Special Assignments

by Boris Akunin

  For some reason the Collegiate Counsellor found this bit of nonsense interesting. He also looked very closely at the Colt revolver discovered in a drawer of the writing desk. The revolver had been loaded quite recently - there were traces of fresh oil on the drum and the handle. Then why hadn't Zakharov taken it with him, Lyalin wondered? Had he forgotten it, then? Or deliberately left it behind? But why?

  Musya disgraced herself. Despite the mire, she went dashing after the scent pretty smartly, but then a massive, shaggy dog came flying out from behind the fence and started barking so fiercely that Musya squatted down on her hind legs and backed away, and after that it proved impossible to shift her from that spot. They put the watchman's dog back on its chain, but Musya had lost all her spirit. Sniffer-dogs are nervous creatures; they have to be in the right mood.

  'Which of them is which?' Fandorin asked, pointing through the window at the cemetery employees.

  Lyalin began reporting: 'The fat one in the cap is the supervisor. He lives outside the cemetery and has nothing to do with the work of the police morgue. Yesterday he left at half past five and he came this morning a quarter of an hour before you arrived. The tall consumptive-looking one is Zakharov's assistant; his name's Grumov. He's just got here from home recently as well. The one with his head lowered is the watchman. The other three are labourers. They dig the graves, mend the fence, take out the rubbish and so on. The watchman and the labourers live here and could have heard something. But we haven't questioned them in detail, since we were told not to.'

  The Collegiate Counsellor talked with the employees himself.

  He called them into the building and first of all showed them the Colt: 'Do you recognise it?'

  The assistant Grumov and the watchman Pakhomenko testified (Lyalin wrote in his notes) that they were familiar with the weapon - they had seen it, or one just like it, in the doctor's apartment. However, the gravedigger Kulkov testified that he had never seen any 'revolvert' close up, but the previous month he had gone to watch the 'doctur' shooting rooks, and he had done it very tidily: every time he fired, rooks' feathers went flying.

  The three shots fired last night by Provincial Secretary Tulipov had been heard by the watchman Pakhomenko and the labourer Khriukin. Kulkov had been in a drunken sleep and the noise had not wakened him.

  Those who had heard the shots said they'd been afraid to go outside - how could you tell who might be wandering about in the middle of the night? - and they apparently had not heard any cries for help. Soon afterwards Khriukin had gone back to sleep, but Pakhomenko had stayed awake. He said that shortly after the shooting a door had slammed loudly and someone had walked rapidly towards the gates.

  'What, were you listening then?' Fandorin asked the watchman.

  'Of course I was,' Pakhomenko replied. 'There was shooting. And I sleep badly at nights. All sorts of thoughts come into my head. I was tossing and turning until first light. Tell me, pan general, has that young lad really passed away? He was so sharp-eyed, and he was kind with simple folk.'

  The Collegiate Counsellor was known always to be polite and mild-mannered with his subordinates, but today Lyalin could barely recognise him. The Chief gave no reply to the watchman's touching words and showed no interest at all in Pakhomeno's nocturnal thoughts. He swung round sharply and spoke curtly over his shoulder to the witnesses: 'You can go. No one is to leave the cemetery. But you, Grumov, be so good as to stay'

  Well, he was like a totally different man.

  The doctor's assistant blinked in fright as Fandorin asked him:

  'What was Zakharov doing yesterday evening? In detail, please.'

  Grumov shrugged and spread his hands guiltily: 'I couldn't say. Yesterday Egor Willemovich was badly out of sorts; he kept cursing all the time, and after lunch he told me to go home. So I went. We didn't even say goodbye - he locked himself in his study'

  "After lunch" - what time is that?' After three, sir.'

  "After three, sir",' the Collegiate Counsellor repeated, shaking his head for some reason, and clearly losing all interest in the consumptive morgue assistant. 'You can go.'

  Lyalin approached the Collegiate Counsellor and delicately cleared his throat. 'I've jotted down a verbal portrait of Zakharov. Would you care to take a look?'

  Fandorin didn't even glance at the excellently composed description; he just waved it away. It was rather upsetting to see such a lack of respect for professional zeal.

