Читать книгу There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union - Reginald Hill - Страница 5

1

For Inspector Lev Chislenko, the affair began on Friday, the thirteenth of July, in a graveyard, but he did not at first think this unlucky.

A man had been spotted behaving suspiciously in the Novodevichy Cemetery which is only a block away from the Gorodok Building. Chislenko answered the call and recognized the man immediately. His name was Starov and he was a black marketeer. He was also a cocky little bastard.

‘What are you doing in the cemetery, Starov?’ asked Chislenko.

‘I like to go places where all men are truly equal,’ replied Starov. ‘I’m thinking of joining the Party.’

‘Why are you carrying two thousand roubles?’

‘It’s money I’ve been collecting for our local old folk’s holiday fund.’

‘Why did you try to run away when the custodian approached you?’

‘He didn’t approach. He jumped out from behind a big marble angel. It’s Friday the thirteenth, remember? That’s a bad kind of date. I thought maybe he was a ghost or something.’

‘There are no ghosts in the Soviet Union,’ said Chislenko unthinkingly.

Starov guffawed and accepted the unintentional invitation to complete the old joke.

‘No, they’ve all been given exit visas to Israel!’

Starov was still laughing when Sub-Inspector Kedin entered. Chislenko had sent him to contact HQ on Petrovka Street to find out what they’d got on Starov. But he returned with other pieces of news.

First, a British tourist had collapsed during a tour of the Novodevichy Convent. When his clothing was loosened to permit first aid, he was found to be wearing six pairs of jeans and twelve T-shirts.

That solved what little mystery surrounded Starov’s intentions.

Secondly, there’d just been an emergency call from the Gorodok Building.

‘A man fell down a lift-shaft from the seventh floor. Or perhaps he was pushed. It seems the caller wasn’t very coherent. Usual emergency services have been dispatched, but I said if they wanted a senior officer in charge, you were just around the corner. Hope you didn’t mind, Chief?’

Kedin was no fool. With Chislenko out of the way, he could claim this Starov case, all neatly tied up. It was a nice collar for an ambitious young officer.

On the other hand, Chislenko was not without ambition either. He knew that the Gorodok Building was the admin HQ of the important Organization of Machinery Supply, Maintenance and Service. A man who sorted out trouble there might get noticed by some very influential people.

It was a consideration Chislenko was later to recall with sad irony.

‘OK, I’ll go,’ he said, knowing that if Kedin had volunteered him, he really had no choice anyway.

‘Wrap him up nice and tight,’ he ordered, nodding at Starov.

The black marketeer grinned and said, ‘Say Inspector, you’re not related to the Chislenko, are you? Used to play for Dynamo?’

‘No. He’s not related to me either,’ retorted Chislenko sourly. He left, carefully not slamming the door.

When he arrived at the Gorodok Building he found the place in chaos. Whoever had made the emergency calls had certainly created a sense of emergency. A frenzy of firemen were trying to clear the building while a panic of police were trying to seal it off. The lift involved in the incident, which was on the south side of the building, was naturally out of use. Unfortunately so many cops, firefighters and emergency technicians had crowded into the north lift that it had broken down between the fourth and fifth floors. This meant that Chislenko, trying to establish order wherever he passed, had to labour up the stairs to the seventh floor. On the fifth landing he passed two medics giving the kiss of life to a third who had collapsed as the team sprinted upstairs to the emergency.

Chislenko did not pause but kept going to the seventh floor where by comparison things seemed almost calm. An elderly grey-faced man in lift-operator’s uniform was leaning against a wall. An out-of-breath medic stood by him with a hypodermic in one hand and a jar of smelling salts in the other, but the liftman was taking his own medication from a battered gun-metal hipflask. The smelling salts could not mask the stink of cheap vodka.

A second medic crouched before the open lift making cooing and clicking sounds as if trying to coax a reluctant puppy out from under a low bed. Two firemen in green overalls stood indifferently by. Along the corridor, fractionally opened office doors were alive with curious eyes.

Chislenko advanced and looked into the lift.

There were two women in it. One of them was middle-aged and stout. She was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up under her several chins and her body pressed as close as it could get to the back wall. In addition her fingers were gripping a length of ornamental ribbing along the wall with a knuckle-whitening tightness which might have made sense if she were perched on a narrow ledge overlooking a precipice. Her eyes were wide and round and terrified.

Beside her knelt the other woman, in her twenties, slim and pretty, her arms wrapped comfortingly round the fat woman’s shoulders.

‘All right,’ said Chislenko in his best official manner. ‘Let’s get you out of there, shall we, madam?’

He stepped into the lift and reached down to pull the fat woman out on to the landing. Her reaction was startling. She opened her large, red, damp mouth, and started to scream.

‘You bloody idiot!’ yelled the younger woman, her face still pretty in its rage. ‘Sod off, will you? Get out! Half-wit!’

Baffled, Chislenko retreated.

The liftman was looking only slightly less grey than his gun-metal flask, but Chislenko was running short of sympathetic patience.

‘You the one who made the calls?’ he demanded.

‘That’s right, boss,’ said the man. ‘Muntjan. Josif Muntjan. Oh Christ!’

He took another drink.

‘All right, Muntjan. What happened?’

The man shook his head as if this were a question beyond reach of any answer he could give.

‘You reported a man had fallen down the lift-shaft, is that true?’

‘Pushed,’ said Muntjan. ‘Not fallen. Pushed.’

There was a phone on the wall a little way down the corridor. Chislenko went to it, studied the directory sheet, and dialled the code for the basement.

A voice said, ‘Hello?’

‘Who’s that?’ said Chislenko.

‘Who’s that?’ echoed the voice.

‘Chislenko. Inspector, MVD. I’m in charge,’ said Chislenko challengingly.

To his surprise the man laughed.

‘You’ll get no quarrel from me, Inspector. Brodsky, Fire Officer. How can I help you?’

‘I assume you’re examining the bottom of the lift-shaft. What have you found?’

‘Fag-packets. Dust. Cockroaches. Spiders. I can send up samples if you like.’

‘No body?’ said Chislenko.

‘No body. Nobody. No sign of any body or anybody. Not in the shaft or up the shaft. Oh, and before you ask, Inspector, we’ve checked the north lift too. The same. We’ve been hoaxed.’

Slowly Chislenko replaced the receiver. No wonder the man had laughed. It was a well-known injustice of the security service world that the man in charge of a wild goose chase usually ended up with bird-shit on his head.

‘All right, Muntjan,’ he said, putting on what he thought of as his KGB expression. ‘Start talking. And this time I want the truth! What the hell’s been going on here?’

Muntjan belched, then began to laugh. True, there was something hysterical in it, but Chislenko was growing tired of people laughing every time he spoke. He clenched his right fist. The medic looked away. Only a fool let himself become a witness to police brutality.

Muntjan saw the fist too and shrugged. Suddenly he was the sempiternal peasant who knows all things are sent to try him and resistance is pointless.

He began to talk.

By the time he’d finished, Chislenko wished he’d never begun.

According to Muntjan, the lift had been descending from the upper floors. In it were the two women and a middle-aged man.

On the seventh floor the lift had stopped. When the doors opened, there was one man waiting there.

‘Going down,’ said Muntjan.

The man hadn’t moved. He didn’t seem to have noticed the lift’s arrival. Muntjan looked closely at him to make sure he wasn’t anyone important. He was slightly built, in his mid-twenties, very blond, wearing a double-breasted suit of old-fashioned cut. He wasn’t one of the Building’s regulars.

Deciding he didn’t look all that important, Muntjan said, ‘If you’re coming, boss, get your skates on. These folk have got places they want to be!’

Still the man didn’t move. The middle-aged man in the lift cleared his throat impatiently. The two women went on chattering away to each other. And now someone else appeared, an older man in his early thirties who must have been wearing rubber-soled shoes, so silent was his approach. The first man glanced round at him with a smile of recognition. The newcomer responded by putting his arm round the first man’s shoulders in what seemed a simple gesture of greeting.

And then he thrust the blond man violently into the lift.

The smile vanished from his face, being replaced by amazement modulating into terror.

He attempted to draw back, teetering like a frightened child on the edge of a swimming pool. But his centre of balance was too far forward and, willy-nilly he stepped into the lift.

And now Muntjan hesitated in his hitherto fluent and detailed tale.

‘Go on,’ prompted Chislenko.

Muntjan took a last suck at his flask. It was clearly empty. He shrugged and said, ‘He went through the floor, boss.’

‘Went through the floor?’

Chislenko stepped up to the lift again and looked inside. The two women had not changed position. The floor on which he had stood in his vain attempt to get the fat woman out looked as solid as it had felt. He went back to Muntjan.

‘Went through the floor!’ he said angrily.

‘You’ve got it, boss. Went through it like it didn’t exist. Clean through it, flapping his arms like a fledgeling too young to fly. And that was it. All over in a second. Clean through. No trace, except …’

‘Except what?’ said Chislenko, eager for something – anything – to get a hold of.

‘I thought there was kind of a long shriek, tailing away, but very distant, like a train at night, a long long way off, you know what I mean?’

‘No,’ said Chislenko. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I don’t begin to know what you mean.’

He returned to the lift. The two pairs of eyes looked at him, one pair terrified, the other angry.

‘Right through?’ he said. ‘You mean, here?’

He pointed down.

‘That’s right, boss.’

Gingerly he stepped forward on to the solid floor, rocked gently from heel to toe, and finally jumped a foot in the air and crashed down with all his weight.

This experiment had an unexpected bonus. The fat woman shrieked out loud and swooned away, releasing her grip on the ribbing.

‘You insensitive bastard!’ exploded the young woman in a new extreme of fury which still did not touch her beauty.

Chislenko stepped back and said to the medics. ‘For God’s sake, get that lump out of there!’

Once they had dragged her into the corridor, the medics started ministering to the recumbent woman and the firemen started examining the lift. The younger woman looked as if she was ready for another explosion, but Chislenko had had enough.

‘Papers,’ he said, snapping his fingers.

She glowered at him, but said nothing as she opened her bag. The ritual of examining identity papers has assumed an almost sacramental status in Moscow and employees of the state know better than to risk any official blasphemy.

‘You are Natasha Lovchev?’

‘Yes.’

‘Employed in the Organization of Machinery Supply, Maintenance, and Service?’

‘Yes.’

‘As a secretary/typist in the Engineering Resources Division?’

‘As personal assistant to the Deputy Chief Costings Officer,’ she retorted indignantly.

Chislenko was amused but didn’t show it.

‘It says secretary/typist here,’ he said.

