Andrey knew he was acting like a jerk, but he had no idea why. Could it be because he knew he could never compete with some fancy-pants antiques dealer? So if the game was lost from the start, why get so worked up about it? What game, you moron? he asked himself as he opened the door to his banged-up old Ford. Are you tormenting her, like a school kid who bullies the girl he likes?
MASHA
Masha watched her supervisor walk away, bewildered. What a strange person. Every time she started to think he might be a decent guy, he’d storm off without so much as saying good-bye. A total jerk! But still . . . Masha started climbing the stairs, her mood improving with every step. Andrey had just given her some actual encouragement. He called her theory “good.” Maybe I deserve to be here after all, Captain Yakovlev! And agreeing to let her work with Kenty—that was a miracle.
Now all she had to do was call and deliver the good news. For the next few days, instead of appraising icons, cruising around antiques markets, and hobnobbing with collectors, he would be interviewing a dozen witnesses in murder cases.
“Kenty!” she pleaded as soon as he picked up. “Come save me! I have to interview a whole pile of people, and I can’t do it alone.” There was a heavy silence on the other end of the line. “I know I’ve been abusing you mercilessly, but there’s no one else I can abuse quite like you. It’s only for three or four days.”
“All right, I’ll do it,” Kenty said, laughing. “I was just looking to see if I could cancel my appointments for the rest of the week.”
“Oh, great!” said Masha. “We need to find out exactly what kind of sinners our victims were. I’ll buy us some voice recorders.”
“I have one already, Masha. Just get one for yourself. I’ll come pick you up tomorrow. Right now I can’t talk, I have visitors.”
“Okay, sorry. See you tomorrow.” And Masha hung up with a happy smile. Her real work was about to begin, and she was going do it with Kenty at her side, at a safe distance from her angry boss. What could be better?
The next day Kenty drove up at the appointed time. He found Masha waiting for him on the bench outside, calling all the numbers on her list.
“Hi,” he said. Masha waved and turned her attention back to the phone. Innokenty sat down next to her. She said good-bye to the person she was talking with, then turned to him.
“Okay, check it out. I managed to set up a bunch of meetings for us. I decided it would make sense to start with the first set of mysterious numbers. I’ll take number one. I’m about to go talk with the girlfriend of the guy who was the least mutilated in that basement on Bersenevskaya. He had the T-shirt with the number one written on it. Slava Ovechkin. Meanwhile, you’ll meet with an athlete, a swimmer, at the Olympic Village. He’ll tell you about his teammate: victim number three, Alexander Solyanko. Then I’ve got Tanya Shurupova, best friend of Julia Tomilina, victim number two. After that we need to find Kolyan’s drinking buddies. I wasn’t able to get through to them by phone, obviously. Can you try to find them after you talk to the swimmer?”
Innokenty nodded.
Masha handed him a list of addresses and jumped up. “Let’s go!”
MASHA
Lyuda looked over the girl from Petrovka with a curious eye. So people like that were working for the police now? The young woman was wearing a plain sweater and black pants, but when she walked into Lyuda’s kitchen and sat down next to the window, Lyuda knew that this plainness was deceptive. The girl’s whole package was deceptive: her unstyled hair, her open face devoid of makeup, her supershort fingernails. She might have been a musician, a cellist maybe. An extremely successful one, judging from the brand of her purse. But here she was working for the government.
She was asking if there was anything unusual about Ovechkin, about his family. Well, it was true, his parents hadn’t known much about their son—they were both too wrapped up in religion, God forgive her, but it was true! Lyuda had only met them once, by accident, in a grocery store. You should have seen Ovechkin’s dad, with his mess of a beard and the kind of old-fashioned jacket and boots nobody ever wore anymore. His mom was even worse. She was wearing a kerchief, and a skirt so long it swept the dirty floor. Terrible. Slava had squirmed visibly, and he introduced them reluctantly. Like, Oh, by the way, I guess these are my parents. And Lyuda knew right away why Slava had never brought her to his house. What would that have been like? Lyuda’s own mother wasn’t much to look at, but at least it wasn’t immediately obvious that she was a nutjob. With these two, it was right on the surface. What a face Slava’s old man had made, like he wanted to put a curse on her right there in the store. Lyuda knew that in her miniskirt and war-paint makeup, she didn’t have much chance of ingratiating herself to that priestly couple. His nun of a mother had even said to her, as she was leaving, God save you, my child! Lyuda had to admit she hadn’t reacted too well, just giggled nervously and shot out of the store like a bullet.
