The Sin Collector (Masha Karavai Detective Series)

by Daria Desombre

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 Daria Desombre

  Translation copyright © 2017 Shelley Fairweather-Vega

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Prizrak Nebesnogo Ierusalima / Призрак Небесного Иерусалима by Eksmo Publishing House in Russia in 2014. Translated from Russian by Shelley Fairweather-Vega. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2017.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542047203

  ISBN-10: 154204720X

  Cover design by M.S. Corley

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PROLOGUE

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  KATYA

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  INNOKENTY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  MASHA

  INNOKENTY

  MASHA

  INNOKENTY

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  INNOKENTY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  INNOKENTY

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  INNOKENTY

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  THE SIN COLLECTOR

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  THE SIN COLLECTOR

  ANDREY

  MASHA

  MASHA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  “Are you not seekers of the City of God? You, who have lost your native city, and now labor in the name of the City Itself?”

  Ivan Shmelev

  “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster in the process.”

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  PROLOGUE

  So cold, such a cold! Vera, also known as the Washpile, stood in the middle of Red Square. Though she was a veteran bum, this cold was too much even for her. She had never liked public squares, but especially hated this one. She felt small and alone, exposed. She told herself it was just the lurking cops making her nervous, but some sort of animal instinct insisted that danger was hiding up above. When you stand in the middle of Red Square, on the raised fortress wall around Lobnoye Mesto, right where everyone says they used to have public executions, you may as well be offering yourself up to the heavens.

  Vera looked around and scolded herself. What had she limped up here for? It was too early for foreigners, who would sometimes give her a hundred rubles. Not even any GUM department store clerks around yet. There were a few students heading home from their night out, but nothing good ever came from those types.

  And it was cold, so, so cold! The wind was blowing, too. Vera got so profoundly lonely on these gloomy mornings that she felt like getting loaded right then and there. But she had no money and no way to get any.

  And then, suddenly, it seemed like the good God above was waggling a finger at her and saying something, something like, O Vera, servant of God! You are but dust, of course, and ashes, but that’s all right—here’s a little something, from me to you!

  There, near the fence that surrounded St. Basil’s Cathedral, there was a big, gorgeous, white plastic bag with the GUM logo on it. Vera practically shivered with excitement. Inside that bag was God’s gift for her. She was sure of it! She turned toward the cathedral, crossed herself in gratitude, and hurried to claim her prize. The bag held something wrapped in white paper, which was stained with brown splotches. Vera pulled off her torn gloves and unwrapped the bundle to reveal something long, pasty white, and covered in sparse black hair. It ended in fingers clamped tightly together, gripping some sort of small picture. A painting. It showed a dark, strange-looking tree set off by an ultramarine sky. And a cow with human eyes looking straight into Vera’s soul.

  A few seconds passed while she considered the sight. Then Vera screamed one long note like an opera singer.

  As she fell flat on her face on the ancient, mighty cobblestones of Red Square, she just managed—before she succumbed to the abyss—to see two police officers running in her direction.

  MASHA

  Masha woke up a couple of minutes before her alarm went off and lay there, staring fixedly at the wall across the room. Her father’s favorite Turkish carpet hung on that wall, one part shining bright red in a patch of sunlight, the rest a dull, shadowy carmine with black ornaments touched with blue.

  Hanging over the carpet was a shelf holding the books from Masha’s childhood that she refused to give away. She sometimes read fifty pages at a time without her mother knowing, pulling out a tattered volume at random and letting it fall open. Sometimes it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sometimes Jane Austen or a Brontë sister. She loved perusing the pages she knew almost by heart. Other people liked to look through old photo albums, smiling nostalgically at the pictures from their childhood. But for Masha, photo albums were a chore. Pictures from before she turned twelve were no fun because her father was in them. In pictures from after, the problem was that he wasn’t.

  From the other side of the wall came sounds of rustling sheets and labored breathing, and Masha, as always, shrunk away. Her mother usually spoke in precise, clinical terms, but she had once given in to mawkishness and called this particular activity “deliverance from solitude.” As far as Masha could tell—why did these walls have to be so thin?—her mother underwent the process of being delivered from solitude a couple of times per week. And every time it happened, Masha felt less like an honor-roll student, less like a bright-but-not-quite-beautiful young woman, and more like a queasy little girl left behind on the platform, watching the train pull away.

  It was a very unpleasant feeling, and a humiliating one. It would be stupid to blame Belov, the stranger who washed in their bathroom and brewed his own special coffee in their kitchen, for—well, for what? For taking her father’s place? Or just for not being her papa? Yes, that was it. He was the UnPapa. The UnPapa sensed Masha’s antagonism and, capable psychologist that he was, took Masha’s side when things were rough with her mother, let her have plenty of s
pace, and gave her silly presents. This alarm clock, for example, which played snippets of Glenn Miller swing tunes.

