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

After that . . . glorious nights of cheap vodka and cheaper tobacco, concerts at the Kirov, picnics in Primorsky Park, and passion. Such passion. She bought him a copy of Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal and read The Albatross to him, again and again – ‘Poets are like these lords of sky and cloud, Who ride the storm and mock the bow’s taut strings.’ Musicians, too, she said. Once he had awoken to find her softly singing her Cossack folk song to him.

But then.

‘No, Revol, not anymore,’ she had whispered one evening as she lay beside him. Informing him with inexplicable detachment that it was over.

‘Not with you, because . . .’

‘Why not?’

She had always refused to tell him.

*

Dr Volkova looked at him with an expression that conveyed she expected him not to be able to stomach what was coming next.

‘Proceed, Doctor,’ he said. But his voice was wavering.

Rossel patted his pockets for the reassuring shape of his cigarettes. Trying to drown out the melody that was still echoing around his brain. Matches – fuck your mother, where are my matches?

The Snow Queen’s ribs – Sofia’s ribs – stuck out like a xylophone. Her long, dark hair spilled behind her head, in sharp and still elegant contrast to the purple and black pudding of what had been her face.

‘Because of the investigations into the Doctors’ Plot, I am one of only two working forensic pathologists left in the whole of Leningrad, Lieutenant, so my time is precious. But now that her internal organs have thawed, I have been able to examine the body and gather evidence,’ said Dr Volkova. She went through the official checklist.

‘Dental records and fingerprints were not possible, as with the other bodies. Our murderer had already eliminated that line of inquiry.’

The doctor had sliced the corpse open from the bottom of the rib cage to below the abdomen and removed the internal organs.

‘As with the other female, this victim had little blood and no urine left. There was practically no fatty tissue on her.’

Rossel was still fumbling for his matches. He felt the burn of acid rising in his throat and felt like throwing up, but he was determined to resist the compulsion.

‘What are those marks?’

Dark green tendrils were spreading over Sofia’s corpse, and her skin was starting to blister and peel.

‘When bodies defrost, decomposition is rapid,’ said Dr Volkova. ‘That discolouration spreads through the veins. I had better finish examining her quickly, before unpleasant fluids start to exit the orifices.’ She caught his expression. ‘Sorry.’

‘Is the killer’s method of starvation and sedation supported in this case, too?’ said Rossel.

‘Indeed,’ the pathologist replied. ‘Pressure sores, lack of fat, nothing in the gastrointestinal tract, muscles showing signs of wasting – all that is the case here. My tests reveal the presence of an opiate rather than a barbiturate but confirm sedation. Also, can you smell?’

He took a sniff in spite of himself. Yes, a faint whiff.

‘Pear, just like you said.’

Dr Volkova nodded. ‘Eau de Bone. The aroma of pear would be clearer if you came closer but perhaps that is inadvisable. The smell was particularly clear when I depressed her lungs. It is the smell of acetone – a ketone, which is produced when your body runs out of glucose and burns fat. It is found in higher concentrations in people who have been starved. Anyone who worked in a morgue during the siege would be very familiar with it.’

Rossel swallowed hard. In an effort to distract himself from the body, he found himself staring fixedly at the doctor’s full, red and slightly quivering lips.

At last!

His fingers closed around the box of matches in his pocket. He took them out and went through the complicated, two-handed process of extracting a lone match from the box that he could manoeuvre into position to strike. Two went on the floor before match, matchbox and cigarette were all where they needed to be.

His eyes pleaded. ‘She wasn’t conscious then? An opiate, you say.’

‘I’m afraid I cannot be certain. There is certainly evidence of haemorrhaging when the face was removed.’

‘Could that not have been done later?’

Dr Volkova lowered her eyes. ‘No. Doing all that to a frozen corpse is not possible. All the mutilations must have taken place shortly after death. Or . . . shortly before.’

The pathologist went over to her desk and returned with a piece of paper.

‘These are the basic details. Height, hundred and seventy centimetres. Hair colour, black. Age, early to mid-thirties. Unfortunately, with a frozen body it is very difficult to estimate time of death.’

Rossel took the paper and thanked her.

Dr Volkova reached out and took Rossel’s cigarette from his lips. Then took two quick nerve-steadying puffs and returned it to him.

‘I heard Captain Lipukhin call this one the Snow Queen,’ she said, reaching down to smooth a crinkle in the lapel of her uniform.

‘A joke. Of a sort.’

‘Do you know the fairy tale?’

Rossel nodded. ‘A little. Something about a magic mirror?’

‘Yes, a devil and his magic mirror,’ said Dr Volkova. ‘A mirror that distorted the reflection of everyone who looked into it, magnifying all that was ugly and hiding everything beautiful.’ She began working at the crinkle in her blouse now, he noticed. Hardly looking up at him.

‘It shattered, the mirror shattered, and its tiny shards were blown all over the world and into the eyes and the hearts and the minds of men and women, boys and girls, everywhere. “Freezing the fragile hearts of all Mother Russia’s children,” is the phrase my babushka used when she would recite the tale to us little ones.’

Dr Volkova dropped her hand and glanced up at him.

‘They froze their hearts,’ she said, ‘those poisonous shards, freezing them – just like our Snow Queen’s, here, has been – and making all around see only ugliness.’

She sighed.

‘I think she was pretty, this one. Not a head-turner, perhaps. But beautiful of soul. Sometimes, I have noticed, they are the ones men obsess about more than any