Death on the Nevskii Pros Page 8

  ‘I will think about it before our meeting,’ said Mikhail Shaporov, trotting off to pay the bill. ‘I insist on paying for lunch, Lord Powerscourt. When we Russians introduce distinguished visitors to our national cuisine, it is only fitting that we should pay. I insist, I really do.’

  As they made their way across the river to their next meeting Shaporov told Powerscourt some of what he knew of the Interior Ministry. Most of his information, he said generously, came once again from his father, some of it from his friends who had had dealings with it, some of it simply absorbed from the air and the streets of his city. Mikhail gave his English visitor the Russian bureaucracy in numbers. Eight hundred and sixty-nine, the number of paragraphs in Volume One of the Code of Laws that defined the rules and conduct of the Imperial Civil Service. Fourteen, the number of different Civil Service ranks, each with its own uniform and title. The top two ranks of civil servants were to be addressed as Your High Excellency. Those in ranks three and four to be addressed as Your Excellency. The less fortunate in ranks nine to fourteen had to make do with Your Honour. White trousers changing to black, red ribbons changing to blue, even adding a stripe here and there could mark momentous turning points in the orderly progression of the bureaucrat’s life. He could be promoted by one rank every three years from ranks fourteen to eight and one every four years in ranks eight to five. Promotion – and Mikhail emphasized how typical it was, this interface between the autocracy and the bureaucracy that would only make it less likely that either could function effectively – promotion to the last four ranks was at the discretion of the Tsar and carried a hereditary title. With great care not to displease, taking as few decisions as possible in case they gave offence, a man might reach the top of the tree by the age of sixty. This carefully modulated bureaucracy, Mikhail said, was strangling Russia, strangling it in a slow bureaucratic bear hug.

  They could see several of these bureaucrats now, coming down the steps of the Interior Ministry building, some of them carrying briefcases.

  ‘They’re not going home already, Mikhail, are they? It’s just before three o’clock, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You don’t want to overdo it, if you’re a bureaucrat, Lord Powerscourt. It’s a very hard life in the Interior Ministry. Some of these fellows may have had to attend a couple of meetings in the morning. Think how exhausting that must have been for them.’

  Powerscourt had been inside a number of ministries in London where the splendour was reserved for the quarters of the minister and his most senior officials. The rest had been furnished with due regard to the exigencies of the public purse and the dangers of newspapers launching crusades about governments wasting taxpayers’ money on luxurious surroundings for civil servants. But nothing, he thought, could prepare you for the drabness of the interior of the Russian Interior Ministry. The floors were covered in something grey that might once have been the Russian equivalent of linoleum. The walls were painted with a dark colour that looked as if it might have been originally intended for a battleship. A long hopeless corridor stretched out for a couple of hundred yards behind the reception desk, manned by a small man with only one arm.

  ‘Mr Bazhenov, Room 467, fourth floor. Lift over there. Enter your names in this book before you go up.’

  Every public building you went into in St Petersburg, Powerscourt was to discover, took down your name and address as if they proposed to establish a regular correspondence. He wondered briefly about instituting a similar system in Markham Square.

  The lift was gloomy and stank of sweat and urine. Mikhail Shaporov pressed the bell for the fourth floor.

  ‘Do you think the more important chaps live higher up, Mikhail?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Only ranks eight and above allowed on floor three?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Mikhail, sounding more cheerful than the surroundings warranted. ‘Do you know, Lord Powerscourt, I have lived in this city most of my life and this is the first time I have ever been inside a government building. It’s a revelation.’

  It seemed that Room 467 must be at the outermost limit of the fourth-floor corridor where the room numbers started illogically at 379 opposite the lift. Clerks carrying files sauntered past them on their way to unknown bureaucratic destinations. Their feet sounded loud on the grey floor covering that might once have been linoleum. One or two doors were open and Powerscourt and Mikhail had brief visions of rooms filled with desks like classrooms for the grown-up and sad-faced men seated at them reading files or making entries in great ledgers. Through the dirty windows on their right they could see a small courtyard below where figures seemed to march round and round as if on some everlasting ministerial treadmill. They passed a conference room with a fine table and velvet-covered chairs round it, waiting for another meeting. Powerscourt thought he saw a thick layer of dust on the mahogany surface as if the last meeting had taken place some time ago, the committee dissolved perhaps, the junior minister moved on. Maybe only ghosts had their being in there now, coming out only at night – God, what must this building be like in the dark – taking ghostly notes of ghostly meetings and recording them in ghostly files.

