There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union. Reginald Hill

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СКАЧАТЬ but pleasant, interesting and bright. Chislenko felt able to relax a little, and enjoy the tea and her company and a brief moment off duty.

      ‘What do you really make of all this?’ he asked her. ‘Now you’ve had time to think about it. Off the record.’

      ‘Off the record?’ She regarded him with an open scepticism and then shrugged and wiped it off with a stunning smile. ‘Well, off the record, it has to be a ghost, don’t you think?’

      ‘A ghost?’ he echoed. He must have sounded disappointed.

      ‘All right, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know that’s what my mother’s been going on about for the past half-hour and you hoped for something more original from me. Perhaps I could dress it up for you. A para-psychological phenomenon, how would that sound in your report? Or perhaps you prefer a delusive projection produced by localized mass-hysteria, perhaps relatable to repressed claustrophobia triggered by the lift.’

      ‘Now I like the sound of that,’ he said, only half joking. So far, until his reports were complete, he had avoided anything like a conclusion, opinion or recommendation. This kind of phraseology sounded just the ticket.

      Natasha snorted derisively.

      ‘Use any jargon you like,’ she said firmly. ‘In my book, any human figure which passes clean through a material barrier is a ghost. Go back in records and look for an accident happening in that lift-shaft. The past is where your investigation should be, if you’ve got the nerve.’

      She was mocking him, but the gibe struck home. The idea had actually occurred to him, but he had dismissed it at once, and not merely because it was absurd. No; an ambitious thirty-year-old inspector of police knew that his every move was scrutinized with great care, and he had no desire to find himself explaining that he was examining old records in order to test a ghost hypothesis!

      He covered his discomfiture with a smile, and returning mockery for mockery, he said, ‘Why the past? What’s wrong with precognition? If you believe in ghosts, surely, you believe in visions too? Perhaps this was an event which has yet to happen.’

      ‘Oh no,’ she said sombrely. ‘It’s happened.’

      ‘How so sure?’

      ‘The clothes,’ she said.

      ‘The clothes?’ He cast his mind back to the witness statements. ‘Yes, I recall, there was something about an old-fashioned suit. But, good lord, Moscow’s full of old-fashioned suits! Who can afford a new-fashioned suit these days?’

      The question was rhetorical since any attempt to answer it would almost certainly have involved a slander of the State.

      She said, ‘It was more than that. It was, well, a new old-fashioned suit, if you follow me. And he was wearing a celluloid collar too. Now, old-fashioned suits may be plentiful still, but you don’t see many celluloid collars about, do you? And he had button-up shoes!’

      ‘Now there’s a thing!’ said Chislenko. ‘So what kind of dating would you put on this outfit?’

      She pursed her lips thoughtfully. It would have been very easy to lean forward and kiss them but Chislenko was not letting himself relax that far. Not yet anyway; the thought popped up unexpectedly, surprisingly, but not unwelcomely.

      ‘’Thirties, late ’twenties, somewhere around then, I’d say,’ she said.

      He laughed out loud and said, ‘Now that is interesting. When you go to work in the morning do you ever look up?’

      ‘Look up?’ She was puzzled.

      ‘Yes, up.’ He raised his head and his eyes till he was looking at the angle where the yellowing paper on the walls met the flaking whitewash on the ceiling. ‘Or is it head down, eyes half closed, drift along till you reach your desk?’

      ‘I’m very alert in the mornings,’ she retorted spiritedly.

      ‘I’m glad to hear it. Then you must have noticed that huge concrete slab above the main door. The one inscribed. The Gorodok Building. Dedicated to the Greater Glory of the USSR and opened by Georgiy Malenkov in June 1949.

      ‘Nineteen forty-nine,’ she echoed. ‘Oh. I see. Nineteen forty-nine.’

      ‘Yes. Part of our great post-war reconstruction programme,’ he said, rising. ‘A little late for celluloid collars and button-up shoes, don’t you think? Thank you for the tea, Comrade Natasha. I’m sure we’ll meet again, I’ll need to keep in touch with you till this strange business is settled.’

      He offered his hand formally. She shook it and said, ‘And I’ll be very interested to learn how you manage to settle it, Comrade Inspector.’

      He smiled and squeezed her hand. She returned neither squeeze nor smile. He didn’t blame her. Only a fool would allow a couple of minutes’ friendly chat to break down the barriers of caution and suspicion which always exist between public and police.

      And Natasha, he guessed, was no fool.

      Checking Josif Muntjan, the liftman, wasn’t half as pleasant but just as easy. The State makes no social distinction in its records. Menial or master, once you come into its employ, you get the womb-to-tomb X-ray treatment.

      Muntjan came out pretty clear. There was a record of minor offences, all involving drunkenness, but none recent, and nothing while on duty.

      Indeed, the supervisor, who didn’t look like a man in whom the milk of compassion flowed very freely, spoke surprisingly well of him. He expressed surprise rather than outrage at the mention of the hip-flask.

      ‘It’s not an offence to own one, is it?’ he said. ‘No need to report it, though, is there? I’ll see he doesn’t bring it to work with him again. He’ll take notice of what I say. Jobs aren’t easy to come by when you’re old and unqualified.’

      Chislenko nodded; the man’s sympathetic understanding touched him. He clearly knew that if Muntjan were tossed out of his job, he probably wouldn’t stop falling till he landed in one of those shacks on the outer ring road where the Moscow down-and-outs eked out their perilous existence. Or rather, non-existence, for of course in the perfect socialist state, such degraded beings were impossible.

      Crime too was impossible. Or would be eventually. The statistics showed progress. Chislenko defended the statistics as fervently as the next man, knowing that if he didn’t, the next man would probably report the deficiency. But falling though the crime rate might be, there was still a lot of it about and Chislenko resented the amount of time he had to spend on this unrewarding and absurd business at the Gorodok Building. The only profit in it was that it had brought him into contact with Natasha Lovchev, but that relationship was still as uncertain in its outcome as a new Five-Year-Plan.

      He turned his attention from Muntjan to Alexei Rudakov. Here the computer confirmed his own first estimate. Rudakov was a man to be treated with respect. Only his initial foolishness in leaving the scene of the incident made him vulnerable to hard questioning. The trouble was, the harder the questioning, the firmer his story.

      Finally Rudakov said, ‘Comrade Inspector, clearly you want to hear this story as little as I want to tell it. In a few days I shall be returning to the Dnieper Dam. Rest assured, I shall not be making a fool of myself СКАЧАТЬ