‘Yes, I know. It was a recent promotion and I haven’t had my papers changed yet.’

Chislenko allowed himself to look dubious and the girl continued, ‘I have an office of my own; at least, I only share it with one other assistant. It’s on the eighth floor. I was showing it to my mother here before we went to lunch.’

‘Ah. This lady is your mother,’ said Chislenko, looking down at the fat woman who now opened her eyes and looked around in bewilderment.

‘Yes. She’s here in Moscow visiting me. Please, Comrade Inspector, may I now take her home? You can see she is not well. All this has been far too much for her.’

These were the first truly unaggressive words she had addressed to Chislenko and he was touched by her filial concern, and also by her big brown eyes which were as lovely in appeal as they were in anger. But there was still work to be done.

‘All what has been too much for her?’ he inquired. ‘Perhaps you could give me your version of what happened here, Miss Lovchev.’

‘You want to hear it again?’

Chislenko’s heart stuttered.

‘Again?’

‘Yes. I heard Josif here tell you all about it just now.’

She gestured at the liftman, who nodded at the mention of his name and said, ‘There you are, boss,’ defiantly.

‘You mean you confirm what this … fellow has just told me? About a passenger being pushed into the lift and going through the floor?’

‘Yes, of course I do. I don’t pretend to understand it, but that’s what happened,’ she retorted, defiant in her turn.

‘Then please tell me this, Comrade Personal Assistant to the Deputy Chief Costings Officer,’ said Chislenko sarcastically. ‘Where is this man? There’s no one down the lift-shaft because we’ve looked there. So where is he? Come to that, where’s the man who pushed him? And didn’t you say there was another man in the lift, Muntjan?’

The liftman nodded.

‘Did you see him too, Miss Lovchev?’

‘Of course I did,’ snapped the girl.

‘Then where is he, too?’ demanded Chislenko. ‘Tell me that, if you can!’

He paused to enjoy his rhetorical triumph, but it was spoilt almost instantly by Muntjan who said, ‘He’s there, boss. That’s him,’ and pointed over Chislenko’s shoulder.

The Inspector turned. Three men had appeared at the head of the stairway next to the lift-shaft. Two of them were uniformed policemen flanking the third, a man of middle age, bespectacled, carrying a briefcase and slightly out of breath after his ascent.

‘Yes, that’s him,’ said Natasha. ‘Now can I get my mother out of here?’

She knelt beside the fat woman, angrily waving the medics aside. The newly arrived trio came to a halt. Chislenko had a sense of things slipping out of control. There were far too many spectators for a start. Doors which had been opened just a crack were now wide ajar as those behind them grew more confident. He had no doubt the stairs were jammed with inquisitive auditors from other floors. He really ought to clear everyone away and start from scratch, in an empty room, seeing individual witnesses one at a time. But in some odd illogical way he felt this would make him lose face in the eyes of the young woman.

‘Report,’ he barked at the policemen.

‘We caught this one trying to escape out of the back of the building, sir,’ replied one of the officers.

‘Rubbish,’ said their prisoner calmly.

‘Speak when you’re spoken to!’ snarled the policeman.

‘Certainly. You’ve just spoken to me, haven’t you? I said, rubbish. Far from trying to escape, I merely walked at a normal pace out of a normal exit from this building. And far from being caught, I stopped the moment you addressed me and returned here at your request without demur.’

‘Identification,’ rapped Chislenko.

The man produced a set of papers which identified him as Alexei Rudakov, a mechanical engineer currently working at a high level in the planning department of the new Dnieper dam project. Also he was a Party member. Chislenko’s eyes drifted from the papers to Rudakov’s person, to the good cloth of his well-cut suit, to the soft leather of his shoes.

‘Thank you, Comrade,’ he said courteously, returning the papers. ‘Would you mind answering a few questions?’

‘If I must,’ sighed the man.

‘First of all, can you confirm that you were travelling in this lift when the … er … incident occurred.’

‘I can,’ said Rudakov.

‘I see,’ said Chislenko. ‘Now I find that very curious, Comrade.’

‘It was curious,’ said the man.

‘No. I mean I find it curious that a man of your standing, a Party member too, should have left the scene of an … er … incident so rapidly when you must have known it was your duty to stay.’

‘I heard the operator here ringing the emergency services,’ offered the engineer in what was clearly only a token excuse.

‘Nevertheless.’

Rudakov sighed again.

‘I’m sorry. Yes, of course, you’re quite right. I should have stayed. But for what, Comrade Inspector? You put your finger on it just now. I am a man of standing and reputation, both in my profession and in the Party too. That’s just what I was thinking of when I left. Let me explain. In my job, I deal with facts and figures, with exact calculation, with solid materials. The Party too, as you well know, is based upon figures and facts, on historic inevitability and economic practicality.’

He paused to permit Chislenko and most of the others present to nod their grave agreement. The kneeling girl, however, permitted her filial feelings to overcome her patriotism to the point of rolling her lovely eyes to the ceiling in exasperation at all this male verbiage, and one of the firemen, who had finished their examination of the lift and lit cigarettes, broke wind gently.

Chislenko suspected this was an offence, but he already felt ridiculous enough without pursuing a charge of ‘farting against the State’.

‘So, Comrade Inspector,’ resumed the engineer, ‘you can see how unattractive I found the idea of having to wait here and bear testimony to something as bizarre as this … incident. Duty is not the only imperative. Suddenly I found myself walking down the stairs. I’m sorry, but I’m sure that an intelligent man like yourself will sympathize and understand.’

Oh yes! thought Chislenko. You’re so bloody right, Comrade!

He looked with loathing at the escorting policemen. If only they hadn’t been so fucking conscientious! This whole ridiculous business was beginning to smell like bad news for clever Inspector Chislenko’s bright future. Up to this point, things had remained manageable – just! The testimony of an hysterical woman (in official terms, Mrs Lovchev’s hysteria was abundant enough to cover her daughter also), and of a drunken and superstitious peasant (in official terms, this description fitted anyone in an unskilled job whose testimony did not suit the police), could have been easily disposed of. But how the hell was he to deal with this pillar of respectability? One thing was certain; his previous instinct had been right. He must get away from all these inquisitive eyes and ears.

He said carefully, ‘It is, of course, every citizen’s duty to act in the best interests of the State, as he sees them, Comrade. Let us see if we can find somewhere quiet to take your statement.’

‘No!’ exclaimed the girl, Natasha, beautifully angry once again. ‘Let him tell what he saw here, in front of everyone like the rest of us!’

There was a murmur of agreement the whole length of the corridor, stilled as Chislenko glared angrily around. Who the hell did these people think they were dealing with?

But before he could let them know quite clearly who was in charge here, Rudakov cut the ground from under his feet by saying, ‘The young lady may be right, Comrade Inspector. I wished to remain silent and uninvolved, but your efficiency has prevented that. Now that you’ve shown me my duty, the least I can do is to tell you simply and without prevarication what has taken place. So here goes.’

It was disastrous. He confirmed in precise unemotional tones every detail of what the others had said.

Chislenko let out a deep sigh. There was only one thing left to do, pass the buck upwards and hope to be agile enough to dodge out of the way when as usual it came bouncing straight back down.

2

There had been two days of silence from the Procurator’s office and Chislenko was beginning to hope that his initial report had been allowed to sink to the bed of that ocean of paper which washed around the basement of Petrovka, the Moscow Headquarters of the MVD.

Unfortunately he himself did not dare let things lie. Official procedure required the making of follow-up reports, each one of which increased the risk of drawing unwelcome attention. It was necessary, for example, to visit Mrs Lovchev to get her version of events once she had recovered sufficiently to speak. He found her clearly enjoying the role of convalescent, sitting up in bed in her daughter’s apartment, eating cream chocolates.

The apartment was tiny and Natasha had given up the bed for the duration of her mother’s visit and moved on to a narrow, age-corrugated sofa. Mrs Lovchev’s version of events differed from the others only in style. It was colourful, melodramatic and drawn out beyond belief and tolerance by family reminiscence, folklore analogy, and in-depth analysis of the lady’s own emotions at each stage of the narrative.

The positive side of the interview was that it gave him a chance to get to know Natasha Lovchev rather better. He’d checked her records in the State Employees computer, of course, and found nothing against her. It had been necessary to mention in his report that she had had no official authority for inviting her mother to see her new office, but he pointed to this as evidence of the extremely lax security at the Gorodok Building rather than dereliction of duty on Natasha’s part. After all, pride in one’s work and love of one’s mother were both figured in the official list of virtues published by the Committee on Internal Morale and Propaganda each year.

Natasha was present during his interview of Mrs Lovchev. From time to time she interrupted, but Chislenko didn’t mind, especially as her interruptions, which were at first defensive of her mother, became increasingly more embarrassed and irritated as that good lady rambled on and on, till finally she rescued the Inspector from the little bedroom and led him out in to the equally small living-room, closing the door firmly behind her.

She didn’t apologize for her mother and Chislenko admired her for that. Children should never apologize for their parents. But her offer of a cup of tea was clearly compensatory and conciliatory. And as they drank and talked, Chislenko found himself aware with his male receptors of what he had already noted with his policeman’s eye, that Natasha was very pretty indeed. Not only pretty, but pleasant, interesting and bright. Chislenko felt able to relax a little, and enjoy the tea and her company and a brief moment off duty.

‘What do you really make of all this?’ he asked her. ‘Now you’ve had time to think about it. Off the record.’

‘Off the record?’ She regarded him with an open scepticism and then shrugged and wiped it off with a stunning smile. ‘Well, off the record, it has to be a ghost, don’t you think?’

‘A ghost?’ he echoed. He must have sounded disappointed.

‘All right, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know that’s what my mother’s been going on about for the past half-hour and you hoped for something more original from me. Perhaps I could dress it up for you. A para-psychological phenomenon, how would that sound in your report? Or perhaps you prefer a delusive projection produced by localized mass-hysteria, perhaps relatable to repressed claustrophobia triggered by the lift.’

‘Now I like the sound of that,’ he said, only half joking. So far, until his reports were complete, he had avoided anything like a conclusion, opinion or recommendation. This kind of phraseology sounded just the ticket.

Natasha snorted derisively.

‘Use any jargon you like,’ she said firmly. ‘In my book, any human figure which passes clean through a material barrier is a ghost. Go back in records and look for an accident happening in that lift-shaft. The past is where your investigation should be, if you’ve got the nerve.’

She was mocking him, but the gibe struck home. The idea had actually occurred to him, but he had dismissed it at once, and not merely because it was absurd. No; an ambitious thirty-year-old inspector of police knew that his every move was scrutinized with great care, and he had no desire to find himself explaining that he was examining old records in order to test a ghost hypothesis!