  Just now the alarm clock sprang to life, and Masha vengefully let it play to the end. By the time the thing quieted down, the rustling in the next room had, too. Masha giggled and stretched. Glenn Miller was a little like Belov. He was great, sure, but nobody could stand swing music every morning. Masha picked her watch up off the nightstand, and gave her daily nod to the photograph hanging on the wall. It was a portrait of a man with a long, thin face and an ironic squint, whose hint of a receding hairline made his forehead look even higher.

  “Morning, Papa,” said Masha. “Why’d you have to go and get murdered?”

  ANDREY

  Andrey opened his eyes and nearly screamed bloody murder, but then he realized this enormous, shaggy, stinking face was not a beast out of his worst nightmares. It was only the result of yesterday’s very unmacho bout of pity and temporary insanity.

  As usual, he’d come home around eleven from police headquarters at Petrovka, tired as a dog, and stopped to buy some bread at the twenty-four-hour shop near his house. An actual dog was sitting outside the shop, scratching himself in a frenzy. While Andrey sipped his well-earned bottle of Baltika, he and the dog had a chat. Basically, Andrey talked about his own doggone life: his terrible but manly loneliness, how fed up he was with “ladies” (he didn’t have to watch himself with the dog—we all know what they call the females of that species), how he worked himself ragged and lived on junk food. He also bragged a little about his culinary feat of the previous evening. He had fried ten frozen meat patties, and tonight he would warm them up in the microwave.

  That had turned out to be a strategic error. The stray was no idiot. Sure, he had listened with sympathy and respect to Andrey’s sad tales of bachelor life, but when it came to meat—well. The dog’s eyes gleamed even more pitifully, and his tail beat on the cracked asphalt. Since Andrey was feeling generous after the Baltika, he invited the dog home. He thought he’d toss a patty onto the porch. Men had to stick together, after all.

  But the mutt had different plans. He followed Andrey into the makeshift kitchen and sat there staring with eyes bigger and sadder than any orphan’s until Andrey had fed him not one, but five of the patties. He didn’t even chew them like a civilized dog—just gulped each one down whole, and noisily.

  “You’re supposed to chew your food,” Andrey admonished him, his mother’s voice ringing in his ears. “You won’t digest anything that way!”

  But to no avail. Andrey had to practically swallow his share whole, too, just to keep some of it away from the scrawny, clever beast.

  “And you’re a terrible actor. You’re playing dumb, but I don’t buy it,” Andrey told him as he sipped some tea. “Who was that shameless blonde in the old Hollywood movies? Marilyn Monroe.”

  This shaggier Marilyn must have known there wasn’t any meat left, and Lipton was clearly outside his expertise. The pitiful sheen in his eyes was gone now, and he stretched out on the floor next to the saggy old couch.

  “Don’t even think about sleeping here.”

  Andrey went to drag the dog out by the scruff of his neck. But Marilyn wiggled out of his grip, and that look returned, a suffering that permeated the whole damn room. Andrey gave in, spat on the floor, and told the dog he was overacting. He shut the door to the bedroom behind him.

  By morning, though, clever Marilyn had evidently figured out how to pry the door open and come right up to the bed. Andrey swore again and walked out to the wash basin hanging outside. He took the towel down from the hook without thinking, then immediately hung it back up again. The towel was such a dingy shade of gray that there was no way he was going to use it. Andrey told himself very seriously that he was really going to have to do some laundry, and then he switched on the electric teapot and sat down on the porch. While the water started to boil, he took yesterday’s teacup and spooned instant coffee into it, along with a couple of cubes of sugar. He sliced some bread. Then he locked eyes with the dog again. Those eyes seemed unimpressed.

  “You can get the hell out if you don’t like it, Marilyn Monroe,” Andrey snapped at him. His mood that morning was rotten enough, and then he remembered that the night before, all wrapped up in his conversation with the dog, he had forgotten to buy the cheese he wanted for breakfast.

  His cell phone rang, and Andrey swore quietly. The day was about to go from bad to worse.

  MASHA

  “Dean Ursolovich isn’t here!” the disgruntled secretary told Masha. “You should have called first.”

  “But the schedule says . . .”

  Annoyed, Masha trudged back downstairs, cursing herself for coming across town for nothing. Ursolovich never followed the schedule, except when it came to his lectures. Students were clearly not a priority. Masha had been proud, at first, that he’d agreed to take her on as an advisee, but as the weeks and months flew by, the seditious thought crept into her mind that maybe a less famous instructor, someone less busy writing textbooks and articles and flying off to conferences at Princeton, would have been a better fit. After all, she wasn’t writing her thesis for him, or for the grade, or for—

  Masha suddenly froze. Through the open door to the university cafeteria, past the bored food-service workers, she spotted Ursolovich’s hunched back at a table by the window.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, striding up to his table. “I tried your office.”

