Special Assignments (37 page)

Then he drove to Bozhedomka. He called in to say hello to Zakhkarov, only it would have been better if he hadn't. The unsociable forensic specialist mumbled something unwelcoming and buried his nose in his papers. Grumov was not there.

Anisii also visited the watchman to find out about the grave-diggers. He didn't give the Ukrainian any explanations, and the watchman didn't ask any questions - he was a simple man, but he had a certain understanding and tact.

He went to see the gravediggers too, ostensibly to give them a rouble each as a reward for assisting the investigation.

He formed his own judgement about both of them. And that was it. It was time to go home and write out his list for the Chief.

When he finished the extensive document, it was already dark. He read it through, mentally picturing each person on it and trying to figure out if he fitted the role of a maniac or not.

The gendarme sergeant-major Siniukhin: an old trooper, a face of stone, eyes like tin - God only knew what he had in his soul.

Linkov. To look at, he wouldn't hurt a fly, but he made a very strange kind of constable. Morbid dreams, wounded pride, suppressed sensuality - there could be anything.

The gravedigger Tikhin Kulkov was an unpleasant character, with his haggard face and pockmarked jaw. What a face that man had - if you met someone like that in a deserted spot, he'd slit your throat without even blinking.

Stop! He'd slit your throat all right, but how could his gnarled and crooked hands manage a scalpel?

Anisii glanced at his list again and gasped. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and his throat went dry Ah, how could he have been so blind? Why hadn't he realised it before? It was as if his eyes had been blinded by a veil. It all fitted! There was only one person in the entire list who could be the Ripper!

He jumped to his feet and dashed off, just as he was, without his cap or his coat, to see the Chief.

Masa was the only person in the outhouse: Erast Petrovich was out and so was Angelina, praying in the church. Yes, of course, today was Good Friday: that was why the church bells were tolling so sadly - for the procession of the Holy Shroud.

Ah, such bad luck! And there was no time to lose! Today's inquiries at Bozhedomka had been a mistake - he must have guessed everything! But perhaps that was for the best? If he'd guessed, then he'd be feeling anxious now, making moves. He had to be tracked down! Friday was almost over; there was only one day left!

Only one consideration made him doubt the correctness of his inspiration, but there was a telephone in the house on Malaya Nikitskaya Street and that helped him resolve it. In the Meshchanskaya police district, which included Bozhedomka, Provincial Secretary Tulipov was well known and, despite the late hour, the reply to the question that was bothering him was given immediately.

The first thing Anisii felt was sharp disappointment: 31 October - that was too early. The last definite London killing had taken place on 9 November, so his theory didn't hold together. But today Tulipov's head was working quite remarkably well - if only it was always like this - and the catch was easily resolved.

Yes, the body of the prostitute Mary Jane Kelly had been discovered on the morning of 9 November, but by that time Jack the Ripper was already crossing the Channel! That killing, the most revolting of them all, could have been his farewell 'gift' to London, committed immediately before his departure for the continent. Anisii could check later to find out what time the night train left over there.

After that the whole thing simply fitted together by itself. If the Ripper left London on the evening of 8 November - that is, on 27 October in the Russian style - then he ought to have arrived in Moscow on precisely the thirty-first!

The mistake he and the Chief had made was that, when they checked the police passport offices, they had limited themselves to December and November and not taken the end of October into consideration. That accursed confusion of the two styles of date had thrown them off the track.

And that was it. The theory fitted down to the last jot and title.

He went back home for a moment: to put on something warm, get his 'Bulldog' and grab a quick bite of bread and cheese - there was no time to have a real supper.

While he was chewing, he listened to Palasha reading the Easter story from the newspaper to Sonya, syllable by syllable. The imbecile was listening intently, with her mouth half open. But who could tell if she really understood very much?

'In the provincial town of N,' Palasha read slowly, with feeling, last year on the eve of the glorious resurrection of Christ, a criminal escaped from the jail. He waited until all the townsfolk had gone to the churches for matins and crept into the apartment of a certain rich old woman who was respected by all, but who had not gone to the service because she was not well, in order to kill her and rob her.'

