Blackstone and the Endgame

by Sally Spencer

  When he returned, at lunch time, it was clear from the worried expression on his face that things had not been going well.

  ‘You remember that the policeman made two visits to the palace last night, don’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Blackstone replied. ‘It’s not really something that I’m likely to forget.’

  ‘Well, now I have learned why he came back that second time – and I’m sure that you’ll find the explanation as incredible as I did.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘On his first visit, Yusupov told him that he and his friends had had a very drunken evening, and at the end of it they decided it might be fun to shoot one of the dogs. I should imagine the policeman was disgusted at the decadence of his so-called “betters” – I know I would have been in his place – but he accepted the explanation, because while it was undoubtedly an insane thing to do, he probably considers that most aristocrats are insane. At any rate, he went back to his post by the canal and would probably have thought no more about it if Purishkevich and Yusupov hadn’t sent the major-domo after him.’

  ‘Yes, why did they do that?’

  ‘I assume because, at that time of the morning, there was no one else around who they could boast to.’

  ‘They didn’t tell him the truth, did they?’ Blackstone gasped.

  ‘They asked the policeman if he was a patriot who loved his tsar, and when he said yes – and what else could he say? – Purishkevich told him he should rejoice, because they had just killed Russia’s greatest enemy.’

  ‘And how did the constable react to that?’

  ‘He didn’t believe it. Who would? Nobody announces to a policeman that they’ve just committed a murder! So the constable – who I have talked to, and can assure you is not one of the world’s great thinkers – asked himself why this important man would tell him such an obvious lie. And the answer he came up with was that it was a kind of loyalty test that was too complex for him to understand – and that what Purishkevich really wanted him to do was report the whole thing to his superintendent, which he did. The superintendent read the report and passed it straight up to head of the Okhrana, who read it himself and then immediately forwarded it to the Minister of the Interior.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Blackstone said.

  ‘The police went to Rasputin’s apartment to check on the family – and also to remove any compromising documents he might have left lying around. That alerted his daughter, Maria, to the fact that something was wrong, and she used one of her contacts in the palace to let the tsarina know.’

  ‘So what will happen now?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vladimir admitted. ‘Rasputin’s death was always bound to have consequences, but if it had been a smooth operation – a quick incision to remove a tumour from the body politic – I might have been able to control the damage. As it is, we are one step closer to disaster.’

  It was only when Patterson asked about Mr Quinn in the Bellevue – by which time it was four o’clock in the afternoon – that the clerk, on being shown the photograph, said, ‘Ah, you mean Mr Hansen.’

  So he was using the same name as he had been using in London, Patterson thought. That was careless of him.

  And it was strange that he should have chosen to stay in the Bellevue, rather than at any of sixteen previous hotels he’d checked on, which had all been much grander.

  But those were minor considerations.

  What really mattered was – after all their efforts – he had tracked the bastard down.

  ‘Is Mr Hansen in his room now?’ he asked.

  The clerk glanced up at the key rack.

  ‘Doesn’t appear to be,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he’s left a note saying where he can be found. A lot of our guests do that.’

  He reached down and checked through the in-tray.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said.

  ‘No note?’ Patterson suggested.

  ‘Oh, there’s a note, all right, but it’s from my colleague on the night shift,’ the other man said. ‘It seems that before he went out for a walk last night, Mr Hansen ordered a room-service breakfast.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Well, we can assume that means he fully expected to be here this morning, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he never returned from his walk, and it’s the night clerk’s opinion – which I happen to agree with – that if he doesn’t turn up by dinner time, we should inform the police.’

  Shit! Patterson thought. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

  Ellie Carr stopped in front of the photographer’s shop more to gather her strength than for any other reason, and if she looked at the display in the window, that was only because it was there to be looked at.

  Part of the window was devoted to pictures taken in the studio.

  There were family groups – the mother sitting on a chair with a saintly expression on her face, the father standing behind her, looking stern, and the kids on the floor, clearly uncomfortable in their best clothes and wishing they were somewhere else.

  There were portraits of young women who saw themselves as romantic heroines and thought that being shot against a background of a painted forest could only add to their mystique.

  And there were pictures of young men, posed in such a way as to emphasize their supposed athletic prowess.

  The other half of the window was devoted to the second string in the photographer’s business bow – his promenade photographs. There was none of the stiffness of studio poses about these photographs, because the subjects had not been posing at all. Instead, they had been captured in a moment of complete naturalness, and had only become aware of the photographer’s existence when he handed them a ticket and told them they could collect their pictures the following day.

  Ellie let her eyes glide over pictures of young men who were out for a stroll with their young ladies, and families exhibiting the true anarchy of family life.

  And then she saw it!

  And then she bloody saw it!

  She opened the shop door. There was the sound of a bell tingling somewhere, and then a middle-aged, balding man in a mock-velvet jacket emerged from the back room.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d like to buy one of the photographs in your window,’ Ellie said, fighting to keep the tremble out of her voice.

  ‘I can’t honestly say that I remember taking a picture of you,’ the photographer told her.