Now Slava was gone, and, honestly, she wasn’t drowning in grief or anything, but she still remembered how she had laughed like an idiot at that my child, and she even thought, sometimes, about going to visit the church where Slava’s father worked. But his dad was so painfully depressing, and she didn’t have any idea where to find his mom. And if she did find her, what would she say? She must be grieving her son, but Lyuda—of course she felt bad for poor Slava, but not as much as if she had been madly in love with him. They’d had a good time together. That was it, really.
That was what she was trying to explain to this elegant Detective Karavay when she asked her what kind of person Dobroslav Ovechkin had been. Lyuda had forgotten that Slava was short for Dobroslav. What a weird old name! His parents really must have been looney tunes. Lyuda furrowed her brow, looked at the girl from Petrovka, and said the first thing that popped into her head.
“He never stopped talking!” said Lyuda.
“What do you mean?” she asked, interested.
“Well, not like spilling state secrets or anything. I just got tired of it sometimes, you know? Usually, you go on and on, and the guy listens. But with Slava it was the opposite. You couldn’t say a word because his blah, blah, blah filled up the whole room. He couldn’t ever shut up. Not even in bed! I could say, like, oh, I just bought some new shoes near the metro. And right away, he’s like, What were you thinking, they only sell garbage there, the heels will fall off the first time you wear them! As if he knew anything about stilettos! Or, like, I might say I wish I could get bigger boobs. What an idiot, you’re not thinking about the consequences! Strange foreign substances, doctors say it’s dangerous—”
“Maybe he just couldn’t afford to give you presents?” the detective asked, her eyes laughing.
Lyuda laughed, too, out loud. “Want some tea?” she asked. And without waiting for an answer, she put an old teapot, which looked like it had boiled dry once or twice, on the burner.
“No,” Lyuda finally answered, sitting down across from her guest again. “He wasn’t stingy. Even if he’d only had enough money for one tit, he would have given it to me.”
“That kind of relationship, huh?” the detective asked.
“Oh man. We were so good together. Before him I was going out with this real ass—” Lyuda pulled up short. For some reason, she really wanted this Karavay woman to like her. “An absolute, um, good-for-nothing. But I don’t think Slava ever had a real girlfriend before me. He wasn’t all that attractive, really. He was a joker. Skinny, kind of a wimp. I don’t have, like, a maternal instinct when it comes to men. I need a guy who can take care of me. But he needs a girl with balls. Well, needed, I mean.”
All of a sudden Lyuda felt like she might cry, but she managed to hold it in. In that pause, choking back tears, she got the tea ready. She put some cookies on the table, too. The detective remained tactfully quiet, then took a sophisticated sip from her cup while looking at Lyuda, who had sat down across from her again, legs crossed, swinging one foot nervously.
“I’m very sorry,” she s
aid quietly.
It was clear that she really was. Sorry for Slava, and maybe for Lyuda, too.
“Well,” said Lyuda, snuffling noisily, “it’s already been two years. And don’t bother looking for any dirt on Slava. He could be a pain, but he wasn’t a bad guy. The only thing I didn’t like about him was the way he talked about his parents. He made fun of their ‘churchly life,’ as he called it, and laughed at how cut off they were from society. But how else could they be, given what they did for a living?”
“What do Dobroslav’s parents do?”
“You know, preachers in that church.”
The detective’s hand froze in the air over the plate of cookies. She had gone pale.
“Kinda weird, right?” Lyuda said. “You know what happened one time? Once at church, while his father was up there droning on, Slava walked in and started singing loud in front of the whole congregation. And he had this terrible voice, really high, you know?”
