the bullet ricocheted against it and out on to the landing. Behind Barclay, Kletochnikov was breathing very hard, blood from the wound on his brow trickling unchecked down both cheeks. Barclay clicked his fingers sharply to capture his attention, then shook his revolver angrily at the agent: concentrate, stand ready. Popov’s careless shot had helped clear his mind and in the time it took for the echo to die away he knew what he must do.
‘Lay down your weapon. I’m coming in,’ he shouted and, bending low, he turned the handle of the door. It was neither locked nor bolted. Shards of wood splintered above his arm as another shot rang round the little hall. Go now as Popov’s arm is shaking, his ears still ringing. Go while he is surprised and afraid of the sound of his own weapon. Go. And Barclay launched himself at the door, stumbling low into the room, dazzlingly bright with sunlight. Confused, he cracked his knee on a piece of furniture and fell heavily on to his shoulder. Where was Kletochnikov?
He could see the silhouette of Popov against the window, only four or five feet from him, his weapon at arm’s length. The shot would be almost point blank.
‘Drop it,’ Barclay shouted. ‘Drop it.’
The gun was trembling in Popov’s hand, the low sun kicking off the barrel. Barclay could not distinguish the expression on his face but he could see the student’s finger curled about the trigger.
‘Drop it,’ he shouted again. ‘You’re under arrest.’ Where was that bastard Kletochnikov? Fire then, damn you. Fire.
But Popov gave a small high-pitched whimper like a child and staggered back against the wall. With a rigid jerk like a marionette, he lifted the gun to his own head. It hovered at his temple for a fraction of a second then ‘crack’. Blood erupted from the side of his head, plastering window and walls, his lifeless body crumpling to the boards with a sickeningly final thud.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
Someone was holding Barclay’s arm but he paid no attention. His gaze was fixed on the window, the sun shining through a coagulated mass of pink and white brain matter sliding slowly down the dirty glass. The spark of life lost in one foolish moment. An impulse. But he owed his own life to that impulse. An accident of time, place, circumstance, and on a different day it would be his tissue the gendarmes would scrape from the corners of the room.
He let Kletochnikov help him to his feet. His knees were shaking. The gendarmes had crowded into the room to gaze at the body of the student.
‘Go on, get out until I call you,’ he shouted. Surely they had seen a dead man before? ‘Not you, Kletochnikov. I want you to see if he’s got anything on him.’
The agent began pulling gingerly at the dead man’s jacket, while Barclay shuffled about the room in search of anything that might be a clue. The student must have been preparing to leave his flat that day, his personal belongings were packed into a small suitcase he had left at the door. In spite of the earliness of the hour, Popov was dressed and had eaten — the remains of a stale loaf and a glass of tea were on a table close to the window. The bed was stripped, the blankets neatly folded at the bottom of it. Barclay picked up the case — it was surprisingly heavy — and threw it on to the bed. Books. The usual texts; Marx, Chernyshevsky, Bakunin, a novel by Dickens and some threadbare and rather dirty clothes.
‘Anything?’ he asked, turning to Kletochnikov.
‘Only this ticket,’ he replied, rising stiffly to his feet. ‘Today’s train to Moscow, and another for Voronezh. Some money. A photograph.’
‘Let me see?’
It was of a woman in her late forties or early fifties, elegant, conservatively dressed, her figure a little matronly, perhaps Popov’s mother, but in any case not a terrorist. But then who could be sure these days?
‘Have you checked his boots and hat?’
Kletochnikov turned back to the body and began pulling clumsily at the dead man’s boots. The student’s navy blue cap had been thrown to the floor by the force of the bullet bursting from the side of his head and was sticky with blood and flecks of tissue. Barclay ripped at the cotton lining and it came away with ease. Nothing. No prisoner, no papers. It was a fiasco. For a few unpleasant seconds his thoughts turned to the interview with Dobrshinsky that would follow later in the day. Picking one of Popov’s shirts from the bed, he wiped the blood from his hands. Kletochnikov was still grunting over the student’s legs, making very heavy weather of a simple task.
In his effort to prise boot from foot, the agent had dragged the body from the window, leaving a crimson trail across the boards. Barclay’s eyes were drawn to a slash of sunlight flickering across the floor close to the student’s shattered head. The wood was scorched black.
‘Leave it, will you.’
There was a brutal thump as Kletochnikov dropped a booted foot.
‘Help me roll him over.’
Beneath the student’s body was a crushed heap of damp ashes and fragments of charred paper. Crouching beside it, Barclay took a pencil from his coat and stirred the pile for something worth salvaging. Popov had done a good job. There were only five pieces with anything he could decipher. Handwritten on the largest strip were a number of dates and the names of cities in the south — Kiev, Kharkov, Voronezh. The student was about to set out on his travels. There were two small fragments from an internal passport, almost certainly Popov’s own. A wanted man, he would have travelled on forged documents, although Kletochnikov had found none on his body. But it was the last two fragments that proved the most intriguing. They were from the same distinctive light blue letter paper and written, Barclay noted, in a cultured hand. Mikhailov’s? He would be able to establish that beyond doubt because a handwriting specimen collected from the revolutionary’s family was sitting in the top drawer of his desk at Fontanka 16.
Kovalenko will meet you at the station at precisely…
‘…with the informer,’ Barclay muttered.
‘Your Honour?’
‘Find the dvornik and ask him when Popov last received a letter. Take a description of whoever delivered it.’
So the student knew he was under surveillance. Mikhailov had warned him. How on earth did he find out? And Kovalenko — that was one of the six names on Bronstein’s list. Who was he? And the names of cities — contacts or meetings? Questions. Questions Barclay would have put to the fool at his feet if he had not blown the little brain he was blessed with about his shabby room.
‘All right,’ he shouted irritably to the gendarmes. ‘You can come in now.’
He would have them take the place apart, but he was quite certain they would find nothing more. At least the student had spared the empire the expense and trouble of a trial for murder. Sadly, the collegiate councillor was unlikely to take quite such a generous view of the morning’s events.
9
Hadfield remembered why the address was familiar over a breakfast of coffee and warm rolls. Fontanka 16. Foolish to forget. The Third Section of the tsar’s private chancellery. Goldenberg was watching a secret policeman or officer of the Gendarme Corps. Who? He worried at it like a dog with a bone. The answer came to him as he was brushing his jacket. Someone had attempted to take the life of the head of the Third Section. Hadfield had heard mention of it at the opera a few weeks before. A revolutionary fired two shots through the window of General Drenteln’s carriage and narrowly missed with both. Goldenberg was watching the general, no doubt with a view to making a better fist of it next time. But if that was the case, what on earth should he do about it? He was pondering this question before his dressing mirror when there was a sharp knock at the door of the apartment. Sergei, the dvornik, was on the step with an armful of birch logs for the fire, at his back three serving women in peasant smocks with stiff brushes attached to the soles of their boots.
