The Third Section (25 page)

‘Unlikely,’ she replied, forcing herself to appear at her most rational.

She could not see Yudin smile, but she heard it in his voice. ‘A fascinating approach to torture, nonetheless. The suspect would be placed in a chair and Chief Secretary Sheshkovsky would engage him in quite friendly conversation. And then at the pull of some unseen lever, the floor of the room would drop away, along with the seat of the chair, and a team of experts would use knouts to beat at the man’s nether regions until they bled.’ He took out a key and unlocked the nearest door, inviting Tamara to enter with an opened hand. ‘And then Sheshkovsky would resume his questioning.’

Inside, the room – cell would perhaps be a better description – was quite large, certainly in comparison with the corridor they had come from. It contained a single piece of furniture: a solitary chair. Tamara walked cautiously towards it, eyeing the floor as she went, but it seemed solid enough. When she reached the centre of the cell she saw that the chair was not entire – simply a wooden frame from which the seat had been cut out.

‘My re-creation,’ said Yudin. ‘Far simpler – with none of the unwieldy engineering.’

She turned and looked at him. In his hand he held a knout; behind him, on the wall, hung several others. He caressed its three leather strands, each of them tipped with a small lead ball. Tamara knew that he wanted her to show fear, but she did not feel it.

‘They call this a
plyet
,’ he said. ‘His Majesty – His
late
Majesty – changed the law to make this form of lash the only one we’re allowed to use.’

‘And you wouldn’t disobey His Majesty,’ said Tamara, eyeing the plethora of different whips on the wall behind him that belied his words.

‘We serve His Majesty.’

‘And I’m sure he approved of everything you have down here.’

‘He didn’t disapprove.’

‘His successor might.’ Tamara glanced at Yudin as she spoke. He seemed to take what she had said in his stride.

Yudin stepped outside again, taking the lamp with him, and the cell was plunged into darkness. By the time Tamara had followed him, he had opened up the door opposite and gone inside. The cell was the same size and shape as the last, but even more sparse – empty at first glance.

‘These chambers go back to Ivan the Third,’ explained Yudin. ‘The features are not entirely original – though the idea dates back even further.’ He glanced upwards and towards the centre of the room. At first, Tamara saw nothing, but then the lamplight caught metalwork and she saw, suspended from eyelets in the ceiling, two sets of iron manacles. Yudin walked towards them and put his hand in the air. He pressed his palm flat against the brickwork above him without even having to fully straighten his elbow. ‘Unfortunately, people are so much taller these days,’ he said.

As they left, Tamara noticed two dark stains in the floor, neatly positioned beneath each set of metallic cuffs. Still she did not experience the fear or nausea that Yudin was clearly anticipating – that would be the reaction of most women. She thought of the train to Pavlovsk, and of Stasik’s little body cradled in her arms, and of the stench that came from his clothes. Yudin had not yet shown her anything to compete with the Lord above.

‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘these things have their advantages too.’ He opened the middle door in one of the walls. The space behind was tiny. Only a child could have stood up in there. ‘In olden days, these would have been quite spacious.’ Yudin’s tone was deliberately light. ‘Now, they can break a man in hours.’ He closed the door. ‘The one opposite is just the same.’

They moved on. They were at the end of the passageway, faced with doors, one on either side, another at the very end. Yudin unlocked the one on the left, but did not open it. ‘We won’t step inside here,’ he said. He pushed the door ajar and thrust the lamp inside. A thousand tiny voices squealed together, punctuated by the sound of sharply pointed claws scrabbling over the stonework
and
the slither of scaly tails. He swung the lamp back and forth and a hundred pairs of black, gleaming eyes sparkled back at them.

Yudin closed the door quickly. ‘They soon learn to lose their fear,’ he said. ‘Particularly when they’re hungry. Man’s fear lasts longer.’

