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‘By all means hunt for that picture,’ blustered Vassileyev. ‘My quarrel is with the man who owns this!’ He brandished the weapon, causing both Pekkala and the dentist to duck. ‘Nobody cuts up my students!’ he declared. ‘I’ll hunt the bastard down myself, and then beat him to death with this leg!’ He rapped his knuckles on the wooden thigh.

‘Take the Chief Inspector up on his kind offer,’ Blaustein advised Pekkala, as he put away his instruments in a black leather bag. ‘You should be resting while this heals. Besides, you don’t want to run into that man again any time soon.’

‘He kissed you good and proper,’ laughed Vassileyev, pointing to the row of x-shaped stitch marks on Pekkala’s forehead.

‘Now then, Inspector Pekkala,’ said Dr Blaustein, ‘if you wouldn’t mind opening your mouth.’

‘What for?’ demanded Pekkala.

‘Now that I’m here,’ answered the dentist, ‘I may as well look at your teeth!’

Late that night, Pekkala stood before the Tsar.

Thanks to a call from Vassileyev, news of the attack had preceded Pekkala’s return to Tsarskoye Selo, and a car was waiting for him at the station. It brought him straight to the Alexander Palace.

Unknown to Pekkala, the Tsar had travelled up from Mogilev earlier that day. By the time Pekkala arrived, the rest of the household had already gone to bed. In spite of the size of the palace, voices often carried down the hallways, so the two men retreated to the Tsar’s study, where they could talk without the risk of waking anyone.

‘That is a nasty cut,’ remarked the Tsar, grimacing at the crescent-shaped line of sutures.

‘It will heal,’ replied Pekkala. ‘I am more concerned about the news I learned today when I paid a visit to Rasputin.’

‘Yes,’ whispered the Tsar. ‘I have already heard. The icon is missing.’

With a deep sigh, he sat down at his desk, a solid slab of walnut supported by two heavy, engraved posts which ran the full width of the desk and which were joined by a foot rail carved in a spiral like the tusk of a narwhal. Towering behind him stood a grey stone fireplace, with a screen placed in front of the hearth since no fires were lit in summer time. ‘Alexandra informed me as soon as I arrived. When I sent you to persuade Rasputin to have the icon returned to the cathedral, I was only thinking about what would happen if people knew it had been entrusted to his safekeeping. I never thought someone would actually dare to steal it!’

‘I must tell you, Majesty, the Empress seemed anxious that I not pursue this case.’

The Tsar brushed his fingers along the line of his jaw, rustling his thumb through his moustache. ‘She doesn’t want Grigori dragged into it, but I told her it was too late for that now.’

‘Do you intend to keep the theft a secret?’ asked Pekkala.

‘No,’ the Tsar said abruptly. ‘I know that is what Alexandra would like, but the truth would come out sooner or later. What if the icon surfaces in the hands of some unscrupulous art dealer, or on some auction block outside the country? How would we explain that to the people of Russia? I told the Empress it was better just to tell the truth, and to let the world know that the Emerald Eye is now on the trail of the thief. From this moment on,
The Shepherd
’s safe recovery is to be your primary concern.’

‘Yes, Majesty,’ replied Pekkala.

‘Good evening, Inspector,’ said a woman’s voice.

Both men turned to see the Empress standing in the doorway. She wore a lavender silk robe over her nightdress. Stripped of its daytime mask of cosmetics, the features of her face looked small and blurred.

‘Did we wake you, my dear?’ asked the Tsar, rising to his feet.

‘It appears that you have had a narrow escape,’ she remarked to Pekkala, ignoring the Tsar’s question.

‘Not for the first time,’ he replied.

‘The Inspector was just making his report,’ said the Tsar.

‘I know why he is here!’ said the Tsarina as she levelled a finger at Pekkala. ‘I warned you before to be careful, and I will warn you once again. If your inquiries bring harm to Grigori, you shall answer for that before God and, as you yourself have learned this night, the angels he sends to wreak his vengeance will not show mercy, even to the favourite of the Tsar!’

‘Majesty, you may be right,’ answered Pekkala, ‘but I have yet to see an angel with a butcher’s knife.’

