“I have,” said Sasha. “Maya wanted to see it. It is bleak.”
“This is an old note, probably crumpled and thrown into a wastebasket,” said Rostnikov. “It is unfinished. The
“So,” said Elena, “she kept the note, brooded, and decided to send her message to Kriskov after she took the negative. If Kriskov and Freud are right, she may be a bit mad.”
“She would write a new note, I think,” said Rostnikov. “But who knows? Madness has its own reasons. Did anyone see someone enter the room where the note was found?”
“No,” said Sasha. “But I really couldn’t make inquiries. I’m a French film executive from Gaumont. Kriskov asked a few people.”
“Conclusions?” asked Rostnikov.
“Someone is trying to make it look as if Svetlana is the thief,” said Elena.
“And I would guess that this note was written on her typewriter, if she has one,” added Sasha.
“Our thief thinks he is very clever,” said Elena.
“Playing a game,” said Sasha.
“More chips?”
“No, thank you,” said Sasha.
Rostnikov shrugged and finished off the last few salty pieces.
“I’ll take a few,” said Elena.
Why was the sight of the chips making her feel suddenly fat? Why was she worrying about her weight? Before Iosef had besieged her, Elena had lived in relative culinary contentment, aware of her weight and mildly cautious, exercising each morning till she worked up a sweat, checking the scale in the corner of her aunt’s bedroom. But now …
“Do you agree, Elena Timofeyeva?” Rostnikov asked.
She had been aware that Rostnikov had said something after he finished his final bite of sandwich but she wasn’t quite sure of what it had been. Her mind had wandered to her waistline.
“I’m sorry, I …”
“If the thief is someone trying to put the blame on Svetlana Gorchinova, then he or she is someone inside the company. The thief would very likely know that Kriskov cannot raise two million American dollars in one day.”
“Then why? …” Sasha began.
“Ah, yes, a puzzle, a conundrum,” said Porfiry Petrovich, handing the note to Sasha. “Work on it. I think the solution may lead you to a thief with an agenda we do not yet know. And now I must clean my desk and turn my thoughts to outer space and distant villages.”
Elena and Sasha went into the hall. They stood silently for a moment and then looked at each other and the note in Sasha’s hand.
“You know what we must do,” he said.
“Yes.”
The trip was brief, four flights down to the ground and two below that to Paulinin’s den. Neither of them looked forward to it, but it was the quickest way to get an answer.
Sasha knocked. They thought they heard someone behind the door and in the distance answer, but the words were unclear. Sasha opened the door. At the end of the room, Paulinin looked up over the naked male body before him. The dead man was an almost bleached white, young, handsome.
The two detectives wended their way through the maze of tables, benches, specimens, debris, and books. Paulinin was wearing rubber gloves. His hair was in desperate need of attention.
“What?” he asked impatiently, eyeing Elena. Paulinin did not welcome living women visitors. “I’m busy. Two corpses. Seven boxes of shoes to examine. I’m busy.”
Sasha had dealt with Paulinin before, had watched Rostnikov deal with him. “This should take you but a minute, perhaps a few seconds,” said Sasha with his best smile. “You are the only one who can help us.”
“Quick then,” Paulinin said. “Quick, quick, people are waiting. Shoes are waiting, and I haven’t had my lunch.”
Sasha reached across the corpse and handed Paulinin the note. Paulinin looked at it and placed it on the chest of the corpse of Vladimir Kinotskin.
“What about it?” he asked.
“How long ago was it written?”
“Weeks, maybe months,” said Paulinin. “One need only look at the absorption of the ink, the small flecking, the … This does not even require magnification. Is that all?”
“That is all,” said Sasha. “Thank you.”
Elena and Sasha exchanged a look which made it clear that both now knew the theft of the negative had been planned long ago.
Paulinin returned the note and, ignoring his visitors, whispered something to the corpse.
Sasha and Elena left quickly.
On the way out, they had to avoid the seven cartons of shoes Paulinin had mentioned.
Vera Kriskov would be thirty-seven years old next month. She was looking forward to the day. She felt like celebrating. Her mirror told her she was still capable, if she chose, of returning to modeling for catalogues, magazines, perhaps even on television, but she really didn’t wish to do so and Yuri would not have permitted it. The bedroom mirror, in front of which she stood quite naked, told her clearly once again that having children had not destroyed her figure, though it had taken enormous exercise and diet restraint to remain the way she looked now. Her trademark long, soft, natural amber hair was as flowing and bright as ever.
Yuri wasn’t quite rich, but they lived comfortably in a dacha with three bedrooms just beyond the Outer Ring. She had her own car, a cream-colored Lada, and plenty of time and spending money.
She also had a husband who hadn’t made love to her in four months, a fact that only bothered her because she wanted to be wanted. Actually, she had no desire to spend time with her husband grunting and moaning in bed and smelling of stale cigarettes. He was, at his best, a conventional lover and certainly a frightened and indifferent one. His absence from bed was matched only by his absence from home. That absence too was not unwelcome.
She began to dress, nothing striking, nothing that would draw special attention, but something that would show her figure and draw attention to her face and hair. She moved, now wearing underpants and a bra, to the bathroom to put on her makeup. Even up close and with magnification her skin was smooth.
Vera had seen her husband’s new mistress, an actress, very young and definitely not as pretty as the face in the mirror before her. The girl was part of the act, Yuri’s pose as a creative, virile, philandering movie producer.
When she was satisfied with the face in the mirror, she got down a simple blue dress of cotton and put on comfortable white shoes with very low heels. Vera was tall, five-feet nine-inches tall, as tall as her husband when she wore even moderate heels.
She was ready. She would meet Yuri for dinner, as he had asked. She would listen to him bemoan his fate. She would be sympathetic, might even pat his hand. She would watch him smoke and eat and fret.
She would be a good wife, but she would also be a good actress, showing deep sympathy and close to tears, while she enjoyed his torment. She had married him because of his energy, money, connections to vibrant people, and the opportunity to become an actress.
Vera had appeared in a secondary role in one of Yuri’s low-budget comedies about a Bulgarian who becomes a Moscow taxi driver and can’t find any address. In addition, the other cab drivers make the Bulgarian’s life a nightmare. Vera played a model who has to get to a photo session. The part was small, but Yuri had told her she had been very good though the director was drunk during Vera’s three scenes.
Then Vera had gotten pregnant. Yuri wanted children. Yuri forced himself to work at it. Yuri worried that he could not create babies. Doctors helped. They worked out a schedule. There was no joy in the process. But Vera did find pleasure in her children. Ivan was almost ten and she prayed that he would not grow up to look like his father. He was a good-looking boy hovering between the image of his mother and father. Even if he grew to look like Yuri, she would love him. And Alla, Alla was four, beautiful, happy, definitely her mother’s child.
Though the children spent most of their time with friends or being watched by a frail young nanny from
