A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

Street, his heart beating like a racehorse, Dima running ahead. Rounding the corner they saw a gallery of men in formal dress and varying states of intoxication leaving the building, pushing their way towards their carriages as quickly as possible. Men with money. No blood on any of them. None of the gendarmes was doing anything.

      Right in front of him there was an angry shriek and Ryzhkov saw a young woman being pulled away from the gate. She was strong and she fought her way down the steps and out to where the men were trying to escape. There was the crack of a whip and a carriage bolted away in front of her; at the last moment someone jerked her out of the path of the wheels and she stumbled and fell into the gutter.

      She got up. ‘No, no…no!’ Slapped her way free of the gendarmes, and started running down the pavement towards the lane. ‘Murder!’ she called with her face lifted to the high windows of the building. And then the police were upon her, wrenching her arm back so that her face contorted in pain.

      On the entrance stairs a uniformed officer from the Life Guards was in conversation with a clutch of police. He was laughing, his hand extended to offer the overawed policemen cigarettes from his silver case. The madam of the house was there on his arm, her dazzling red hair piled up with feathers, a beaded dress with a décolletage that provided an easy view of her ample bosom. She was smiling through it all as she wished everyone goodnight.

      Behind them Ryzhkov saw Hokhodiev and Dudenko pushing Rasputin out of the foyer towards the street. A little mob of aristocrats were jammed up there, all patting each other on the back and moaning their goodbyes.

      ‘Let them through!’ Ryzhkov growled at a gendarme sergeant who was smiling and bowing and apologizing for the situation. The man’s eyes suddenly went wide with fear and he backed up two steps when Ryzhkov held up his disc. Suddenly the knot of pleasure-seekers parted and Rasputin was right in front of him.

      ‘Unfortunately, we must be leaving, Holy One,’ Ryzhkov said, trying to take the sarcasm out of his voice as he reached out and grabbed Rasputin by his satin shirt. The man smelled of tobacco, body odour, and lavender perfume.

      ‘But, I thought we were here for the music?’ Rasputin was saying to the woman behind him. Ryzhkov had Rasputin by the shoulder and steered him down the steps towards his carriage. There was an enthusiastic chorus of goodbyes and blessings for a safe journey. The guards officer watched them go, smiling faintly.

      ‘What happened in there, Holy One?’ Ryzhkov asked Rasputin.

      ‘I don’t know. We haven’t even started and boom it’s all for nothing.’ He seemed genuinely perplexed by the whole thing. Hokhodiev looked over at Ryzhkov and shrugged. ‘But there’s always another party going on somewhere. Who knows? It’s probably for the best, eh?’ Rasputin said.

      ‘Perhaps, Holy One. Go, now…’ They pushed Rasputin into his carriage and the driver flicked his whip. Around them the policemen were helping the guests on their way. He and Hokhodiev stood there for a moment, looking down at the end of the building, both of them thinking about the girl. He didn’t want to go back down there.

      ‘Whoever did it has had lots of time to get out,’ Hokhodiev said quietly.

      ‘Yeah, yeah…’ Ryzhkov took a sharp breath, shook himself like a dog. His fingers had cramped around the knife he carried in his trouser pocket.

      ‘But Blue Shirt certainly was under control. I found him at the table, just like a gentleman.’

      ‘He has a sixth sense.’

      ‘Exactly, he can sniff trouble. He knows, I’m telling you…’ Hokhodiev frowned, put a big hand on Ryzhkov’s shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked cautiously.

      ‘Yes…’ he said, but he wasn’t and they both knew it. A St Petersburg police officer was a few paces away and Ryzhkov walked over, flashed his disc. ‘Hey, who owns this place?’ The lieutenant shrugged, gave a thin smile and pointed to the sign over the portico. ‘Well, this isn’t a book factory, there’s obviously some kind of apartments up there. What about those?’

      The lieutenant was still smiling. ‘Yes, a Finnish gentleman has leased the entire building. Unfortunately, he’s not on the premises. Tonight appears to be a private party, some friends of his.’ The young officer shrugged. He wasn’t going to give Ryzhkov much help no matter what service he was from.

      ‘Hey, who’s paying you off, pal?’ Hokhodiev stepped forward to intimidate the gendarme, but the lieutenant didn’t budge.

      ‘It’s a suicide, from what I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘Some little vertika tail-twister jumped out of one of the windows around the corner.’ They all looked down to the lane. ‘It happens more and more,’ the lieutenant said with a sad smile.

      Suicide. Ryzhkov thought about it for a moment, tried to put it together with what he had seen in the lane. Maybe suicide was becoming fashionable, but he hadn’t realized that children were doing it. The whole thing was a lie, transparent as the dead girl’s dress. He turned and looked at the officer for a moment, gave him a smile of his own. ‘Sleep tight, little fellow,’ he said and walked back towards the alley.

      The gendarmes backed away as soon as they rounded the corner.

      Ryzhkov stood there, a little unsteady, looking down at the girl, memorizing it all. Maybe he had been thinking she’d wake up, or move, or say something. Maybe he’d been thinking that he could heal her somehow. He looked up to the opened windows on the top floor. There was still gramophone music playing up there, crazy, jangling ‘negro music’ that filled the street.

      ‘Ah…if we hurry, we can catch up with Blue Shirt…’ Hokhodiev said gently. Dudenko only shrugged.

      ‘Pyotr, she’s gone, and we have to go too,’ Hokhodiev said.

      ‘Yes,’ Ryzhkov said finally, backing away so that the attendants could free her from the pavement and roll her on to the stretcher.

      A crowd had formed now; neighbourhood residents who had heard the commotion and had rushed to their windows, then thrown on their robes and come out on to the street. As they headed back through the crush he saw officers from both the Preobrazhensky and the Grenadier Guards regiments, and what he supposed were uniforms of at least two foreign countries. There was even a pair of court pages there, boys not yet grown into men, who strode away nervously, heading towards the busy intersection of Sadovaya Street.

      ‘Excuse me, sir –’ A nervous gendarme rushed towards the gates where several women were being briskly escorted off the property. Ryzhkov saw the same angry one among them.

      ‘There you have it, Pyotr,’ Hokhodiev mused. ‘An entire flock of whores, judging by the feathers…’ Six or seven of them, pulling on their brightly coloured robes, being rushed out of the building before they had time to finish dressing, hair undone, clutching their bags.

      Ryzhkov saw that the angry one had fallen behind the others; she was spent now. No longer screaming about murder, just standing there alone. Hat jammed down over her head, clutching her bag across her breast, just staring down towards where the ambulance attendants were doing their work. He thought he could see her lips moving, talking to herself.

      ‘Are we ready, now? Have we done our careers enough damage now?’ Hokhodiev said, trying to make it all go away, trying to turn it into a joke.

      ‘Yes…why not?’ Ryzhkov said.

      ‘Good, while we all still have jobs, eh?’ Hokhodiev steered him out of the lane. Ahead of them Ryzhkov saw their cab drawn up at the corner by the teahouse.

      It was a scruffy place, there was no sign above the shop, just a long arc of painted flames that spanned the width of the establishment. Muta was sitting there pretending to be calm, taking a pull from his pipe. The ejected prostitutes had gathered at the door and were talking with some of the customers and angrily pointing back to the bindery.

      Hokhodiev pulled him across the cobblestones to avoid his being trampled as an expensive carriage