City of Ghosts by Ben Creed (most important books of all time txt) 📕

did them like that. As though the pathologist occasionally came back to the morgue at midnight and dipped her buffed cuticles in fresh blood.

She stood on one side of the slab, Rossel on the other. In between them was Body Number Five, the fifth one in the line of the dead. The blue-top. The other four lay at the far end of the room.

The flesh of the woman’s thighs had thawed a little, giving her legs a more recognisable shape. Somehow, she looked a little more human, he thought – a little more feminine. Even though it was hours since they’d found her and her four companions on the railway line, the woman looked slightly better. As if, despite the unfortunate inconvenience of missing a face, being dead suited her.

‘Report to you, or to state security?’

‘To me first. Then, of course, I will relay your findings to the appropriate authorities.’

Dr Volkova had dark, well-cut hair that framed sharp, curious blue eyes. She liked to joust with Rossel. She had also made a pass at him once. More than once, in fact. But there was none of that in the air today.

‘How did she die?’ he asked.

‘Answering that question will require patience,’ said Dr Volkova. ‘It takes several days for a body to thaw properly if it has frozen solid, and until then I would only be speculating. Those dark red patches on the knees and elbows are typical of prolonged exposure. She was not shot or stabbed. The removal of the face is crude – not a professional’s work – and one hopes she was already dead at that point. A heart attack or stroke is possible, but as there are another four bodies in a similar state to this one, that seems unlikely. Poisoning? Overdose? We will have to wait.’

The doctor looked pale. It took a lot to spook Volkova but five faceless corpses turning up in her mortuary at the same time seemed to have done the trick.

‘This is the only place I feel safe these days,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Here, with you, where I work.’

This was flattering and disturbing in equal measure. Me and these corpses, comforting Dr Volkova. But if the MGB did come for her as a suspect in the current Doctors’ Plot, the five bodies on the slabs would be able to defend her better than he could.

Rossel returned to the matter in hand.

‘Captain Lipukhin was of the opinion our murderer was a maniac,’ he said.

Dr Volkova’s lips quivered but she brought herself under control.

‘I would agree,’ she said.

‘Really? The killer was methodical, not mad.’

‘The teeth. I’m assuming they extracted them to prevent identification of the victim,’ said the pathologist. ‘The face, too, and the fingers or even entire hands. For those acts there might be a pragmatic motivation but the other mutilations – that is malice, pure and simple. Surely you must agree?’

‘Malice, yes. But malice allied to method,’ said Rossel. He looked again at the face. There was none of the neat musculature he had seen in Volkova’s books. Just a mess that looked like . . . He tried hard not to make comparisons.

‘Those bodies were placed with care on the railway line,’ he continued. He looked away again before speaking further. The light green walls and metal benches that lined them were scrubbed spotless. Like the morgue’s guests, everything was sanitised and lifeless. ‘We were meant to find them like that. Five bodies loaded into a truck of some sort. Then driven out to the middle of nowhere in a snowstorm. Arranged with care, feet together, heads turned, clothing arranged. It seems to me whoever did this was in complete control of their emotions. I had to visit the Leningrad Psychiatric Hospital once. A big Georgian with a vicious scar on his neck pointed at the sky and told me that the clouds above the golden domes of St Basil’s were all oysters and every raindrop was a pearl. No one like that is capable of planning something as considered as this.’

Dr Volkova took off her gloves and headed for the sink.

‘Almost all the homicides I see are the result of spontaneous violence. A man walks in on his wife and her lover. Thieves turn on thieves – over status, gambling, money, suspicions that someone is an informer. The killer is almost always a man, and often a man who has been drinking. To have more than one victim is unusual. And so, five frozen and faceless victims are perhaps not the work of a frenzied lunatic. But neither does it look like the work of state . . .’

She stopped herself. Then continued.

‘Of higher powers. Nor the habitual drunken thug, nor thieves. Whoever that leaves as the killer may have been in control of their emotions but nonetheless did not enjoy a close working relationship with sanity. Come back in a few days and we’ll know more.’

Rossel pointed at the naked body on the slab.

‘I’m a layman, of course, but she looks malnourished.’

‘She does.’

Volkova walked back across to the slab and dipped her nose towards where the corpse’s mouth used to be. She sniffed.

‘Nothing yet. Needs to thaw a little.’

‘What are you checking for?’

‘A faint whiff of pears, a sure sign of starvation. We saw so much of it during the siege we used to call it Eau de Bone.’

Rossel stared at the corpse.

‘So, your guess would be?’

Dr Volkova ran a sleeve over her forehead.

‘Yes, I suspect so, Lieutenant. Whoever did this, before they cut off her face, they half starved her to death as well.’

6

The tiny rubies bled a twinkling circle of pink light into the surrounding gloom as Junior Sergeant Lidia Gerashvili held up the two earrings a little higher so Rossel could see them better. Even in the dimly lit officers’ department, amid the thick curls of wood smoke from the logs in the grate, which could not escape the ancient and partially blocked chimneys, the gems still shimmered.

‘They do not match, Comrade Lieutenant,’