'Ooh!' said Sonya. My goodness, thought Anisii, she understands. And a year ago she wouldn't have understood a thing; she'd have just dozed off.

At the very moment when the murderer was about to rush at her with an axe in his hand' - the reader lowered her voice dramatically - 'the first stroke of the Easter bell rang out. Filled with an awareness of the solemn holiness of that moment, the old woman addressed the criminal with the Christian greeting: "Christ is arisen, my good man!" This appeal shook the sinner to the very depths of his soul; it illuminated for him the deep abyss into which he had fallen and worked a sudden moral renewal within him. After several moments of difficult internal struggle, he walked over to exchange an Easter kiss with the old woman and then, breaking into uncontrollable sobbing

Anisii never learned how the story ended, it was time for him to rush away.

About five minutes after he had dashed off at breakneck speed, there was a knock at the door.

'Oh that crazy man,' Palasha said with a sigh; 'he's probably forgotten his gun again.'

She opened the door and saw that it wasn't him. It was dark outside - she couldn't see the face, but he was taller than Anisii. A quiet, friendly voice said: 'Good evening, my dear. Look, I wish to bring you joy'

When the essential work had been completed - after the scene of the crime had been inspected, the bodies photographed and taken away, there was nothing left to do. And that was when Erast Petrovich began feeling really bad. The detectives had left and he was sitting alone in the small drawing room of Tulipov's modest apartment, gazing in a torpor at the blotches of blood on the cheerful bright-coloured wallpaper, and still he couldn't stop himself trembling. His head felt as empty as a drum.

An hour earlier Erast Petrovich had returned home and immediately sent Masa to fetch Tulipov. Masa had discovered the bloodbath.

At this moment Fandorin was not thinking of kind, affectionate Palasha, or even meek Sonya Tulipova, who had died a terrible death that could not possibly be justified by God or man. In the grief-stricken Erast Petrovich's head there was one short phrase hammering away over and over again: He won't survive this, he won't survive this, he won't survive this. There was no way that poor Tulipov could ever survive this shock. He would never see the nightmarish picture of the vicious mutilation of his sister's body, never see her round eyes opened wide in amazement; but he knew the Ripper's habits, and he would easily be able to imagine what Sonya's death had been like. And that would be the end of Anisii Tulipov, because no normal man could possibly survive something like that happening to people who were near and dear to him.

Erast Petrovich was in an unfamiliar state quite untypical of him: he could not think what to do.

Masa came in. Snuffling, he dragged in a rolled-up carpet and covered the terrible blotches on the floor, then he set about furiously scraping off the bloodstained wallpaper. That was right, the Collegiate Counsellor thought remotely, but it hardly did any good.

After a while Angelina also arrived. She put her hand on Erast Petrovich's shoulder and said: Anyone who dies a martyr's death on Good Friday will be in the Kingdom of Heaven, at the side of Christ.'

'That is no consolation to me,' Fandorin said in a dull voice, without turning his head. And it will hardly be any consolation to Anisii.'

But where was Anisii? It was already the middle of the night, and the boy hadn't slept a single wink last night. Masa said he'd called round without his cap, in a great hurry. He hadn't said anything or left a note.

It didn't matter: the later he turned up, the better.

Fandorin's head was absolutely empty. No surmises, no theories, no plans. A day of intensive work had produced very little. The questioning of the detectives who were keeping Nesvitskaya, Stenich and Burylin under surveillance, together with his own observations, had confirmed that, with a certain degree of cunning and adroitness, any one of the three could have slipped away and come back unnoticed by the police spies.

Nesvitskaya lived in a student hostel on Trubetskaya Street that had four exits or entrances, and the doors carried on banging until the dawn.

Following his nervous fit, Stenich was holed up in the Assuage My Sorrows clinic, to which the detectives had not been admitted. There was no way to check whether he had been sleeping or wandering round the city with a scalpel.