  'That's all,' Fandorin said curtly. 'There's no need to question anyone else. You, Lyalin, go to the Assuage My Sorrows Hospital in Lefortovo and bring the male nurse Stenich to me on Tverskaya Street. And Sysuev can go to the Yakimanka Embankment and bring the factory-owner Burylin. Urgently'

  'But what about the verbal portrait of Zakharov?' Lyalin asked, his voice trembling. 'I expect we're going to put him on the wanted list, aren't we?'

  'No, we're not,' Fandorin replied absent-mindedly, and strode off rapidly towards his wonderful carriage, leaving the experienced detective totally bemused.

  Vedishchev was waiting in the Collegiate Counsellor's office on Tverskaya Street. 'The final day' Dolgorukoi's 'grey cardinal' said sternly instead of saying hello. We have to find that crazy Englishman. Find him and then report it, all right and proper. Otherwise you know what will happen.'

  And how do you come to know about Zakharov, Frol Grigorievich?' Fandorin asked, although he didn't seem particularly surprised.

  "Vedishchev knows everything that happens in Moscow'

  'We should have included you in the list of suspects, then. You put His Excellency's cupping jars on and even let his blood, don't you? So practising medicine is nothing new to you.' The joke, however, was made in a flat voice and it was clear that Fandorin was thinking about something quite different.

  'Poor old Anisii, eh?' Vedishchev sighed. 'That's really terrible, that is. He was a bright lad, our shorty. He should have gone a long way, from all the signs.'

  'I wish you would go to your own room, Frol Grigorievich,' was the Collegiate Counsellor's reply to that. He was clearly not inclined to indulge in sentimentality today.

  The valet knitted his grey eyebrows in a frown of annoyance and changed to an official tone of voice: 'I have been ordered to inform Your Honour that the Minister of the Interior left for St Petersburg this morning in a mood of great dissatisfaction and before he left he was being very threatening. I was also ordered to inquire if the inquiry will soon be closed.'

  'Soon. Tell His Excellency that I need to carry out just two more interrogations, receive one telegram and make a little excursion.'

  'Erast Petrovich, in Christ's name, will you manage it before tomorrow?' Vedishchev asked imploringly. 'Or we're all done for.'

  Fandorin had no time to reply to the question, because there was a knock at the door and the duty adjutant announced: 'The prisoners Stenich and Burylin have been delivered. They are being kept in separate rooms, as ordered.'

  'Bring Stenich in first,' Erast Petrovich told the officer, and pointed the valet towards the door with his chin. 'This is the first interrogation. That's all, Frol Grigorievich - go, I have no more time.'

  The old man nodded his bald head submissively and hobbled towards the door. In the doorway he collided with a wild-looking man - skinny and jittery with long hair - but he didn't stare at him. He shuffled off rapidly along the corridor in his felt shoes, turned a corner and unlocked a closet with a key.

  But it turned out not to be any ordinary closet: it had a concealed door in the inside corner. Behind the little door there was another small closet. Frol Grigorievich squeezed into it, sat down on a chair with a comfortable cushion on it, silently slid opened a small shutter in the wall and suddenly he was looking though glass at the whole of the secret study, and he could hear Erast Petrovich's slightly muffled voice: 'Thank you. For the time being you'll have to stay at the police station. For your own safety.'

  The valet put on a pair of spectacles with thick lenses and pressed his face up close
to the secret opening, but he only saw the back of the man leaving the room. So that was an interrogation, was it? - it hadn't even lasted three minutes. Vedishchev grunted sceptically and waited to see what would come next.

  'Send in Burylin,' Fandorin ordered the adjutant.

  A man with a fat Tatar face and insolent eyes came in. Without waiting to be invited, he sat down on a chair, crossed his legs and began swinging his expensive cane with a gold knob. It was obvious straight away that he was a millionaire.

  'Well, are you going to take me to look at offal again?' the millionaire asked merrily. 'Only you won't catch me out like that. I have a thick skin. Who was that who went out? Vanka Stenich, wasn't it? Ooh, he turned his face away. As if he'd not had plenty of pickings from Burylin. He rode around Europe on my money, and he lived as my house guest. I felt sorry for him, the poor unfortunate. But he abused my hospitality. Ran away from me to England. Began to despise me - I was dirty and he decided he wanted a clean life. Well, let him go; he's a hopeless man - a genuine psychiatric case. Will you permit me to smoke a small cigar?'