On the morning of 21 June 1915, Pekkala entered the shop of Melzer, the knife-maker, and was perplexed to find that there wasn’t a knife in sight.

Aside from several different blocks of wood for making knife handles, as well as a pile of oblong metal bars, from which the blades themselves would be fashioned, the shop was devoid of anything which might have been for sale.

Melzer himself stood behind the counter on which the bars and blocks of wood lay neatly stacked. He was a short, aggressive-looking man, with a redness to his face which made his skin appear as if it had been scoured with a wire brush. There was no hair to speak of on his head and, for a man who specialised in blades, he had made a poor job of shaving his chin. This contradiction did not catch Pekkala by surprise. He had known cobblers who shuffled about their workshops in shoes so ragged and worn down that, if those shoes had been brought in for repair, they themselves would have refused to work on them. Likewise, the tailor Linsky, who provided Pekkala with his eccentrically heavy clothes, sometimes greeted customers wearing only a nightshirt.

‘I do custom work,’ explained Melzer, as if reading Pekkala’s mind. ‘By the time a knife has been made, it already belongs to someone else, so, in effect, there is nothing to display.’

‘So how do people know to come to you?’ asked Pekkala.

‘My family has been making knives for generations,’ said Melzer. ‘There has never been a need to advertise.’

Pekkala wondered what this artisan would think of the battered old lock-knife, with its cracked stag-horn grips and dingy iron blade, which he always carried with him. It was made by a company called Geck in Brussels, and he had come across it one cheerful autumn afternoon some years ago while wandering through the Sukharevka market in Moscow. He had carried it with him ever since and, in spite of the length of its menacing edge, the knife had mostly been employed for sharpening pencils, peeling apples and for jemmying open the lock on his apartment door whenever he misplaced his keys.

Now Pekkala laid the halal, wrapped in a fresh piece of brown paper, upon the counter. ‘I am told that you might have made this.’

Melzer unwrapped the knife and laid it on the unfolded paper. At first, he did not touch it, but only studied the implement, in a way which reminded Pekkala of the way his mother used to inspect the fish she bought at the market every week in Lappeenranta. Then he slowly closed his hand around the handle and raised the blade.

Seeing the long, razor-sharp edge, Pekkala couldn’t help flinching as he thought of the fight in the alley, and how close he had come to being carved up like a sacrificial lamb.

‘This is the work of my father,’ said Melzer, ‘from whom I inherited the business when he died ten years ago.’

‘How can you tell the difference between one knife and another?’

‘Here is his mark,’ replied Melzer, indicating the square and cross stamp along the top edge of the tang. ‘My own stamp is a triangle and cross. My son, who, God willing, will one day inherit the business from me, has a circle and a cross as his brand. Otherwise, indeed, it might be difficult to tell.’

‘So that knife,’ Pekkala nodded to the halal, ‘is at least ten years old.’

‘At the very least,’ answered Melzer. ‘The handle is made of arctic birch. You can tell by the closeness of the grain and by the way it seems to shimmer in the light.’

Pekkala had seen cups made from this wood, which were used by his mother’s family in Lapland. ‘But does this tell you anything about the person for whom your father made it?’

‘Not who,’ replied Melzer, ‘but it does tell me when. This knife was made in Siberia, where my father learned his trade, in the city of Kurgan. He moved to St Petersburg almost forty years ago and our family has been here ever since. I never saw him work with arctic birch while he was here in St Petersburg.’

‘Did your father keep a ledger with the names of his customers?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Unfortunately not.’ Melzer smiled apologetically. ‘He was a knife-smith, not a bureaucrat.’

At that moment, the door to the shop swung open.

‘There you are!’ said a voice.

Pekkala turned to see Vassileyev, cheerful and sweating from the exertion of walking on his wooden leg.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ said Vassileyev.

‘Is everything all right?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Better than all right, I’d say,’ remarked Vassileyev. ‘Some priest who worked at the Church of the Resurrection, where the icon is normally kept, just walked into Okhrana headquarters and confessed to stealing it!’

‘A priest?’ asked Pekkala.

