City of Shadows (10 page)

“Did she ever mention any?”

“Not as far as I know. There was a husband died in the war, but she never talked about him either. You’ll find an address book up there, maybe.”

“I’ll go up, then,” Esther said, not moving.

“That’s my girl.” Boris put up a thumb to her. “I’ve got to get back.” He raised his hat and walked off. Then he turned. “Nick says to give her a good send-off but don’t overdo it.”

The sun was turning even this devastation into a vista; she could see the cathedral in the distance. Buddleia had colonized areas of rubble, and butterflies were hovering on its purple spikes. Sparrows made a kerfuffle taking baths in the dust. The clatter from the open windows of the printing works sounded like not unfriendly, automated gossip.

She dallied, wondered what was it like when the butterflies and the sparrows and the compositors had all gone home and darkness turned the piles of bricks into gravestones.

Just get up those stairs, Esther.

The wooden balustrade was warm under her hand as she climbed. A net curtain covered the glass in the upper half of Olga’s front door. Es
ther fitted the key into the lock, turned it, and went in.

Heat slammed into her. Heat and the smell of corruption. She stood for a moment, then forced herself inside, leaving the door open behind her.

It was a bed-sitter and must have been a nice one—a large, wooden-floored space with metal-framed windows that now presented spacious views. And neat.

Or would have been neat, if it hadn’t been for a wooden chair that lay on its side with ropes still attached to it. Dark brown splashes on the floorboards around it. There were scattered tufts of black hair....

She walked briskly past it to get to the windows, trying to be furious. The police, Boris,
somebody
should have cleaned the place. There was something indecent in having left evidence of the woman’s agony ex
posed.

It wasn’t rope on the chair—stockings. He’d tied Olga up with her own black woolen stockings.

Esther pushed open the window with the cathedral view and leaned out, taking in summer air. This was more than the poor battening on the poor. He, they—perhaps there’d been more than one—had tor
tured at leisure. A woman had screamed for her life, and nobody’d heard her.

Esther jerked more windows open, then set about doing her job.

Olga had made it easy for her. A nonhoarder, Olga. The suitcase on top of the wardrobe was empty. The wardrobe itself contained few clothes, all smelling of the mothballs that lay scattered around them. On a rail with legs next to the wardrobe hung some of the Green Hat’s costumes.

Here and there was gray dust with which, she supposed, the police had tried to find fingerprints; there seemed to be very few—a regular polisher, was Olga—and all of them small enough to be a woman’s.

A stout pine table, also dusted, held a sewing machine with a swath of white linen still on the needle plate—Olga had been making herself a new nightdress. Esther pulled the material aside to reveal a drawer. Pins, needles, cotton, silk, some paper patterns, and, on one side, two stapled bundles, one of bills, the other of wage slips.
Jesus,
Olga, was that all Nick paid you?

In the kitchen area, a larder contained a small piece of cheese and half a rye loaf. Small wonder she’d spent every hour she could at the Green Hat; staff could eat free.

Everything tidy and neat, everything spotless. The bath in the tiny bathroom lacked patches of enamel but was scrubbed clean. A cupboard above the washbasin contained basic toiletries and a bottle of black hair dye. Esther shut the door on it quickly—Olga would have hated her knowing that. Olga would have hated her being here at all.

No photographs, no letters, no mementos of children—probably didn’t have any—no war medals belonging to the dead husband, no ad
dress book.

She looked around. Come on, woman, there must have been more to your life than this.

She drew back the curtain separating the alcove containing Olga’s bed from the rest of the room—and found Olga’s life.

Prince Nick’s face looked back at her. And looked back at her. And back at her. Dozens—perhaps a hundred—of photos and press clip
pings had been pinned up on the alcove ceiling and walls, all of Nick. Around and about the severely made bed was Nick bowing to the king of Albania, Nick saluting the Italian ambassador, Nick in fancy dress, Nick’s portrait in profile, in full face, Nick with some comedian—both of them sporting a fez—with Gigli, with Nellie Melba. Nick in half a photograph that cut one of his arms off, presumably because it had lain around the shoulders of a pretty woman—Melba was the only female represented in the gallery; maybe her size disqualified her as a rival. Prince Nick winning a Grand Prix ...Nick presenting a check to char
ity (a rare one, that, but Olga had noted and kept it).

The strips of newspaper had stirred as Esther opened the curtain— the untidy flapping of a prayer wheel. To a god who’d never noticed.

It was like being a Peeping Tom. Quickly, Esther closed the curtain. Then opened it again to begin tearing the pictures down.

I’m so sorry, Olga. Sorry I saw this. I’ll never tell.

Keeping Olga’s secret was the one thing Esther could do for her.

Before she left, she slipped one of the portraits in her handbag. It would go into the coffin.

She’d hoped that
perhaps the policeman in charge of the case would be the one who’d attended the Green Hat. It wasn’t. An Inspector Bolle
assured her, “We’ll catch him, Fräulein, don’t you worry,” but he sounded dispirited and echoed Boris’s despair at what was happening to Germany, citing cases of old men and women being attacked for their pensions, housewives robbed on their way home from market, a milkman kicked to death by the man who stole his horse.

“Too many foreigners coming in,” he said, oblivious of whom he was talking to. “It was never like this in the old days.”

Were those the old days when there’d been a world war? Esther won
dered. When you were fighting England? France?

Apparently Nick had been able to exert influence, even from the South of France, and both autopsy and inquest were to be expedited. The body would be released ready for burial the following Wednesday.

At the undertaker’s, Esther ordered the most expensive casket avail
able, to be drawn by black-plumed horses—the bill to be sent to Prince Nikolai Potrovskov personally. Still vengeful, she went on to the florist’s and arranged for enough late roses to cover the entire coffin lid.