  Now they had reached Room 467. The name plate announced the presence of Vasily Bazhenov, Third Assistant Deputy Under Secretary, Administrative Division, Ministry of the Interior. Powerscourt wondered what pain and humiliation had to be gone through to win these undistinguished spurs. He noted that the name plate looked very old as if Bazhenov had been in post for many years. Perhaps promotion had passed him by. Perhaps the jump from Third Assistant Deputy Under Secretary to Second Assistant Deputy Under Secretary was too much for him. Perhaps Vasily Bazhenov would be old and crabbed and waiting for retirement.

  But the voice that answered Shaporov’s knock and bade them enter was cheerful. So was the bureaucrat. He spoke quite slowly as if to give Mikhail plenty of time to translate. Powerscourt and his friend were seated on one side of a circular table in chairs that did not have velvet upholstery but were perfectly respectable nonetheless. Bazhenov had a number of files in front of him. He was about forty years of age with a wild shock of black hair that looked as if it repelled all attempts to control it. His eyes were grey, his nose small and his long black beard seemed to be acting in sympathy with his hair. Powerscourt wondered if he had a wife who wrestled with his appearance before she despatched him every morning on his bureaucratic Via Dolorosa. The man could have been taken for some wild Siberian preacher rather than a Third Assistant Deputy Under Secretary in the Administrative Division.

  ‘You are interested in a Roderick Martin, I believe,’ he said to Powerscourt.

  ‘That is correct, Mr Under Secretary,’ said Powerscourt, remembering Rosebery’s advice to promote all army officers, civil servants and policemen. ‘We were given to understand that you might have some details about him here.’

  Bazhenov sighed deeply. ‘In one sense, I have to disappoint you, Lord Powerscourt. I – we – cannot help you with this Martin. Under normal circumstances, there would be all kinds of information about such a man. The time and date of his arrival and departure. The record of where he was staying. If he was an important person holding important meetings with important government officials, there would be a record, as there will be of this meeting.’

  The Third Assistant Deputy Under Secretary smiled. There had been almost a note of irony, Powerscourt thought, of mocking as the bureaucrat detailed his lists of information, though it was hard to tell in another language. Information, after all, was the currency he dealt in, wrested from the reluctant population to be stored in the unforgiving files of the Interior Ministry.

  Bazhenov opened his hands wide. ‘But we have no records for the year 1905. No place of entry. No place of residence. I wish I could help you, gentlemen, but I cannot.’

  The man’s lying, Powerscourt thought to himself. Surely he knows Martin came here and was killed here last December. He remembered the fat inspector with the red beard shouting at them in the police station where his investigations i
n St Petersburg had begun. Perhaps they’re all liars. But he could see little point in an argument. Better to hear what the man might have to say.

  ‘You are being as helpful as anybody could be, Mr Under Secretary,’ said Powerscourt at his most emollient, ‘but I would ask you to consider things from my government’s perspective. Mr Martin, a distinguished member of his ministry in London as you are of yours here in St Petersburg,’ Bazhenov half rose to his feet and bowed to Powerscourt at this point, ‘comes here last December and holds, we believe, a series of meetings, possibly with the Foreign Ministry, we are not sure. On the evening of the same day he is murdered. The death is reported by a policeman in the police station nearest to the British Embassy. It is even committed to paper.’ That, Powerscourt felt, should have maximum appeal to the bureaucrat. The spoken word, it was nothing, worthless as air. Pieces of paper, records, minutes, memoranda, these were his life’s blood. ‘Now the police deny all knowledge. They say the piece of paper must be a forgery.’ Truly, Powerscourt said to himself, forgery would be the sin against the Holy Ghost of bureaucratic machines everywhere. It could cast doubt on everything it touched. It, or the suspicion of it, could spread through the files like the Black Death. ‘They say Mr Martin cannot have come to St Petersburg. But he left London on a special mission to the Russian capital. He has not returned. We have no reason to believe he is alive. We believe he is dead. You gentlemen say he never came here at all. Who or what are we to believe?’

