Read The White Russian for Free Online Page A

leaned back against the desk, examining the posters on the wall. He moved closer. Alongside the grainy police photographs of wanted men, there was a caricature of Rasputin dancing alongside the Tsar and a half-naked Empress. Next to the Tsar sat his English cousin George. The caption read, “Little Father plays with Georgie, little Mother lies with Grigory.”
    Alongside the poster was a row of photographs of Rasputin’s body. The first was a close-up of his face, which looked as if it had been rubbed in soot. There appeared to be a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The other two showed the priest’s frozen corpse, with its legs and hands bound, arms raised above his head.
    “I thought you told me we never got called to the scene,” Ruzsky said.
    “The photographer arrived first. By the time I got there, Anton had handed jurisdiction to the Okhrana.”
    Ruzsky frowned at his friend, who seemed nervous or embarrassed, his eyes evasive. Last night, he’d told Ruzsky that the constables had called the Okhrana direct-indeed they’d had a mild altercation over it. The Tsar’s secret police normally dealt only with sedition and terrorism and the ruthless suppression of opposition to the Tsar. This was the first time they had ever taken direct control of a murder case.
    “You think Anton should have fought for the investigation?”
    “No.”
    “But you still had a look?”
    Pavel didn’t answer and Ruzsky turned back to the photographs. “This was taken by Great Petrovsky Bridge.”
    “Yes.”
    “So it’s true he was still alive when they threw him into the river. His arms are like that because he was trying to escape when his body froze?” Rumors had even reached Tobolsk about the manner of Rasputin’s death-that he had been almost impossible to kill, and had still been breathing after being shot, bound, and thrown into the ice.
    “I don’t know,” Pavel said.
    “And you weren’t curious?”
    Pavel stared at the photographs, without responding.
    “We should have insisted on making it our investigation,” Ruzsky said easily.
    “There was no investigation. The dogs on the streets knew who had done it. If the relatives of the Tsar want to murder his wife’s lover, then who are we to get involved?”
    “You don’t really believe that they were lovers?”
    Pavel shrugged. “People do. I got called out to an incident-about a year after you left. It was at one of the new gypsy restaurants. He was drunk.”
    “Rasputin?”
    “Yes. Somebody telephoned to complain and I happened to be working late. When I arrived he was dancing in the middle of the restaurant, boasting of how he could make the Empress dance like this…” Pavel shoved his hips forward. “Then he dropped his trousers and started waving his penis at the spectators.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “On my son’s life.”
    Ruzsky shook his head. He had met the peasant priest only once, just before the war, after the imperial favorite had appeared at the police department late at night, drunk, claiming incomprehensible threats on his life.
    The constable shuffled back with the book and pushed it across the desk. There had been no entries for more than a week. “I suppose it is too early for anyone to have missed them,” Ruzsky said.
    He turned around and led Pavel past the entrance to the armory and up to the first floor. The door to Anton’s office at the top of the stairs was shut, the corridor dark. To their right were the administrative offices-finance, the records library, constables and senior officers’ administration-but Ruzsky flicked on the light and turned left to the Criminal Investigation Division.
    Their office was small-far too cramped for the number of people who worked here-a series of wooden cubicles arranged around a group of desks in the center reserved for the secretaries and the junior constables on attachment. Vladimir ’s cubicle had the words Investigator, Street Crime inscribed in the door. Next came