  Ursolovich turned to her, a chunk of sandwich distending one cheek. “Ave a cuppa chee,” he mumbled to her, then turned his back again.

  Masha obediently bought herself some tea and a roll and then returned, thinking gloomily that Ursolovich would surely punish her for interrupting his repast, just like he had done to another of his advisees. The poor guy had stumbled from his office pale and trembling, dropping loose pages covered in red ink, and practically run off down the hall.

  “I can’t eat when someone is sitting there just watching me,” Ursolovich told her when she settled down in the chair next to him.

  He dug through his worn-out briefcase and pulled out the painfully familiar folder. Then he wiped his fingers haphazardly on a paper napkin and began paging through her thesis. Masha gripped her teacup hard; her fingers had gone white. The margins of her manuscript were unsullied with comments.

  “This is good work, Karavay,” he finally said, raising his nearsighted, nearly lashless eyes. “With a little work, you could stretch it out into a doctoral dissertation. But you’re not planning to go into academia, are you?”

  Masha shook her head.

  “Well, here’s what I would tell you.” Ursolovich leaned back in his chair. “The topic is really very . . . nontrivial. Rather particular, I’d say.”

  Ursolovich’s attentive eyes were fixed on Masha’s face, and she suddenly felt ill at ease.

  “You know more about this, er, research topic than I do. More than anyone in this entire institution, to be honest. This sort of knowledge”—he slapped a hand down on the folder—“is not something that can be acquired in a whole year of training. Not even two. Maybe if you devoted yourself to it for five years, at a minimum. Which means this thesis has been in your head ever since you started the program. So tell me, young lady, what makes this subject so attractive for a girl of twenty-three?”

  Masha felt the heat rush to her cheeks.

  Ursolovich suddenly leaned over the table and asked her, quietly, “So you didn’t believe them?”

  Now Masha really met Ursolovich’s gaze for the first time, and in a flash, he remembered the color of Fyodor’s eyes. They had been just like hers, a light, light green, a rare color, very cold. The resemblance really was astonishing: she had the same sharply defined cheekbones, the strong, handsomely drawn mouth. And her gaze, too—definitely a Karavay family trademark. It was as if she were looking right through him as the gears turned in her brain.

  “Listen.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, even though
there was nobody around. “No matter who it was, please, let this go! Don’t waste your life trying to understand. And remember, no matter what, Fyodor is not coming back.”

  Masha shuddered, but Ursolovich looked away, closed the folder, and continued in a new tone. “I have a few other questions and suggestions about your work, mostly in terms of structure. There’s a page stapled to the bibliography. All right, you can go.”

  Masha nodded, muttered something inaudible that might have been thanks, stuffed the folder into her bag, and nearly ran for the exit.

  “Where’s your internship?” Ursolovich’s voice chased after her.

  Masha froze, her spine stiff.

  “At Petrovka,” she called back, her voice even.

  Ursolovich snorted and turned away. It’s hopeless, he thought. She’ll never let it go. Just like her father! Who would believe that behind that innocent gaze, that smooth forehead, those locks of straw-colored hair tucked studiously behind one pink ear, there was such a strange beast lurking, like something out of a Goya painting?

  Masha strode away from the cafeteria, eyes forward, chin jutted out, trying with all her might not to let any excess moisture—that was her father’s phrase—leak from her eyes. But that moisture was looming, compelled by helplessness and childlike anger. How could she have unmasked herself so stupidly? What was she thinking, revealing a secret she hadn’t entrusted to her friends, her diary, or even her mother? Why, why, why hadn’t she decided to write her paper on some other topic, something more innocent? A topic like . . . But here Masha faltered, because for her, there was only one topic.

  She must have been working on it for five years, at least, Ursolovich had said. Five? Try ten. Masha’s thesis had taken shape in her head when she was twelve years old, the age little girls put away their dollies for good. And what do they start playing with instead?

  ANDREY

  If someone had told Andrey he was suffering from the typical complexes of a guy from outside the big city—and not just a case of provincialism, but of poor-person provincialism—he would have laughed in that person’s face. Considering yourself a provincial in Moscow was ridiculous. Ninety percent of the city’s residents came from somewhere else. And the ten percent who insisted on their ancient and venerable Moscow roots? Look closely and you’ll always find an auntie in Saransk and a grandpa in the Urals. Andrey considered Moscow his own because he knew it like the fingers on his hand. That knowledge was extremely valuable.