“Falsetto,” the detective said slowly.
“Yeah, that. So, in this falsetto voice, he sang a song, some old number about love, totally unbelievable, you know the kind.”
The girl from Petrovka nodded uncertainly.
“He said his mom just about died on the spot, and his dad went totally red in the face. And Slava just ran out. So. I don’t know what else to tell you. Have you talked to his friends yet?”
The detective shook her head no. Lyuda frowned. Before, this Petrovka lady had been listening close, all involved in the conversation. But now she seemed lost in thought, like she had forgotten about Lyuda completely.
“Thank you, Lyuda,” she finally said, turning off her recorder and putting it back into her big black purse. “You’ve been a big help.”
“Really?” Lyuda smiled. “Well, great! I don’t know what I said that helped. Anyway, go and catch that monster.”
The detective nodded, said good-bye, and left. But the aroma of her perfume lingered in the apartment for hours. Lyuda wished she had asked her what it was called.
INNOKENTY
“Listen, I already told the detectives everything I know,” the swimmer told Innokenty as he tossed his wet towel on a bench. “If the investigation’s at a dead end or whatever, that doesn’t mean you’ve gotta come around asking questions for the twentieth time, does it?”
Innokenty didn’t respond. He had just spent an hour waiting for this guy to finish his training session, watching through a window in the locker room as the swimmer cut through the pool’s unnaturally blue water, back and forth, tirelessly. His head looked small against the smooth surface of the water and perfectly streamlined, disappearing and reappearing at even intervals. Innokenty, who preferred mental labor, was spellbound by this astounding concentration, this subordination of the self to the body.
But a whole hour of waiting around, breathing the stale smell of chlorine and sweat, was enough to sour his mood. Now they stood facing one another, one in a gray tweed jacket and a nice pair of trousers, the other almost naked, showing off the generous span of his muscular shoulders and his surprisingly sharp face, all pointy nose and jutting chin.
“I won’t take up too much of your time,” said Innokenty, quietly but with authority.
They were the same height. The swimmer tried to size him up, then shook his head like a wet dog. A few drops splattered onto Innokenty’s shirt, and he looked down, annoyed, as they soaked into the fabric.
“Sorry,” said the swimmer, and finally extended his hand. “Nikolay Snegurov.”
They sat down right there on the wooden benches. There was nobody else around.
“You were Solyanko’s friend and colleague. Could you try to tell me what kind of guy he was?”
Snegurov looked at Innokenty, and the blue sheen of the pool seemed frozen in his eyes.
“There’s one thing you need to get straight,” he said. “Solyanko wasn’t my friend. Maybe writers or scientists can be friends, but in sports, it doesn’t happen. You have to be a winner, third place at worst. And you don’t have much time. We’re like ballet dancers. One step closer to retirement every year. You work your ass off maybe twenty years tops, the injuries pile up, and you’re off to the showers. When I hear people talk about ‘healthy competition,’ it makes me want to vomit. We’re not some pansy fucking naval officers riding desks at the Admiralty. Here, if you don’t make it at the Olympics, then you train for another four years, and in four years anything could happen.
“Know why I’m telling you all this? Because Solyanko was a piece of shit. I don’t give a fuck that you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. I was just a kid when I started swimming, I wasn’t even ten, and I was always busy, away at sports camps. No reading books, no chasing girls. We give up our whole lives. All for a higher good, right?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Innokenty said carefully.
“You don’t? Maybe they didn’t write it down before, didn’t think it was important. Or they checked out my alibi. It’s airtight, thank God. Solyanko and I were the leaders of the Russian team. Everyone thought either Solyanko or Snegurov would take home a medal, defend the country’s honor. They even called us the SS Squad, for our initials. So naturally we trained like we were possessed. We were young, right? At our peak. It was our big chance. Solyanko and I hardly ever spoke in those days. Not just because I never liked him, but because we were too busy training. So, you know, rumors started to spread. That Solyanko was taking EPO.”
