People Who Walk In Darkness (Inspector Rostnikov)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  His body was not hairy. His features were strong, rugged. He bore a small white scar right on his left eyelid and several others, one the size of a baby’s fist on his right arm.

  “No,” she lied.

  “Good.”

  She lit her cigarette, inhaled with satisfaction, and allowed herself a small smile for the future.

  “A shame you have to stay so thin,” he said.

  “You don’t like it?”

  He shrugged. “Given what I am looking at, I would be a fool to complain.”

  He had pulled a chair to the side of the bed and propped up his feet near her. He was wearing nothing.

  “Given what I can see from here,” she said. “You are far from complaining.”

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  She surprised herself by putting out her cigarette and saying, “Why not? A celebration.”

  “It’s too soon to celebrate,” he said, climbing on the bed and reaching for her.

  She held up a hand, palm extended.

  “Lie down,” she commanded.

  He laughed.

  “You’re giving orders? I like that, but not too often.”

  As she straddled him, Oxana considered, but only for a moment, when it might be best to kill him. He knew the contact in Paris. When he told her, the opportunity would arise. She was certain he did not plan to share with her, and she could not let him live to hunt her down.

  She knew he was almost certainly thinking the same thing about her.

  “What is your name again? Forgive me for . . .”

  Vladimir Kolokov’s face was inches from the face of the black man in the chair. The Russian’s eyes were open wide, his head tilted very slightly to the right as if he were paying very close attention to the black man.

  “James,” said the man in the chair, his voice dry, cracking.

  “No, no,” said Kolokov with a laugh, turning to face the other three men in the room, sharing the joke. “No, I know your name is James. It’s your last name I have trouble with.”

  “Harumbaki.”

  “Harumbaki,” Kolokov repeated. “James, I am sorry to tell you, your friends are dead.”

  James knew this. The Russian had let him see their bodies before two of the men in the shadows had dragged them off.

  “But you, you and I are partners,” said the Russian.

  He patted the shirtless black man on the shoulder. James tried not to cringe, but a slight movement betrayed him.

  “Have I hurt you?” asked Kolokov, himself looking hurt by the movement of the man in the chair.

  “No.”

  “Your Russian is a little weak, James,” Kolokov said. “You’ll have to speak up.”

  “No, you have not hurt me.”

  Kolokov, who relished the scene, turned away to face his audience of three, and then he turned back suddenly, inches away from James’s face again, spit spraying his prisoner’s face.

  “But I could, could I not?”

  One of the men in the shadows, Alek, laughed.

  “Yes.”

  “Then we are partners,” said Kolokov. “We have a fair split. I get everything and you get to live.”

  “Yes.”

  “You tell me who you sell the diamonds to and when, and you and I go and make the transaction, and we all part company with a drink and a tear for fallen comrades.”

  “Yes,” said James, not believing it for an instant.

  Believing this lunatic was not really an issue. The diamonds were gone. When they had encountered Kolokov, James and the others had been on the way to their courier, a stupid Russian drug addict who had not been of James’s choosing. James and the others had been informed of the theft of the diamonds and the murder of the prostitute who had been carrying them. A drug addict and a prostitute. If he survived, which was not likely, James planned to find out how two incompetents could be selected to transport millions in diamonds.

  Kolokov leaned even closer and whispered into James’s ear.

  “I am sorry. I cannot treat you too nicely. You understand how it is. My friends here would not understand. They would be jealous. They would think, or maybe even say, ‘Vladimir, you have a new friend. You have abandoned us.’ You understand, James Hakimkov?”

  James did not correct him. Instead he said,

  “Yes.”

  With that Kolokov pulled a small screwdriver from his pocket and shoved it deeply into the side of the man in the chair.

  James gasped.

  “Are you all right?” asked Kolokov with mock concern. “I’m sorry. I had to do it.”

  James couldn’t speak. The pain was searing, throbbing, screaming.

  “Are you all right, James?”

  James shook his head yes.

  “Good.”

