A Razor Wrapped in Silk (23 page)
Dr Pervoyedov frowned at his sketch. ‘What do you think of that? Have I rendered the stains accurately?’
Virginsky gave an impatient jerk of the head in begrudging assent.
‘Now all that remains is to ink in the sketch.’
‘Can you not do that later? I do not have all day.’
‘No, I must do it now, so that you may witness the accuracy of the finished figure with your signature.’
‘Very well, though it is hardly convenient for me to wait on you. I am not even assigned to the Polenova case. That, I believe, is at the root of why he wishes to punish me. I have been assigned to the case of a missing boy. Indeed, I have been told that my participation in that case was specifically requested by an interested party. That seems to have put Porfiry Petrovich’s nose out of joint. I would not be surprised if there is not some element of professional jealousy involved here. But really, he has no grounds for complaint. He brought it on himself. He failed to investigate the case when it was first brought to his attention – by me, I would have you know. Now she has chosen me and he doesn’t like it.’
‘She? Who is this
she
?’
‘It doesn’t matter. The thing is, it was while I was doing the rounds of the hospitals that I encountered the tramp wearing this tunic. A pure accident. Porfiry Petrovich should consider
himself fortunate to have even this. But no, he wanted the man wearing it too.’
‘He can be a very demanding taskmaster, I’ll grant you that. There. I have finished the inking. A tolerable rendition, I dare say. If you would be so good as to sign it, we may proceed with the analysis itself.’
While Virginsky signed the diagram, Dr Pervoyedov took a scalpel to the cloth of the tunic.
‘It seems to me that you have never forgiven him for the prank he played on you here in this very room.’
‘You call it a prank? To confront me without warning with the severed heads of two of my friends!’
‘It was designed to disorientate you. You might even say, to unhinge you a little.’
‘Is that not sadism?’
‘Not sadism, no.’ Dr Pervoyedov extracted a small square of stained cloth from the tunic with a pair of fine tongs. He held the sample up for scrutiny. ‘If this is blood, it should dissolve in distilled water – although that is not the ultimate test, of course.’ The doctor dropped the swatch into a glass retort containing clear liquid. ‘He did it because he believed it was necessary. To break down whatever carapace you had erected around the truth, so that the truth might seep out, whether you would or not.’ Dr Pervoyedov peered at the retort as whorls of pink began to form in the water. ‘But tell me, what’s this about a missing boy?’
‘A young factory worker – a labourer at the Nevsky Cotton-Spinning Factory. He is one of several now who have gone missing. All of them connected with a school that has been founded to bring the benefit of education to such children. I started with the hospitals in case he had been the victim of an accident.’
‘Did you try the Medical-Surgical Academy?’
‘Why would he have been admitted there?’
‘He would not.’ Dr Pervoyedov shook the retort to hasten the dissolution.
‘Then why suggest it?’
‘At least, he would not be admitted there alive. However, the Medical-Surgical Academy is very interested in acquiring unclaimed cadavers.’ Dr Pervoyedov drew off a small quantity of the pink liquid with a pipette.
‘I don’t understand. From whom do they acquire them, if they are unclaimed?’
‘There is an unofficial trade carried on between the Academy and …’ The doctor released a drop of the liquid on to a glass slide. The minuscule mound stood proud above the polished surface. ‘The police.’
‘The police sell corpses to the Medical-Surgical Academy?’
Dr Pervoyedov slipped the prepared slide into place in the stage of the microscope. ‘It has been going on for generations.’
‘The police trade in dead bodies?’
‘The practice was prevalent when I was studying at the Academy.’ The soft shush of a Lundström match being struck, the delicate flicker and glow of a newborn flame, held the two men rapt. Virginsky breathed in the wheedling scent of red phosphorus, and felt the kick of something deadly spur his heart. He watched Dr Pervoyedov light the wick of a kerosene lamp on the bench and place it inside the arc of a concave reflector. The light from the lamp was directed towards the base of the microscope, where the mound of liquid was held.