The situation with Burylin was even worse: his house was immense, with sixty windows on the ground floor, half of them concealed by the trees of the garden. The fence was low. It wasn't a house: it was a sieve, full of holes.

It turned out that any one of them could have killed Izhitsin. And the most terrible thing of all was that Erast Petrovich, convinced of the ineffectiveness of the surveillance, had cancelled it altogether. This evening the three suspects had had complete freedom of action!

'Don't despair, Erast Petrovich,' said Angelina. 'It's a mortal sin, and you especially have no right. Who else will find the killer, this Satan, if you just give up? There is no one apart from you.'

Satan, Fandorin thought listlessly. Ubiquitous, could be anywhere, anytime, slip in through any opening. Satan changed faces, adopted any appearance, even that of an angel.

An angel. Angelina.

Freed from the control of his torpid spirit, his brain, so accustomed to forming logical constructions, obligingly joined the links up to form a chain.

It could even be Angelina - why couldn't she be Jack the Ripper?

She had been in England the previous year. That was one.

On the evenings when all the killings had taken place, she had been in the church. Supposedly. That was two.

She was studying medicine in a charitable society and already knew how to do many things. They taught them anatomy there too. That was three.

She was an odd individual, not like other women. Sometimes she would give you a look that made your heart skip a beat -but you couldn't tell what she was thinking about at such moments. That was four.

Palasha would have opened the door for her without thinking twice. That was five.

Erast Petrovich shook his head in annoyance, stilling the idling wheels of his insistent logic machine. His heart absolutely refused to contemplate such a theory, and the Wise One had said: 'The noble man does not set the conclusions of reason above the voice of the heart.' The worst thing was that Angelina was right: apart from him there was no one else to stop the Ripper, and there was very little time left. Only tomorrow. Think, think.

But his attempts to concentrate on the case were frustrated by that stubborn phrase hammering in his head: He won't survive this, he won't survive this.

The time dragged on. The Collegiate Counsellor ruffled up his hair, sometimes began walking around the room, twice washed his hands and face with cold water. He tried to meditate, but immediately abandoned the attempt - it was quite impossible!

Angelina stood by the wall, holding her elbows in her hands, watching with a sad insistence in her huge grey eyes.

Masa was silent too. He sat on the floor with his legs folded together, his round face motionless, his thick eyelids half-closed.

But at dawn, when the street was wreathed in milky mist, there was the sound of hurrying feet on the porch, a determined shove made the unlocked door squeak open, and a gendarme officer came dashing into the room. It was Smolyaninov, a very capable, brisk young second lieutenant, with black eyes and rosy pink cheeks. 'Ah, this is where you are!' Smolyaninov said, glad to see Fandorin. 'Everybody's been looking for you. You weren't at home or in the department, or on Tverskaya Street! So I decided to come here, in case you were still at the scene of the murders. Disaster, Erast Petrovich! Tulipov has been wounded. Seriously. He was taken to the Mariinskaya Hospital after midnight. We've been looking for you ever since they informed us; just look how much time has gone by ... Lieutenant-Colonel Svershinsky went to the hospital immediately and all his adjutants were ordered to search for you. What's going on, eh, Erast Petrovich?'

Report by Provincial Secretary A. P. Tulipov Personal Assistant to Mr E.P. Fandorin Deputy for Special Assignments of His Excellency the Governor-General of Moscow

8 April 1889, half past three in the morning

I report to your Honour that yesterday evening, while compiling the list of individuals suspected of committing certain crimes of which you are aware, I realised that it was absolutely obvious that the crimes indicated could only have been committed by one person, to whit, the forensic medical expert Egor Willemovich Zakharov.

He is not simply a doctor, but an anatomical pathologist -that is, cutting out the internal organs from human bodies is his standard, everyday work. That is one.

Constant association with corpses could have induced in him an insuperable revulsion for the whole human race, or else, on the contrary, a perverted adoration of the physiological arrangement of the human organism. That is two.