He covered his discomfiture with a smile, and returning mockery for mockery, he said, ‘Why the past? What’s wrong with precognition? If you believe in ghosts, surely, you believe in visions too? Perhaps this was an event which has yet to happen.’

‘Oh no,’ she said sombrely. ‘It’s happened.’

‘How so sure?’

‘The clothes,’ she said.

‘The clothes?’ He cast his mind back to the witness statements. ‘Yes, I recall, there was something about an old-fashioned suit. But, good lord, Moscow’s full of old-fashioned suits! Who can afford a new-fashioned suit these days?’

The question was rhetorical since any attempt to answer it would almost certainly have involved a slander of the State.

She said, ‘It was more than that. It was, well, a new old-fashioned suit, if you follow me. And he was wearing a celluloid collar too. Now, old-fashioned suits may be plentiful still, but you don’t see many celluloid collars about, do you? And he had button-up shoes!’

‘Now there’s a thing!’ said Chislenko. ‘So what kind of dating would you put on this outfit?’

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. It would have been very easy to lean forward and kiss them but Chislenko was not letting himself relax that far. Not yet anyway; the thought popped up unexpectedly, surprisingly, but not unwelcomely.

‘’Thirties, late ’twenties, somewhere around then, I’d say,’ she said.

He laughed out loud and said, ‘Now that is interesting. When you go to work in the morning do you ever look up?’

‘Look up?’ She was puzzled.

‘Yes, up.’ He raised his head and his eyes till he was looking at the angle where the yellowing paper on the walls met the flaking whitewash on the ceiling. ‘Or is it head down, eyes half closed, drift along till you reach your desk?’

‘I’m very alert in the mornings,’ she retorted spiritedly.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Then you must have noticed that huge concrete slab above the main door. The one inscribed. The Gorodok Building. Dedicated to the Greater Glory of the USSR and opened by Georgiy Malenkov in June 1949.

‘Nineteen forty-nine,’ she echoed. ‘Oh. I see. Nineteen forty-nine.’

‘Yes. Part of our great post-war reconstruction programme,’ he said, rising. ‘A little late for celluloid collars and button-up shoes, don’t you think? Thank you for the tea, Comrade Natasha. I’m sure we’ll meet again, I’ll need to keep in touch with you till this strange business is settled.’

He offered his hand formally. She shook it and said, ‘And I’ll be very interested to learn how you manage to settle it, Comrade Inspector.’

He smiled and squeezed her hand. She returned neither squeeze nor smile. He didn’t blame her. Only a fool would allow a couple of minutes’ friendly chat to break down the barriers of caution and suspicion which always exist between public and police.

And Natasha, he guessed, was no fool.

Checking Josif Muntjan, the liftman, wasn’t half as pleasant but just as easy. The State makes no social distinction in its records. Menial or master, once you come into its employ, you get the womb-to-tomb X-ray treatment.

Muntjan came out pretty clear. There was a record of minor offences, all involving drunkenness, but none recent, and nothing while on duty.

Indeed, the supervisor, who didn’t look like a man in whom the milk of compassion flowed very freely, spoke surprisingly well of him. He expressed surprise rather than outrage at the mention of the hip-flask.

‘It’s not an offence to own one, is it?’ he said. ‘No need to report it, though, is there? I’ll see he doesn’t bring it to work with him again. He’ll take notice of what I say. Jobs aren’t easy to come by when you’re old and unqualified.’

Chislenko nodded; the man’s sympathetic understanding touched him. He clearly knew that if Muntjan were tossed out of his job, he probably wouldn’t stop falling till he landed in one of those shacks on the outer ring road where the Moscow down-and-outs eked out their perilous existence. Or rather, non-existence, for of course in the perfect socialist state, such degraded beings were impossible.

Crime too was impossible. Or would be eventually. The statistics showed progress. Chislenko defended the statistics as fervently as the next man, knowing that if he didn’t, the next man would probably report the deficiency. But falling though the crime rate might be, there was still a lot of it about and Chislenko resented the amount of time he had to spend on this unrewarding and absurd business at the Gorodok Building. The only profit in it was that it had brought him into contact with Natasha Lovchev, but that relationship was still as uncertain in its outcome as a new Five-Year-Plan.

He turned his attention from Muntjan to Alexei Rudakov. Here the computer confirmed his own first estimate. Rudakov was a man to be treated with respect. Only his initial foolishness in leaving the scene of the incident made him vulnerable to hard questioning. The trouble was, the harder the questioning, the firmer his story.

Finally Rudakov said, ‘Comrade Inspector, clearly you want to hear this story as little as I want to tell it. In a few days I shall be returning to the Dnieper Dam. Rest assured, I shall not be making a fool of myself by repeating this anecdote there. In other words, if you stop asking questions, I’ll stop giving answers!’

It made good sense to Chislenko. The best way to deal with this absurd business was to ignore it. He only hoped his superiors would agree, and he gave them their cue by writing a final dismissive report, this time risking a conclusion couched in the kind of quasi-psychological jargon Natasha had mockingly used.

Then he crossed his fingers, and waited, and even said a little prayer.

The authorities were right to ban religion.

The following day he was summoned to Procurator Kozlov’s office.

3

Of all the deputy procurators working in the Procurator General’s office, Kozlov was the one most feared. Unambiguously ambitious, he took lack of progress in any case under his charge as an act of personal sabotage by the Inspector involved, and his own advancement was littered with the wrecks of others’ careers. His legal career had begun in the attorney’s department of the Red Army, and on formal official occasions Kozlov always wore the uniform of colonel to which his military service entitled him.

He was wearing the uniform today. It was not a good sign.

So preoccupied was Chislenko by this sartorial ill-omen that at first he did not notice the other person in the room. It was only when he came to attention and focused his eyes over the seated Procurator’s head that he took in the unexpected presence. Standing by the window looking down into Petrovka Street was an old gentleman (the term rose unbidden into Chislenko’s mind), with a crown of snow white hair, a goatee beard of the same hue, cheeks of fresh rose, eyes of bright blue, and an expression of almost saintly benevolence.

Procurator Kozlov did not look benevolent.

‘Inspector Chislenko,’ he rasped. ‘This business of the Gorodok Building. These are your final reports?’

He stabbed at the file on his desk.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Chislenko.

‘And you recommend that no further inquiry is needed?’

‘I can see no line of further inquiry that might be useful,’ said Chislenko carefully.

The Procurator sneered.

‘No line which might be fruitful if pursued in the indolent, incompetent and altogether deplorable manner in which you’ve managed this business so far, you mean!’

The unexpected violence of the attack provoked Chislenko to the indiscretion of a protest.

‘Sir!’ he cried. ‘I resent your implications …’

‘You resent!’ bellowed Kozlov, his smart uniform stretching to the utmost tolerance of its stitching.

‘Comrades,’ said the old man gently.

The speed with which the Procurator deflated made Chislenko look at the old gentleman with new eyes. Wasn’t there something familiar about those features?

‘Let us not be unfair to the Inspector,’ he continued with a friendly smile. ‘He has done almost as much as could be expected, and his desire to let this matter die quietly is altogether laudable. However …’

He paused, came to the desk, picked up the file and sifted apparently aimlessly through its sheets.

‘Do you know who I am, Inspector?’ he said finally.

Desperately Chislenko searched his memory while the old man smiled at him. Honesty at last seemed the best policy.

‘My apologies, Comrade,’ he said. ‘There is something familiar about you but I cannot quite find the name to go with it.’

To his surprise the old man looked pleased.

‘Good, good,’ he said, beaming. ‘In my work, as in yours, not to be known is the best reputation a man can look for. I am Y.S.J. Serebrianikov.’

It was with difficulty that Chislenko concealed the shocked dismay of recognition. Of course! This was the legendary Yuri the Survivor, that shadowy figure who had started his career under Beria and survived his passing and that of Semichastny, Shelepin, and Andropov, in the process making that most dangerous of transitions from being a man who knows too much to live to being a man who knows too much to destroy. Now nearly eighty, he was officially designated Secretary to the Committee on Internal Morale and Propaganda, which sounded harmless enough, but this was not a harmless man. Either through flattery or blackmail, he always picked his protectors well and for many years now he had been under the ægis of the powerful Minister of Internal Affairs, Boris Bunin, which explained his presence but not his purpose in the MVD Headquarters. Bunin at 65 was young enough to have very large ambitions. Serebrianikov with his vast store of knowledge and his still strong KGB connections must have been, and might be again, a tremendous help to him.

Chislenko bowed in his direction.

‘It is an honour and privilege to meet you, Comrade Secretary,’ he intoned.

‘Thank you, Comrade Inspector,’ replied the old man. ‘Now in the matter of this trivial and absurd incident at the Gorodok Building, you are perhaps wondering what my interest is? Let me tell you. I am old now, and should (you are perhaps thinking) be spending my time in my dacha at Odessa, watching the seagulls. But some old horses miss their harness, as perhaps one day you will find, and the Praesidium – in their kindness and to satisfy an old man’s whim – permit me to preserve the illusion at least of still serving the State.’

This was dreadful, thought Chislenko. No man could be so humourously self-deprecating except from a base of absolute power.

‘What I do is sometimes watch and sometimes listen and sometimes read, but mainly just sniff the air to test the mood of the people. Internal morale is the fancy name they give it. I watch for straws in the wind, silly rumours, atavistic superstitions, anything which may if unchecked develop into a let or hindrance to the smooth and inevitable progress of the State.’

‘But surely this silly business at the Gorodok Building could hardly do that!’ burst out Chislenko, winning an angry glare from the Procurator, but an approving smile from Serebrianikov.

‘Possibly not, in certain circumstances,’ he said. ‘Had, for instance, the initial response not been so attention-drawing. I do not hold you altogether responsible for the other services, but is it not true that your policemen surrounded the building and arrested everyone trying to leave?’

To explain that this had not been his idea at all was pointless; only results counted in socialist police work.

Instead Chislenko countered boldly, ‘Had we not done that, Comrade Secretary, we should not have apprehended the witness, Rudakov.’

‘True,’ said the old man. ‘But with hindsight, Comrade Inspector, do you not think it might have been better if you hadn’t caught Comrade Rudakov?’

This precise echo of his own feelings was perhaps the most frightening thing Chislenko had heard so far.

‘At least the Comrade Engineer appears a man of discretion,’ continued Serebrianikov. ‘Unlike Muntjan who is a drunken babbler, and the woman, Lovchev, who is a garrulous hysteric. Yet there might have been means to restrain these, too, if you had avoided conducting the initial interrogation in public!’