The doctor gestured towards the spectroscope eyepiece. ‘Would you care to take a look? It is a revelation. A small revelation of one of the wonders of science.’
Virginsky held up a palm in a gesture of deferment. ‘It is an outrage. It is an abuse.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘A policeman’s wages are paltry. You cannot blame them for wanting to supplement their income.’
‘But the bodies are not theirs to sell. And the Medical-Surgical Academy is equally at fault for creating the demand.’
‘But without fresh corpses to practice upon, how can you expect medical students to acquire the knowledge they need to become doctors?’
‘You cannot condone this vile traffic!’
‘Without such training, I would be little use to you. Besides, as I said, the bodies are unclaimed.’
‘And, I dare say, they are without exception the bodies of paupers.’
‘Invariably so. Which is why I suggested you make enquiries at the Academy. Tread carefully though. If you go in blazing with indignation, you will surely fail to secure their co-operation. In short, they will deny everything.
Everything
.’ At last Dr Pervoyedov stooped to peer into the microscope. ‘Ah! Now that’s interesting. Very interesting indeed.’ He turned to Virginsky, his face enlivened by boyish excitement. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to look at this, Pavel Pavlovich?’
Virginsky crossed the Neva by the temporary pontoon bridge at the end of Liteyny Prospekt, riding on the open deck of an omnibus. The acrid smell of the Vyborgskaya District drifted over the river to greet him. A thick ash, the noxious product of factory chimneys, settled on him like a coating of despair. Snow was no longer in the air, only this infernal negative of it. He chose the upper deck, despite the cold and the poisonous fumes, because he liked to look down on the city, or rather to feel in himself the potential for ascent.
The clop of the horses’ hooves lost their resonance as the omnibus rattled off the shifting bridge on to the solid embankment north of the Neva. Virginsky gave in to a resentful despondency, as he rose from his seat. No one, it occurred to him, ventured into the Vyborgskaya District unless they had to. It was a place of sprawling factories and precarious wooden slums; between them, expanses of flat, black, toxic wasteland, littered with clumps of grubby vegetation and human detritus. At this time of the year – the damp, raw season before the big freeze set in – the largely unpaved roads were churned into seas of mud. The earth became an impediment, sucking purpose from those who sought to traverse it.
He jumped off the moving platform of the omnibus on Morskaya Street, just as the Medical-Surgical Academy came forward to dominate the view. Tucked in behind the Military
Hospital, as if these institutional outposts felt the need to huddle together, it was a neo-classical building somewhere between a palace and a temple. An academy, in fact: Virginsky had no doubt that it would have conformed to all the Vitruvian requirements of that genre of building, the architect substituting obedience for imagination, as was so often the way in Russia.
Virginsky felt a glimmer of excitement at his own small act of insubordination, although perhaps it was not so very small, after all. He ought to have returned immediately to the bureau with the results of Dr Pervoyedov’s analysis. And yet, he had come here, on his own initiative – or rather, in open disobedience of his superior, Porfiry Petrovich. He could argue that he was acting in response to the lead given him by Dr Pervoyedov. However, it did not help his case that the bureau lay between the Obukhovsky Hospital and the Surgical-Medical Academy. It would have been an easy matter for him to call in on his way and share the news with Porfiry Petrovich. Virginsky smiled to himself. There was no doubt he enjoyed having the advantage over Porfiry Petrovich for once, and he would hold on to it for as long as possible. He had to admit, however, that he found it impossible to make sense of the information Dr Pervoyedov had given him. At the same time, he had the irritating premonition that Porfiry Petrovich would know just what it signified as soon as it was revealed to him.
A statue of some Roman goddess (he would never understand why a nation that declared itself Christian continued to erect these tributes to pagan deities) stood in the garden before the entrance to the Academy, with a number of benches around it. Virginsky hesitated for a moment, looking up at the lemon yellow building. Its white columns gleamed like the
teeth in a monumentally gaping mouth. A group of medical students in their uniforms gave him a mildly curious backward glance as they passed him. He fell in behind them, and climbed the steps to enter.
