“Right,” said the driver, pushing the
“Then rooms would not grow and things would feel,” came the muffled voice from the rear followed by the sound of breaking glass.
“Hey,” shouted the driver in anger mixed with fear, trying to look over his lump of a shoulder. “I just had that seat cleaned and…”
At the corner of Petro Street and Gorky Place, eighty-year-old Vladimir Roshkov and his fifty-year-old son Pyotr were about to cross the street on their way to their small clothing store. The basement had flooded and they wanted an early start to clean it up before the business day began. The taxi came around the corner sideways in a mad skid catching Pyotr’s pants on a bumper, stripping him, and throwing him against a street light. Vladimir jumped back, looked at his startled son, and watched the taxi bounce over the curb and come to a solid stop against the wall across the street. Pyotr stepped forward dazed, bruised, and confused, and thought only of getting back home and putting on a pair of pants. Anger took a few moments to hit the father and son, who were strong, solid, and very slow of thought. When it came, it came to them both at the same moment and they strode toward the now silent cab. They took a few more steps forward and stopped.
The black figure was covered with blood, but it was not the blood that stopped them. It was the fact that the man was laughing softly, not the laugh of hysteria, but the laugh of gentle pleasure. The man looked at the two figures in front of him, one in the snow without pants, laughed and ran down Petro Street. By the time the Roshkovs recovered their wits and hurried after him, the man was almost out of sight. They stopped, panting, with no heart for the pursuit and headed for the taxi.
The wind was whipping Pyotr’s bare legs, and his father could not help thinking this would mean the police and questions and hours lost in draining the basement. He opened the front door of the cab saying to his son, “Go call the police-”
As the door came open, the body of Ivan came tumbling out into the street, a lump of human with a face as red as his country’s flag.
“Go, fast,” said Vladimir, waving at his son and considering whether the two of them should simply run away. He decided that someone might have seen them by now and to run might make them suspects in this murder. As Pyotr hurried bare-legged across the street and back to find a phone, a groan or sound came from the heap of blood in the snow.
Vladimir forced himself to the side of the man and leaned forward.
“Yes,” he said. “My son is getting the police. Don’t worry.”
“Granovsky,” said Ivan Sharikov the cabman.
“Granovsky?” repeated Vladimir Roshkov.
Ivan nodded his bloody face in agreement and went silent.
“Are you dead?” said Vladimir Roshkov.
“I don’t know,” replied Ivan the cabman who promptly died.
The young police officer parked the yellow Volga in Dmitri Ulyanov Street and sat looking straight ahead the way he had been taught to do. He wondered why the Inspector did not get out of the car immediately and rush into the building, but he did not let his curiosity show with even the twitch of his face. He tried to think of nothing and was surprised at how easy it was to do so.
Rostnikov knew that once he plunged into this case-with pressure from above and a good chance that he would come up with nothing-the days and the nights would begin to blend, he would grow weary and irritable; he would be uneasy until he had a desk full of possibilities and a suspect to talk to. If it was to be as it had been in the past, these were his last moments of ease before embracing the agony of the investigation and the torment of other people’s tragedies. He planned nothing. The case would define itself, carry him into branching streams and dead ends. He would float or fight as he saw fit, trying not to drown in paperwork and bureaucracy.
He thought of his son’s face. It was a trick he used to relax. He forced himself to recall the boy’s features, to let the nose define the face and the mouth, to remember him as a child of fourteen, lean and uncertain, and as a young man of twenty-four, solid and curious. The mouth always came to Rostnikov as a stern line that had to be modified by a great effort of will. With concentration, the face of his son came to him and he smiled, let it go and stepped out of the car. The pre-dawn air was sharp and cold and clean compared to the enervating warmth of the Volga.
“Turn off the engine,” he said to the driver. “If you get cold, come inside.”
Rostnikov moved into the building and up the stairs slowly. His leg would allow no other progress, but that did not disturb him. He knew that Alexiev, the strongest man in the world, could move no faster than himself. If Alexiev walked up four flights of stairs, his massive legs were in pain from chafing against each other. Strength was not a matter of swiftness but heredity, determination, and dignity. Dignity had a price. Rostnikov’s hand touched an old peeling poster on the red brick stairway wall. “Surpass America…” it began and never ended. The area of competition was lost in the act of some young vandal of the past.
The officer in front of Apartment 612 was short, stocky, and dark. His collar was clearly rubbing his neck painfully. His winter cap was pulled down against his ears, which bent comically. The officer recognized Rostnikov and stepped out of the way.
“It’s warm out here,” said Rostnikov. “Open your jacket and relax. Who’s in there?”
“Wife, daughter, Officer Drubkova,” said the officer, unbuttoning his coat.
“The corpse?”
“Covered with a sheet. No one has touched it.”
Rostnikov knocked and waited for a woman’s voice that told him to come in.
An awkward move of the foot was all that kept him from slipping in the sticky trail of blood, and even so, he almost fell. Only one of the three women in the room had looked up to see him enter. She was clearly Officer Drubkova. Her face was pink and eager. Her zeal would be oppressive and tiring. He knew her type as soon as their eyes met. She had been kneeling next to the corpse which was covered with a white sheet, a sheet that showed remarkably little blood, considering the broad trail of it in the room. The corpse must have been covered very recently, Rostnikov decided, fascinated by the clear outline of the sickle under the sheet.
A woman and young girl, with hands identically folded on their laps, sat in an uncomfortable-looking straight-back sofa of uncertain period looking at the white figure on the floor.
Officer Drubkova bounded toward him like an athletic bear and introduced herself, almost saluting.
“Officer Drubkova,” she said. “The hospital has been alerted and will come for the body when you are finished. There is a hole in the window which I have covered with cardboard. We have touched almost nothing and I have retrieved a book that was thrown through the window.”
She handed it to Rostnikov, who tucked it awkwardly under his arm not wanting it at all, but not wanting to offend her. Nor did he bother to tell her that it was pointless to avoid touching the room. If there were fingerprints, they would be on the handle of the sickle and nowhere else that would be meaningful. Any room is a maddening, useless fury of fingerprints.
“Very good,” said Rostnikov. Officer Drubkova’s pink face turned a pleased red. “Now go to another apartment and call the hospital. I want the corpse taken care of as soon as the photographs are taken. When you make the call, remain in the hall and do not let anyone in except Inspectors Karpo and Tkach. Do you know them?”
She nodded affirmatively.
“Good. I can count on you.”
Officer Drubkova hurried out of the room and Rostnikov opened his coat in relief. He glanced at the law book under his arm and placed it gently on the wooden table. He lifted one of the three wooden chairs at the table and moved it directly in the line of vision between the two thin women on the sofa and the body on the floor. The mother tried to look through him, found him too solid and then allowed something like anger to touch her face. That was what he wanted, some awakening and emotion, something to touch beyond grief. The young girl, however, simply stared through him.
“I’m Inspector Rostnikov. Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. My father enjoyed
The woman allowed more anger to show.