‘In public! No!’ protested Chislenko.

The old man took out a small notebook and held it before him, like a Bible aimed at a vampire.

‘Would you like me to recite a list of those who admit to overhearing the whole of your initial interviews, Inspector.’

Chislenko remembered the firemen and the medics, the corridor draughty with open doors, the stairways crowded with curious ears.

I wish I were dead! he thought.

‘I apologize most sincerely, Comrade,’ he said formally. ‘My only excuse is that I was misled into thinking a serious incident had taken place in a government building.’

‘I should have thought that those circumstances would have urged greater discretion, not less,’ murmured the old man.

‘No, Comrade, what I meant was that, realizing I had been misled, perhaps even hoaxed, I momentarily lost sight of the need for discretion. Indeed, Comrade Serebrianikov, with permission, I would like to say that even now I am at a difficulty in understanding what all the fuss is about. I mean, if there had been an incident and there had been any need to hush things up, well, not to put too fine a point on it, I’d have made damn sure that everyone in the entire building, in hearing distance or not, knew that if they didn’t keep mum, they’d have their balls twisted till they really had something to make a noise about!’

The transition from formal explanation to demotic indignation took Chislenko himself completely by surprise, and made the Procurator close his eyes in a spasm of mental pain.

Serebrianikov only smiled.

‘You are young and impetuous and see your job in terms of fighting the perils of visible crime,’ he said. ‘That is good. But when you are as experienced and contemplative as age has made me – and the Procurator here –’ this came as an afterthought – ‘you begin to appreciate the perils of the invisible. Let me give you a few facts, Inspector. It is now a week since this alleged incident. What will you find if you visit the Gorodok Building? I will tell you. So many of the personnel working there refuse to use the lift in question, which is the south lift, that long queues form outside the north lift. When a directive was issued ordering those in offices on the south side of the building to use the south lift, many of them started walking up the stairs in preference. Furthermore, this incident is still a popular topic of conversation not only in the Gorodok Building but in government offices throughout the city, and presumably in the homes and recreational centres of those concerned.’

Chislenko started to speak, but Serebrianikov held up his hand.

‘You are, I imagine, going to dismiss this as mere gossip, trivial and short-lived. I cannot agree. Firstly, it panders to a particularly virulent strain of superstition in certain sections of our people who, despite all that education can do, still adhere to the religious delusions of the Tsarist tyranny. But there is worse. All families have their troubles and these can be dealt with if kept within the family. Our sage and serious Soviet press naturally do not concern themselves with such trivia, but several Western lie-sheets have somehow got wind of the story and have run frivolous and slanderous so-called news items. And only last night at a reception to celebrate the successful launching of our Uranus probe, I myself was asked by the French ambassador if it were true that ghosts were being allowed back into the Soviet Union. The man, of course, was drunk. Nevertheless …’

The pale blue eyes fixed on Chislenko. He felt accused and said helplessly, ‘I’m sorry, Comrade Secretary …’

‘Yes,’ said Serebrianikov. ‘By the way, Comrade Inspector, you’re not related to Igor Chislenko who used to play on the wing for Dynamo, are you?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Chislenko.

‘A pity. Still, no matter,’ said the old man with sudden briskness. ‘Procurator Kozlov, I think we understand each other, and I have every confidence this young officer can establish the truth of this matter, explode the lies, and bring the culprits to book. I shall expect his report by the end of the week, shall we say? Good day to you.’

With a benevolent nod, Serebrianikov left the room, his step remarkably light and spry for a man of his age.

The Procurator remained at his desk, his head bent, his eyes hooded. Chislenko remained in the posture of attention to which he had belatedly snapped as he realized the old man was leaving. After perhaps a minute, he said cautiously, ‘Sir?’

Kozlov grunted.

‘Sir, what is it precisely that the Comrade Secretary wishes us to do?’

The Procurator’s head rose, the eyes opened. The voice when it came was almost gentle.

‘He wishes you to scotch all those wild stories about what happened in the Gorodok Building,’ said Kozlov. ‘He wishes you to show that not only was there no supernatural manifestation, but also that the whole affair has been stage-managed by subversive elements, encouraged and supported by Western imperialist espionage machines operating out of certain embassies, with the ultimate aim of bringing the Soviet state into disrepute.’

‘But that’s absurd!’ protested Chislenko. ‘I don’t mean the bit about Western imperialist espionage, of course. I’m sure the Comrade Secretary is quite right about that. But what’s absurd is expecting me to set about disproving a ghost!’

Kozlov smiled.

‘Do you wish me to inform Comrade Serebrianikov that his confidence has been misplaced?’ he asked, almost genial at the prospect.

‘No! No indeed, sir!’

‘Then I suggest you get to work! And you would do well to remember one thing, Chislenko.’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘There are no ghosts in the Soviet Union!’

4

When a Soviet official is given what he regards as an absurd and impossible task, he knows there is only one way to perform it: thoroughly! Whatever conclusions he reaches, he must be certain at least that no matter how finely his researches are combed, there will be no nits for his superiors to pick at.

Chislenko saw his task as dividing into two clear areas. First: disprove the ghost. Second: find a culprit.

It might have seemed to a non-Soviet police mind that success in the latter would automatically accomplish the former. Chislenko knew better than this, because he knew what every Russian knows: that when it comes to finding culprits, the authorities have free choice out of about one hundred and thirty million candidates.

In this case, of course, there was a short-list of four. And here was another reason for delaying the hunt for the culprit.

Rudakov looked pretty invulnerable. Even his attempt to leave the scene of the incident pointed to his innocence. Unless he’d managed to get up someone important’s nose, he looked safe.

Mrs Lovchev was even safer. Who the hell could accept a fat old widow from Yaroslavl as a subversive? In any case it would be impossible to implicate her without dragging in her daughter also.

Natasha was a pretty good bet, regarded objectively. Young upwardly mobile professionals were just the group that tended to throw up the dissenters, the dissidents, the moaners and groaners about human rights. Serebrianikov would probably be delighted to be given one to squeeze publicly to encourage the others.

Chislenko shuddered at the thought. It mustn’t happen. The KGB mustn’t be allowed even a sniff of Natasha. If there had to be a culprit, he would do all he could to make it that poor bastard, Josif Muntjan.

Meanwhile, he had to accomplish task one and scotch the ghost. It was of course absurd that the State should need to disprove physically what it denied metaphysically, but there was no doubt that the best way of convincing that great mélange of logic and superstition which was the Russian mind that there’d been no ghost in the Gorodok Building was to prove that there was nothing for there to be a ghost of!

The strength and the weakness of Soviet bureaucracy is a reluctance to throw away even the smallest scrap of paper. The whole life of the Gorodok Building was there to be read in the archives of the Department of Public Works.

There were two ways of gaining access. One was to write an official request which would be dispatched to the office of Mikhail Osjanin, the National Controller of Public Works. The request, of course, would never get anywhere near the Controller himself, who had far more important things to do (mainly, according to rumour, brown-nosing top Praesidium people, in pursuit of his own high political ambitions). But one of his minions would doubtless consider it, ask for clarification, consider again, and finally accede. It might, if Kozlov countersigned the request, go through in only a week.

The other way was for Chislenko to check his own mental archives, which were in their way merely an extension of this same Soviet bureaucracy.

Yes, there it was, the half-remembered scrap of information. Six months earlier he had interrogated several men detained after a raid on a gay bar near Arbat Square. It was not a job Chislenko liked and he was easily persuaded that most of those he questioned had been in the bar accidentally or innocently. One of them had been called Karamzin and he had given his job as records clerk in the Department of Public Works.

Chislenko went to see him.

The frightened little clerk nearly fainted when he recognized the Inspector, but once he grasped the reason for his visit, his cooperation was boundless, and within minutes rather than days, Chislenko had at his disposal all he required.

The Gorodok Building had been projected in 1947, approved in 1948 and erected in 1949, under the guiding hand of a project director called M. Osjanin.

‘This Osjanin, is that the same one who’s your boss now?’ inquired Chislenko of the hovering clerk.

‘Ultimately, I suppose,’ said Karamzin. ‘In the same way as Comrade Bunin’s your boss.’

Chislenko knew what he meant. The only time he ever saw the Minister for Internal Affairs was on television when he stood in the rank of hopefuls on the saluting platform in Red Square.

‘I take your point,’ he answered.

‘Naughty boy,’ said the clerk coquettishly, then a look of such consternation spread over his face that Chislenko almost laughed out loud.

‘What about the building’s maintenance history?’ he asked.

‘Over here.’

They spent an hour going over this. There was no reference to anything other than routine maintenance with regard to the lifts or indeed to any other part of the building.

He thanked the clerk formally, resisting a strong temptation to wink, and continued his researches among the records of the emergency services, principally fire and police. Again nothing. Finally he composed a memo to the Chief Records Officer, KGB, beginning it further to an inquiry authorized by Y.S.J. Serebrianikov, and sent it across to the Lubyanka, uncertain whether it would produce the slightest effect. To his surprise, a reply came back within the hour. KGB records had nothing on file about any sudden death or violent incident in the Gorodok Building during its whole existence.

The speed of the reply confirmed one thing. Comrade Serebrianikov was no old buffer put out to grass till he went to the Great Praesidium in the sky.

His task now finished so far as scotching the ghost was concerned, Chislenko drafted out the first part of his report. It was a job well done, but now the time had come when he could no longer delay beginning the second part of his investigation. The proof of Serebrianikov’s continued authority in the KGB had been a salutary warning of just how delicately he would have to tread in keeping Natasha Lovchev safely out of the official eye. He made a vow to himself that, whoever else might suffer, he would at all costs protect Natasha.

An hour later he found himself arresting her.

It happened like this.

Deciding that it made sense to start his new inquiries with the Lovchevs (and also feeling a sudden longing to see that all-weather beauty again), he set out for the girl’s tiny apartment. When he got there, he found Mrs Lovchev preparing to return to her home in a village close to Yaroslavl on the banks of the Volga, about two hundred and thirty kilometres away. She greeted him like an old friend and demanded to know if he’d found out anything more about ‘the ghost’, adding that she’d always thought Moscow folk a bit standoffish, but since she’d started talking about her experience in the local shops, she’d found them just as friendly and curious as the folk back home.

‘And she can’t wait to get back home and tell them there that it’s not all motor-cars and concrete here in the big city, can you, Mother?’ laughed Natasha.

