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

usual black and white photograph and densely typed columns of information. And the unmistakable stamp at the top of the file.

‘You really are on a suicide mission. You’ve stolen an MGB file.’

‘Two, to be precise. When I was last in the Bolshoi Dom I didn’t waste my time. I’ve got the other one somewhere safe.’

‘Nikolai Shevchuk.’ Vassya read out the name on the file. ‘Who is he?’

‘Deputy Cultural Kommissar Shevchuk was one of the people who decided what was “good” or “bad” in Soviet culture. Who chose what our great patriotic Soviet state considered to be a work of artistic genius, or a piece of “bourgeois, reactionary recidivism” that might earn its creator a little time sunbathing in the Siberian permafrost. But Shevchuk also had an extra special role. He was given the task of deciding what great work would be the Soviet Union’s music for the war. A few months ago, he disappeared from his workplace. To a gulag, people supposed. But I believe it is more likely that he had fallen into the embrace of dear Comrade Vronsky.’

‘How can you be certain it is Shevchuk?’

‘Four of the victims we found on the railway tracks were in their early thirties – not surprising, since they were all classmates. But one was in his early fifties. According to Dr Volkova, he had access to luxury items like caviar. Thus he was likely to hold a position of privilege. He is the right age, the right rank, and the only other person Vronsky would have wanted to kill, since he chose Shostakovich as the Soviet Union’s war composer. And there is one more clue. See that?’

Rossel pointed to a column in the file headed: Distinguishing marks. Vassya read from it aloud.

‘Three large black moles, one of very distinct triangular shape, each about a centimetre in diameter, found at the base of the neck on the right-hand side,’ she said. She looked up. ‘So?’

‘So that is why we have hoisted him out of the freezer. Roll him over.’

On the count of three, they manhandled the corpse onto its front. The wound was immediately obvious – a deep, crude incision a little below the nape.

‘So, the murderer had to slice off the skin on his neck to disguise the moles, otherwise it would have been too easy to identify the body? Is that it?’

Rossel nodded.

‘Meet Comrade Shevchuk. Body number five.’

Vassya stared at the corpse. ‘Did Dr Volkova not work out who it was?’

He smiled. ‘Possibly. But perhaps she was more preoccupied with keeping maestro Vronsky and his good mama abreast of our investigation.’

‘How long for?’

‘I’m not sure. At least, I suspect, for the last few weeks.’

Vassya’s mouth twisted as if she had tasted something unpleasant. ‘An informer.’

‘Yes. She seemed frightened at times, but never enough,’ said Rossel. ‘Only two forensic pathologists in the whole of Leningrad have managed to escape arrest in the Doctors’ Plot, and she was one of them. When the MGB came to the station, despite their unrivalled revolutionary zeal, urgency and purpose, which saw them kill Taneyev in cold blood, they did not pursue Dr Volkova and arrest her even though her profession is under such scrutiny. And she returned to this station to help us when most sane people would give it a wide berth. Either she is incredibly lucky or extremely dull-witted. Or, she has been protected by someone very well connected. Her mother is a history professor who wound up in a labour camp in the Urals and recently contracted tuberculosis – she might get medical attention or it might be withheld. There are plenty of ways to put pressure on someone in Dr Volkova’s position, and plenty of things, on top of protection from the MGB, which Madame Vronsky could offer her in return for her eyes and ears.’

Rossel turned his attention back to the late Deputy Kommissar.

‘And now that Comrade Shevchuk and I are at last reacquainted, I think I understand everything. Or almost everything. The madness of it I do not understand.’

‘You knew this man, too?’ Vassya said, shaking her head. ‘As well as the others?’

‘No, I didn’t know him. Or, more exactly, we were never introduced. I was in the same room with him briefly only once in my entire life, as were, I’m almost certain, Nadya, Felix, Max and Sofia. And a trumpeter named Gusts Landau.’

‘When was that?’

Rossel stepped a little closer to the trolley and stared down at Body Number 5.

‘March 12, 1942, at the RadioKom headquarters of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra. The day of the greatest all-Soviet composers’ competition. The day Shostakovich and Vronsky went head to head to see which of those great men would become famous throughout the world as the eternal symbol of Soviet resistance against the Fascist menace and, eventually, come to represent something even more powerful than that: hope for all of mankind.’

*

Afterwards, Rossel found he could recall very little about the music in the competition. Not the thunderous first movement of Shostakovich’s seventh, or the intense adagio of Vronsky’s submission. The Shostakovich had involved a drummer, he recalled that much, but otherwise very little had remained with him. Both maestros had protested at the lack of time to prepare their pieces. Both were doubtless aghast at the performances of their music by a motley band of stinking scarecrows rounded up from the city’s defenders. And the scarecrows were equally unimpressed by the composers’ protestations.

The percussionist who had tackled the side drum part, a pounding, endless ostinato, had collapsed near the end with dystrophy and been taken out. Otherwise Rossel could remember none of it.

But he could remember the onions – the small, glistening onions that floated like tiny gastronomic jewels on top of a battered blue tin bowl of pale soup. They had given a helping to each member of the ensemble. How those tiny onions looked, how they smelt, how they tasted! ‘A bowl full of Heaven, served up in the midst of hell,’ Felix had said. Vital provisions had been flown