  Another pat on the shoulder.

  “We’ll clean that up. It’s not deep and I rinsed the screwdriver earlier today. Fresh bandages. Pau’s mother was a nurse, is that correct, Pau?”

  “Yes,” came a voice from the blurred darkness.

  “Partners,” came Kolokov’s voice as James started to pass out.

  Chapter Four

  “You’ve come to visit your father’s leg,” Paulinin said, stepping back to let Iosef and Zelach through the reinforced door.

  Paulinin’s laboratory was two levels below ground in Petrovka. It was an anomaly. A bureaucracy bustled or shuffled in the sparsely furnished rooms above, but Paulinin’s laboratory stood alone as a testament to a time long gone if it ever existed at all.

  “Among other things,” said Iosef.

  Paulinin, dressed in a white laboratory apron spotted with something that was probably more unpleasant than blood, looked at Zelach who was decidedly uncomfortable.

  “The man who slouches,” said Paulinin, adjusting his glasses.

  Zelach immediately straightened up. There was much in the laboratory that made Zelach uncomfortable—the seemingly random jars of specimens arranged in no apparent order, the unmatched desks covered with books and towers of reports that threatened to tumble over, the laboratory and autopsy tables under bright lamps.

  But what made Zelach most uncomfortable was Paulinin himself.

  The lean, bald man was clean shaven. His ears were large, as were his teeth. He spoke quickly, softly, and often burst out loudly with a “Don’t touch that” or an “Are you paying attention?”

  But, as the scientist led the way around the desk toward the low music from a CD player or radio, Zelach saw that there were two naked black bodies on adjoining autopsy tables.

  “Over there.” Paulinin pointed with his left hand as they moved.

  “I know,” said Iosef, looking at the leg of his father floating in a large jar.

  Zelach looked too.

  “I don’t talk to it enough,” Paulinin said almost sadly. “Too much to do. Chopin.”

  He had turned his head and was looking at Zelach who was puzzled. Did the mad scientist call Rostnikov’s leg Chopin?

  “The music,” Paulinin said as they moved between the two autopsy tables. “Chopin.”

  Akardy Zelach knew little about classical music. Heavy metal, fine. Jazz, fine. Classical, no.

  Iosef, Porfiry Petrovich, and Karpo had long assured Zelach that the scientist was brilliant. Detectives and even members of military law enforcement came to him, but most police avoided him, preferring mediocrity in their investigation to the prospect of having to deal with the man who now patted the arm of the dead man on the table.

  “What has he been telling you?” asked Iosef.

  “Ah, this one does not speak Russian very well, and my other guest speaks no Russian.”

  “How do you . . . ?” Zelach started and then stopped himself. Too late.

  Iosef folded his arms and waited patiently.

  “This one was tortured. Slowly, slowly. His mouth, throat, lungs, vocal cords were unharmed. Someone wanted him able to speak. In his pocket were receipts, notations. No rubles. The money was taken. I know bec
ause he was well if not expensively dressed, very good serviceable English shoes. He would not be walking around without money. He was a man who didn’t have to be bereft of funds. His friend . . .”

  Paulinin turned and patted the arm of the other dead man reassuringly.

  “His friend here had no rubles either, no notes or bills or receipts in Russian. He relied on his friend for all necessary conversation and transactions with Russians. He was not tortured, only murdered, which shows that a knowledge of the Russian language is not always a blessing.”

  Paulinin seemed to be waiting for confirmation.

  “It is not,” agreed Iosef.

  Zelach wanted to get out of the alcoholic and chemical smell, the dark corners, the glaring specimens enlarged by the glass bottles that surrounded them, the two dead men to whom Paulinin spoke.

  “Can you imagine what it would be like to have a tube forced down your nose, rubbing the lining raw and bloody all the way to your stomach, and have food forced down the tube?”

  He was looking at Zelach.

  “No I cannot,” said Zelach.

  Paulinin shook his head and scratched his neck.