  ‘It’s not a picture of me,’ Ellie explained. ‘It’s a picture of my nephew.’ She pointed to it. ‘There he is – young Archibald.’

  ‘Ah!’ the photographer said cautiously.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Ellie wondered.

  ‘Well, yes,’ the photographer admitted. ‘I don’t normally sell my promenade pictures to anybody but the subjects of them. Folk can be funny about other people having an image of them without their permission, you see. You might call that superstition, but that’s just the way things are.’

  ‘He is my nephew,’ Ellie pointed out.

  ‘So you say, but I’ve no proof of that, now have I?’ the photog-rapher countered.

  ‘Would I give you a guinea for a picture of someone who wasn’t my nephew?’ Ellie asked.

  The photographer licked his lips. ‘A guinea, you say?’

  ‘A guinea,’ Ellie repeated.

  ‘Well, I’m sure your nephew won’t mind at all,’ the photog-rapher said. ‘In fact, he should be quite flattered that his aunt is prepared to pay a guinea for his picture.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ellie agreed, ‘he should.’

  Vladimir and Blackstone stood on the Petrovsky Bridge, looking down at the water below. The river was partly frozen over, but in the sections that were ice-free, a number of divers were at work.

  ‘The police received information that there was blood on the parapet, and when they came to investigate, they found an overshoe on the ice, which Rasputin’s servant identified as belonging to him
,’ Vladimir said. ‘Was there ever a more incompetent bunch of conspirators?’

  ‘It would be hard to imagine there could be,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Now that they know where to look, it should not take them long to find the body, because it will be floating just under the ice.’

  ‘Floating? I thought they were going to weigh him down with chains before they threw him in.’

  ‘So they were – but in all the excitement, they forgot to.’

  The divers had found nothing near the bridge and were moving further along the bank.

  ‘Yusupov denies ever seeing Rasputin last night, but no one believes him,’ Vladimir continued. ‘The police visited the palace this afternoon. By then, the prince actually had shot one of his dogs – both to support the first story they told the policeman last night and so they might have some canine blood to cover the bloodstains left by Rasputin.’ He paused. ‘A man who will shoot his own dog,’ he added, with a hint of anger in his voice, ‘does not understand the meaning of loyalty and is capable of anything.’

  The divers had selected a new spot in which to search, and two of them plunged into the river.

  ‘The poor animal died in vain,’ Vladimir said. ‘The police found the traces of blood leading from the basement to the edge of the courtyard. It was obvious that so much blood could not have come from one dog.’

  The two divers emerged from the water, shivering and shaking their heads. Two more plunged in to take their place.

  ‘I hear that General Kornilov is angrier than anyone ever remembers seeing him before,’ Vladimir said. ‘He has been pacing up and down his office ever since he heard the news, and none of his staff dares go near him. It is not, of course, the death of Rasputin that has driven him into this rage – he doesn’t give a fig about the starets – it is the effect that the death will have on the little princess who he has nurtured for so long.’

  ‘He’ll want to see someone punished for it,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘He will indeed,’ Vladimir agreed.

  The divers emerged from the river, and the moment they were on the bank again, they began waving their hands excitedly.

  ‘They found the body,’ Vladimir said fatalistically. ‘I told you it wouldn’t take them very long.’

  ‘Will Kornilov want to punish Grand Duke Dimitri and Prince Yusupov?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Yes, he will – but he will not be allowed to,’ Vladimir said. ‘Dimitri is a member of the imperial family, and Felix – despite his inclinations in the other direction – is married to the tsar’s niece.’

  ‘Then who will he punish?’

  ‘He will attempt to punish whoever it is that Yusupov – once he is backed into a corner – names as being the leading light of the conspiracy. And who do you think our Felix will choose to rat on?’

  ‘It could be you,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Yes, though I played no active part in the whole bloody mess, it could very well be me,’ Vladimir agreed.

  The pub next to the railway station was called – unimaginatively – the Railway Arms, and when Patterson entered the saloon bar at six o’clock, Ellie Carr was already sitting at one of the tables, waiting for him.

  She looked cheerful enough, he thought as he crossed the bar – but then she hadn’t heard his news yet.

  He sat down opposite her.

  ‘I found out where Max has been staying, but he’d already gone,’ he said heavily. ‘He left, unexpectedly, last night. He must have known we were on the way, but what I can’t work out is who could have tipped him off.’

  Ellie didn’t look the least disappointed. In fact – to Patterson’s astonishment – she was grinning.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  ‘I should have given up then, but I didn’t,’ Patterson said. ‘I thought, you see, that, in his panic, he might have taken refuge in one of the smaller boarding houses, so I checked them out as well. Nobody had seen him. He might be back in London, I suppose, or he might have finally fled the country, but whatever he’s done, we’ll never find him now.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ Ellie repeated.

  ‘It does matter,’ Patterson said, starting to get angry. ‘Without Max, we have nothing.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Ellie told him. ‘We have this!’

  She laid the photograph she had bought for a guinea on the table.

  ‘Another photograph,’ Patterson said despondently.

