“You have very smooth skin,” Sasha said, looking at her.
“You mean for someone my age?”
“For someone any age.”
“Thank you. I will order coffee and something to eat. You go shower.”
He nodded, went into the bathroom, found the razors, and turned on the shower. While he waited for the water to turn warm, he picked up the thin bar of soap on the edge of the sink and looked into the mirror.
The Sasha Tkach he saw was quite different from the one with whom he had grown up. That Sasha Tkach had the face of a boy, a handsome boy who seemed to draw women of all ages. That boy had fallen in love with and married a beautiful Ukrainian girl named Maya. They had had two children. But he had been unable to control his animal desires. And she had left.
Now the Sasha Tkach in the mirror was a man, a handsome man with soulful eyes and no trace of boyishness. That man still held an animal within him. The evidence of that was the Englishwoman in the next room. He had not hesitated to come up here with her, to take off his clothes, to kiss and hold and make love to her and have her make love to him while all the time he thought of Maya and nearly wept believing he would never be able to control the animal within.
Steam covered the mirror and Sasha backed away, knowing that if Iris called he would return to the bed in spite of the hour, in spite of Elena, who would be calling him, in spite of his memories of Maya.
He stepped into the shower. It was too hot. His fair skin would be red for hours. He was tempted to make it even hotter, but instead he cleansed himself and then lathered his face with soap. His beard was light and came off with gentle, even strokes.
When he finished showering, he reached out for the towel on the nearby rack. Iris stood in front of him, still naked, towel in hand.
“Inspector Timofeyeva is on the phone.”
“The room phone?”
“Cell.”
Sasha eased past the smiling Iris, wrapping the towel carelessly around his waist. The phone lay on the bed. He picked it up.
“You did not answer your cell phone,” Elena said.
He detected no hint of reprimand.
“No, I have not turned it on yet.”
He was certain that she knew, and his certainty was confirmed by her question.
“Are you dressed?”
“No,” he said.
“Get dressed and bring Miss Templeton down to the lobby with you. Daniel Volkovich is dead.”
Iris was standing in the doorway of the bathroom meeting his sudden glance. Volkovich, the procurer who had allowed himself to be interviewed by Iris and who had let her into the brothel, was dead.
“What is it?” Iris asked.
“Get dressed quickly and come down. I have another surprise for you and Miss Templeton,” said Elena. She hung up.
Sasha hung up, tossed the towel on the bed, and reached for his underpants, saying, “Daniel Volkovich is dead.”
Iris dressed quickly. When she was finished, she spent a few moments in the bathroom preparing herself, doing her best to quickly brush her hair into a semblance of order.
They left the room together and used the stairs instead of waiting for the indifferent elevator. They found Elena Timofeyeva sitting in the lobby with a pretty young woman who had difficulty holding her cigarette steady between her fingers.
Elena looked at Sasha and Iris as they approached. There was no overt sign of reproach in Elena’s look, but Sasha detected a distinct disapproval.
Elena stood and so did the nervous young woman.
“This is Olga Grinkova,” said Elena. “She went to a police patrol car early this morning. She told her story and was taken to Petrovka, where she was directed to the Office of Special Investigations, where she sat waiting when I arrived. It was Olga who reported the murder of Daniel Volkovich. She is afraid that she too will be murdered.”
The young woman’s eyes were red and moist. Sasha detected an almost imperceptible quiver in her full lower lip. Olga Grinkova’s eyes kept turning toward the lobby door.
“Why is she afraid that she might be killed too?” asked Iris.
“Because,” said Elena, “she talked to you last night.”
Iris looked at the young woman again and said, “Svetlana?”
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was well prepared with reading material this morning. He had his usual Eighty-seventh Precinct novel and two newspapers. The skies had stopped dropping various kinds of moisture, leaving only a dark slush that seeped into the shoes of those who failed to take this weather into account.
Rostnikov had, thanks to his wife, been well prepared with ankle-high waterproof shoes. The left shoe had proved to be somewhat obstinate. In custom-manufacturing the foot, the craftsmen had made the left foot more than a half size too large. The artificial left foot of all three pairs of shoes that the Chief Inspector owned had been stretched. He kept a special German-made shoe stretcher in the left shoe he planned to wear each morning, but as soon as the device was removed the shoe began to seek its normal shape and size.
Porfiry Petrovich considered forming a self-help group for people with one leg to discuss all the things that the two-footed never thought about. He considered it, but he was certain he would not be forming such a group.
One thing he would have put on the agenda of the first meeting, had he actually proceeded with the idea, was the problem of walking. Now he was walking through Bitsevsky Park, pausing from time to time to search for a bird feeder. He found three among the trees at least fifteen feet from the path. As he walked, the policeman displayed only a slight limp, but he felt a distinct growing ache where his leg had once been. He would have to sit very soon.
People passed him coming and going. He noted but did not acknowledge them. These were people on the way to work as he was. They had no time for pleasantries and barely enough time for small unpleasantries.
There were few morning chess players. They had been greeted with wet benches and tables. The veterans had remembered to bring towels to dry enough space for them to begin their combat. If these veterans recognized those who had not come prepared, they might allow them to use their towels.
Rostnikov had planned to make it as far as the ski slope. There would be no skiing today. The hills would be sponges of cold water with puddles of melting ice.
It was too far and would be too much for his leg. He had not set the slope as a goal because he expected to find anything there. He had no clear objectives. He turned around and headed along the meandering path back to the entrance to the park from which he had come.
As he moved slowly, he encountered a small bridge over the creek and paused to listen to the rushing water. He went to a bench nearby, cleared a spot for himself with some wadded newspaper, and sat facing the water and the trees, most of which were weeks from bearing leaves again.
After listening and watching as people passed and birds began to chirp, cry, and caw, Rostnikov took out his novel and found his place. The book was in English. Porfiry Petrovich could understand written English far better than he could understand English when it was spoken to him or he spoke it. It also helped that this was the third time he had read this particular ragged-edged paperback.
“What are you reading?” asked the man who sat next to Rostnikov after picking up the wadded newspaper and using it to dry a space for himself.
“An American police mystery,” said Rostnikov.
“What is it about?”
“A group of detectives in a mythical city who are trying to catch a serial killer.”
Rostnikov looked at the man, who was neither young nor quite in the middle of life. He had good teeth, a
