neva River, near a place
called the Krestovsky Island. His corpse had been rolled in a
carpet and shoved beneath the ice.

Soon after, Pekkala arrested Prince Yusupov, who readily
confessed to murdering Rasputin. In the company of an army
doctor named Lazovert and the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch,
first cousin of the Tsar, Yusupov had attempted to murder
Rasputin with cakes laced with arsenic. Each cake contained
enough poison to finish off half a dozen men, but Rasputin ate
three of them and appeared to suffer no effects. Then Yusupov
poured arsenic into a glass of Hungarian wine and served that
to Rasputin. Rasputin drank it and then asked for another
glass. At that point, Yusupov panicked. He took the Browning
revolver belonging to the Grand Duke and shot Rasputin in the
back. No sooner had Dr Lazovert declared Rasputin dead than
Rasputin sat up and grabbed Yusupov by the throat. Yusupov,
by now hysterical, fled to the second floor of his palace, followed
by Rasputin, who crawled after him up the stairs. Eventually,
after shooting Rasputin several more times, the murderers rolled
him in the carpet, tied it with rope and dumped him in the
boot of Dr Lazovert’s car. They drove to the Petrovsky bridge
and threw his body into the Neva. An autopsy showed that, even
with everything that had been done to him, Rasputin died by
drowning.

In spite of Pekkala’s work on the case, and the proven guilt of
the participants, none of his investigation was ever made public
and none of the killers ever went to prison.

When Pekkala thought back on that night when Rasputin had
appeared out of the storm, he wished he’d shown more kindness to
a man so clearly marked for death.