“That’ll teach him to pay her peanuts,” she told Natalya when she got home. “I’m going to see he walks behind that cortege with his bloody hat in his hand.”

“Bit late to do Olga much good,” Natalya pointed out.

“It’ll do
him
good,” Esther said. “And me.” She went to her desk to put the date and time in her diary in order to make sure Nick kept to them.

Natalya heard her whimper. “What’s up?”

“It was him.” Esther was looking at the diary as into the face of the gorgon. “He killed her.”

“Nick killed her?”

“It was him. It was the sixth weekend. Oh, God, oh, Jesus, it was
him.
”

Natalya led her to the sofa. “Put your head between your knees. I’ll get you a drink. We got any brandy?”

Esther didn’t hear her.
That’s when he comes, every six weeks.
Jostling for notice behind Clara’s voice, other statements, other disregarded facts, were accumulating and joining up.

Boris:
The police reckon either he was waiting for her or he followed her home.

Waiting for her. Followed her home. Déjà vu.

Natalya came back with a glass of schnapps. Esther clutched at her. “Where’s Anna?”

“In bed. As usual.”

“He was after her. That’s who he wanted.”

“Who did? Is this the Cheka we’re talking about?”

“He waits and follows, that’s what he does. It wasn’t money he wanted from Olga. She didn’t have any; he didn’t even look for it. Her suitcase—it wasn’t opened, not a drawer out, nothing disturbed. He didn’t want money, he wanted Anna’s address—that’s why he tortured Olga.” She took a breath. “I’ve got to tell the police.”

Natalya was still holding the schnapps, concentrating politely. “Why would Olga have this address?”

“She didn’t.”

“Well, why would he think she did?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” She rubbed her forehead. “Yes I do.” She was back at the Green Hat. Anna was upstairs in Nick’s office, asleep. The lights were out. Olga was in the doorway of the club room, scolding, coming up the stairs after her.
Young woman,
I
arrange accom
modation for the girls.

“He heard her say so. He thought she knew where we were taking Anna. But she didn’t. He tortured her for information she didn’t have.” Esther stood up. “I’ve got to tell the police.”

“Nick’ll love that.” Natalya pulled her back down and forced the schnapps into her hand. She went into the kitchen, returning with the bottle and another glass. “Let’s go through it again, shall we? I ain’t grasped exactly who you think done what.”

Esther went through it again, this time from the beginning and with more clarity.

Natalya nodded carefully. “So this assassin, Cheka or whatever he is—”

“Not Cheka,” Esther said irritably. “Anna was afraid of him before she got grand-duchess ideas.”

“This guy with a grudge and a long memory wants to do Anna in— and after the day I’ve had alone with that cow, I don’t blame him. Anyway, he’s lurking around Dalldorf, sees you and Theo take her to the
Hat, follows, gets into the club with the idea of knifing Her Imperial Whatsit, but you shove him downstairs with a broom instead.”

Esther sipped her schnapps; she knew where this was going. She could see her own logic—it was making her hands shake—but this was a matter where logic compounded the apparent absurdity.

Natalya went on, still carefully. “But he happens to have heard Olga doing her I-know-everything-that-goes-on-in-this-place, so he thinks, ‘Okay, Olga’ll give me Anna’s address. Next time I get a couple of days off, I’ll do some more lurking outside the Green Hat, follow Olga home, and beat the shit out of her until she gives it to me.’ Which he does. Is that it?”

Esther said, “I know it sounds far-fetched
.. . .
”

“Phhh.” Natalya’s lips formed a perfect cupid’s bow as she sucked breath through them. “I wouldn’t say far-fetched, exactly. The police won’t say it’s far-fetched—they’ll just treat you kindly and take you straight to Dalldorf to be with your pal Clara.”

“I’ve got to tell them.”

“Of course you have, of course you have.”

“Stop that.”

Natalya ceased her soothing. “All I’m saying is you’ve built this whole story out of a diary some loony kept in Dalldorf.”

“You think the timing’s just coincidence,” Esther said.

“It
is.
”

“But Anna’s definitely afraid of something.”

“She’s another loony, for God’s sake.”

“Natalya, he tortured Olga.
Tortured
her. What for? She didn’t have money. Her place wasn’t turned over—he could see she didn’t have money. Nick kept her on starvation wages. So what was he after if it wasn’t to know where Anna was living?”

“Esther, my little rosebud, I don’t like to tell you this, but there’s men who
like
torturing women. Gives ’em a hard-on. All right, Olga was un
lucky, but living in a place deserted at night, she was asking for trouble. Could’ve happened anytime. There’s nothing to say it’s the same man as the one at the Hat, is there?
Is
there?”

Esther sighed. “No.”

“No.” Natalya nodded. “Go to the police if you like, but your six
week murder theory’ll just amuse ’em. I mean, what sort of killer only turns up when he gets around to it? What is he? A traveling salesman with a nasty disposition?”

“No.” She almost smiled. Whatever he was, the killer was feral. The man on the stairs stank of the jungle; she couldn’t see him selling vac
uum cleaners door-to-door. She knew she was losing her case. If she couldn’t convince sharp, streetwise Natalya, with how much less belief would that lumbering inspector at Alexanderplatz receive her?

She should go to him, nevertheless. He’d find her ridiculous, a crack
pot foreigner, but she would have discharged a duty—that the whole matter be recorded in case,
in case,
in six weeks’ time, the killer tried again and murdered somebody else.

The phone rang. “Esther? How’s Anna? Get her ready, kid, we’re go
ing to put her through a little test. I’ve found a Romanov we can show her to.
Ne coupez pas,
for Christ’s sake.”

Nick was in Nice and having the usual trouble convincing a French telephone operator that he wanted to stay on the line.