The Last Train to Kazan. Stephen Miller

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       9

      Propas, the chauffeur, roused him out of bed. It took some work. Ryzhkov was hung over, sick, and his head was pounding so that he could hear it. Another man was waiting while Ryzhkov, making certain of his hand-holds, climbed into the back seat. The man watched with a disgusted expression, waited for him to swing his legs inside, slammed the door and got in the front. The car was huge and painted field grey and, in places, a paler colour that might have been brown; brushstrokes done quickly, and the doors labelled in odd stencilled writing that Ryzhkov thought looked Chinese.

      The man in the front seat turned out to be Ilya Strilchuk, the only remaining detective inspector who had been a veteran of the Tsarist Yekaterinburg police. When the Bolsheviks took over Strilchuk had escaped execution by hiding in the woods, but his wife and children had been murdered instead. He didn’t turn around to look at Ryzhkov when he made his introduction, and he didn’t elaborate on any of the details.

      After Strilchuk’s sad story, they fell silent. They were driving up a gentle slope, climbing away from the embankment and the historic centre of the city, the road curving to where it opened out upon a church and a wide square, which abruptly ended in a tall wooden palisade. The fence had been built of rough wood and newly cut logs, and a quartet of guardhouses were spaced along the opposite side of the street. Peeking out above the tall fence he recognized it as the house he’d been shown on the way into town.

      ‘This is the place,’ Strilchuk said, and the chauffeur set the brake. Strilchuk got out to help him, but Ryzhkov was conscious of his own dignity to the point where he made the effort to get out unaided. Giustiniani was at the front of the building, evidently waiting for them. The magistrate Nametkin was with him. They both looked just fine. The gate was opened by a boy in a cut-down artilleryman’s uniform. He snapped to present-arms as they went through. Nametkin thought the boy was funny and kept nudging Giustiniani.

      ‘Do you let just anybody in here?’ Giustiniani said to the boy. ‘There may have been murder done in this house, you know that, don’t you?’

      The boy shrugged spasmodically.

      ‘This house is the subject of a military investigation. Everyone that comes is required to sign a register. Where is it?’

      ‘A book, do you mean, Excellency?’

      ‘Yes, yes, of course. A book. Can you produce it?’ The boy turned and headed for the front door to search for it.

      ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ Nametkin said. ‘We need you to translate for our witness. How are you today, Ryzhkov? Hale and hearty?’

      ‘I’ll last the morning at least,’ he said. ‘What’s this about a witness?’

      ‘Just inside,’ Nametkin said. They stepped into the foyer. The place was a mess. In the front room there was live ammunition piled on top of the piano. The floor was littered with leaves that had either been blown in or tramped in on the soldiers’ boots and not swept away. Nametkin headed for the staircase. ‘This first floor was the billet of the inner guard,’ he said over his shoulder.

      The house had been not so much destroyed as worn down. The upholstery on the furniture had been punctured and spilled out, the legs on some of the chairs had broken and the pieces thrown into the corners. Smells of food gone rancid, the filthy toilets, stale tobacco and sweat lingered in the rooms. ‘The Imperial Family were confined to the five rooms above,’ Nametkin said as they made their way up the central staircase, rounded the banister and walked into the hallway. Even with the windows open the house was stuffy.

      ‘Up here the guards occupied the area beside the stairs, and the family lived behind these doors,’ Nametkin said and waited for them to catch up. Giustiniani came up last, looking over his shoulders.

      Nametkin threw open the double doors and Ryzhkov walked into the Romanovs’ apartments.

      He could see the rooms had been taken apart. Every piece of furniture had been moved about and repositioned, the cupboards opened, drawers tipped out and anything of value taken away. It looked like a building that had been repossessed by a series of particularly angry landlords and then abandoned. Underneath it all there was an elusive perfume that still lingered in the dust, in the fabric of the chairs and the bedding. It might be soap or something rotting just from being closed up in the summer.

      Nametkin waved his finger at the mess. ‘You and Strilchuk should get a list of all these possessions.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’ Strilchuk said. Whatever he said it always had that edge in his voice.

      ‘It’s part of the estate, I suppose,’ Giustiniani murmured. He was standing at the windows. Ryzhkov saw they had been painted over with whitewash from the outside and then the sash had been nailed closed.

      ‘Well…’ Nametkin made a face. ‘The Romanov estate? Until we have some evidence, I guess it must be assumed…’

      Under a chair Ryzhkov saw a book. He stooped and picked it up: Les Bienfaits de la Vièrge. Inside was an inscription to Tatiana –

       For my darling…

      He slid it back onto the floor.

      Around the room, nothing broken, no shards of glass. No blood. Just disarray and petty theft as the Bolsheviks had retreated.

      ‘Ah, here’s our friend,’ said Nametkin. A guard walked out with a man whose hands were cuffed in front of him. They put him in a chair and Ryzhkov told him to tell his story while Strilchuk wrote it all down.

      The witness was one Petr Matok, and he claimed to have been one the guards at the Ipatiev house. In Matok’s version the Imperial Family had been brought to Yekaterinburg in two contingents: the Tsar, Alexandra and their daughter Maria came in April, then about a month later the remaining grand duchesses and the heir Alexei arrived and were taken to the Special House.

      In the first week of July the Ural Soviet replaced the commandant of the guard with a Cheka officer named Yakov Yurovsky.

      ‘Why did they do that?’ Giustiniani asked them man.

      ‘He was the man from Moscow,’ Matok said, as if that explained everything.

      ‘So it was orders from the very top, then, eh?’ Nametkin said. Matok only shrugged.

      ‘Go on,’ Ryzhkov told him.

      According to Matok, Yurovsky had grown up in Yekaterinburg and was an experienced revolutionary. He’d been educated, been a photographer, and had acquired sufficient medical experience to act as a doctor for Alexei on one occasion. Things changed with Yurovsky’s arrival: ‘Tthe broom sweeps clean,’ Matok said. He was smiling a little now. No one was beating him up and he wanted to say the right things and keep it that way.

      Yurovsky replaced almost all of the guards, dividing them into two groups with no connection to each other: an outer guard of local volunteers to police the approaches to СКАЧАТЬ