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

desk in Station 17, Nikitin pacing up and down behind him and cursing with impatience, Rossel hummed the notes under his breath.

The refrain had dissonance at its heart, like a folk song from the Caucasus. Three of the notes formed the triad of E-flat major – a key associated with heroes. The F was the second note of that scale. The A natural was the odd one out – not part of the scale at all. From E-flat to A was a tritone, what composers three hundred years previously had termed a diabolus in musica. The devil’s interval.

The five bodies on the line had been composed into their own funeral dirge. One which Rossel increasingly believed had also been composed for him.

*

‘Two train lines running in parallel form a stave – the name for the lines on a piece of sheet music. The top line is missing but the killer didn’t need that.’

Rossel held the pencil in a dagger grip and drew four jagged lines on a blank piece of paper. Next to him, splayed on the table and reflecting the lamp light, were the photographs taken from the biplane as well as the images Taneyev had taken when the bodies were first discovered.

‘The way the bodies were arranged looked stylised in every way but one. They were dressed up, mutilated, and laid out at equal distances. But the positioning of the heads was different. Some were resting in between the lines, some on the rails. There had to be a pattern; it’s just that standing on the ground we didn’t see it. But from above . . .’

He tried to get a better hold on the pencil but writing was always an ordeal. After adjusting one hand with the other, he was able to draw stick figures onto the stave – oval blobs for heads and nothing but a brusque line to show the direction of the body.

‘Sofia. First in the row, though the fourth body to be identified. Her note is F – F in the German naming convention, fa in the solfege system that we use in Russia.’

Nikitin looked annoyed at this. A code he did not recognise.

‘How do you know you’re not reading this upside down?’ the MGB officer demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Rossel. ‘It’s just a theory. Her head rested between the tracks of the lower railway line, her feet pointing south, like everyone else’s feet.’

‘Go on.’

Nikitin had grumbled at coming to Station 17 and his mood was not being improved by Rossel’s unhurried presentation. Vassya, who sat muffled from head to toe in Sergeant Grachev’s chair, seemed unperturbed.

Rossel returned to his diagram. ‘Maxim. Second in line. His head was here,’ he made two more marks. ‘That would make him a lya in Russian but an A in German.’

‘What’s with the German? Is our killer a German?’

Rossel shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. But someone familiar with musical notation. More familiar than most. Composers, conductors, musicologists. Bach used the letters of his name to make a motif. Schumann, too.’

‘Germans,’ said Nikitin.

‘Comrade, it is quite difficult to escape the presence of Germans in classical music. German scores are played up and down the Soviet Union every week. In any case, our very own Dmitri, Dimitri Shostakovich, does it. The motif D-S-C-H appears . . .’

‘Get on with it.’

‘. . . in many of his works.’

Rossel leant over the paper and waved his pencil again.

‘Felix.’ He drew an E.

‘What is it in Russian?’

‘In Russian it is a mi. But look.’ He arranged two of the original photographs next to each other. ‘These three bodies have hats placed next to their heads, instead of on them. Positioned with care on the left-hand side. If that is intended as a musical sign, it would mean the killer wanted to alter the note, making it slightly higher or lower. So instead of mi it might be mi-bemol.’

‘More complicated,’ said Nikitin. ‘What’s this bemol?’

‘It flattens the note, comrade. Makes it a semitone lower.’

‘That’s not a Russian word, either.’

‘It is French, I believe,’ said Rossel.

Nikitin grunted. ‘Too many foreign influences in this musical language of yours,’ he said.

Rossel could think of a dozen Russian words off the top of his head that were borrowed directly from other languages, including French and German, but chose not to comment.

‘Corpse number four. Little Nadya, the first to be identified but the fourth in line.’ He dotted a B on his crude musical stave. ‘The head is in the correct place, lying on the third rail up.’ He showed Nikitin the photographs, from the ground and the air. ‘It could be a si, but the hat could make it a si-bemol.’ He added a flat sign.

Rossel made a final couple of strokes.

‘The last note. The fifth body had its head lying on the second rail. The means a G. Sol. This is assuming that the killer was writing in the treble clef, of course.’

Nikitin looked at Vassya.

‘Does any of this make sense to you?’ he demanded.

Vassya nodded. ‘Now I’ve seen it, it does.’

Rossel put down his pencil.

‘Those are our five notes.’

*

This case had always been a trap. Right from the very start of the investigation, he had felt it. Yes, he had moved forward, placing one foot in front of the other but always suspecting the trap would be sprung.

And now, it seemed, he had his own personal musical score. A murderer who must have known from the outset that only a musician would have been able to decipher his refrain. And how many musicians could be found in the Leningrad militia?

Nikitin sat down at the table opposite him with a thick glass of tea in his hands.

‘So, I passed word of your crazy theory up the line.’

‘And?’

The MGB major took a sip, then sighed and slumped back in the wooden chair.

‘Congratulations. We are invited to Moscow tomorrow, you and me. They are, it seems, more convinced of the possibility of a musical murderer than I am. A special someone wants to get a personal update on the progress of your investigation.’

Keep on