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

Rossel, before the war there were so many. So many: like you, like this stuck-up shit Eliasberg. We had no time for anything but our work, and as we worked, we improved. I became like one of your conductors myself, my friend. Sometimes there was no need to even pick up my baton, or take the slightest preparatory bow before they crapped their pants in appreciation. Now that’s a symphony of sorts, is it not?’

‘Do you ever allow them to confess without interrogation?’ asked Rossel, knowing the answer.

Nikitin belched before answering.

‘Never. We always ask questions. Sometimes they confess to the wrong crime or omit important details.’ He raised his chipped blue mug. ‘Anyway, enough of that. Your turn to propose a toast.’

Rossel raised his own mug. ‘To the efficiency of Soviet justice.’

Nikitin, the tip of his nose beginning to redden a little, blinked. ‘Very good,’ he murmured. They drank a little more.

‘What about you, Rossel?’ said Nikitin. ‘Why the militia?’

There was a pat response to that, too. But there was another, a truer one. If the vodka was intended to make him reckless, he would let it happen – he was already at the major’s mercy. Rossel stared into Nikitin’s eyes.

‘Until I came to Leningrad before the war, I lived with my parents. They were – well, you have my file. They were transported to the gulag. And died there. My sister and I were put in the care of a state orphanage in Kostroma, a small town on the Volga, near Yaroslavl. Galya and I played in the town orchestra. The orchestra gave its big concert every spring and it was one of the most important days in Kostroma’s life. In the winter of 1935, we were rehearsing something very ambitious – a Mozart symphony, number 40 in G minor. Everyone knows it, everyone can hum it.’

Rossel broke off and whistled the notes.

Nikitin recognised the piece and banged his tin mug on the table in crude accompaniment.

‘It was a hard winter,’ Rossel continued. ‘You could walk onto the river and skate, and jump up and down, play hockey with sticks and a can, and it was like playing on concrete, no chance of going through. Cars and trucks wouldn’t start, trains wouldn’t start, roads were cut off. It came in waves, spells of minus thirty, minus thirty-five, lasting for weeks. Minus fifteen felt like a tropical respite.’

Nikitin’s face was very flushed now. But he poured more for them both.

‘When I had you hanging from the ceiling,’ the major said. ‘When you were dancing in the air. You whispered a woman’s name. Was that her?’

Rossel ran the remaining two fingers of his left hand over his stubble to cover the twist in his mouth. He wondered how quick the bastard was – if he would be able to stop a glass being driven into his eyes or the bottle smashed over his head.

‘Everyone must have one face for the world and another for himself, Revol.’

His father’s advice filled his mind and stayed his hand. He sought his refuge, the place Nikitin had never been able to get to him. That eyrie, beyond the predator’s reach – cold and in solitude.

Patience, Revol. There will be a time for the settling of old scores.

‘After the concert we played together, I went drinking with my bandmates,’ said Rossel. ‘Galya and I had a row about it. She didn’t like me drinking so much. About midnight, I staggered drunk to the front of the concert hall and saw Galya, alone in the twilight as the snow was coming down, cheeks like pink roses under the street lamp. She began walking, drifting down the middle of the road in her long coat, and there was no one else around. Just her, and me, meandering, half blind, fifty paces behind. Galya was heading back to the orphanage. I don’t know if she saw me or heard me – the snow muffled everything. She never looked round and I thought, I’ll just follow her home and everything will be all right.’

Nikitin laughed. A drunken guffaw. A crude attempt to mask emotion. But it fell away.

‘I have a daughter, Rossel,’ he mumbled almost to himself. ‘A beautiful daughter. Did I tell you that?’

‘I got home,’ continued Rossel. ‘I went to bed and passed out. Then awakening in the night, I looked through the window and thought I could see her, still in her coat, her head wrapped in her shawl, standing and looking at the house. She never moved. Just watched and waited. Soon I lay back and fell asleep – perhaps I had never actually awoken – and in the morning Galya wasn’t there. She wasn’t there and she never ever came back. I have been looking for her ever since. That’s why I joined the militia. It gave me an excuse to go looking.’

Rossel held his torturer’s gaze.

‘Now there are three of us,’ said Rossel.

‘Three of us?’

‘I know this story. Sofia, the girl I once loved, knew it – I told it to her. And now you do.’

‘Was she good of heart, your Galya?’ asked Nikitin. He did not ask gently but with the quick, clipped voice of an interrogator.

‘Always,’ said Rossel.

‘How old?’

‘When she disappeared, she was eighteen.’

‘Hm.’ Nikitin stared back at him but his eyes were rolling and the moment of acuity had been blown away. He rocked forward and poured again. The bottle was almost empty. Vodka splashed into Rossel’s mug. Nikitin filled his own to the brim again.

‘Your sister is a mystery and so you became a cop. I like that story, gundog. I’m not sure I believe it but I like it very much. To the good of heart.’ He jerked his head back and the liquid gushed down his throat. ‘Here, let me show you.’

Nikitin fumbled inside his tunic and pulled out a black wallet.

‘My daughter,’ he said. With his fingers getting in each other’s way, he nonetheless managed to tease out a creased photograph of a very serious, very pretty