She looked and sounded delightful when she laughed, but Chislenko was too horrified at what had just been said to fully appreciate her beauty. Surely he’d warned them to keep quiet about the incident? Fears for the Lovchevs’ and for his own future mingled to make him speak rather brusquely to the garrulous old woman. Natasha intervened sharply, the laughter dying in her eyes. He replied with equal sharpness in his best official tone, but this only provoked her to a slanderous if not downright subversive attack upon the MVD and all its works.

Jesus! thought Chislenko. If Procurator Kozlov could hear this …

And then the dreadful thought occurred that perhaps worse people than Kozlov could be listening. What more likely than that Serebrianikov would have arranged for all those involved in the Gorodok Building affair to be bugged?

It was at that point that he arrested Natasha.

White-faced – with anger, he guessed, rather than fear – she let herself be thrust into the passenger seat of the little official car he was using. Normally ‘pool’ cars were as hard to come by as Western jeans, but in the last few days he’d found one permanently set aside for him, proof again of the strength of the Serebrianikov connection.

After he had been driving a few minutes Natasha burst out, ‘Where are you taking me, Inspector? This isn’t the way to Petrovka?’

‘No, it’s not. But we’ll get there, never you fear,’ said Chislenko grimly. ‘I just want a quiet word with you first. I’m going to give you some advice and I think you’d be wise to take it.’

‘What do you mean?’ she said, looking at him with contempt. ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, is that it?’

‘What do you mean?’ he demanded in his turn, growing angry.

‘I’ve seen the way you look at me, Comrade Inspector,’ she retorted. ‘But I warn you, I’m not one of your little shop-girls to be frightened out of her pants by an MVD bully!’

The suggestion horrified Chislenko. Was this really how his admiration of Natasha’s lively spirit and gentle beauty had come across – as unbridled lust?

Holding back his anger with difficulty, he said, ‘Listen, Natasha, for your mother’s sake if not for your own. This business at the Gorodok Building, it’s not wise to talk about it. It’s certainly been very unwise of your mother to go spreading tales of ghosts and ghouls all over Moscow, and it would be even unwiser for her to fill the Yaroslavl district with them too.’

‘Unwise for her to tell what she saw?’ said Natasha indignantly. ‘How can that be? And I saw it too, don’t forget!’

‘I’d try not to be so sure of that,’ said Chislenko.

‘What are you trying to tell me, Inspector?’ demanded the girl. ‘And why do I have to be driven all over Moscow to be told it?’

She still thinks I’m going to park the car somewhere quiet and invite her to take her skirt off, thought Chislenko.

He swung the wheel over and accelerated out of the suburbs back towards the centre of town.

‘It would be wise to admit the possibility of error, Comrade Personal Assistant to the Deputy Costings Officer,’ he said coldly. ‘It would be wise for your mother to do the same.’

‘Wise? Give me one good reason?’

He slowed down to negotiate the turn from Kirov Street into Dzerzhinsky Square.

‘There’s your best reason,’ he said harshly, nodding towards the pavement alongside which loomed a massive, ugly building. In many ways this was the most famous edifice in the city, out-rivalling even St Basil’s. Yet it appeared on no postcards, was described in no guide books.

This was the Lubyanka, headquarters of the KGB.

They drove on in silence.

After a while the girl said in a blank, emotionless voice, ‘What now, Comrade Inspector?’

Chislenko said, ‘I take you to Petrovka.’

‘So I am under arrest?’

‘I said so in your apartment, Comrade, and I’m not sure who may have been listening there. So I take you to Petrovka. I ask you some questions. The four most important ones will be: One, who was closest to the lift door when the lift stopped on the seventh floor? Two, what were you doing at that moment? Three, are you quite sure the man waiting for the lift did not merely change his mind and walk away? Four, who was it that made all the fuss and insisted on calling the emergency services?

‘Your answers will be: One, Josif Muntjan. Two, I was engaged in close conversation with my mother. Three, it’s possible as my mother and I didn’t take much notice till the liftman started yelling. Four, Josif Muntjan.

‘Do you follow me, Comrade?’

‘Yes, Comrade Inspector,’ she said meekly.

‘Good. Then I will make out a report saying that the Comrade Personal Assistant after some initial misunderstanding was perfectly cooperative and I have every confidence she and her mother will behave as good citizens should. You meanwhile will make your way home and take your mother for a walk and persuade her to hold her tongue when she gets back to her village.’

‘Don’t I get a lift home?’ she said with a flash of her old spirit.

Chislenko smiled.

‘That would be out of character for the MVD,’ he said. ‘There might be others beside yourself looking for an ulterior motive.’

She flushed beautifully.

‘I’m sorry I said that,’ she said. ‘It was a stupid thing to suggest.’

He glanced at her and said drily, ‘No, it wasn’t,’ and she flushed again as they turned into the official car park at Petrovka.

That evening Chislenko visited Alexei Rudakov in his room at the Minsk Hotel on Gorky Street.

‘You again,’ said the engineer ungraciously. ‘I was hoping for an early night. I leave first thing in the morning.’

‘I know. That’s why I’ve called now,’ said Chislenko. ‘I won’t keep you long. I wouldn’t be troubling you at all except that Comrade Secretary Serebrianikov of the Committee on Internal Morale and Propaganda has taken a personal interest in the case.’

He paused. Rudakov’s eyebrows rose as he registered this information. Chislenko returned his gaze blankly.

He said, ‘So if you could just confirm the following points. You were standing behind the liftman, Josif Muntjan, when the lift stopped on the seventh floor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Next to the two Lovchev women who were engaged in lively conversation?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So their conversation would probably have distracted your attention just as Muntjan’s body must have blocked your view?’

A slight smile touched Rudakov’s lips.

‘Quite right, Inspector,’ he said.

Chislenko phrased his next question carefully, ‘If the man waiting to enter the lift had stepped forward, then changed his mind and retreated, stumbling slightly, and if then Josif Muntjan had started shouting that there was an emergency, you would have accepted his assessment, would you not?’

Again the smile.

‘As an expert in my field, I’ve always learned to accept the estimates of other experts, however menial,’ the engineer replied.

‘You mean, yes?’

‘I mean, if that had been the case, yes.’

‘And is it possible, in your judgment, Comrade, that that might have been the case?’

This was the key question.

‘Of course one could say that anything is possible …’

‘So this too is possible?’ interrupted Chislenko.

‘Yes …’

‘Good,’ said Chislenko. ‘That’s all, Comrade. If you would just sign this sheet, here. I think you’ll find it’s an accurate digest of our conversation.’

Rudakov hesitated. Chislenko admired the hesitation but was glad when it developed no further.

With an almost defiant flourish, the man signed.

‘Thank you, Comrade,’ said Chislenko, putting the paper into the copious file on the affair he was lugging round with him in his battered briefcase.

‘Official business over?’ said Rudakov. ‘Would you like a drink before you go, Inspector?’

‘That would be kind,’ said Chislenko.

The engineer poured two glasses of excellent vodka.

‘Here’s to a successful conclusion to your inquiries, Inspector,’ he said.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Chislenko.

‘So Comrade Serebrianikov is interested in this business,’ Rudakov went on. ‘A fine man.’

‘Yes. You know the Comrade Secretary, do you?’

‘Oh, not personally,’ said Rudakov. ‘I don’t move in such exalted circles. But naturally I know of his high reputation. It’s men like him that have made the State the magnificent, just and efficient machine we enjoy today.’

Chislenko smiled to himself. Rudakov had clearly decided not to take any risks. Being haughty with a mere copper was one thing, but now there was a hint of a KGB connection, the man was underlining his credentials.

‘And what is Comrade Serebrianikov’s assessment of the affair, may I ask?’

Chislenko looked at him quizzically across his glass.

‘Comrade Serebrianikov does not believe there are any ghosts in the Soviet Union,’ he murmured.

‘No, of course not,’ replied Rudakov, a trifle uneasily. Then, recovering, he added, ‘It must have been an odd case for you to work on, Inspector.’

‘Pretty routine, Comrade,’ said Chislenko.

‘Ghost-hunting is routine?’

‘I thought we’d agreed there are no ghosts,’ said Chislenko menacingly. He was rather enjoying this.

‘Yes, of course, I didn’t mean …’

Chislenko tired of the game quickly and said, ‘But it was routine. Even if there had been the possibility of a ghost, which there couldn’t be, of course, there’d have had to be someone whose ghost it might have been, which there wasn’t. I checked back all the way to nineteen forty-nine. That’s where the routine comes in, Comrade. We even check out the impossible.’

‘Why 1949?’ said Rudakov.

‘That’s when the Gorodok Building was completed,’ said Chislenko, putting down his glass.

‘Really? I’d have said … but no, it hardly matters. Another drink before you go?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Chislenko, recognizing the tone of dismissal. But he also recognized the tone of something unsaid and his natural curiosity made him add, ‘What doesn’t matter, Comrade.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You seemed surprised at something about the date. Nineteen forty-nine is what the records say.’

‘And no doubt they’re right. The building itself certainly belongs to that post-war period, but it just occurred to me now, while you were speaking, that … well, I dabbled in many branches of mechanical engineering before I got on to power stations. I was involved in various kinds of building projects, domestic and commercial, and I’d have said that the lift in the Gorodok Building predated nineteen forty-nine by quite a bit. German manufacture too, at a guess, though I’d need to see the actual machinery to be certain of that.’

‘You’re sure of this, Comrade?’ said Chislenko.

Rudakov laughed and said mockingly, ‘In this affair it seems I must wait for you to tell me what I’m sure of, Inspector. So, no, I’m not sure of anything except that I must get on with packing. Good night to you.’

‘Good night, Comrade,’ said Chislenko.

Slowly he made his way back to the high-ceilinged room in the old apartment house which was his home. Here he had another glass of vodka, much cheaper but also much larger. It would have been nice to slip into bed with nothing more troublesome than a few erotic fantasies about Natasha filling his mind. But to a good policeman, there are imperatives stronger even than sex. Unsatisfied lust can be dealt with either by a warm hand or a cold shower, but unsatisfied curiosity is not so simple to remove.

In addition, if it turned out he’d missed something, however unimportant, it could mean a black mark against his name.

It was a long time before he got to sleep.

5

When the gay little records clerk arrived at the Public Works building the following morning, he was alarmed to see a figure lurking in the side entrance he used. He was not at once reassured when he recognized the waiting man as Inspector Chislenko.

‘The Gorodok records,’ snapped the weary-looking Inspector. ‘Hurry.’

Delighted that it was his files not his friends that interested the Inspector, Karamzin scurried to obey.