  “Old KGB torture,” he explained. “Many are the afflicted who were feasted so inside Lubyanka, but a long walk or a short Metro ride from where we now stand.”

  “Our torturer is former KGB?” asked Iosef.

  “Perhaps still secret police,” Zelach tried.

  “No, they know how to rid themselves of bodies.”

  “Anything else?” asked Iosef.

  “Small, very sharp knife. The torturer was not tall, maybe five feet and eight inches. The tortured man was seated. See his ankles, the rope burn around his groin. The highest wounds indicate the man’s height. Other wounds indicate that our man with the knife was nervous, attention deficit disorder or something like that. He kneels, stands upright, crouches, keeps moving. His hair is dark brown and long. He is alcoholic.”

  “How . . . ?”

  Zelach again.

  “Hair samples on both bodies. Not the victims. DNA,” explained Paulinin. “I called in favors. The men and women in the DNA laboratory owe me. There is a faint but detectable smell of alcohol on both of my guests, though neither of them has the slightest trace of alcohol in his stomach.”

  “Did your guest talk to the Russian?” asked Iosef.

  “Oh yes. The torture stopped abruptly. The tale was told, but not the end. The end depends, I think, on the third man.”

  “The third man,” Iosef repeated.

  “What third man?” asked Zelach.

  “Two blood types on the body of my guests are Type B. So, I believe, is the man who tortured them. Ironic. Torturer and victims are blood brothers. But there is a third blood type, AB, on the skin of these two men. My guess is that all three men struggled, were beaten, bled on each other. We are fortunate. The third man carries the virus for narcolepsy. The man was bitten by a tsetse fly. It is, therefore, likely that he is from somewhere in the south of Africa.”

  “Because tsetse flies are only found in Africa?” said Zelach.

  “No, because my two friends here bear tattoos on the backs of warriors from the same Southern African tribe, a Botswanan tribe.”

  “Warriors?”

  This from Iosef.

  “Yes,” said Paulinin. “Perhaps, but modern ones. These tattoos are only an homage to the past. They are like the tattoos prisoners wear to mark them as being from a particular gang.”

  “Anything else?” asked Iosef.

  “One moment,” said Paulinin, moving back into darkness, changing the CD. When he returned he looked at Iosef.

  “Rachmaninov,” said Iosef.

  Paulinin smiled.

  “There is one more thing. Pa’smatril. Look.”

  He turned the tortured dead man on his side and said, “You have to look very carefully.”

  Paulinin pressed his finger into a red spot on the dead man’s back. His finger disappeared into the body.

  “They both have them. The other one’s is on his thigh, like little pockets.”

  “Drugs,” said Zelach.

  “Diamonds,” said Iosef.

  “Possibly,” said Paulinin.

  Iosef did not press the issue. He was certain. The meeting in Porfiry Petrovich’s office made it clear that they were all in search of diamonds.

  “Now,” said Iosef, “if you can only tell us where to begin looking for this third man . . .”

  “Four-seven-two-four Kropotkin Street,” said Paulinin.

  “You cannot know . . .” Zelach could not stop himself.

  “Rent receipt in my friend’s pocket,” said Paulinin, touching the nearest corpse.

  “Spa’siba. Thank you,” said Iosef.

  “Yes,” added Zelach resisting the urge to run out of the laboratory.

  “Zelach wants to know if it is true that you have Stalin’s head and Lenin’s teeth and eyes,” said Iosef.

  No, no, no, thought Zelach looking at Paulinin.

  “I have treasures pathological, historical, and cultural,” said Paulinin who was looking over his glasses at Zelach. “It would be unwise to share treasure. Let yourselves out.”

  Rachmaninov bloomed in the garden of glass, wood, and metal at their backs as Iosef and Zelach moved toward the door to the corridor.

  A voice spoke cheerily behind them.

  Paulinin was talking to the dead men. The scientist seemed certain that the dead men also talked to him.

  And in some sense, he was right.

  “Bedraggled,” Lydia Tkach said, looking at her son.

