There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union

He attempted to draw back, teetering like a frightened child on the edge of a swimming pool. But his centre of balance was too far forward and, willy-nilly he stepped into the lift.

And now Muntjan hesitated in his hitherto fluent and detailed tale.

‘Go on,’ prompted Chislenko.

Muntjan took a last suck at his flask. It was clearly empty. He shrugged and said, ‘He went through the floor, boss.’

‘Went through the floor?’

Chislenko stepped up to the lift again and looked inside. The two women had not changed position. The floor on which he had stood in his vain attempt to get the fat woman out looked as solid as it had felt. He went back to Muntjan.

‘Went through the floor!’ he said angrily.

‘You’ve got it, boss. Went through it like it didn’t exist. Clean through it, flapping his arms like a fledgeling too young to fly. And that was it. All over in a second. Clean through. No trace, except …’

‘Except what?’ said Chislenko, eager for something – anything – to get a hold of.

‘I thought there was kind of a long shriek, tailing away, but very distant, like a train at night, a long long way off, you know what I mean?’

‘No,’ said Chislenko. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I don’t begin to know what you mean.’

He returned to the lift. The two pairs of eyes looked at him, one pair terrified, the other angry.

‘Right through?’ he said. ‘You mean, here?’

He pointed down.

‘That’s right, boss.’

Gingerly he stepped forward on to the solid floor, rocked gently from heel to toe, and finally jumped a foot in the air and crashed down with all his weight.

This experiment had an unexpected bonus. The fat woman shrieked out loud and swooned away, releasing her grip on the ribbing.

‘You insensitive bastard!’ exploded the young woman in a new extreme of fury which still did not touch her beauty.

Chislenko stepped back and said to the medics. ‘For God’s sake, get that lump out of there!’

Once they had dragged her into the corridor, the medics started ministering to the recumbent woman and the firemen started examining the lift. The younger woman looked as if she was ready for another explosion, but Chislenko had had enough.

‘Papers,’ he said, snapping his fingers.

She glowered at him, but said nothing as she opened her bag. The ritual of examining identity papers has assumed an almost sacramental status in Moscow and employees of the state know better than to risk any official blasphemy.

‘You are Natasha Lovchev?’

‘Yes.’

‘Employed in the Organization of Machinery Supply, Maintenance, and Service?’

‘Yes.’

‘As a secretary/typist in the Engineering Resources Division?’

‘As personal assistant to the Deputy Chief Costings Officer,’ she retorted indignantly.

Chislenko was amused but didn’t show it.

‘It says secretary/typist here,’ he said.

‘Yes, I know. It was a recent promotion and I haven’t had my papers changed yet.’

Chislenko allowed himself to look dubious and the girl continued, ‘I have an office of my own; at least, I only share it with one other assistant. It’s on the eighth floor. I was showing it to my mother here before we went to lunch.’

‘Ah. This lady is your mother,’ said Chislenko, looking down at the fat woman who now opened her eyes and looked around in bewilderment.

‘Yes. She’s here in Moscow visiting me. Please, Comrade Inspector, may I now take her home? You can see she is not well. All this has been far too much for her.’

These were the first truly unaggressive words she had addressed to Chislenko and he was touched by her filial concern, and also by her big brown eyes which were as lovely in appeal as they were in anger. But there was still work to be done.

‘All what has been too much for her?’ he inquired. ‘Perhaps you could give me your version of what happened here, Miss Lovchev.’

‘You want to hear it again?’

Chislenko’s heart stuttered.

‘Again?’

‘Yes. I heard Josif here tell you all about it just now.’

She gestured at the liftman, who nodded at the mention of his name and said, ‘There you are, boss,’ defiantly.

‘You mean you confirm what this … fellow has just told me? About a passenger being pushed into the lift and going through the floor?’

‘Yes, of course I do. I don’t pretend to understand it, but that’s what happened,’ she retorted, defiant in her turn.

‘Then please tell me this, Comrade Personal Assistant to the Deputy Chief Costings Officer,’ said Chislenko sarcastically. ‘Where is this man? There’s no one down the lift-shaft because we’ve looked there. So where is he? Come to that, where’s the man who pushed him? And didn’t you say there was another man in the lift, Muntjan?’

The liftman nodded.

‘Did you see him too, Miss Lovchev?’

‘Of course I did,’ snapped the girl.

‘Then where is he, too?’ demanded Chislenko. ‘Tell me that, if you can!’

He paused to enjoy his rhetorical triumph, but it was spoilt almost instantly by Muntjan who said, ‘He’s there, boss. That’s him,’ and pointed over Chislenko’s shoulder.

The Inspector turned. Three men had appeared at the head of the stairway next to the lift-shaft. Two of them were uniformed policemen flanking the third, a man of middle age, bespectacled, carrying a briefcase and slightly out of breath after his ascent.