Red Icon by Sam Eastland Page A

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