The records were as meticulous as one would have expected in a project supervised by a man who had since risen to the imposing heights of public responsibility that Mikhail Osjanin now occupied. Everything was listed and costed, down to the last pane of glass and concrete block. The lifts in the building had been manufactured and supplied in 1948 by Machine Plant No. 242 situated in Serpukhov, sixty miles south of the capital.

So much for Comrade Engineer Rudakov! thought Chislenko with some relief as he noted the details. Even experts could be wrong.

Now all that remained for this particular expert to do was close the trap on poor old Muntjan. Not that such a job required much expertise, only authority and the will. Chislenko found he had little stomach for the job and the only sop to his conscience was that if he didn’t do it, someone else with far less concern for the liftman’s well-being would. At least he, Chislenko, could do his best to see that the case against Muntjan was couched in terms of alcoholic delusion rather than political subversion. Surely even Serebrianikov would agree that it was absurd to present a broken-down old man like Josif as an agent in the employ of the West?

When Chislenko arrived at the Gorodok Building, he discovered that Muntjan was making his task easy. The liftman had taken a few days’ sick leave immediately after the incident, only returning the previous day. There was still a significant boycott of the south lift by many workers, but those who were using it soon had cause for a different complaint, namely that Muntjan refused to let the lift stop on the seventh floor.

Finally the staff supervisor was informed. He had given Muntjan a public dressing-down and ordered him to answer every summons to every floor.

Josif obeyed. But so nervously debilitating did he find the experience of stopping at the seventh floor that he needed to fortify himself from his hip-flask every time it happened. By the end of the day, the supervisor was once more called to deal with the situation.

‘I sent him off straightaway, no messing,’ said the man sternly.

‘You mean, you sacked him?’ said Chislenko.

‘Well, not exactly sacked,’ said the supervisor, his sternness dissolving slightly. ‘To tell the truth, Inspector, I’m a bit sorry for the old fellow. He’s getting on and this business has been a real shake-up for him.’

The supervisor’s attitude puzzled Chislenko a little. He didn’t look like a naturally kind man, and the Inspector now recalled being surprised by his compassionate attitude to Josif at their first encounter. He felt he might have missed something and there was enough residual irritation from the business of the dating of the lift to make him react strongly.

‘Listen,’ he growled, putting on his KGB expression. ‘Isn’t it time you told me the truth? It’ll sound a lot better in my report if it comes straight from you. So give!’

The supervisor glowered at him angrily for a moment, then suddenly he seemed to exhale all his resentment in a long, deep sigh.

‘It’s my wife,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Muntjan’s her uncle, well, sort of half-uncle, really. But she’s got an overdeveloped sense of family responsibility. I tell her I’ve got my responsibilities too. I told her when I got Josif the job that if he didn’t do it properly, he was out. I meant it, believe me, Inspector.’

‘And what did your wife say to that?’

‘She said she understood. I was quite right. I had my job to think of. Only …’

‘Only?’

‘She said if Uncle Josif got the sack, he’d never find another job, and he’d not be able to afford to keep his room, so he’d have to come and live with us.’

That must have sounded like the ultimate threat! thought Chislenko. He looked with pity at the unhappy supervisor. The man had more cause for worry than he knew. He’d just offered himself as another sacrificial victim to Serebrianikov. The only difficulty in presenting Muntjan as an advanced alcoholic in the grip of the DTs had been in explaining how he kept his job. Now all was clear. The poor bastard was in the trap beyond all hope of escape.

But why should he be feeling this degree of sympathy? Chislenko asked himself. The case he was building up against Muntjan was surely not only the best, but also the only possible explanation of the incident! Natasha was mistaken; her mother was mistaken; Rudakov was mistaken. They must all have been mistaken, mustn’t they?

Of course they were, he told himself angrily. He was absolutely certain of it. All that remained now was to go and arrest Muntjan.

He said to the supervisor, ‘I’d like to examine the south lift. Can you arrange for it to be stopped and put out of use for half an hour?’

‘Yes, of course, Comrade Inspector. But couldn’t you examine it just by riding in it?’

‘I want to look in the shaft, and at the winding machinery too,’ said Chislenko.

The supervisor clearly thought he was mad but was wise enough to hold his peace. Chislenko too began to think he was mad as he got covered with dust in the shaft and stained with oil in the machine cabin. What he was looking for, he admitted to himself in that tiny chamber of his mind he reserved for his most lunatic admissions, was some mark of manufacture, preferably one which would indicate that the lift had been produced in Machine Plant No. 242 in Serpukhov in the year 1948.

For a long time he found nothing. After a while this began to worry him. There were places where perhaps a name or a number might have been expected to be stamped, but when the dust and oil were rubbed away, only a smooth surface appeared; but something about the smoothness was not quite right. Was it his imagination or had something been filed out of existence here? He could not tell. He must be mad, playing about up here when he should be arresting poor Muntjan, the drunken bum who’d started all this brouhaha!

Then he found it, screwed with Germanic thoroughness to the underside of the brake-lock housing, a small plate packed so tight with a cement-like mix of dust and oil that he had to chip at it with his pocket knife before the letters slowly emerged.

Elsheimer GmbH Chemnitz, and a reference code, FST 1639–2.

Carefully he copied them down in his notebook before triumphantly emerging from the machine cabin at the top of the shaft. The supervisor looked at him in horror.

‘Would the Comrade Inspector care to wash his hands?’ he asked carefully.

Chislenko examined his hands. If the rest of him was as filthy as they were, then it was a hot bath and a dry-cleaner’s he really needed.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

The supervisor started the lift once more and they descended towards his quarters in the basement. On the way down, the lift stopped at the seventh floor and Chislenko felt a dryness in his mouth as the door opened. But his apprehension turned to surprise when he saw it was Natasha standing there.

‘Good lord,’ she said. ‘What on earth have you been doing? You’re filthy.’

‘More to the point, what are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t work on this floor. You’re on the eighth.’

She flushed.

‘That’s right. But I had to go down to ground floor for something and the lift was marked Out of Order. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve tended to use the stairs anyway rather than get in by myself. But I heard it start moving as I reached the seventh landing and I thought, this is stupid, I’m not a child to be frightened of ghosts in broad daylight, so I came along here and pressed the button.’

She spoke defiantly as if challenging him to laugh at her. When she looked defiant, she still looked beautiful. It was perhaps at this moment that Chislenko realized he was in love with her.

He said, ‘Well, get in if you’re getting in. We can’t hang around here all day.’

Gingerly she stepped inside. When the lift stopped at the ground floor, he said formally, ‘I may have some more questions to put to you later, Comrade Lovchev. I would like you to be available for interview this evening.’

‘This evening is not possible, Comrade Inspector, but at the moment, I have no plans for tomorrow evening,’ she said pertly. ‘So try me then. Who knows? You may be lucky!’

The supervisor shook his head as she walked away.

‘Give ’em a bit of status and they think they’re boss of the universe, these young ones, eh, Inspector? What that one needs is a randy man to satisfy, and half a dozen kids to bring up, what say you?’

‘What I say is, why don’t you keep your stupid mouth shut,’ said Chislenko.

Half an hour later, relatively clean, he was back at Petrovka. There was a bit of a setback when he could find no reference to a German town called Chemnitz in his up-to-date World Gazetteer. That know-it-all Sub-Inspector Kedin, solved the mystery.

‘Try Karl-Marx-Stadt,’ he said. ‘The name was changed in 1953.’

So at least the town was in the Democratic Republic which would make cooperation easier once the initial contact had been made. That was where the real difficulty lay. An Inspector of the MVD might just get away with mailing an official request for help to the police force of a friendly country, but telephoning, which was what Chislenko wanted to do, was impossible without higher approval.

He asked to see Procurator Kozlov.

‘I don’t see any point in it,’ said Kozlov after he’d listened to Chislenko’s report. ‘Muntjan is obviously at the centre of this business. I’m not certain Comrade Serebrianikov is going to be happy that it’s all down to drunkenness. He seemed certain there must be a Western connection somewhere, but I’ve no doubt he can track that down for himself once he has Muntjan. This supervisor seems a likely contact to me. Check him out thoroughly, Chislenko.’

Chislenko shuddered. Poor old Uncle Josif! Poor old nephew supervisor!

Kozlov continued, ‘As for this lift business, I don’t see what difference it makes. There’s probably some simple explanation. Perhaps it’s you that’s got things muddled, Inspector. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that it was your muddle that got us into this in the first place!’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Chislenko, admitting defeat. ‘I’ll put my report in writing, then.’

‘I’d appreciate that,’ said Kozlov sarcastically. ‘And stick to the relevant facts, will you? Nothing about lifts and Germany, understand?’

Chislenko left and returned to the Inspectors’ office. Half an hour later he was summoned back to Kozlov’s room. The Procurator was writing at his desk and did not once look up as he spoke.

‘I’ve been thinking, Chislenko. I don’t like loose ends. You have permission to contact the authorities in Karl-Marx-Stadt in pursuance of your inquiries. Thoroughness in small things, that’s what makes the State great, you’d do well to remember that. Dismiss!’

Chislenko dismissed. It was clear to him that the change of heart had not been Kozlov’s. He must have reported to Serebrianikov and that terrible white-haired old man had given the go-ahead.

Suddenly Chislenko wished he’d kept his mouth shut. A man should be careful in his choice of masters. True, at the head of the MVD was Minister of Internal Affairs Bunin who was known to be Serebrianikov’s protector. But it would be a comfort to know for certain that the Comrade Minister knew for certain what the Comrade Secretary was up to.

On the other hand, that burning curiosity to learn the causes of things which had taken him into the police force in the first place demanded to be satisfied in this matter.

He sent for Sub-Inspector Kedin who knew everything.

‘I bet you speak good German, Kedin?’

‘Pretty fair.’

‘I thought so. Sit here with me. I may need you.’

It took three phone calls spread out over the rest of the day to get things under way.

The first established contact and brought the information that there was no machine manufacturing company called Elsheimer currently operative in Karl-Marx-Stadt.

The second confirmed that yes, there had been a firm called Elsheimer, founded in 1885 and foundering in 1932.

The third revealed that rather than simply foundering in 1932, Elsheimer had been taken over by Luderitz GmbH, a subsidiary of Krupp, and thereafter had diverted to the manufacture of armaments. This in its turn had been taken over first by the Russians in 1945, and subsequently by the Democratic Republic itself, and still survived in a much developed and expanded form as State Machine Factory (Agriculture, Heavy) Number 364 AK.

