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

There’s a big flat granite outcrop near the lakeshore. The locals call it Nevsky’s Pillow because, some say, Alexander Nevsky slept on it when he came to Pskov. But I don’t think Father Tikhon was using it to sleep on.’

‘What then?’

The boy was shivering. Rossel wasn’t sure if it was from nerves or from the cold.

‘The archimandrite has tried to hush everything up. He’s worried that the Patriarch in Moscow will get to know. The Church has to keep the Party happy. A scandal like this, they’re already shutting some monasteries down again.’

‘A scandal?’

‘There’s a cave near Nevsky’s Pillow. Tikhon took up residence there when he left here. Then he got some followers – a few at first. Some foolish girls, a boy, a teenage simpleton from one of the farms near Pechory. But the rumours started almost straightaway.’

‘Tell me about those rumours.’

‘People said Tikhon was using the place as some kind of altar. The boy, the simpleton, was found dead by the lake shore. He had eaten some wolfsbane in the forest. It was terrible, the things the other novices said after his body was discovered.’

Rossel dropped his cigarette onto the snowy ground and stamped on it.

‘Go on.’

The novice sucked on his own cigarette and then blew out a sharp puff of smoke.

‘I wasn’t there, Lieutenant, so all I can tell you is what people said.’

‘Which was?’

‘When they found the body, he’d been dead for at least week. He had some small cuts on his belly. Missing pieces of skin and muscle. The talk was that Father Tikhon had blessed these trophies on his altar and then offered his remaining followers a perverse Eucharist made from human flesh.’

Rossel thought for a moment.

‘A dead body lying for a week like that in a wood would be disturbed by animals – wolves, foxes,’ he said. ‘The novices like to gossip, as you say. The archimandrite told me that. Your tale is a gory one, the kind people like to believe might be true. It appeals to their darker instincts. What makes you so certain there’s something in it?’

The novice took one last draw on his cigarette. Then dropped it onto the ground between their feet. The hot tip glowed in the dark and began to melt a little of the snow around it. He looked straight into Rossel’s eyes. His pupils were dilated with fear.

‘We shared a cell, he and I, like I said. One night I awoke with a start. There was an atmosphere in the room. A pulse of strange electricity. I turned around and Tikhon was sitting bolt upright on his bed, staring at me. His robe was pulled down and I could see some of his tattoos. One of them was of Death. His eyes were like two dark moons and filled with desire.’

‘So, he was a queer?’

The novice shook his head.

‘No, he wasn’t looking at me like that.’

‘What then?’

The boy pulled up the collar of his cassock around his neck.

‘As if I was a side of pork hanging in a butcher’s window.’

18

Monday October 22

The dark rings under Captain Lipukhin’s eyes put Rossel in mind of the giant panda that had arrived in Moscow a few weeks previously, a gift from the Maoists in China. There the similarity ended. The captain’s breath stank of stale tobacco and cheap vodka. Lipukhin sat on one side of his desk. Rossel, Grachev and Taneyev all sat on the other. Grachev and Taneyev had drawn their chairs together so there was a gap between them and Rossel. They were avoiding eye contact with him.

The thin official militia file on Father Tikhon, which included his missing person’s report, lay on the desk. A thicker file on Nadya, the MGB agent, was underneath it.

‘I assume you went out to this rock, Nevsky’s Pillow?’ the captain asked Rossel.

‘Of course.’

‘And?’

‘I contacted the local militia at Pskov and went out with them. We found little. The cave was empty, although there were signs of a campfire with some broken vodka bottles and empty tins of food around it. But nothing unusual, really, around the rock itself. All the members of this dark congregation of Tikhon’s – and no one seemed to have any idea how many there had been – had vanished. Probably several months ago.’

Taneyev leaned forward in his chair and addressed Lipukhin.

‘You think it could be them, then, Captain? Our five bodies, all members of this cult that this Father Tikhon had started. He persuades the others to travel to the forest outside Pechory, kills them, and dumps them on the tracks a few hundred kilometres away as some kind of crazy sacrifice.’

Grachev gave Taneyev a withering look.

‘Unlikely, don’t you think? Not unless he chopped his own face off afterwards and then lay down on the railway lines beside them.’

Lipukhin dropped a couple of aspirin into a glass of water and sighed.

‘What do you think, Revol? You are the one who went out to Pskov.’

Rossel pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘A death cult?’ he said. ‘I’m not sure. Tikhon had certainly scared the novice I talked to half to death. He looked like he would believe anything anyone told him about the things that were going on out at the cave. And then there was the case of the young lad who had died and been, so he said, partially eaten. I talked to the local militia about that, though, and they thought it more likely there were animal bites on his body. As for the wolfsbane, he wouldn’t be the first to eat the wrong root or plant in the forest and suffer the consequences. People talk. And from the foolish things they say, others make giant leaps of imagination which often turn out to be nonsense. That, at least, was my first thought.’

Lipukhin drank down the glass of water with the aspirin in one gulp. Then slammed it down on the desk.

‘But?’

Rossel’s tone was considered.

‘No one knows what happened to Father Tikhon after he left the area.