  Sasha was at the mirror in the tiny bathroom adjusting the white shirt under his tan zippered jacket. She had followed him before he could close the door.

  Sasha, examining his face, had to agree. The unruly line of hair still came down to cover his forehead, only the hair was no longer really the color of corn. He was handsome still, but the appealing boyishness was missing. Undercover assignments were still his lot, but he could no longer pass himself off as a student or an innocent. His blue eyes betrayed him.

  “Look at you.”

  Sasha looked at his reflection and saw sympathy in the eyes that met his. Lydia was retired, no longer the tyrant who held together a gaggle of functionaries in a government office. Lydia, long hard of hearing, tended to shout when she was displeased. She tended to shout when she was happy. Shouting was her conversational currency and Sasha had endured it for more than thirty years.

  “I’m looking,” he said. “What am I supposed to see?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it as soon as the words had been spat from his lips, but he could not give up the small vestige of childish defiance.

  “You are supposed to see a husband,” she said. “You are supposed to see a father with two children, one of whom is ill in an awful, dirty city of murderers.”

  “The children are not ill and Kiev is neither dirty nor full of murderers.”

  Why could he not silence himself?

  “What was I saying?” she asked, looking at the dull green painted wall of the bathroom.

  “You were telling me what I am supposed to see in the mirror.”

  He turned to face her. She was small, lean, strong, and reluctant to wear the perfectly satisfactory hearing aids he had bought her.

  “Yes, you are supposed to see a policeman, a policeman who could be shot or stabbed or beaten on the head or run over by a car.”

  “Don’t forget poisoned,” he said, moving past her into the living room.

  “You are not funny,” she said, following him.

  “I know. It is one of my many failings. What are you doing today?”

  “I’m working at not changing the subject when I talk to my only child. Did you see someone in the mirror who has been drinking too much, like his long-dead father?”

  “My father died in a car accident.”

  “Hah.”

  “Hah?”

  “I suspected poison a
t the time,” she said, trying without success to lower her voice in case some governmental agency thought enough of her to eavesdrop on her every word. “He was engaged in very sensitive government work.”

  “Yes,” said Sasha, knowing that his father had been no more than a senior file clerk in the Underministry of Vehicles.

  Now she followed him into the little kitchen where he opened the refrigerator door, removed the sliced brown bread and the last of the ham they had been nursing through meals for three days.

  “You have never said anything about poison,” Sasha said, knowing that he was lost, lost in one of those futile conversations with his mother.

  “I didn’t want to trouble you,” she said. “Put mustard on that.”

  Sasha paused, plate of butter in his hand.

  “Who doesn’t like mustard? Let’s have a show of hands,” he said, holding up his free hand.

  “You are mocking your mother,” she said loudly with mock resignation.

  “I have never liked mustard,” he said, placing the butter dish on the small table.

  “And that has been your downfall.”

  “Not liking mustard has been my downfall?”

  “Being difficult has been your downfall,” she said, reaching out to tear off an edge of the ham he had placed on the table.

  “I am not yet hopelessly fallen,” he said.

  She said nothing, watched him make a sandwich, considered giving him more culinary advice, and thought better of it.

  “You should stop being a policeman,” she said. “It is dangerous and you are no longer as alert as you once were.”

  “Which of us is?”

  Now they were into a familiar conversation they had repeated dozens of times.

  “I’ve talked to Porfiry Petrovich about my concerns for your safety,” she said, folding her arms over the green dress she mistakenly believed flattered her.

  “Many times,” Sasha said.

  “Yes, many times.”

  The sandwich was finished. It was a monument to distracted inefficiency. He took a bite.

  “You should sit when you eat. It is bad for your digestion to eat while standing.”

  He moved toward the door.

  “It is worse to eat while walking,” she said.

  She walked behind him to the door. He finished downing what he had in his mouth, paused, and turned to face her. She was a head shorter than he, which made it easier for him to lean over and kiss her head, which he did.