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

Kilometre, where I was generally agreed to be King Wolf. Pretty boy he was, so I had him trussed up like a tutu-wearing ballerina and fed him to the camp faggots. First they fucked his arsehole into a mush, then slit his throat. Nasty business. You are very pretty too, cop.’

Kerselidze lifted the little barber’s fez, planted a big sloppy kiss on his bald skull and then popped the hat back down again.

‘Loma, here, used to be a kozyol back in the days of his youth. Isn’t that right, Loma? Until Gubaz found him.’

A kozyol was a prisoner who got singled out as a weakling and passed around for general sexual gratification. Loma reached up and straightened his fez. He looked as though he’d spent a long time learning how to tiptoe on eggshells when in the vicinity of Gubaz Kerselidze.

Loma the barber grinned sheepishly.

‘Things is just as you say Papa Gubaz, things is always exactly as you say. Loma is happy to please, as always, he is, of course, your kozyol.’

He took off his fez and performed a sweeping bow.

Kerselidze’s cheeks reddened as he burst into laughter. Then, almost in the same moment, standing next to the dead priest, he became serious again. He stabbed a meaty middle finger against the third eye in the middle of his own brow.

‘A lieutenant, eh? Let’s hope you have brought me a man who can solve my problem, Pugachev, or I’ll slit your fucking throat and turn your ugly Ukrainian ass into a mitre for this dead priest, you understand me?’

Rossel stepped forward.

‘A problem, Mr Kerselidze? How can we help you?’

‘I have a friend, Major Timoshenko, he runs the militia station here at Frunzensky District.’

‘And this friend has a problem?’

Kerselidze shook his head.

‘No, I have a problem with my friend.’

‘Which is?’ said Rossel.

‘He’s not my friend any more. This piece of shit, Timoshenko, he’s nobody without me, you understand? Nobody. But now he tells my men he can’t help Mr Gubaz no more. I give this shitbag everything, you understand? Kickbacks, pussy, caviar. A nice little cut of the heroin I’m running out of . . . not your business. I even build him fucking dacha in the woods near Ladoga, now he don’t want to know. Normally, an arse-wipe like this I cut out his heart and serve it up with some kapusta. But I kill one of your boys and there’s a chance shit might rain down on old Gubaz’s head.’

The thief boss stubbed his finger against his third eye again.

‘Gubaz not stupid – he sees the future before the future sees itself. So, when friend Pugachev here tells me some Leningrad militia men need someone to read a ten-day-old corpse like it was War and Peace, that got me thinking.’

Kerselidze smiled. ‘Who better to rat out the militia than other militia? I can only kill him. The state can make him disappear. File a report on this shit. I can give you all the information you need, send him to a gulag, my friends give him friendly time.’

Rossel cursed Pugachev. He hadn’t known this was the deal and t

‘No,’ he said.

The thief stared at him. ‘Where is the harm? The major is a crook. Soviet justice will catch up with him, who cares how?’

‘You overestimate my influence, Mr Kerselidze.’

‘I know you are just a flunky, a kozyol in a stupid uniform. But you find out his rivals, you leave a file on a desk. In fact, now you know Major Timoshenko is crook, you breaking the law by not informing on him.’

‘I have no evidence.’

‘Fuck you, kozyol – no one in this country has evidence!’ Kerselidze lumbered towards him. ‘No one needs it, and if they need it they make it up.’ The gangster pushed his battered face up to Rossel’s own. ‘You think you are on side of justice? You are on side of liars and murderers.’

Rossel clenched his fingers.

‘I’ll tell you why I won’t do it,’ he said. The whole room was silent. Kerselidze’s men were still. But ready for action.

‘An informer. An informer did this.’

He held up his left hand, glove removed, and waggled the two remaining and crooked fingers to draw attention to the missing ones.

‘So, comrade, you can use that fish knife if you want to.’

Kerselidze’s eyes flickered down to the weapon he was holding three inches from Rossel’s gut. Then they came back up to linger on Rossel’s hand.

‘You can have these idiots perform their tricks on me and give me a bath at the bottom of the Neva,’ said Rossel. ‘But the answer is still no.’

The gangster drew back his lips, exposing a row of broken tombstones embedded in his fleshy pink gums.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘But you are on the wrong side.’

‘I am on the side of working out who killed that poor bastard over there,’ said Rossel, putting his glove back on. ‘So, if you aren’t going to kill me or help me, I’d like my priest back, please.’

The head thief swivelled on his heel, marched over to Loma and slapped him so hard on the back that the barber’s fez slipped over his left eye.

‘You got your scissors, little Loma?’

Loma frowned.

‘You want me cut the cop’s hair, boss?’

Kerselidze clapped his hands together in childlike glee.

‘Not his.’

He pointed at the faceless body held up by the hat-rack.

‘His.’

The gangster scratched himself.

‘Like I say, Gubaz Kerselidze sees the future before the future sees itself. You’re a skilled man, Loma. A trim from you, a little parma-violet pomade, and I reckon you can make this fucker look just like a Yankee movie star.’

Loma picked up his barber’s scissors from a silver tray on a table.

‘No one knows pretty boys like Loma knows pretty boys, Papa Gubaz. One movie star bitch coming up!’

*

Strands of hair were floating through the air and landing on the linoleum. As Loma stood on a pair of metal stepladders and clipped away at the mane of the corpse, the gangster walked around the naked body and pointed to particular markings