Elena Speranskaya - Alibi for the hero. Detective novel

Translator Elena Borisovna Speranskaya

© Elena Borisovna Speranskaya, 2018

© Elena Borisovna Speranskaya, translation, 2018

ISBN 978-5-4490-6791-3

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

As usual, Nikifor Naumovich slept perfectly and in good spirits went to the service, to which he was used, as to the most normal routine business, perceiving the world in the light of commercials gliding across the screen and bursts of emotions of joyful leaders selling the lowest quality goods with surprising ease and self-oblivion. He never crossed the permissible border in the direction of the path, preferring to go straight, albeit with costs for his own health and a lack of free time. Sitting at the computer at the entrance to the sanatorium all night, tracking every new visitor, he received a call from the administrator in the morning and immediately suspected something was amiss.

“Now I will close the entrance and I will be with my colleague. At this time, no one is expected with a visit.”

“Thanks, Seregin appeared without delay,” thought the investigator on duty, who came to the sanatorium to work and to treat the waist. From the kitchen spread the sweet smell of vanilla cookies, baked for breakfast injured resting athletes and coaches.

“We must ensure the safety of the nearby territory if the corpses are pouring out of nowhere,” he said abruptly, pressing to hang up when this simple thought occurred to him.

“Come, my friend, it was much more complicated than we thought,” his colleague encouraged him.

He was already standing with one foot on the sidewalk, and the other was holding the door from a plastic box with glass windows, a booth set at the exit of a wide, entrance gate of a high, twisted, cast-iron fence separating from the road a stunning plot of land, intended since the Stalin era for the holiday of eminent people.

It was the middle of summer with thunderstorms, showers, occasionally hail, but immediately melted. The coolness of the morning was replaced by the stuffiness. By the evening it was getting a little fresher. From the surrounding mountains a warm, dust-enveloping air blew. The birds, wrapping in their nests, rushed with screaming in whole, large flocks, teaching young chicks the skill, soaring to the very height, but did not reach the high floors of skyscrapers, fell with desperation and hovered somewhere below, rustling plumage and breaking the space at an incredible speed. The dogs, digging out pits in the ground at the roots of the bushes, were stacked, flapping their tails, fell asleep with pleasure. Kiosks with mineral water, vending machines with soda, and barrels with kvass did not have time to change the coordinators-distributors of drinks. By twelve o’clock the sellers were taking off their aprons. They stood in the hope that the daily rate of production of the desired moisture suddenly increases at least a percentage of twenty. But it was easier to engage in percent mania on paper than in reality. The premium of the ice cream women increased and gradually grew to a pyramidal size. Famous men, walking with their grandchildren, and directors of large banks started dating them. The shadow could be sold, which was done by greedy guides, enticing naive children into their dexterous networks, ignorant youth and zealous tourists, who got rich on speculation and chatter. Guides persuaded to make dizzying routes in the snow Kilimanjaro, Pamir, anywhere, just to get rid of boring investment. The dollar and the euro were rising. Oil fell in its equivalent. Shares and securities were not available. The price per gram of gold, as always, grew. Dealers incredibly profited, barely able to figure their growing capital in the drawer of an old desk.

Work in the sanatorium-dispensary of Transcaucasian started. Only at six o’clock the morning shift of the attendants began. While all the holidaymakers were putting themselves in order, preparing for an easy breakfast, prettying themselves before a meeting with friends in a chic classic, pompous dining room with columns, colored, picked up curtains and a long buffet where delicious snacks were laid out in the center on perfectly clean white porcelain and metal sets produced in Germany.

When one of the new maids went down to the basement, she walked through the foyer to the utility room, where she ironed the dry linen on a comfortable, special, folding stand that served as a table, opened the door to the room where the towels were stored, and then froze in surprise. She saw on the floor; face down, the full length of the basement room, the corpse of a heavy old man, dressed in old, dilapidated, faded gray clothes.

Once on the day of his arrival, she talked with him when he approached her with a request to change the terry bed cover for caprone and bring him a wool blanket to his room, since he had frozen at night. He’s on his way to the resort, as he explained intelligently to the maid: “An old rheumatism and lumbosacral radiculitis has opened.”

“Darling, I need a good woman with work skills,” the heavy old man said then, leaning on the ironing board with the elbow of his right hand, coming very close to her.

“How can I help?”

The compassionate old man involuntarily took offense in the heart, for she was completely indifferent to his words, not wanting to lift his tired eyes on him, doing the drying of another set of clothes.

He remembered the young years, swiftly swept in constant running around from one library to another, reading classics of Russian literature, traveling along river open spaces with parents. He had an accumulation luggage of knowledge, communication with educated teachers, hard-working journalists, passing exams in a technical college for construction specialties. He met with the intelligent family of the future wife – a surprisingly modest and naive girl, to whom he repaired a room in the communal house. Matchmaking, honeymoon and farewell of the father – captain of the river vessel: “Do not lose each other for a long, full of reefs, obstacles and failures of life.”

There was a sudden confluence of mercenary people and fateful circumstances. Courts and long terms of imprisonment, deferred for a period, after twenty years. Care for the family and the desire to become an example for imitation of the youth. Who had already admired his remarkable abilities? Often he was advised by his wife – a fashion model and a mannequin with slender legs, much younger than him: “To be a leader in the collective of the elite of the developing society”. They discussed among themselves of the basic principles of family life, as was customary in the family of the famous revolutionary democrat N.G. Chernyshevsky.

To be the defender of such a fragile girl was not easy. They did not swear at trifles, but seriously took care of the sore problems in the common kitchen with their parents and neighbors. “Learning the moral principles of farming, serving the motherland, caring for well-being – such a great happiness none of us had ever imagined in our childhood!”