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

very bourgeois sentiment. Many important Party members have purchased items from that shop. She sought to blackmail them with fabricated information. The jeweller, Djilas, had agreed to be her accomplice in exchange for her overlooking some of his less official business activities. The man was a black-marketeer. It took a little time but, eventually, he confessed as much. We suspect others were involved. We will soon discover just how far this plot spreads.’

Rossel was about to protest Gerashvili’s innocence again but before he could, Lipukhin leaned forward.

‘In your phone call, you said this was a matter related to the murders, Comrade Colonel. How so?’

Sarkisov picked up his briefcase and stood.

‘Treachery, of course. If Lieutenant Rossel’s vigilance is anything to go by, you have all been keeping a close eye on the newspapers. Both these murders and Gerashvili’s jewellery scheme are the work of agitators and fifth columnists. How else could it be that acts of such depravity have taken place in the USSR? How could you have permitted it? This is not America, gentlemen, where due to the iniquitous exploitative social structures of capitalism people starve on the streets of New York, Chicago and Washington and, as a result, homicide is commonplace.’

He picked up his cap and put it back on. There was a plastic paperweight on Lipukhin’s desk. A present his sister had bought him from a seaside holiday in Khosta on the Black Sea. It had a white sailing ship sealed inside it and Sailing Club of Khosta was written on its base.

Sarkisov pointed at the paperweight.

‘Complete dump, Khosta – I went there once for a military conference. Not a decent plate of food to be had in the whole town. Nothing to eat but ukha all week – they’d had a delivery of pike, and I hate pike. I couldn’t wait to get back to Leningrad.’

He picked up the paperweight with his left hand and then tossed it into the air, catching it with his right.

‘The coming celebrations in honour of the opening of the Road of Life are only a few weeks away. Leningrad will be welcoming many of the very highest-ranking members of the Party as honoured guests. Stalin himself, I am told by Comrade Beria, is anxious that all troublesome matters of law enforcement, state security and Soviet justice are cleared up long before then. I will give you a few more days, no more, to make some progress on this case, comrades. These spies and traitors – whoever you think may have committed these terrible crimes . . . Consult your own records and you may find, I’m sure, that some of your usual suspects may well be implicated. Well then, round them up, have them confess. A simple honest confession is, as you know, the key component of our unsurpassable Soviet justice system, so extract one. Solve the case and let us all move on. That is the message I have brought for you.’

Colonel Sarkisov tucked a small strand of his long hair under the rim of his bright blue cap. Then dropped the paperweight onto the desk.

‘Like I say, comrades, Khosta is a dump. But I can think of worse places. And so, I reckon, can you.’

*

As soon as Colonel Sarkisov left the building, it started.

‘You bastard,’ Grachev hissed at him. ‘I always knew you were suspect. Denounced, interrogated, sent to die, and you would have done us a favour if you’d blown your fucking brains out. And now this. You stuck-up, kulak scum.’

The words were out – Grachev knew words, said loud enough, were all it took to daub you from head to foot in treachery. It was another name Grachev had for Rossel – ‘our kulak lieutenant’. A landowner, oppressor, exploiter. A whispered insult. But not whispered today. A class enemy because he could walk upright, read books and deal with prostitutes without raping them, which in Grachev’s world was beyond comprehension.

The sergeant wasn’t finished.

‘First, you send Gerashvili to do a man’s job and bring the blue-hats down on our heads and then, when they turn up – an MGB major from Beria’s office, fuck your mother – you give them some lip, when we – all of us – are the ones who will pay. It turns out you knew one of the victims, which is a nice detail, and one I’m sure the MGB will make hay with once we’re all nailed to the floor of the Bolshoi Dom. Just who do you think you are?’

Lipukhin, standing next to his desk, watched, crouched, ready to step between them. Taneyev just watched. It was the most prudent thing to do.

Grachev and Rossel were eyeball to eyeball now. Rossel took a fractional step backward. Grachev leered, sensing surrender, and followed, pushing his face into Rossel’s. Nothing, he believed, could stop Senior Sergeant Grachev, who had fought a path from the burning craters of Stalingrad right the way to the Reichstag and would have had the skulls of dead Germans dangling from his backpack if there had been room to buckle them all on. The keeper of his own legend, Grachev had spun enough tales of wartime heroism for every junior in the station to hold his combat skills in awe. Some of the rougher ones over the years had worshipped him, emulating with enthusiasm his ways of extracting compliance from men and women in the cells. He’d had his factions, had Grachev. At times they’d bordered on insurgency. Nothing could topple him.

Especially not this musical cripple with his missing fingers and poncey manners.

Grachev pushed his face into Rossel’s. Swung his fist. The lieutenant stepped nimbly to one side, dodged the blow, and hit him.

Now the sergeant rasped in earnest, his grey teeth bared and his eyes wide, but his left knee had buckled for a split second.

Then the right fist followed up.

Grachev staggered but kept to his feet.

Say it again, thought Rossel, staring him down. Say it, he whispered inside his head, enraged by Grachev’s contempt.

‘Say it again,’ he shouted.

The sergeant’s