Still Tamara failed to feel the terror that Yudin so evidently wanted to induce in her. She had seen rats before – in the streets, beside the river, even running along the railway tracks, to hide under the platform when a train came in. They survived, like any other creature, and their greatest threat to man was that they stole his food – just as man stole theirs. A room full of wolves would seem a better way to make a person afraid. But Tamara was being rational – and she knew that that was a state of mind that Yudin would have eradicated long before he brought his captive to this room.

‘Why are you showing me this, Vasiliy Innokyentievich?’ she asked.

‘Because you expressed an interest.’

Tamara searched her memory, but could not think of anything she might have said to give that impression. ‘I did?’ she asked.

‘When you began to investigate a crime. An investigation leads to an arrest, an arrest to an interrogation, an interrogation to a confession.’

‘If the man is guilty.’

‘Or the denunciation of a friend if he is not. Either way, your investigation will come to an end down here. Are you prepared for that?’ As he asked the question, he moved to the door across the passageway and began to unlock it.

‘What about this one?’ asked Tamara, indicating the door at the very end of the corridor. It was different from the others: more sturdily built, with iron bands across acting as braces. In addition to the lock, there were three heavy bolts at different levels sealing it tight. And unlike the other six doors it had no grille in it at eye level to allow the activities within to be observed.

Yudin glanced at the door and then at her, silent in thought. His face seemed to smile, although his lips never moved, and a look of excitement, exhilaration even, came into his eyes. Then,
in
an instant, the expression faded, and he turned back to unlock the other door. ‘Perhaps another day,’ he said quickly, and then disappeared into the room that he was happier to show her. She was reminded of the story of Bluebeard.

Even before following him in, Tamara could hear the trickle of water. Inside, her first impression was that the room contained a coffin. It abutted the side wall and was made of stone – more a sarcophagus than a coffin. Above it a lead pipe protruded from the wall, pouring water into it, filling it almost to the brim. Not a coffin, or even a sarcophagus, she thought, but a bathtub. A small notch in the side allowed the water to flow out again without the tub brimming over completely. It ran along a gutter and then disappeared through another hole in the wall. The water stank with the familiar reek of the sewer.

‘Are you prepared to do it?’ repeated Yudin. ‘To do whatever it takes to extract the information you need?’

She considered, but not the prospect of bringing a man down here to discover his secrets. She considered the image of Irina Karlovna, lying on the bed, the description of Margarita Kirillovna in much the same circumstances, along with those of the others who had died. If whoever had killed them had the stomach to do what he had done, then was it fair that she lacked the stomach to discover the truth?

‘If it becomes necessary.’

The smell from the water seemed to become stronger, filling the room.

‘Many fear drowning more than anything,’ said Yudin wistfully, staring down into the rippling water. Then he looked up, straight into Tamara’s eyes. ‘Danilov is seventy-four years old. Could you bring an old man down here?’

‘He’s not the murderer – not of Irina.’

‘But he may know who is.’

‘Then he’ll tell me.’

‘He’s kept his secret for thirty years,’ Yudin persisted.

Tamara corrected him. ‘Forty-three years.’ She was finding it hard to breathe. The stench reminded her of Petersburg and of 1848.

He smiled, almost imperceptibly, then turned to look back into
the
water, its odour seeming not to affect him. ‘The water comes from the Neglinnaya, as far as I can make out, and must drain into the Moskva. Filthy these days, of course, but that only adds to the effect.’

Tamara tried to breathe through her mouth, but the stench had already filled her nostrils and she could not escape it. She felt bile rising in her gullet and closed her mouth tightly to restrain it, which forced her once again to inhale the foetid air through her nose until she could stand it no more. She turned and fled, at last, she knew, giving Yudin the response he was hoping for, though not for any reason he would predict. It was simply the smell – the miasma that had filled Petersburg in 1848 and had brought with it cholera. It had spread from the rivers and canals and through the streets and into the houses and taken her children from her. Half of her wanted to stay there, to breathe deeply of the foulness and be taken by the disease that had taken her family, and it was not fear of the disease that made her run, but fear of the memories that the stench brought with it.