Vassileyev shrugged. ‘That’s what he said he was, and he looked like one to me.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘No. He’s in a holding cell at headquarters, which is where he will stay until you decide what to do with him. This is your case, Pekkala. The Tsar himself instructed me to tell you that. He also told me that, as soon as you have interrogated the suspect, you are to report your findings to him at the Alexander Palace.’

‘I can tell you one thing for certain,’ Melzer said, as Pekkala was walking out the door. ‘My father did not make this knife for any priest!’

Following the guard who was on duty at the Okhrana holding cells, Pekkala made his way down a long corridor to a room that had been set aside for interrogations.

There was total silence in the corridor, which was lined with steel doors, each one with a deadbolt and a small opening, covered by a sliding metal plate, through which food was delivered twice a day in metal bowls made of metal so soft that the bowls could be folded in half with a man’s bare hands. No cutlery was provided, so the prisoners ate with their fingers. Once a week, if inmates were held that long at headquarters before being transferred to one of the larger prisons in the city, each man would put his head through the opening. In this uncomfortable position, he would wait to be shaved by the prison barber, a sombre, thoughtful man named Budny who, in spite of these harsh surroundings, was a gentle and accomplished practitioner of his trade.

Arriving at the interrogation cell, the guard slid back a deadbolt and pushed the door open with his other hand.

‘I might be a while,’ whispered Pekkala.

The guard nodded and set off down the corridor towards the guardroom, which was furnished with an assortment of couches with threadbare upholstery, wing-backed chairs and even a rocker, all scrounged by the industrious Vassileyev from the many noble patrons of his service. Unaware that Pekkala was still watching from the doorway of the cell, the guard held his arms out to the side, as if gliding through the sky like an albatross, fingertips brushing past the doors.

Pekkala stepped into the room and closed the door.

The interrogation cell contained no windows, only an air vent in the ceiling. A single lamp, hooded by a metal shade, hung over a table in the centre of the room. There were two chairs, one on either side of the table. Otherwise, the room was completely empty, and the dark grey walls, as grim as thunderclouds, combined with the cone of light above the table to give the impression of a raft floating in the middle of a stormy sea.

The priest had already been brought in. One of his legs had been shackled to a ring anchored in the floor beside the chair, and his hands were fastened with a set of heavy cuffs. He was a small man in his late thirties, with thinning hair and a sallow, puffy complexion. He wore the simple black robe of an Orthodox priest, which fastened down the left side of his body with hidden hooks, rather than buttons. Those being held at Okhrana headquarters were not issued the coarse grey-and-black-striped clothing of convicts. That would come later, for those who moved on into the long-term prison system.

The first thing Pekkala did was to fetch a small key from his pocket, lean across the table and unfasten the cuffs. With a heavy rattle, they slipped from the man’s wrists on to the table and lay there like a pair of iron crab claws. Without undoing the chain which shackled the priest’s right leg to the floor, Pekkala took his seat.

The prisoner watched with great curiosity as Pekkala removed a small notebook from the chest pocket of his waistcoat, and then a black fountain pen with a gold clip. He unscrewed the cap, revealing the long and graceful nib, pushed the cap on to the end of the pen and scribbled the day’s date at the top of a page in his notebook. Only then did he raise his head and look the prisoner in the eye. ‘What is your name?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Detlev,’ replied the man. ‘Alexander Nikolaevich Detlev.’

Pekkala wrote it down, the pen rustling across the page. ‘Father Detlev, I understand that you have confessed to stealing the icon known as
The Shepherd
from the house of Grigori Rasputin.’

‘Yes,’ he answered readily.

‘And where is the icon now?’ asked Pekkala.

‘It has been destroyed,’ Detlev said, matter-of-factly.

Pekkala looked up sharply from his notebook. ‘Destroyed?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘And who destroyed it?’

‘I did,’ answered Detlev.

‘How?’

‘I burned it. If you don’t believe me, go to the pavilion on the island of the Lamskie pond at Tsarskoye Selo. There you will find what is left.’

‘Why did you destroy it?’ he asked.

‘It was my sacred duty.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘No more than I have already said,’ Detlev answered vaguely.

‘And having done this thing . . .’

‘Why did I turn myself in?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Because I do not consider what I have done to be a crime.’

‘But surely you realise that those who stand in judgement of you now will never be persuaded of this?’