Blackstone and the Endgame (11 page)

Even when he'd finished this second glass, he didn't leave immediately, but remained in his seat and watched the world of Petrograd pass him by, and, as a result, he'd been in the tea shop for over an hour when he finally stood up.

As he reached the door, the waitress smiled at him again.

‘
Mne kazhet saya vy
,' she said.

Blackstone shrugged apologetically. ‘I'm sorry, I just don't understand,' he said.

‘
Mne kazhet saya vy
,' the waitress repeated, more slowly this time.

‘
Bol'shoe spasibo
,' Blackstone said helplessly.

As he stepped out on to the pavement, a woman strode past, and even the brief glance he caught of her face was enough to make his heart miss a beat.

The woman kept on walking, heading in the direction of Kazan Cathedral, and Blackstone just stood and watched her, unable to move.

It couldn't be her, he told himself.

Vladimir said she was dead.

But then, he thought, Vladimir lied a lot.

He found his legs and set off in pursuit, though catching her up wouldn't be easy, because Agnes had always been a good walker, and he was still a little weak from the fever.

How long had it been since he had last seen her, he asked himself, as the effort to reach her made him struggle for breath.

Jesus – it had been eighteen years!

They are sitting in a tiny railway carriage in the middle of the vast steppes. They have declared their love for each other and had intended to go back to England to start a new life together. But the evidence has been mounting up, and now Blackstone can no longer fight off the conclusion the evidence so clearly points to: that all the time their love had been growing, Agnes had been Vladimir's agent and had been using him for Vladimir's ends.

‘It was Vladimir's decision that you should come back to England with me, wasn't it?' he asks.

‘I
want
to come back with you, Sam, my darling,' Agnes says. ‘I know you don't believe me now when I say that I love you, but you will in time – because I'll find ways to prove it to you.'

‘Nevertheless, it was Vladimir's decision,' Blackstone says unyieldingly.

‘Nevertheless, it was Vladimir's decision,' Agnes agrees.

‘Why? So you can spy on me as you did on the Count?'

‘He asked me to report to him if I discovered anything interesting.'

‘Of course he did!'

‘But he did not have high expectations that I
would
have anything to report. When you return to your humdrum work in Scotland Yard, you'll be of no further use to Vladimir – because he has no interest in the doings of London pickpockets and bank robbers.'

‘So what
is
in it for him? Why does he want you to go back to London with me?'

‘I am Vladimir's
gift
to you. He believes that I can make you happy, and I know that I could. But let's forget Vladimir, Sam. Let's pretend that he never existed and we're starting afresh. Neither of us has to be anybody's gift. We could be a gift to each other!'

‘It won't work,' Blackstone says.

‘Why?' Agnes asks, almost hysterical now. ‘Because of your foolish pride? Because Vladimir found me before you did?'

‘Because if I accept his gift now, he'll have a hold over me for ever – and I can't allow that.'

Agnes takes a handkerchief out of her bag and dries her eyes.

‘You're right, of course,' she admits. ‘Vladimir is hard enough to resist even if you're not in his debt.'

He was gaining ground on the woman, but only because she was slowing down as she approached the tram stop.

He wondered why he was doing this – wondered, if he did catch her up, what they would find to say to each other after all those years.

A tram came rattling down the street and pulled up at the stop. The woman climbed on board, and the tram moved off again.

Perhaps it had been Agnes, and perhaps it hadn't. He was no longer sure. But the one thing he was
almost
certain of was that she was in Petersburg, for though he was by no means a fanciful man, he could sense her presence in the air.

V
ladimir's apartment was on the first floor (or the second floor, as the Americans would call it, Blackstone reminded himself) of a prosperous-looking building not far from Nevsky Prospekt. It was rather a large apartment for a single man with only one servant, but then it needed to be large to accommodate the railway.