  ‘Look at it, Archie!’ Ellie urged him. ‘For Gawd’s sake, look at it!’

  With little show of enthusiasm, Patterson did as he’d been instructed.

  Then a sudden change came over him. His eyes bulged, and his lip began to tremble. He picked up the photograph in shaking hands and held it up to the light. Then, not content with that, he twisted it around so he was viewing it from a different angle.

  Finally, he laid it carefully back on the table.

  ‘This changes everything, doesn’t it?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t matter where Max has gone, because we don’t need him any more.’

  ‘Which is what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last five minutes,’ Ellie pointed out.

  Patterson picked up the picture again, as if to reassure himself that it was real.

  ‘I never suspected … it never occurred to me …’ he said.

  ‘It never occurred to anybody,’ Ellie told him. ‘Why would it have?’

  Patterson looked up at the bar clock. ‘It’s come too late for me to make any use of it,’ he said. ‘In fourteen hours’ time, I’ll be behind bars.’

  ‘I know that,’ Ellie agreed.

  ‘And that means it will all be down to you.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Do you think you can handle it?’ Patterson asked worriedly.

  ‘I’ll do more than just handle it,’ Ellie told him. ‘I’ll enjoy it.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  18th December 1916 – Julian calendar; 31st December 1916 – Gregorian calendar

  It was mid-morning on New Year’s Eve, and Sir Roderick Todd lay propped up – with a great many pillows – in his bed. He was now so ill that he rarely saw visitors, but he was not about to miss the opportunity to extract one last drop of sweet revenge from the Sam Blackstone saga, which was why he had agreed to meet the woman who was standing in front of him.

  ‘You are, I believe, Inspector Blackstone’s mistress, Dr Carr,’ he said, in the thin, reedy voice that was all that was left to him now but which still managed to convey his disgust. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ Ellie Carr replied.

  ‘Are you saying that you do not visit his bed – that you do not sink into all kinds of debauchery together?’ Todd asked incredulously.

  ‘Oh, we do that all right,’ Ellie agreed, ‘though not quite often enough for my liking. It’s the term “mistress” that I object to.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘And so you should. There’s something rather unequal about the word “mistress”, don’t you think? Men talk about “my mistress” in much the same way as they might talk about “my dog” or “my horse”. It’s not like that with me and Sam. I’m his lover, and he’s mine.’

  ‘Are you really such a shameless woman?’ Todd wondered.

  ‘I try to be,’ Ellie said. ‘And now we’ve got your moral outrage out of the way, do you suppose we could get down to business?’

  ‘Of course,’ Todd agreed. ‘You’re here to beg for mercy for Sam Blackstone, aren’t you? You want me to use my influence with the Yard – and with the courts – to get him a lighter sentence.’

  ‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ Ellie told him. ‘I’m here because I have some information the police should know about, but, given the nature of that information, I’m not sure who I can trust in Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Why should you trust me, when you say you can’t trust a serving officer?’ Todd wondered.

  ‘There are a number of serving officers – and I’ve no ide
a who they are – who will either have something to lose by my evidence becoming public knowledge or something to gain by helping to suppress it. You, on the other hand, only stand to gain something if the evidence is investigated further.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense,’ Todd said. ‘What can I hope to gain? Can’t you see I’m a sick man?’

  ‘You’re not sick – you’re dying,’ Ellie said.

  Todd started coughing, and spatters of blood appeared on the bedspread and his nightshirt.

  ‘You are a very callous woman,’ he said, when he was finally able to speak again.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ Ellie told him. ‘I say what I see. And what would be the point of lying to you, when we both know that within a week – two weeks at the outside – you’ll be gone.’

  ‘My only wish is to live long enough to see Sam Blackstone gaoled.’

  ‘Well, that isn’t going to happen,’ Ellie said indifferently. ‘But I’ll tell you what will happen. Any number of important people will turn up at your funeral and say what a fine policeman you were. They’ll call you a relentless champion of justice and claim that you were determined never to rest until all the criminals in this fine country of ours are behind bars. They’ll say it – but they’ll know that it’s all a load of old bollocks, even as the words are coming out of their mouths.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Todd gasped.

  ‘You’ll have spoken at such events yourself and used just the same platitudes,’ Ellie said. ‘And while you were delivering your speech, you’ll have been thinking, “I remember the time when, to cover his boss’s mistake, he buried a case,” or, “He’d bend with the wind, that one, and when somebody in government asked him to back away, he’d do it without a second’s hesitation.” Tell me I’m wrong, Assistant Commissioner Todd.’

  ‘We live in an imperfect world,’ Todd said weakly. ‘We all have to compromise now and again, or nothing would ever get done.’

  ‘What I’m about to offer you is the chance to have somebody stand up at your funeral, say, “He did what was right – whatever the consequences,” and really mean it. It’s unlikely any of them will say that, of course. In fact, if you do what I want you to do, they’ll probably hate you for it. But they’ll know in their hearts that you were right – and that’s as much of a legacy as any man can ever hope to leave behind him.’