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

about military assistance. I like to think of their vice chairman wiping his arse on the latest Ukrainian wheat production statistics.’

He leaned forward and took another puff on his cigarette.

‘If Pravda is still printing all the sycophantic crap it was last time I bothered to read it then he’s probably got a picture of Comrade Beria printed on each of his yellow arse cheeks.’

Grachev whistled.

‘And you’re looking for a reason they put you in the camps? We’ve only been here five minutes and you’ve already said enough to earn yourself another ten years.’

Pugachev stifled a yawn.

‘One day they took me. I never knew why. Another day they released me. Ditto. There’s a little freedom in that, Sergeant, if a man understands it properly. I can misbehave and be arrested, sure. But I can also behave and be arrested just the same. So why worry? I should be dead by now anyway after sawing pine logs through ten Siberian winters. It’s minus fifty in the winter out there. Did you know that? A man can snap off his prick just trying to take a piss. In a place like that, a wise man looks for what protection he can get – and in the camps, that means joining the thieves.’

Pugachev stubbed out the remnants of his cigarette.

‘They arrested the model, too – just in case, I assume,’ he said. ‘As far as I know that hapless dwarf never made it back to the circus.’

He rapped his tin mug on the tabletop. The babushka looked up from behind her counter and nodded.

‘These two are paying,’ Pugachev told her.

He turned back to the militia officers.

‘You say you have some ink to show me?’

*

‘Interesting.’

Pugachev tapped the photograph that Grachev was holding up, the one of the priest. His nicotine-stained middle finger pointed to an area just below the shoulder.

‘A bunch of dots,’ said Rossel. ‘What’s so interesting?’

‘It means he’s been in solitary in a punishment block. Not just once. Each dot denotes a confinement. Ten marks, like this guy has got, means ten times.’

‘A troublemaker? Someone the guards and other inmates would remember?’ said Rossel.

Pugachev nodded.

‘A man would have to be a little crazy to put himself in harm’s way like that so often. Even I would pass on those odds.’

‘A boss, then?’ said Grachev. The thieves had their own code and their own hierarchy; in the gulag, bosses had as much power over life and death as the state.

‘No. There’s no tattoo that marks him out that way. And a boss doesn’t often get solitary. They get others to do the dirty work.’

‘What about this one? The coiled serpent?’ asked Rossel.

Pugachev took the photograph with one hand and peered closer. He prodded a finger of the other against the snake above the man’s right nipple.

‘It’s nicely done. But lots of prisoners have those,’ he said. ‘It could be drugs. Or it simply expresses polite surprise at being so often ill used by our glorious Soviet state.’

He pointed at the red reaper holding the hammer and sickle.

‘This one is unusual, though. I’ve seen plenty of reapers but not one that is holding a hammer and sickle before. And not on the shoulder. Or red. Never red. Gulag inkings are rarely coloured as the ink is made in the camps and it’s too difficult to get the pigments.’

‘How do you make the ink in the camps?’ asked Rossel.

‘Ashes, burnt tyre, soot, mixed in with a mug of urine. Lasts a lifetime,’ said Pugachev.

Grachev yawned.

‘This is going nowhere, Rossel. We’ve been here for half an hour already. I’m going outside – my bladder’s about to burst. When I come back, I suggest we take Comrade Pugachev back to Vosstaniya Street and get him to confess to something.’

‘Confess to what?’ asked Pugachev. The green eyes that stared up at Grachev contained not a single note of apprehension.

Grachev shrugged and pushed his way past a couple of customers towards the shack’s front door.

‘He’s an angry man, your colleague,’ said Pugachev. ‘I remember you are a little more on the patient side, Lieutenant? Patient enough to send the occasional symbol of your appreciation my way as compensation for violating the thieves’ code.’

Rossel was already handing him half a dozen notes. Traditional thieves claimed to shun all contact with the state, scorning anyone who cooperated with the state. Occasionally, however, it was deemed worth bending the rules in order to have a line to a militia officer. As long as he left them largely alone.

‘If you have anything else to tell me, I’ll listen,’ said Rossel.

Pugachev leafed through the photographs, straining to pick out details in the dim orange light. Behind him one of the other drinkers slumped forward off his chair and onto the floor. The babushka tutted.

The rest of the priest’s flesh was a confused whorl of cupolas, angels and saints at prayer. Pugachev frowned as he traced them with a finger. ‘There’s something not right,’ he said.

Rossel waited as the thief continued tracing. Grachev reappeared. ‘Right. Are we going to arrest this arsehole or what?’ he said. ‘This is a joke. This prick is wasting our time.’

His voice trailed away. Pugachev had pulled his shirt and sweater off in one movement.

The glow from the light bulb dangling at one end of the shack, barely augmented by the sputtering brazier, was weak but it was enough. Pugachev stood before them, covered in black markings.

‘This one,’ he said, pointing. ‘A tsarist medal. I got it for beating up a guard. It was my first tattoo. It signified my acceptance into the thieves’ law. These – the devil’s head. Says fuck you to the system. The sword and shield – loyalty to my boss, while the burning book is the life I left behind. All symbols of a thief who lives by the thieves’ law. I’ve got more, but’ – he nodded in the direction of the babushka – ‘there’s a lady present.’

Pugachev replaced his shirt and poked at the photographs the two cops had brought with them.

‘Your man, he