found the indoor ice cream stand and informed the little man that he would be working with him.
'You have children?' Boris asked after they had served a pair of families.
'A little girl,' said Sasha watching the crowd, hoping for a stroke of luck.
'Little girls are better,' said Boris.
Tkach waited for the reasoning or emotion behind this observation but Boris appeared to have none.
'Your wife ever see the exhibition?' Boris said, hands on his hips.
'Once, before we were married.'
'Why not have them come tomorrow? We'll give them a free ice cream,' said Boris.
Tkach liked the idea and smiled at Boris.
'I've decided in the last hour you're good for business,' said Boris. 'The women like you. You are coming back? Not the other one.'
'He's in Siberia,' said Tkach, looking past a pair of giggling girls who were looking at him and walking toward the ice cream stand.
'Just for failing to catch those kids?' asked Boris incredulously.
'An investigation,' Tkach corrected as the two girls ignored Boris and ordered ice creams from Sasha.
Boris was pleased. He hoped the muggers stayed away and this policeman remained working with him for weeks. He imagined expanding, hiring relatives, getting a bigger cart, becoming a capitalist. Stranger things had happened, happened to his own brother-in-law Oskar, and Oskar, that big, lumbering oaf, deserved beets growing out of his ears, not financial success. Boris began to dream of a dacha in the country, a week in Yalta. The week had started badly but it could well turn out to be quite profitable.
CHAPTER SIX
There was no dawn in Tumsk, not in the winter. The sky went from black to dark gray and the moon faded a bit. Rostnikov had managed to wake up a little after six. It was not difficult. He seldom slept through any night. He would normally awaken three, four or five times each night to a stiffening of his leg and rolled over to check the time by switching on the lamp near his and Sarah's bed. She never awakened to the light. He would then go back to sleep.
And so, in spite of the morning darkness, Rostnikov had awakened just before six, had checked his watch and decided to get up and read the reports. He used the white pad he had brought with him to make a list.
Assuming no one had come in from the outside, an assumption for which he had no evidence, he had a limited list of suspects. He would assign the least likely to Karpo and take the troublesome and the possible himself.
He had already decided how to handle Sokolov. He had considered simply ordering him to accompany Karpo and tell him the truth, that he did not conduct initial investigation interviews well with someone observing. It tended to interfere with making personal contact with the person being interviewed. He would also keep notes and turn them over to Sokolov for discussion. Sokolov might not like it but he would have difficulty overcoming the order without exposing himself. For the present he would simply leave early and claim that he had been unable to wake him.
Rostnikov dressed, wrote a note for Sokolov and left his room, closing his door quietly. On the wooden table at the foot of the stairs he found a warm kettle of tea and a plate with three smoked fish. He sat down with a grunt, poured himself tea and reached for a fish. Behind him he sensed rather than heard movement.
'Good morning, Emil,' he said softly without turning around.
'Good morning, Inspector,' replied Karpo.
'Fish?'
'I've eaten,' said Karpo, moving around the table to face Rostnikov who carefully peeled his fish and tasted it.
'Good,' said Rostnikov.
Karpo placed a small pile of handwritten notes in front of Rostnikov who glanced down at them and continued eating and drinking.
'I interviewed the sailors on the night shift at the weather station,' Karpo said. 'Those are my notes.'
Rostnikov removed a small bone from his mouth and looked at Karpo who seemed, as he had last night, to be struggling with something.
'What are your thoughts, feeling about the sailors?'
'The interview material is all…' Karpo began.
'Intuition,' Rostnikov said, turning the fish over, savoring its smell and touch.
Karpo sat silently for about thirty seconds while Rostnikov ate, and finally said, 'I think they are innocent of any participation in or knowledge of the murder of Commissar Rutkin. 'And I believe that when I question the day shift, I will likely conclude the same about them. The weather station is well equipped, autonomous, and the sailors do not interact socially with the residents of Tumsk. When they are given two days off, they go to Igarka.'
'And so, following your questioning of the day sailors, we can tentatively eliminate half the residents of Tumsk from our suspect list,' said Rostnikov.
'Perhaps we can give them somewhat lower priority,' suggested Karpo.
'Let us do so,' said Rostnikov.
'And Comrade Sokolov?'
'He was snoring this morning as I passed his door. I knocked lightly but failed to rouse him and so I've written this note.'
Rostnikov rubbed the tips of his fingers together and removed the note from his pocket placing it against the kettle. Sokolov's name was printed clearly on the folded sheet.
'I believe,' Karpo said slowly, 'we should proceed with caution.'
'Always a good idea,' agreed Rostnikov, putting aside the neat bones of the fish. 'Now, you can talk to your sailors and I will have morning tea with the residents of Tumsk. Wait. Add the janitor at the People's Hall to your list, Mirasnikov.'
'Yes, Inspector,' said Karpo.
A few minutes later, after checking the location of the various houses on a crude map Famfanoff had made for him, Rostnikov bundled up from head to foot, wrapped the scarf Sarah had made for him around his neck and stepped into the town square of Tumsk. The cold greeted him with a slap and a frigid hug as he moved to his right. There had been no additional snow during the night but the wind had filled in the footprints.
He trudged past the pointing statue, glanced at the window of the People's Hall of Justice and Solidarity and moved slowly in the morning darkness. A mechanical rattle and then a motor catching broke the silence and Rostnikov paused, looking at the weather station on the slope across the square. A yellow vehicle with a snow plow mounted low in front rolled slowly, noisily around the building and began to move toward Rostnikov.
Behind the wheel a young sailor in his dark uniform and tight-fitting hat nodded at the policeman and began to clear the main section of Tumsk. A few lights went on in the houses on the hillside toward which Rostnikov was headed. The morning naval plow was probably the alarm clock of the village. Rostnikov tried to remember what time Rutkin was supposed to have died and he made a mental noteit was too cold to take his hands out of his pockets and writeto check it.
With the rattling of the plow behind him, Rostnikov made his way up the gentle slope to the first house beyond the weather station. A light was on inside. He knocked on the heavy wooden door and a voice called almost immediately, 'One moment.'
And then the door opened and Rostnikov found himself facing a burly man with a head of long, curly white hair and a smile of remarkably even white teeth that did not look false. The man wore a short fur jacket, thick pants and fur mukluks that came up just below his knees.
'Inspector Rostnikov?' the man asked stepping back to let him in.
'Dimitri Galich?' Rostnikov counter-questioned as he stepped into the house.
'Let me take your coat, get you a cup of tea,' Galich said, helping Rostnikov remove his coat.
Outside, the plow roared in the twi-morning as Rostnikov looked around the room. The walls were dark