“What was he taking?”
“EPO. Erythropoietin. It’s a drug, improves your endurance. Increases the oxygen in your blood, or something like that. It can improve your performance by fifteen percent, basically.”
“So, doping.”
“Oooo, bad, right? The big bad wolf! Doping in sports!” Snegurov made a menacing face.
Innokenty was glad, suddenly, that Masha wasn’t with them. The guy really looked monstrous.
“I’m so fucking tired of that. Know why? Because it’s so—what’s the word?—yeah, hypocritical. All these fucking bureaucrats, looking so serious, going, Oh, we would never permit doping in our young champions! But everyone does it, you know? Everyone! Every competition these days is all doped-up athletes. Furosemide, EPO, growth hormones for muscle mass . . . We get word about ‘surprise’ testing a couple days ahead, or the test results go missing, or you use blood you drew a couple days before. So the tests never find anything. And you know why I’m telling you this? Everyone out here has at least tried it once. And everyone thinks the International Swimming Federation is way too strict. But the government officials . . . On the one hand, they desperately want us to win. On the other hand, Russia needs to act like it’s fighting doping as much as any country, maybe more. And then on the other other hand, at the Olympics in Sochi, we all heard what the president said about doping. And that’s when they found a packet in my locker. Someone leaked it to one of the sports papers that same day and, since the Federation couldn’t cover it up, they decided to make an example of me. Suddenly it was 1937 around here, a big fucking purge. You’re presumed guilty, right? I was banned from competition for two years and I missed my Olympics. While my lawyer was trying to prove that the packet wasn’t mine, I missed out on my gold.”
“And the drugs really weren’t yours?” Innokenty asked.
Snegurov huffed sadly. “I don’t have any reason to lie about it now. But I know someone who could have benefited from making me look bad, who could have tipped off the press, who could have planted the packet, no problem. Except, as you know, Solyanko never made it to the Olympics. That freaky murder didn’t have anything to do with doping, obviously, but you asked what kind of guy he was. A piece of shit.”
Snegurov stood up, and Innokenty rose, too. They shook hands.
“We’re not Olympians,” said the failed champion, shaking his head. “We’re gladiators, paying with our sweat and blood for the right to survive.”
Kenty thought that Snegurov must have found the time t
o read a couple of books, after all.
“Who won your event?” he asked, when the swimmer’s wide back had already passed through a doorway.
“Some guy from China.” Snegurov turned back and grinned like a wolf. “And a couple of years later, they caught his coach with a suitcase full of growth hormones.”
MASHA
Masha waited for Julia Tomilina’s best friend next to the entrance to her apartment building. The woman was running late. Finally, the door opened a crack, and from the dark depths, a bright-pink stroller emerged. Masha jumped up and held the door open while Tanya Shurupova, squinting with the effort, shoved a double-wide baby limousine through the narrow doorway. Drops of sweat were rolling down her pretty face.
“Thanks,” Tanya panted. “Phew.” She wiped her forehead and smiled at Masha with embarrassment. “You don’t mind if we talk in the park, do you? The twins just fell asleep, and I need to keep moving or they’ll wake up and start yelling.”
Masha smiled. “Girls?”
“No, they’re boys. The pink stroller, huh? It’s a hand-me-down from friends. Beggars, choosers, you know.”
She and Masha crossed the street with the stroller and walked into Yekaterininsky Park. Masha stole a look at Tanya. Her ponytail was pulled back with an ordinary rubber band, and there were dark circles under her eyes.
“Not sleeping through the night yet?”
“Sleeping! Ha! First one sleeps, then the other. I don’t even have time to eat. We don’t have grandparents around to help us, they’re all gone, both sides. And the government thinks those grants will make us have kids and solve the population problem!”
“What does make us have kids?” Masha broke in, having never considered the question before.
Tanya laughed. “Decent men. Men with their heads on straight.”
“So raising decent men is an important job, I guess.” Masha smiled, nodding at the two little bundles in the stroller.
The Sin Collector (Masha Karavai Detective Series) Page 10
