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

He sets up by the lake in early 1949, starts attracting followers that summer – although the local police say they drifted away when the weather turned cold. But he himself stays all the way through the winter. Who knows who visits him or how he survives? But he is there in the spring. Then the body turns up. More acolytes arrive and then – gone. Father Tikhon disappears in June this year, just when the days are long and the opportunities for deluded souls to enjoy themselves in the countryside are at their peak. Why should he have disappeared then?’

Rossel took up position, right behind Grachev’s chair. The sergeant didn’t move a muscle.

‘Assuming the archimandrite was telling the truth, Father Tikhon had an obsession with the consumption of flesh. He starts fantasising at the monastery about perverting the communion process and does so, initially, by allowing the blessed host to moulder and then consuming it. But that is not enough for him. The incident with the novice shows a progression of his thinking – he now wishes to consume a Eucharist made of human flesh. So, when he is expelled from the monastery, he goes out to Nevsky’s Pillow and puts his plans into action. The simpleton is, perhaps, the first of his victims. Then finally, like a dark Moses, he leads his followers out to the railway line and disposes of them in some way.’

Spoken aloud, the theory sounded even more far-fetched than it had in his mind. But he remembered the novice who shared a cell with Tikhon. The young monk’s fear had been genuine.

Grachev snorted.

‘Now you are thinking like Taneyev. Unless this Tikhon was a real devil, there’s no way he killed himself. Not with those injuries.’

Lipukhin sighed again.

‘Grachev is right, Revol. A man cannot cut off his own face somewhere else and then travel to the railway lines and lie down next to his victims.’

‘Then he gets a loyal acolyte to kill him, carve him up, and disappear,’ said Rossel, taking his hands off Grachev’s chair. ‘But it’s not that which bothers me.’ He leaned across the desk and picked up Nadya’s file.

‘I knew her. She wasn’t the kind to get involved in an occult death cult. Little Nadya was all about the real world and how to make her way in it. There is one link. The archimandrite said that Father Tikhon had a passion for religious music. That he actually cried during vespers. Music connects Father Tikhon and little Nadya, perhaps. But what else?’

‘Connects them how?’ said Grachev. ‘She was a clarinet player who packed it in after the Chekists recruited her as an informer at the Kirov Theatre, posing as an assistant to one of the Soviet Union’s leading opera singers. All we know about the monk and his music is that his eyes got a little wet when the choir sang hallelujah. That’s not much to hang a case on. How are we going to get our confession for Sarkisov and the MGB? By rounding up all the monks in the choir at Pskov and getting them to say they were all screwing the fat clarinettist? That she sucked Father Tikhon’s cock so hard he was smiling so wide his face split in two? I don’t think so. A death cult, on the other hand, the MGB might buy that. But first, we’re going to need to find someone to give us a confession.’

Rossel dropped the file back on the middle of the desk.

‘Someone like who? Confessing to what?’

Grachev could not hold back a smirk. ‘I’ve got someone in mind.’

Rossel sat back down on his seat and moved it a little to the left so as to close the gap between him and the chairs that Grachev and Taneyev were sitting on. He reached out and gently patted Taneyev on the back. Then he leaned in towards Grachev. His voice became soft and cajoling.

‘Who is it – Pavel Konstantinovich? Aren’t you going to share the mysterious name with me?’

Taneyev’s cheeks flushed. Grachev, refusing to take the bait, turned his face away from Rossel’s, and addressed Lipukhin.

‘Can I have a word, boss?’

Lipukhin shrugged.

‘About what?’

Grachev stood up and picked his cap off the table. He glanced contemptuously down at Rossel. Then turned back towards the captain.

‘In private.’

19

Lipukhin’s communal apartment was in Pulkovo, near the city’s Shosseynaya Airport. He had moved there when his marriage broke up. His parents and two of his three sisters died in the siege – a direct hit from a German bomb. The other sister, a doctor, had survived and lived here with him. Rossel had been to the place once before when he and the captain had gone to a football match together about five years ago. Zenit had beaten Traktor Stalingrad 1–0. Lipukhin celebrated a little too much afterwards, ended up puking in the gutter and Rossel had had to help him back to his apartment. Zenit had been playing today, as it happened, away to Daugava Riga. Rossel had heard on the radio that they lost 2–0.

It was dark by the time he arrived. He knocked on the captain’s door. There was no answer. Another rap. Still nothing. Then he heard the shuffle of feet and the clank of several locks. The door opened an inch or so and a child’s face appeared in the crack. A little girl with blonde hair. It was Darya, Lipukhin’s seven-year-old niece.

‘My name’s Revol, Darya. Do you remember me? I work with your uncle. Is he here?’

She nodded.

‘Mama’s at the hospital,’ she said. ‘Uncle Ilya is looking after me but he fell asleep.’

‘Can I come in?’

The girl opened the door to let him pass.

‘Uncle Ilya threw a bottle at the mantelpiece and it smashed into a lot of pieces. He’s done it before. Mama won’t be happy when she gets back.’

*

Shaken awake, Lipukhin sat on a small couch in the shared room, looking even more puffy-faced than usual. His hair was out of place and his clothes