  Then Bazhenov produced one of the classic bureaucratic ploys, a Sicilian defence amidst the paperwork. ‘I wish I could help you, Lord Powerscourt. Leave it with me for a day or two. Perhaps some information has been mislaid. Perhaps one of the other organizations of the state will be able to help.’

  Powerscourt was to learn later that other organizations of the state meant the secret police, the Okhrana, or other even shadowier organizations devoted to the safety of state and Tsar. ‘That is most kind of you, Mr Under Secretary. We are very grateful. Permit me to ask one question before we take our leave. You said at the beginning that you had no information concerning Mr Martin for the year 1905. That implied, maybe I misunderstood you, that you might have information about other months.’

  Bazhenov laughed and slapped an ample thigh. ‘I said to my second assistant this morning, Lord Powerscourt, that they are clever people, these English. They will surely ask the right question to unlock this information.’ Powerscourt wondered how many assistants the man had. Three? Five? Seven? Perhaps he could ask the next time they came. ‘No information for the year 1905 is indeed what I said. But consider our Mr Roderick Martin or, perhaps, your Mr Roderick Martin. He lives at a place called Tibenham Grange in Kent in your England. He is married. He works for your Foreign Office. Is this Mr Martin also your Mr Martin?’

  ‘He is,’ said Powerscourt sensing suddenly that some bombshell was about to arrive that would blow his investigation wide open.

  ‘Why, then, we have only one Mr Martin between the two of us, not a multiplicity of them, not a flock or a gaggle or a parliament of Martins. We do not believe he came here in 1905, but we know he came on three other occasions in 1904, three times in 1903 and twice in 1902. We could find out if he came also in previous years by the time of our next meeting. You could say, Lord Powerscourt, that Mr Roderick Martin of His Majesty’s Foreign Office was a regular visitor to our city.’

  3

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was trying as hard as he could not to show his astonishment. The knowledge that Roderick Martin had been a regular visitor to St Petersburg could change everything in his investigation. He noticed that Mikhail Shaporov looked completely unconcerned as if he’d known this information all along.

  ‘That is most interesting, Mr Under Secretary,’ he began. ‘Might I ask if you have the dates of these visits to hand? The place or places where he stayed? The length of his visit? My government would be at your service, sir, if this information could be passed on.’

  ‘It can be, Lord Powerscourt. It shall be. Let no one say that the servants of the Tsar are unwilling to co-operate with the King of England and the Emperor of India.’ Vasily Bazhenov was expansive now, his black hair rolling down his forehead. ‘It should be fairly easy to extract the information you require. I propose, gentlemen, that we meet again at the same time early next week. I shall send word to the Embassy. I hope by then to have all the information you need. I shall spend the intervening hours working for the Government of His Majesty King Edward the Seventh. A very good day to you, gentlemen.’

  Powerscourt and Mikhail Shaporov did not speak on their long march down the bureaucratic corridor from Room 467. They did not speak in the foul-smelling lift. They acknowledged the greeting of the man with one arm who noted the time of their departure. Only when they were outside the grip of the Interior Ministry, walking beside the Fontanka Canal on their way back to the British Embassy, did Mikhail Shaporov break the silence.

  ‘That’s a bit of a bombshell, isn’t it, Lord Powerscourt. Have you any idea what it means?’

  Powerscourt laughed. ‘At this moment, I have absolutely no idea.’ It was now, Mikhail told Natasha afterwards, that he first realized what a lot of experience Powerscourt had, and what a devious mind. ‘It could mean that he had a mistress in the city. It could mean that he had an illegitimate child or children here in St Petersburg that he came to visit. He didn’t have any back in England after all. Maybe he was being blackmailed by a St Petersburg blackmailer and he had to come and hand over the payments in person. Maybe he was a secret diplomatic conduit between the British Government and the Tsar. Maybe he was a double agent of the Okhrana, come to Mother Russia for the confession of sins and the resumption of vows of fidelity to an alien power. Maybe he was all of those, though I have to say I think that’s unlikely. But I tell you this, Mikhail. Whichever one of those he was, or some other kind of person, we’re bloody well going to find out.’

