blind.”
“I thought so,” said Zelach.
“Now we are searching for three children who live in this neighborhood. One of them is named Mark.”
“That shouldn’t be so hard,” said Zelach.
“It shouldn’t?” said Sasha with less certainty than his partner.
When they stepped out onto the sidewalk, they were immediately confronted by the old man in the postman’s cap.
“Did he confess? Why aren’t you dragging him away?”
“He is blind,” said Zelach.
The old man on the crutches looked skyward for help in enduring such fools as these.
“He is pretending to be blind to collect his pension,” the old man said.
“I don’t think so,” said Sasha.
“Then Zorotich had that dog lead him down with the tommy gun and he shot the man, blind or not. Shot him and took his money. A blind man could do that. I saw him.”
“You were mistaken,” said Sasha. “Do you know any small boys in this neighborhood? Two, three, four of them. One of them is named Mark.”
The old man suddenly looked terrified.
“No,” he said, hurrying down the street, almost falling. “I know nothing.”
Zelach turned to Sasha and said softly, “It may not be so easy.”
Karpo walked through the hall of the Khovrino Municipal Police Station half listening to the uniformed sergeant who had been assigned to him. The police station had been built in 1946 as a school. Now it was falling apart, as were most of the district stations, which occupied whatever space had been found for them-old apartment buildings, taxi garages, large shops. One district station had once been a toy store. Some of the walls of the former toy store were still covered with fading cartoon drawings of Donald Duck, Elmer Fudd, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Yogi Bear.
But it was the Khovrino where Karpo found himself through a combination of determination and good luck.
Beneath his feet were cracked floor tiles. Above him the ceiling was a trail of exposed electrical wires. The wallpaper was peeling badly, and many of the light fixtures had no bulbs.
“Here,” said a somber young sergeant with a mustache, indicating a door on their right. There was a thick plate of scratched glass at eye level. Karpo looked in.
Inside were six men. There were six cots lining the walls. Three of the men were seated on the floor playing some kind of card game. One of the prisoners was lying on a cot reading the newspaper,
“This is where we keep the toughest,” said the sergeant. “Murder suspects, strong-arm robbers. We’ve got two other lockups.”
Karpo knew all this. He continued looking into the cell, showing no sign that he had heard what the sergeant said.
“Your man, Voshenko, is the one looking at the newspaper.”
Karpo looked at the man lying on the cot. The man seemed to sense his gaze and looked up from his newspaper at the gaunt specter at the cell door. Their eyes locked, and neither man wavered.
“Voshenko’s been in for twenty days. We expect to charge him with murder soon and to transfer him to a prison to await trial,” the sergeant said.
The man on the cot smiled at Karpo. It was not a pleasant smile.
“Is the interrogation room empty?” Karpo asked.
“Yes, I think so,” said the sergeant, looking into the gloom farther down the hall. “The light is not on.”
“Can you bring Voshenko to me there?”
“Yes, but …”
The sergeant had been told by the colonel who was chief of the district to do whatever the strange-looking detective from Petrovka wanted, and to do it without question. The sergeant unlocked the door. The men playing cards and the two men at the window looked at him as he stepped into the cell, his hand on his pistol. The black- clad vampire had disappeared. The sergeant was about to speak Voshenko’s name, but the prisoner had already put down the newspaper and was standing. He was a huge man, dressed like the others in a badly faded blue two-piece uniform. Voshenko’s face was dark, ugly, and freshly shaved. He got up slowly and stepped past the sergeant, who, even though the prisoner was shackled, backed away to give him room.
“Down the hall. To the right,” the sergeant said, stepping into the hall and closing the cell door, which clanged and echoed in the corridors of darkness.
Voshenko, six feet six, close to three hundred pounds, filled the narrow hallway built for children. He shambled forward, his leg chains rattling.
“Stop. There,” called the sergeant from a safe dozen feet behind, his weapon now out of the holster.
Voshenko had been brought in drunk after having killed two people, a man and a woman, in a bar on Kachalova Prospekt. He claimed there had been a fight. No witness stepped forward. Both victims had broken necks. Less than a week after entering the police-station lockup, another prisoner in the same cell as Voshenko had been found one morning with his neck broken. Voshenko denied the killing but admitted readily that the dead man had repeatedly looked at him even after having been told to stop. It was then that he had been shackled. There was no room in the three cells of the station house to place him in complete isolation, and there was no point in asking any of the other stations to take him. No one wanted another mouth to feed on an already meager budget.
Voshenko looked back over his shoulder at the sergeant, who took a step back before he could stop himself. Voshenko smiled and stepped into the interrogation room. The sergeant moved forward cautiously behind him. When he got to the door, he could see that Karpo was already seated behind the small metal table facing Voshenko, who moved to the chair across from the pale policeman.
The sergeant was about to close the door and stand ready, weapon in hand, while the strange inspector from Petrovka questioned the giant. The sergeant believed there was no chance Voshenko would even yield his name.
“Wait outside,” said Karpo. “Down the corridor, next to the cell. I’ll call you when I want you to return.”
“I don’t think …” the sergeant began, and then remembered his orders.
What would happen to him if Voshenko broke the neck of this lean ghost? Would the sergeant be held responsible? Yes, without doubt, and he might well find himself in one of the cells. But he did as he was told, locking the interrogation-room door firmly behind him.
Karpo and Voshenko looked at each other without blinking and without speaking. Finally Voshenko looked away as if in boredom.
“Do you know who I am?” Karpo asked.
“The Tatar, the Ghost, the Vampire,” said Voshenko. “Karpo.”
“Do you know why I am here?”
Voshenko shrugged. He looked at the peeling, once-white walls.
“I called many stations and several prisons asking if they had any prisoners with a specific tattoo,” said Karpo.
Voshenko folded his hands in front of him. They were large with long fingers. On each finger, just above the knuckle, was a minute tattoo of an animal, but only the head of the animal.
“When you were brought here, you were photographed,” Karpo said, his own hands flat on the table.
Voshenko did not remember. He had been too drunk. But he knew of the procedure.
“One of the officers on duty looked through the photographs of all tattooed prisoners,” said Karpo. “He found the tattoo I was looking for on you.”
Voshenko smiled and shook his head. He started to rise, but there was no response from the man who remained seated in front of him. Voshenko lifted his shirt. He was covered with tattoos, almost as many as the man who had been shot outside the café where Mathilde had been murdered.