  All of the millionaire's questions went unanswered. Instead, Fandorin asked his own question, which Vedishchev didn't understand at all. At your meeting of fellow-students there was a man with long hair, rather shabby. Who is he?'

  But Burylin understood the question and answered it willingly: 'Filka Rozen. He was thrown out of the medical faculty with me and Stenich, distinguished himself with honours in the line of immoral behaviour. He works as an assessor in a pawn shop. And he drinks, of course.' 'Where can I find him?'

  'You won't find him anywhere. Before you came calling, like a fool I gave him five hundred roubles - turned sloppy in my old age, thinking of the old days. Until he's drunk it all to the last kopeck, he won't show up. Maybe he's living it up in some tavern in Moscow, or maybe in Peter, or maybe in Nizhny. That's the kind of character he is.'

  For some reason this news made Fandorin extremely upset. He even jumped up off his chair, pulled those round green beads on a string out of his pocket and put them back again.

  The man with the fat face observed the Collegiate Counsellor's strange behaviour with curiosity. He took out a fat cigar, lit it and scattered the ash on the carpet, the insolent rogue. But he didn't start asking questions; he waited.

  'Tell me: why were you, Stenich and Rozen thrown out of the faculty, while Zakharov was only transferred to the anatomical pathology department?' Fandorin asked after a lengthy pause.

  'It depended on who got up to how much mischief Burylin said with a laugh. 'Sotsky the biggest hothead amongst us, actually got sent to a punitive battalion. I felt sorry for the old dog; he had imagination, even if he was a rogue. I was under threat too, but it was all right: money got me out of it.' He winked a wild eye and puffed out cigar smoke. 'The girl students, our jolly companions, got it in the neck too - just for belonging to the female sex. They were sent to Siberia, under police surveillance. One became a morphine addict, another married a priest - I made inquiries.' The millionaire laughed. And at that time Zakharka the Englishman wasn't really outstanding in any way - that's why he got off with a lesser punishment. "He was present and did not stop it" - that's what the verdict said.'

  Fandorin snapped his fingers as if he had just received a piece of good news that he'd been expecting for ages, but then Burylin took a piece of paper folded into four out of his pocket.

  'It's odd that you should ask about Zakharov. This morning I received a very strange note from him, just a moment before your dogs arrived to take me away. A street urchin brought it. Here, read it.'

  Frol Grigorievich twisted himself right round and flattened his nose against the glass, but there was no point - he couldn't read the letter from a distance. Only it was clear from all the signs that this was a highly important piece of paper. Erast Petrovich's eyes were glued to it.

  'I'll give him some money, of course,' said the millionaire. 'Only there wasn't any special "old friendship" between the two of us; he's just being sentimental there. And what kind of melodrama is this: "Please remember me kindly, my brother"? What has he been up to, our Pluto? Did he dine on those girls that were lying on the tables in the morgue the other day?' Burylin threw his head back and laughed, delighted with his joke.

  Fandorin was still examining the note. He walked across to the window, lifted the sheet of paper higher, and Vedishchev saw the scrawling, uneven lines of writing.

  'Yes, it's such terrible scribble you can hardly even read it,' the millionaire said in his deep voice, looking round for somewhere to put the cigar he had finished smoking. As if it was written in a carriage or with a serious hangover.'

  He didn't find anywhere. He almost threw it to the floor, but decided not to; he cast a guilty glance at the Collegiate Counsellor's back, wrapped the stub in his handkerchief and put it in his pocket. That's right.

  'You can go, Burylin,' Erast Petrovich said without turning round. 'Until tomorrow you will remain under guard.'

  The millionaire was highly incensed at that news. 'I've had enough; I've already spent one night feeding your police bedbugs! They're vicious beasts, and hungry. The way they threw themselves on an Orthodox believer's body!'

  Fandorin wasn't listening. He pressed the bell button. The gendarme officer came in and dragged the rich man towards the door.

  'But what about Zakharka?' Burylin shouted. 'He'll be calling for the money!'