With not much hope, Chislenko gave the details of the lift. They sounded slight, the story sounded feeble, the task impossible. He could almost hear the incredulity at the other end of the line as Kedin translated his request that the Karl-Marx-Stadt Polizei should check to see if any old records of the Elsheimer company remained and if they contained any reference to the lift in question.

Such a request to a Russian official would, he knew, have been tossed into a pending tray; a couple of months later, after two or three reminders, a token search might have been made, and the negative response sent through the slowest of official channels some few weeks later.

German efficiency – plus the desire to impress these Russian peasants with that efficiency – might speed things up in this case. But after all this time, it didn’t really seem likely the response could be anything but negative.

Early the following morning the phone rang. This time he did not need Kedin. The East Germans – clever bastards – had got their own Russian speaker who told him in a studiedly matter-of-fact voice that the records of the Elsheimer company had been found intact and that the lift in question was one of a pair manufactured in the spring of 1914 and shipped to St Petersburg (as it was then), shortly to be renamed, first, Petrograd (because after 1914 St Petersburg sounded too Germanic), and finally, in 1924, Leningrad. The order had been placed in 1913 by a St Petersburg construction company and the lifts were intended for a new hotel in the city to be called (the interpreter allowed himself the ghost of a chuckle) the Imperial.

These details would be confirmed in writing within the next few days, with photocopies of the relevant record sheets. If the Comrade Inspector required any further assistance, he should not hesitate to ask.

Chislenko smiled as he recognized the triumphant insolence behind the measured correctness.

‘We are most grateful,’ was all his reply. He didn’t grudge them their triumph. But once again he found himself wondering about the wisdom of the course he had set himself on.

But to turn back now was impossible. This information was official. When the written confirmation arrived, it would be on the record. He had to proceed, even though now he was beginning to guess where his progress would take him.

He picked up the telephone and asked to be put through to MVD Headquarters in Leningrad. The traditional rivalries between the two cities – Muscovites regarding natives of Leningrad as peasants and being regarded in their turn as barbarians – unfortunately extend even into official circles. Chislenko did not want to be messed about, so he cut through any potential delaying tactics with the sharpest instrument at his disposal.

‘This is an inquiry authorized by Comrade Secretary Serebrianikov of the Committee on Internal Morale and Propaganda,’ he declared baldly. Then after a pause to let the implications sink in, he made his request.

The promised return call came midway through the morning.

The Hotel Imperial no longer existed. Indeed it hadn’t really existed as the Hotel Imperial at all. Planned for completion at the end of 1914, its construction had been suspended at the outbreak of the war and it wasn’t actually finished till 1922. It occurred to someone shortly afterwards that Imperial was perhaps not the most suitable name for this revolutionary city’s most modern hotel, and the name was changed about the same time as Petrograd became Leningrad. It must have seemed a name for all time when they decided to christen it after the Father of the great Red Army and re-named it the L.D. Trotsky Building. The name survived Trotsky’s expulsion from the Party in 1927 – rehabilitation perhaps still seeming possible – but not his exile two years later, when it was rechristened, uncontroversially, the May Day Centre. During all these vicissitudes it was used as an administration and accommodation centre for visiting officials and delegations from all over the country. Moscow might be the official capital, but Leningrad was, and would always be, the historical centre of the great revolutionary movement …

Chislenko interrupted the threatened commercial brusquely. ‘And what happened to the place, whatever you call it, in the end?’

‘It was hit by German shells in 1943,’ came the reply in a rather hurt tone of voice.

‘Hit? You mean destroyed?’

‘It was rendered unusable, that’s what the records say.’

‘And it was never reconstructed as such.’

‘No, Comrade. That area of the city, like many others, was cleared and totally rebuilt in the great post-war reconstruction programme.’

‘Is there in the records a list of those who were in charge of that particular site in the clearance stage of the reconstruction programme?’

For the first time the MVD man in Leningrad let a hint of impatience sound in his voice.

‘We’ve no list as such, but I suppose I could go through the minutes and progress reports and see which names turn up.’

‘That would be kind. The Comrade Secretary would, I am sure, appreciate that,’ said Chislenko.

The names were soon forthcoming. In fact it wasn’t too long a list, and one name dominated the rest. Clearly this was the man on the ground who was in direct control of the day-to-day work.

Chislenko noted it without comment. He’d already written it down on his jotter with a large question-mark next to it. Now he crossed out the question-mark.

The name was Mikhail Osjanin.

6

That evening in Natasha’s apartment with the radio turned up high just in case he was right about KGB bugs, he told the girl about the two reports he had left in the Procurator’s office that afternoon.

One of them had been long and very detailed. This was the one which showed there was no possible historical basis for a ghost, then went on to give the new and revised accounts of events from Natasha, her mother, and Rudakov, ending with the conclusion that a combination of heat, fatigue, stale air and a little restorative alcohol had combined to make Josif Muntjan hallucinate so strongly that his hysteria had communicated itself to those around.

Chislenko then declared boldly that he could find no evidence of subversive intent and recommended that Muntjan should undergo a medical examination to test if he were fit for his job. If, as seemed likely, he failed this, he should then be pensioned off to be looked after by his niece who happened to be the supervisor’s wife.

Natasha whistled.

‘That’s bold of you, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes. You could just have tossed him and the supervisor to the wolves, couldn’t you?’

‘Don’t think that I wasn’t going to do it,’ said Chislenko drily.

Then he told her about the second report.

It had been very short.

In it he said that it appeared that the lifts in the Gorodok Building had been manufactured in Chemnitz, Germany, in 1914 for the Hotel Imperial in St Petersburg. This building had been damaged in 1943 and the site had been cleared in 1945 under the supervision of M.R.S. Osjanin.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Natasha.

‘You would if you could see the photostat documents accompanying the other report. The full history of the Gorodok Building’s there. Plans, costing; material and machines; purchase, delivery; everything. All authorized and authenticated by the project director, who has since risen to the rank of Controller of Public Works, one Mikhail Osjanin.’

Natasha digested this.

‘You mean Osjanin was on the fiddle?’

‘Possibly,’ said Chislenko.

‘But a couple of lifts … how much would they cost, by the way?’

‘I forget the exact costing, but a lot of roubles,’ said Chislenko. ‘The point is, of course, how much else was there?’

‘Sorry?’

‘How much other material cannibalized from demolition sites and officially written off did Osjanin and his accomplices recycle into the reconstruction programme? And what else has he been up to? A fiddler rarely sticks to one fiddle!’

Natasha studied him earnestly.

‘This is dangerous, isn’t it?’ she said softly.

‘Could be. That’s why I’ve put these reports in separately. By itself the second one is pretty meaningless. I even left the old names in – Chemnitz, St Petersburg, the Hotel Imperial. You could drop it in a filing cabinet and no one would look at it for a hundred years. But set it beside the documents on the Gorodok Building attached to the other …’

‘I see. You make no accusations, draw no conclusions. That’s for someone else.’

She sounded accusing.

‘Right,’ he said.

‘And will conclusions he drawn?’

‘Osjanin’s a youngish man, mid-fifties. Rumour has it he feels ready for even higher things. It all depends whether Oscar Bunin, my MVD Minister, sees him as an ally or a threat. If he’s a threat, then Bunin will almost certainly set Serebrianikov on him.’

‘Otherwise he’ll get away scot-free?’ said Natasha indignantly.

‘Certainly,’ smiled Chislenko. ‘But, at least, giving the Comrade Secretary that has put me in credit enough to dare recommend that poor old Josif Muntjan gets let down lightly.’

She thought about this for a moment, then leaned forward and kissed him.

‘You’re a nice man, Lev Chislenko,’ she said.

‘No, I’m not,’ he said bluntly. ‘I’m a policeman.’

‘Yes, you’re that too. I’ve been wondering about that. You shouldn’t be telling me all this, should you? Why are you doing it?’

He took a deep breath.

‘Because I’m in love with you,’ he said. ‘Because I’ve nothing to give except what I am, (which I’m not ashamed of, by the way) and that means telling you things you shouldn’t hear, telling you things you won’t want to hear. It’s called trust, I believe.’

She sat very still, then said, ‘You’re taking a hell of a risk, you know that?’

His face lit up with a kind of delight.

‘Yes. I know that.’

‘Suppose I can’t love you?’

‘I could persecute you.’

‘I could blackmail you.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

She leaned forward and kissed him again. He tried to take her in his arms but she drew back.

‘You’re not related to the Chislenko who used to play for Dynamo, are you?’ she asked.

‘No, I’m not,’ he said.

‘Good. I hate football,’ she said leaning towards him once more.

The wireless was still blaring when he woke up in the middle of the night. It was dark and Natasha was warm beside him under the coarse linen sheet. She was awake.

‘Lev,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘I was thinking.’

‘Yes.’

‘All that stuff about there being no one for that man to be a ghost of. Because no one had died in the Gorodok Building since it was erected.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s not true now, is it? I mean, if the lift was made as far back as 1914, anything could have happened in it, couldn’t it? And those old-fashioned clothes he was wearing, they would make sense now. Have you thought of that?’

He didn’t tell her, yes, of course I’ve thought of all that, because no one loves a know-it-all policeman, and he desperately wanted this girl to love him. Instead he turned towards her and began kissing her breasts and after a while had the satisfaction of knowing he’d put all thoughts of the strange events in the south lift of the Gorodok Building out of her mind.

Putting it out of his own mind in any permanent sense proved much more difficult.

Every instinct told him that his wisest policy was now to shun the whole affair completely. If Serebrianikov and Bunin decided that nothing should be done about Osjanin, then it would be very silly to let himself be discovered apparently still paddling in these muddied waters. Particularly as his only excuse could be that he was still hunting for a ghost!

What he wanted to do was contact Leningrad again, or better still to go there, but there was no way he could hope to conceal even a simple telephone call, let alone a journey. So he compromised by paying yet another visit to the Records Office.

‘Hello, Comrade Inspector,’ said Karamzin, the clerk, with a simpering smile of welcome. ‘Do we want to rifle my records again?’

Good Lord! thought Chislenko. Can it be that the vain little bastard’s beginning to imagine my frequent visits have got something to do with him!

He said, ‘Is this really a Central records office? I mean, do you have records of other buildings – in Leningrad, say?’

‘Oh yes,’ said the clerk confidently, then modified his certainty to, ‘At least, some of them. As long as it’s post-war, that is.’

‘This would be pre-war,’ said Chislenko.

‘A public building?’

‘A hotel that was taken over by the State, more or less,’ said Chislenko. ‘So in a sense it was a public building.’

‘What year?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Chislenko. ‘It’s the Hotel Imperial, to start with. Then it becomes the L.D. Trotsky Building, and it ends up as the May Day Centre.’