Inside, in contrast to the classical formality of its exterior, the great entrance hall presented the worn-down eccentricity of a functioning institution. It was a place where people congregated; they had made their mark on it, chipping off its edges, treading down its pathways. It had the feel of a clannish, almost familial enclosure. The members of this community knew their place, and moved about within it with the contented confidence of belonging. When voices were raised, it was in raucous fellowship, each individual burst of exuberance adding to the strength of the corporate body. Virginsky keenly felt his status as an interloper.
He had arrived just as the next period of lectures was about to begin – no doubt the last of the morning. The corridors thronged with medical students. He noticed a number of students flocking in one particular direction. They seemed possessed by a highly animated excitement that drew him into their midst. He hurried to keep up with them, pausing only once to glance through the circular window in a closed door which bore the number 11 on a small plate. Banks of seating led down to a demonstration area. On a table, beneath a green sheet, an ominously elongated mound awaited the beginning of the lecture.
Virginsky caught up with the students. Their excitement seemed to heighten into bravado. They streamed through a door identical to the one that had given Virginsky pause a moment before. This one was designated ‘Anatomy 1’. He had expected it to be another banked auditorium, but it was simply
a large open room in which were arranged around twenty or so tables. Each table was draped with a green sheet, though the mounds beneath these sheets were much smaller and more spherically compact than the one he had glimpsed earlier. The students took their places, a pair to each table. Their excitement had drained from them, and from many all colour too. They were tense, though an occasional bubble of nervous laughter broke out.
A bell rang. A professor in a white coat entered and strode up to the lecture podium at one end of the room.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Uncover your heads.’
It had come to this again, as it always did. And as ever, it was Porfiry Petrovich who had brought him here.
*
The tables had marble surfaces. He had not expected that. The heads lolled back on them. Virginsky wanted to keep looking at the marble. He wanted to find patterns in the mineral veins. He did not want to meet the vacant eyes, and even less the tendril-trailing neck stumps of the decapitated heads.
There were too many to take in at once. Each head, each face, contended for his compassionate attention, but without beseeching, without expression of any kind. All around him, dead mouths gaped in mute chorus.
He moved unchallenged between the tables, his service uniform for the moment lending the imprimatur of authority. He estimated that of the approximately twenty heads, six were those of children.
‘May I help you?’ It was the professor, a sinewy man of about fifty years, wearing a pince-nez across a scalpel-sharp nose. His adam’s apple was almost equally sharp.
‘Yes. I am a magistrate from the Department for the Investigation of Criminal Causes. I am looking into the disappearance of a number of children. I notice that there are children’s … uhm … remains, amongst these that the students are working on today.’
‘Sadly, yes.’
‘Is it usual for there to be so many children at one time?’
‘I’m afraid it’s not unprecedented – although, yes, we do currently have a higher proportion than is typical.’
‘How did they die?’
‘The children?’
‘Yes.’
‘In different ways.’
‘But you have ascertained a cause of death for each child?’
‘This is an anatomy class. We are not teaching forensic medicine.’
‘But if, for example, a child had died in an horrendous accident, you would notice, would you not? There would be wounds, broken bones perhaps, even ruptured internal organs?’
‘Oh certainly. We get our fair share of those. They are of limited usefulness to the students. The industrial accidents are the worst. The bones are not simply broken, but crushed, sometimes to a fibrous pulp. Picture a shredded banana skin. I’m talking about young bones, of course. The older, more brittle bones simply shatter into fragments, which become embedded in mangled tissue.’
‘I trust the police make allowances for this in the price they ask for such sub-standard goods.’
The professor gave him a severe look over the top of his pince-nez. ‘That does not come into it.’
‘You do not pay the police for the bodies?’
‘We are assured that the money goes to the families. Our payment is made in the form of a charitable contribution.’
‘There are families involved? I understood that the bodies you acquired were unidentified, and therefore unclaimed. Is that not so?’
‘I cannot comment. The police assure us that the money goes to the families. That is how it is put to us.’
‘But wouldn’t a family wish to bury its children?’