Vladimir's study, at the front of the house, was where the railway had its nerve centre. From there, tracks ran off in all directions: to Moscow (Vladimir's bedroom), to Baku (the guest bedroom), to Warsaw (the dining room), to Kiev (the small parlour) and to Vladivostok (which was sited in the lumber room overlooking the Neva, at the back of the apartment). Walls did not impede the network – if a wall was in the way, it had simply been tunnelled through.

And along each line were stations – some the sort of grandiose monuments that provincial towns with pretensions opted for, others like the tumbledown shack at which Blackstone had said his last farewells to Agnes.

The apartment was otherwise sparsely furnished – furniture was, on the whole, incompatible with the efficient running of a railway – but what little he had bought was functional and betrayed nothing of its owner's personality.

The locomotives themselves were truly exquisite, and there were no two of them alike.

‘This one was owned by the Great Russian Railway Company and is painted in its colours,' Vladimir explained as they sat in the study, waiting for dinner to be served, ‘whereas this model was not brought into service until after the state took over the company in the 1880s, which is why it is in imperial colours.'

And though they drew their power from the electrified track – which Vladimir controlled from a panel on his desk – each had a small boiler which produced steam as the locomotives ran along the rails.

Blackstone found it slightly disturbing that the railway existed
at all
. It seemed wrong that a man whose work was so grounded in the harsh realities of life should yet be able to sustain a fantasy world in his own apartment.

It was disturbing, too, that Vladimir had chosen to share this secret world with him – had exposed so much of his inner self.

But, of course, it was always possible that the railway was no more than a prop in Vladimir's game – a camouflage behind which the real Vladimir was lurking, unseen.

‘What do you get out of your rail network, Vladimir?' he asked, testing out this latter theory.

‘I find it soothing,' the Russian replied. ‘In a country where nothing works – where I am forced to
employ
chaos in order to
control
chaos – it is pleasant to spend a little of my time with something orderly, something that always runs as it is supposed to.'

‘So it exists purely to give you pleasure?'

‘Yes.'

‘I don't believe you,' Blackstone said. ‘You're not a man to waste effort, and if you can't achieve at least two objectives with a single course of action, then you'll find another way to do things.'

‘What do you mean?' Vladimir asked, suddenly cautious.

‘There are two reasons you brought me to Russia. One was to protect me, but the other was so that you could use me.'

Vladimir laughed. ‘You are right, of course,' he admitted.

‘So the model railway does have a second purpose?'

‘Yes.'

‘And what is it?' Blackstone wondered.

‘You don't need to know that now,' Vladimir replied, ‘and let us pray that you never find yourself in a position where you
do
need to know.'

The study door flew open – almost as if they were under attack – and Vladimir's massive servant, Yuri, entered the room and grunted something that was probably incomprehensible even to most Russians.

‘Dinner is served,' Vladimir said grandly. ‘Let us go and see what culinary delights my master chef has prepared for us this evening.'

Most visitors to the Patterson household would have been ushered into the hardly used front parlour, but Ellie Carr was almost a part of the family, and Maggie took her into the kitchen, instead.

It was a cosy room. It smelled of baking and stews, and it was dominated by a large table at which the Patterson clan ate all their meals. A large copper kettle, permanently just off the boil, sat on the hob next to the fire, and two canaries – known to the family alone as Sam and Ellie – chirped cheerfully in a cage that rested on top of the Singer sewing machine.

The two women sat down at the table, and Ellie told Maggie about Mr Hartington.

‘Why should a big lawyer like him want to represent my Archie?' Maggie asked when Ellie had finished.

‘I suspect the answer is that he's getting a hell of a lot of money for it,' Ellie said.

‘But who'd be willing to pay?' Maggie fretted. ‘We all think the world of Archie, of course, but he's not really an important man in anybody else's eyes.'

‘I don't know who's footing the bill,' Ellie admitted, ‘and frankly, as long as he
keeps
footing it, I don't give a damn.'