The clerk left the room rolling his eyes as if to say, if all he wants is my conversation, why does he have to invent such bloody inconvenient excuses? He was away for thirty dusty minutes, but his face was triumphant beneath the smudges when he returned.

‘Here’s something,’ he said. ‘It’s not much, but at least it shows we’re willing.’

He simpered again.

Chislenko ignored him and studied the musty file. Basically it was a record of maintenance expenses. Once the Imperial became the property of the State, it was State money that was required to replace broken windows, make good storm damage, renovate the heating system. Once again, he blessed the bureaucrats. His practised eye quickly scanned the sheets. There was nothing of interest till he reached 1934.

And there it was, July 1934, a sum of money, and typed alongside it, repair to lift.

‘Thanks,’ he said to the clerk. ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘My pleasure,’ said the clerk to the policeman’s rapidly retreating back. ‘Entirely, it seems.’

Now one thing remained to do. Again, a telephone call to his MVD colleagues in Leningrad would probably have been the quickest way, but the same objection remained as before. So instead he took a calculated risk and drove down Leningradsky Prospekt till he reached Pravda Street, where the offices of the great newspaper of the same name were situated.

His application to examine copies of the paper for July 1934 was greeted with the bored resentment which is the Muscovite’s conditioned response to almost any request for help or information, but at least he was not required to produce any authorization other than his MVD card.

Seated at a rough wooden table, he began his search.

His first discovery was that in 1934 the thirteenth of July had also fallen on a Friday.

He found the report he was looking for printed three days later. Probably in the impatient West it would have been in the very next edition, but wise Mother Russia always takes time to weigh carefully what her children may safely be told, what is best kept from them.

This was a small report, easily missed. It merely stated a man had been killed in an unfortunate accident at the May Day Centre on July 13th. For some reason the lift had jammed between the ninth and tenth floors, but the indicator had continued to function. Thinking the lift had arrived, the accident victim had opened the outer door on the seventh floor and stepped into the shaft before he realized his error. The lift had then started to function again and medical evidence was not clear whether the fall had killed him or whether the descending lift had crushed him to death in the basement.

Chislenko swallowed hard. But it was not just the ghastliness of the story which twisted his stomach. It was the man’s name.

He was a rising light in the Leningrad Party, a valued friend and associate of the famous Sergei Kirov.

His name was Fyodor Bunin.

Chislenko called for the man in charge of the archives.

‘Do you have a copy of the Encyclopædia of Historical Biography?’ he asked.

The man looked as if he’d have liked to deny this, or at least to say that it was nothing to do with him if they’d got one or not. But something in Chislenko’s expression made him reply with only token surliness, ‘I expect so,’ and go and fetch it.

It was the latest edition, though there was nothing to show that there had been previous editions. Anyone who had a full set would be able to chart all the ebbs and flows of the great power struggles which had shaken the State since its inception nearly seventy years before. But as private ownership of the work was forbidden by edict, private owners were few and far between.

Chislenko thumbed through the bulky tome till he found Bunin. It was a sign of something, he didn’t know what, that Bunin the novelist and Nobel Prize Winner, who chose to live in Paris after the Revolution, actually merited a few lines. This contrasted with a page and a half on Boris Bunin, Head of the MVD, the Ministry of the Interior. His star was clearly in the ascendant, so much so that its light had spilled over to illuminate the brief life and minor eminence of his elder brother, Fyodor, whose promising career had been nipped off by a tragic accident.

According to the Encyclopædia, in the atmosphere of growing distrust in the early ’thirties between Stalin and his powerful henchmen, Sergei Kirov, Party Leader in Leningrad, Fyodor Bunin’s voice had been one of the few influences towards conciliation and compromise. Young though he was (only 25 at his death) he had the ear of both leaders and was widely regarded as one of tomorrow’s men. With his death any vague possibility of reconciliation between the opposing forces had disappeared, and a few months later Kirov’s assassination had signalled the beginning of the Great Terror.

Chislenko finished reading and closed the volume with a snap that made the archivist purse his lips in irritation. On his desk a telephone rang and the man glowered at Chislenko as if that too was his fault, but the Inspector did not notice.

Everything in this case seemed to lure him into greater peril. To be found pursuing a ghost as if he believed in it would do his career no good at all, but to offend the sensibility, as well as the sense, of his own MVD Minister by suggesting that this was the ghost of his own dearly beloved brother might well destroy it.

The best, the only thing to do was to tiptoe quietly away and never again mention the Leningrad accident.

‘Inspector!’

He realized the archivist was digging his finger into his shoulder as if he’d been trying to attract his attention for some while.

‘Yes?’

‘It is for you,’ said the archivist triumphantly.

He evidently meant the telephone.

Chislenko rose and went to it.

‘Chislenko,’ he said.

‘Kedin here. Look, you’d better get back, quick as you can. Serebrianikov’s in the Procurator’s office and he wants to see you.’

‘I’m on my way,’ said Chislenko. ‘Hold on though, Kedin …’

‘Yes?’

‘How did you know where to contact me?’

‘Serebrianikov said we would get you at the Pravda building. Why do you ask?’

Chislenko didn’t reply but gently replaced the receiver.

So much for all his precautions! He should have known from the start that men like Serebrianikov didn’t let their watchers go unwatched. What was perhaps more frightening was the arrogant casualness with which the man tweaked the thread to bring him back to hand.

He returned the papers and the Encyclopædia to the archivist’s desk and watched the man cross out his name. It felt like a symbolic act.

‘Chislenko,’ said the archivist. ‘Are you … ?’

‘No,’ said Chislenko. And went to meet his fate.

7

‘Well, here he is, the hero of the hour!’ proclaimed Serebrianikov. ‘Come in, sit down. You’ll take a drink with us? Procurator, a vodka for Lev. You won’t mind an old fogey like me calling you Lev, will you?’

Chislenko stood at the threshold, mouth agape, convinced he must be the victim of some hallucinatory nerve-gas. Serebrianikov, looking like the incarnation of old-world benevolence, clapped his hands together in glee and said, ‘I can see you’re too hard on your Inspectors, Kozlov. They’re not used to kind words in this office. Look at poor Lev here, not certain whether this is madness or mockery!’

Suddenly he became serious.

‘I’m a hard man myself, Lev, when the need arises. But I’ve always believed, merit should be acknowledged and rewarded. You’ve done well. We all think you’ve done well. The Minister is very impressed. He wants to see you personally. We’ll be off in a moment, but there’s time for that drink first.’

‘Comrade Bunin wants to see me?’ said Chislenko incredulously.

Kozlov thrust a large glassful of vodka into his hand, saying, ‘That’s right, er, Lev,’ (stumbling only slightly on the name). ‘He’s very pleased with the way we have handled this case.’

‘Yes, he is,’ said Serebrianikov a trifle sardonically. ‘You’ve done well too, Procurator, and your reward is still to come. But Lev’s the man of the moment. I give you Inspector Lev Chislenko!’

He raised his glass in salutation. Kozlov followed suit. Chislenko raised his in acknowledgement. Then in perfect unison the three men tossed the hot round spirit to the back of the throat, and because fifteen centilitres of straight vodka at that brief moment of initial epiglottal contact monopolizes all thought and feeling, for the first and probably the last time in their lives the trio felt and thought as one.

Then they were three again.

‘And now,’ said the old man, ‘we must not keep the Minister waiting.’

Chislenko had imagined he would be escorted to the Minister’s official chambers in the highest reaches of Petrovka, where his own minor rank did not permit him to penetrate. Instead, they went down to the street and climbed into an oldish but still luxurious Mercedes with a plain-clothes chauffeur.

‘You like the car?’ said Serebrianikov, noting his impressed glance. ‘My enemies say it is unpatriotic to use a German car, but I reply that historically it has always been the duty of the patriot to flaunt the trophies of victory.’

Chislenko, who knew a little about foreign cars through gently envious study of confiscated magazines, wondered what particular victory over the Germans Serebrianikov had won in the late ’sixties.

He said, ‘They make excellent machinery, the Germans.’

‘Yes. Cars. Guns. Lifts even. They build to last, as Comrade Osjanin realized. A very clever man, Comrade Osjanin.’

The compliment sounded genuine. Chislenko risked a direct question, though still keeping it as ambiguous as he could.

‘Is further action contemplated, Comrade Secretary?’

The old man smiled in acknowledgement of the easy route offered him to switch the subject from Osjanin, but replied, ‘Oh yes, Lev. But you will have guessed that this business of the lifts was probably not a unique aberration. There have been suspicions before. You have given us our first sound evidence and now we shall dig and dig. There is corruption here on a huge scale, I would guess. Many, many millions of State money must have been diverted into the Comrade Controller’s pocket, and the pockets of his accomplices. Perhaps you would like to help in the digging, would you, Lev?’

Chislenko must have looked so alarmed that Serebrianikov chuckled with glee.

‘What a cautious man you are! I like that; it is a good quality in an Inspector, caution. And discretion too. You have shown them both, Lev. Now you must show them again. Tell me, what did you discover in the Pravda records?’

Was he being invited to demonstrate his powers of caution and discretion? Or was this a time for openness? It occurred to him that he had no idea where the car was headed. Perhaps at the end of the journey two KGB thugs with guns and spades were waiting if he gave the wrong answers. Sudden terror squeezed his heart for a long moment.

‘Indigestion?’ said Serebrianikov. ‘It is my fault. Vodka in the morning, without some zakuski to chew on, is all right for tough old guts like mine, but you modern youngsters! Here, have a peppermint.’

The old man sounded genuinely concerned.

Chislenko took a mint. As he put it into his mouth, he wondered neurotically if perhaps it was drugged, then grew very angry with himself. These were silly fantasies. If anything, he was safer in this car than anywhere. In a sense, the car, he decided, was a time-capsule. Outside the car, all the old rules applied. But inside, it was truth-time. Serebrianikov had shown the way.

He took a deep breath and said, ‘I found out that the Minister’s brother, Fyodor Bunin, died in an accident in what was possibly the same lift on Friday, July 13th, 1934.’

‘Possibly?’

‘There were two lifts, Comrade Secretary. The records do not show whether the one in which the accident took place in Leningrad fifty years ago was used as the north or the south lift in the Gorodok Building.’

The old man nodded approvingly.

‘Good, good. You are using your intellect, Lev. Go on, go on.’

Go on where? wondered Chislenko. He found he was surprisingly eager to continue to impress the old man but his brain was groping in a fog of vague possibilities. He tried to focus on what he knew. Fyodor Bunin. The Encyclopædia