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

they, too, would lead back to his past. Lieutenant Revol Rossel. He was the biggest clue in his own case.

As he looked back down into the pit, he noticed Eliasberg, still sitting at Vronsky’s feet, staring up at him. An insouciant half-smile momentarily flickered on the conductor’s lips. Then he glanced back down at his score.

How could have Rossel been so foolish?

The arrest of all members of the local militia department out at Lake Ladoga had deceived him into believing that his involvement was a coincidence. Those arrests were more than plausible – one person’s slip of the tongue could condemn a hundred friends and colleagues. So, it had seemed credible – just another evening of misfortune – that the Vosstaniya Street station, far away from the scene of the crime, should merely have drawn the short straw on a filthy winter’s night to journey into the wilds of Karelia. Now, that plaintive telephone call direct to Rossel’s station was as tell-tale as a spot of blood in the snow. The killer had arranged it. He was certain of it.

Inside his coat he tried to flex his broken fingers, to get them to resist the tone, resist the rhythm, resist his own sickening conclusions. But they would not obey.

*

Vronsky’s right arm was fully extended, jutting out from the spotlight into the shadow that surrounded him. As the music stopped, he let it fall for a final time.

‘No orchestra other than a Soviet orchestra could reach such heights,’ he told them. ‘I am honoured to have you perform my music.’

The composer smiled at the excited turmoil as the Kirov’s orchestra – lighting cigarettes, exchanging compliments, pulling on fur coats and hats – struggled out of the pit and the chorus cleared the stage.

Before long only two men remained in the great hall.

Rossel had waited. Marina had recognised the building in the sketch. He was sure of it. It seemed significant to her. And she was, after all, sleeping with the maestro. So Vronsky might recognise it too.

The composer pulled on his wolfskin coat and then picked up a green manila file, bursting with manuscript papers, from his stand. His voice boomed from the stage. The silent auditorium emphasising its aggressive autocratic sibilance.

‘This time you didn’t listen, Listener. I sent word that you had to go.’

Rossel was sitting on one of the red velvet seats in the middle of the stalls. He got up and began to walk towards the stage. Talking as he moved down the aisle.

‘Marina’s top A, maestro. A little flat, didn’t you think?’

Vronsky’s eyes twinkled. For a moment, as last time, Rossel half expected the composer to break into laughter, changing his mood in an instant. But it passed.

‘Your hands may be twisted and contorted but there’s nothing wrong with your ears. People here remember you. They saw us talking and thought they recognised your face. And Marina cannot stop talking about “young Rossel”. How your professor had told her you were the best student she’d ever had. That when you first turned up at the conservatory you could already play the Tchaikovsky concerto well enough to make people fall at your feet. Raw talent, talent of the kind that turns up once in a generation. And so handsome, too.’

The composer gestured with his huge right hand back towards the set of The Blockade. ‘A tiny fragment of this piece is, in part, inspired by an earlier work of mine, based on Crime and Punishment. And you are every inch a young Raskolnikov, like Dostoevsky describes him. “Slim, well built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair.” That’s what Marina said. But you know what women are like? They do tend to wax a little overlyrical about any exotic fruit they feel nature has forbidden them.’

Rossel was standing next to that stage now; staring up at the great man.

‘There was a certain tension in her voice, don’t you think so, maestro? Marina sounded distracted, perhaps?’

Vronsky ran his fingers through his thick black beard and then nodded.

‘Yes, there was some imperfection of tone, Lieutenant, a barely perceptible trace of it. I, too, I like to believe,’ his voice was mocking, ‘have something of an ear. We’d squabbled a little earlier, she and I. It’s Marina’s way of getting her revenge, refusing to deliver of her very best. Keeping something back to torment her admirers. She does the same thing when she’s flat on her back – a cheap courtesan’s trick to elicit further payment. A tawdry negotiation around the level of attention she believes her beauty demands. Trouble is, I’ve had her so many times now it’s beginning to grate a little. Especially in the White Nights, when the sun slips through the drapes and picks out the ragged lines around her eyes. Such is life, eh, Lieutenant? Once a man is allowed to dine on foie gras every evening, he soon begins to dream of a simple breakfast of kasha and black bread.’

Rossel climbed the steps to the stage and stood a few feet away from the composer. This close, in his all-enveloping fur and still singled out by the stage lights, Vronsky’s presence was as intimidating as ever.

Rossel opened Sofia’s book and proffered it. Letting the composer get a good look at her sketches. ‘Do you recognise anything in here, maestro? I think Marina might have.’

Vronsky took the book and glanced through it, as if uninterested. Then sighed deeply.

‘Ah, you disappoint me, Lieutenant, you really do. I, just now, cast you in the role of Dostoevsky’s greatest creation, Raskolnikov, an exceptional individual who was daring enough to take all the steps that are necessary for his will to triumph in this world and you reveal yourself, with this persistent plodding inquiry, to be nothing more than his sanctimonious, foolish detective, Porfiry Petrovich.’

‘So, you don’t recognise anything there, in the notebook?’ Rossel persisted.

Vronsky shook his head. ‘No, plodding Porfiry, I do not.’

‘You are sure about that, maestro? There’s nothing in there that stirs even the most distant