A light, which could almost have been hope, appeared in Maggie's eyes. ‘Do you think he can get my Archie off?' she asked.

‘He didn't promise that,' Ellie said cautiously.

‘But he might, mightn't he?'

‘I think Archie has more chance with him than he would have with any other solicitor,' Ellie said, still treading a thin line.

Tears appeared in Maggie's eyes. ‘Archie's going to gaol, isn't he?' she asked. ‘Whatever happens, he's going to gaol.'

‘It seems likely,' Ellie agreed.

Maggie sniffed and forced her lips into a tight smile. ‘Still, it looks as if this Mr Hartington can get him out on bail for Christmas at least, and that's something, isn't it?' she said.

‘I think you're being amazingly brave,' Ellie said softly.

‘Oh, don't be so nice,' Maggie pleaded. ‘If you're nice, I'll start blubbering, and once I've started, I won't be able to stop.'

‘A good cry might make you feel better,' Ellie said.

‘It probably would, but there's still the kids' suppers to prepare and their clothes to wash, and you can't do that when you're sobbing your heart out,' Maggie said.

‘Perhaps I could do all that,' Ellie suggested.

Maggie smiled. ‘That's what I needed,' she said. ‘A bit of humour to cheer me up!'

‘I don't know what you mean,' Ellie told her.

‘You're a very clever woman,' Maggie said, ‘and I think it's marvellous the way you cut up all them bodies – I wouldn't have a clue where to start, myself. But if you think you can look after my three kids properly – even for a few hours – then you're living in a dream world.'

Ellie grinned. ‘Well, you've really put me in my place, haven't you?' she said. ‘And quite right, too.'

Yuri had prepared wild boar for dinner that night, though, with his massive hands, he looked better equipped to strangle the beast than to cook it. Still, Blackstone had eaten worse – though he was pushed to remember when – and Vladimir, who seemed to regard food as no more than fuel, cleared his plate without comment.

When the meal was over, Vladimir suggested that they return to his study for a chat and a few vodkas, but once they were there, the Russian went straight to his desk and switched on his railway control panel.

‘It relaxes me,' he said.

Blackstone looked around the network of tracks, and at the engine shed which covered all the space along the front wall that was not occupied by the double doors leading on to the small balcony.

‘How many locomotives have you got?' he asked.

‘Fifty-seven,' Vladimir said automatically.

‘And are they all different?'

‘Of course.'

Shaking his head in wonder, Blackstone opened the French doors and stepped out on to the balcony for a breath of air. It had only recently stopped snowing, so except for the tram lines that ran down the centre of it – and which were cleared by the wheels every time a tram passed over them – the street below was covered in a gentle white carpet.

It was not a majestic street, like Nevsky Prospekt, Blackstone thought – it was nowhere near as wide for a start – but it was pleasant enough, and he was sure that most of the people who occupied the apartments beside and across from Vladimir's considered themselves quite fortunate to live there.

A little of Petrograd's chill night air was more than enough, but before he stepped back inside, Blackstone took another gulp of it, in preparation for what he was sure was going to be a very difficult conversation.

‘I'd like to know exactly what you're doing to clear Archie Patterson's name,' he said, as he closed the balcony doors behind him.

Vladimir, bent over his controls, flicked another switch. ‘It's complicated.'

‘I'd still like to know.'

‘You must learn to be patient, Sam,' Vladimir said. ‘Like my locomotives, my schemes criss-cross each other, and to an outsider there seems to be no pattern to them, until, of course, the final rail switching is completed and each element of the scheme approaches its intended destination.'

‘Which is a fancy way of saying you're not going to tell me?' Blackstone suggested.

Vladimir nodded. ‘I would trust you with my life, Sam, but I will never be willing to let you – or anyone else – see the workings inside my head.'

He flicked another switch on the control panel, and one of the trains – which had seemed to be on an inevitable collision course with another – swiftly changed tracks.