  Mikhail Shaporov and Natasha Bobrinsky were sitting in the Old Library in one of the Shaporov palaces on Millionnaya Ulitsa, Millionaires’ Row, not far from the Hermitage and the Winter Palace. They had exchanged chaste, rather middle-aged kisses at the railway station and were now respectably seated on opposite sides of a small table, drinking tea. Natasha thought Mikhail looked very grown up and sophisticated after his time in London. He thought she was more enchanting than ever.

  ‘What brings you back to St Petersburg so soon?’ she began. ‘I was very pleased to get your note, Mikhail, but I didn’t expect to see you for months. How long are you going to be here for?’

  The young man smiled. ‘I don’t know how long I’m going to be here for. It’s rather a fantastic story, how I came to be here.’

  ‘Do tell.’ The girl was leaning closer to him. ‘I adore fantastic stories.’

  ‘I’m here as an interpreter for an English investigator called Lord Francis Powerscourt who has been sent by the British Foreign Office to find out about a man called Martin.’

  ‘Why,’ said Natasha quickly, ‘do they need to send the two of you all the way here from London? Why don’t they just ask Mr Martin what they want to know?’

  ‘That would be a bit difficult, Natasha.’ Mikhail was resisting the temptation to smile. ‘You see, Mr Martin can’t say anything very much any more. Mr Martin is dead. To be more precise, Mr Martin was murdered. They found his body on the Nevskii Prospekt.’

  ‘Did they indeed?’ said the girl, reluctant to display too much excitement in the face of death. ‘But why you, Mikhail? How did you come to be selected? Have you made a habit of consorting with Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr Watson in the fogs of Baker Street?’

  ‘Alas, no,’ said the young man, ‘the answer is much more prosaic. My father has some dealings with this British Foreign Office. It was all organized through him. No doubt he will expect some favour in return some day. Maybe they thought he might be able to help here. Come to think of it, that would have been rather clever of them.’

 
‘And how is your translating, Mikhail? Do you go round talking to very important and exciting people?’

  ‘I wouldn’t quite put it like that,’ he replied. ‘So far we’ve been to a police station, a couple of morgues, a little restaurant that served cabbage soup – he liked that, by the way, my Lord Powerscourt, he said it reminded him of Ireland – and a Third Assistant Deputy Under Secretary in the Administrative Division of the Interior Ministry. That was so exciting we’re going back again early next week.’

  ‘And what’s he like, this Lord Powerscourt? Is he frightfully handsome and clever? Would he be a suitable catch for me, Mikhail?’

  ‘I think you need a younger man than Lord Powerscourt, Natasha,’ said Mikhail in his most worldly voice. ‘Young but with considerable experience of the world, lived abroad, well read, well spoken, that sort of thing. I could say more about him but I’ll save it for later if I may. Lord Powerscourt is in his forties, married with four children, lives in Chelsea, a fashionable part of London and has exquisite manners. Beneath it all I think he cares very much for the poor dead Mr Martin and the bereaved Mrs Martin. And one last thing, he’s extremely clever, though he doesn’t show it. I only realized that earlier this afternoon.’

  Mikhail remembered his conversation with Powerscourt and telling Natasha about Martin and asking her to keep her ears open.

  ‘So does anybody know yet why this poor man was killed?’ Natasha was rather thrilled that her young man – well, he was nearly her young man, a couple of kisses at railway stations were only an inadequate hors d’oeuvre in her view – should be engaged on such a mission.

  ‘That’s just the point, Natasha,’ said Mikhail Shaporov, wondering what word would best describe her dark eyes, now glittering with excitement. ‘At first the police told the British Embassy he was dead. Now they’re denying all knowledge of him. They’re saying he wasn’t here this time, but that he came here earlier last year and the year before and the year before that. It’s all very confusing.’