Once out of the cell and away from Yudin’s lamp, she found herself in darkness. She turned the wrong way and felt the wood of the door that was forbidden to her against her hands. From the other side she thought she heard a sound – a voice pleading for help – but she realized it was only an echo of the cries she had heard from Stasik as he lay in agony, years before. She turned and went the other way, not quite running, trailing her fingers along the enclosing walls, counting the doorways that she passed. She tripped as her toe caught the first of the stone steps, but was able to push out with her arms and brace herself on the walls on either side before falling.

She climbed the stairs in the way she had done as a child, leaning forward and half crawling so that her hands touched the steps in front of her, ignoring the filth and grime that they picked up, almost pleased that in the darkness she could not see it. The steps flattened out and she thought she must be in Yudin’s office, but she remembered the small landing where the stairway had branched into two. She turned right, and soon felt the steps rising again.

At last she came up against another door. She pushed at it, but it would not open. Her hands fumbled around, searching for a
handle
or latch. Eventually she gripped something metallic. She pulled on it and the door opened. Now, finally, in Yudin’s office, there was some little illumination, but it did not stop her flight. She crossed the room and carried on upwards on the stairs that she knew led to the surface. Soon another door was in front of her, but this one opened easily. She spilled outside and took in great gasps of the cool, clean night air. Eventually her breathing slowed.

She waited for Yudin to join her, but he did not. She knew she should go back down – only to his office – and speak to him, but she was unable. Instead she headed home. The taste of the foul air below was still on her tongue, its scent still in her nostrils. She lit a cigarette and drove the stench – and the memories – away.

It was the small hours before Dmitry made it back to his lodgings and went to bed, but he did not sleep. The enemy bombardment had begun to subside, but still the occasional blast could be heard, which was enough to keep him awake – as was his state of mind.

It should have all been quite inexplicable. Dmitry had been at the mercy of Ignatyev and yet the creature had not killed him. More than that, Ignatyev had desisted at Tyeplov’s instruction. Why should Tyeplov command him? Why should he obey? And yet the explanation came in the image that filled Dmitry’s mind as he lay in the darkness and gazed at the ceiling.

It was the scene in the bedroom, before the explosion – the dead man on the floor, Ignatyev turning away, blood streaming from his lips, and Tyeplov, his face in his hands at the washstand. Dmitry let his mind create music to accompany his recollection, but the tunes that came were strangely light-hearted; clarinets and piccolos danced over the melody, laughing at Dmitry. And there was good reason for it, for there was one aspect of the tableau that proved Dmitry to have been an utter fool.

In the mirror on the bedroom wall, above the washstand, Tyeplov had shown no reflection.

Dmitry had never seen him in daylight. He had seen him consort with men who had later proved to be vampires – Mihailov, Wieczorek and now Ignatyev. When Mihailov and Wieczorek had come to them in the casemate, it was not as two vampires come
to
feast on two men. They were merely rejoining their comrade in the hope of sharing at least a taste of the blood that Tyeplov had so cunningly taken into his possession.

And that was another way in which Dmitry felt a fool. It was so absurd he even chuckled at it – thinking of himself as some deluded young virgin, tricked by an old letch. Tyeplov had wanted him only for his body. If that were true in the normal sense, then Dmitry would not have minded; he was not a romantic who needed to be flattered to be seduced. He had enjoyed Tyeplov’s body just as much as he had believed Tyeplov enjoyed his. But for Tyeplov, the night they had spent together had not been the goal of his seduction, but merely a phase of it, a way to weaken Dmitry’s resistance when the moment came for the final consummation of the flesh, which Dmitry would have found impossible to enjoy.

The same thing must have happened that night. Whoever their poor victim had been, Dmitry could only suspect that Tyeplov and Ignatyev had lured him with promises of much the same enjoyments as Dmitry had experienced. Clearly Tyeplov had learned from his mistakes with Dmitry, and had allowed Ignatyev to strike swiftly.