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

what you told yourself just after you realised that he, not you, was most likely to win the tsarina’s prize,’ said Rossel. ‘And probably every other prize, too.’

Vronsky placed the glass tube onto the floor. Rossel couldn’t take his eyes off it. The composer put the heel of his black boot over the end and crushed the tip.

‘They were lovers, Stolypin and my mother,’ Vronsky said. ‘After he died, Mama befriended his widow. Then she persuaded her to set up the competition and invite the tsarina. But, one evening, Madame Stolypin told her that our professor considered Andrei the greater prospect. And that he intended to recommend the boy should make the principal recital when the tsarina came to visit. Nonsense, of course. Had Suvorin lived, I would have, in any case, proved the old fool wrong.’

‘But your dear mother decided not to take that chance?’

Vronsky nodded.

‘At first, she simply tried to persuade them to have the boy excluded from the competition, but they would have none of it.’

‘And so, your mother killed Suvorin?’

The composer smiled again.

‘Matricide is the word used for someone who kills their mother but, as far as I know, there has been no lexicographer yet farsighted enough to invent a word for someone who kills with them. We both did for the boy.’

‘You left him in the ice house. Left him in there to freeze to death and while he was dying, he carved the notes I saw into the stone.’

Rossel was trying to mask the anger and loathing in his voice. But failing.

Vronsky put a finger to his lips and began to speak in hushed tones.

‘I told Andrei I had forgotten to bring matches for the tobacco we already smoked. Then, as soon as I left, my mother, who was hidden nearby, shut the door and bolted it.’

With his cuff, Vronsky dabbed at a bead of sweat on his brow.

‘At first,’ he continued, ‘Andrei thought I was joking. We could hear him shouting out. Then his cries changed to ones of petulance and frustration. Finally, tears and sobs. After twenty minutes, we walked away just as the evening sun began to fall. My mother had arranged a recital so that everyone was busy and no one could hear.’

Vronsky ambled over to the nearest cage and pushed at it. It swung back and forth like an outsize thurible.

‘Andrei was a religious boy. At night, before bed, he would recite the hymn to the Virgin Mary, what the Greeks call the axion. The refrain he carved into the rock was an unfinished final prayer of some sort, I imagine.’

Vronsky pushed the cage again and it began to rock faster, the chains groaning as it moved to and fro. Then the composer took three quick steps forward so he was standing directly in front of the detective. He struck Rossel once in the face with the outstretched palm of his right hand. Then a second time using his left fist – there was an echoing crack as the cartilage in Rossel’s nose broke. Vronsky’s arm swung back as if to strike another blow. But then he stopped. The composer glanced at the glass tube on the floor. He bent down and picked it up. He stepped to the side of Rossel and placed its jagged end against the bare flesh of the detective’s neck. The lieutenant could feel the scratch of the glass prickle against his carotid artery and hear his own breathing punctuating the silence with sharp staccato bursts.

‘This one is exactly the same size as the one I had designed for your friend Felix. When pushed into the windpipe it turns a last breath into something beautiful, Comrade Rossel. Not a perfect E-flat, I grant you that, but at that late stage of his life, I truly believed it helped young Felix express the inexpressible, everything he had failed to get across in his mediocre violin playing. He confessed to everything when I had him inside his cage and began to slowly starve him to death. He was desperate to live. By the end he would tell me everything I asked. All about how much in love you were with sweet little Saint Sofia.’

Rossel felt the tube nick his throat. A sudden wetness there he knew must be blood. He braced himself for the end.

‘Initially, he gasped as I pushed the pipe in, greedy for air. Just like they all did. But then, at the very end, he clamped his mouth tight shut; tried to put a stopper in the bottle. That was when the sound was at its most haunting – as his last essence slipped away.’

Rossel grimaced in fear as the glass pierced his skin again. Then, suddenly, the composer took a step backward.

‘No,’ Vronsky muttered to himself, looking around as if he had forgotten something. ‘Not like this. You, after all, are my listener. I must prepare my performance.’

He lumbered out of the room, shouting for Razin, leaving Rossel to eye the shard of glass – the broken tip of the crystal tube – he had left on the floor. Just out of reach.

42

For the fifth time, Rossel managed to move the seat an inch or so forward. The bindings on his ankles were not quite as tight as those on his wrists and so, now he was this close, he managed to move his left foot towards the sliver of glass, about two centimetres long, which lay half a metre away along the cobbles. He stretched out his bare foot again. This time, he made contact with the glass. Used his toes to scrabble it a little closer. He repeated the action: once, twice. Then a third time. Now the shard was close enough.

Adrenalin coursed through Rossel’s body and sat him back – bolt upright – as he heard the doorknob rattle.

Vronsky swept back into the room, bloated and grandi-ose. Behind him walked his brutal retinue of one: Razin. Rossel got the sole of his left foot over the