  'That's no concern of yours,' said Erast Petrovich, and he asked the officer: 'Has the reply to my inquiry arrived from the ministry?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Let me have it.'

  The gendarme brought in some kind of telegram and went back out into the corridor.

  The telegram produced a remarkable effect on Fandorin. He read it, threw it on to the desk and then suddenly did something very strange. He clapped his hands very quickly several times, and so loudly that Vedishchev banged his head against the glass in his surprise, and the gendarme, the adjutant and the secretary stuck their heads in at the door all at once.

  'It's all right, gentlemen,' Fandorin reassured them. 'It's a Japanese exercise for focusing one's thoughts. Please go.'

  And then even more wonders followed.

  When the door closed behind his subordinates, Erast Petrovich suddenly started to get undressed. When he was left in just his underclothes, he took a travelling bag that Vedishchev hadn't noticed before out from under the desk and took a bundle out of the bag. The bundle contained clothes: tight striped trousers with footstraps, a cheap paper shirt-front, a crimson waistcoat and yellow check jacket.

  The highly respectable Collegiate Counsellor was transformed into a pushy jerk, the kind that hover around the street girls in the evenings. He stood in front of the mirror, exactly a yard in front of Frol Vedishchev, combed his black hair into a straight parting, plastered it with brilliantine and coloured the grey at his temples. He twisted the ends of his slim moustache upwards and shaped them into two sharp points. (Bohemian wax, Frol Vedishchev guessed - he secured Prince Dolgorukoi's sideburns in exactly the same way, so that they stuck out like eagles' wings.)

  Then Fandorin put something into his mouth and grinned, and a gold cap glinted on one tooth. He carried on pulling faces for a while and seemed perfectly content with his appearance.

  The Yuletide masker took a small wallet out of the bag, opened it, and Vedishchev saw that it was no ordinary wallet: inside it he could see a small-calibre burnished steel gun barrel and a little drum like the one on a revolver. Fandorin put five shells into the drum, clicked the lid shut and tested the resistance of the lock with his finger - no doubt the lock played the role of a trigger. What will they think of next for killing a man? the valet thought, with a shake of his head. And where are you going dressed like a cheap dandy, Erast Petrovich?

  As if he had heard the question, Fandorin turned towards the mirror and put on a beaver-fur cap, tilted at a dashing angle, winked familiarly and said in a low voice: 'Frol Grigorievich, lig
ht a candle for me at vespers. I won t get by without God's help today'

  Ineska was suffering very badly, in body and in spirit - in body, because last night Slepen, her former ponce, had waited for the poor girl outside the City of Paris tavern and given her a thorough beating for betraying him. At least the creep hadn't rearranged her face. But her stomach and sides were battered black and blue - she couldn't even turn over at night; she just lay there shifting about until morning, gasping and feeling sorry for herself. The bruises weren't the worst thing - they'd heal up soon enough, but poor Ineska's little heart was aching so badly she could hardly stand it.

  Her boyfriend had disappeared, her fairy-tale prince, the handsome Erastushka; he hadn't shown his sweet face for two days now. And Slepen was as brutal as ever and always making threats. Yesterday she'd had to give her old pimp almost everything she earned, and that was no good; decent girls who stayed faithful didn't do that.

  Erastushka had gone missing; that lop-eared short-arse must have handed him over to the police and her pretty dove was sitting in the lock-up in the first Arbat station, the toughest in the whole of Moscow. If only she could send her darling a present, but that Sergeant Kulebyako there was a wild beast. He'd put her inside again, the same as last year, threaten to take away her yellow ticket, and then she'd end up servicing the whole police district for free, down to the last snot-nosed constable. It still made her sick to remember it, even now. Ineska would gladly have accepted that kind of humiliation if she could just help her sweetheart, but after all, Erastushka wasn't just any boyfriend: he had brains, he was nice and clean, choosy; he wouldn't want to touch Ineska after that. Not that their passion had actually come to anything yet, so to speak; love was only just beginning, but from the very first glance Ineska had taken such a fancy to his lovely blue eyes and white teeth, she'd really fallen for him; terrible it was, worse than with that hairdresser Zhorzhik when she was sixteen, rot his pretty face, the lousy snake - if he hadn't drunk himself to death by now, of course.