Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

‘I can’t show my f-face at the police station. Hold on t-to the letter. You have to g-give it to Colonel Solntsev in person.’

There was no address on the envelope, and it wasn’t even glued shut.

‘That is so you will n-not have to waste any time b-buying a new one,’ Mr Nameless explained. ‘You’ll read it anyway.’

There was no way you could hide anything from him, the sly serpent.

Before Senka had even walked on a hundred steps alone, someone ran up from behind and started pawing his cotton-wool tits.

‘Oh, soft and springy, we could have some sweet fun,’ a fervent voice whispered in his ear.

He turned his head and saw an ugly mug that hadn’t been shaved and smelled of stale vodka and onions.

So this was what it was like for a girl to walk round Khitrovka on her own.

At first Senka was just going to frighten the randy villain, tell him he would complain to Brawn, the biggest pimp in Khitrovka, about this cheek, but the unwelcome admirer went on to lick the false mamselle on the neck, and Senka’s patience snapped.

Following the rules of Japanese fighting art, first he breathed out all the air in his lungs (to shift the root of his strength from his chest to his belly), then he smashed his heel into his admirer’s shin and then, when the admirer gasped and opened his filthy great mitts, Senka swung round rapidly, jabbed his finger into the top of his belly and winded him.

The lascivious wooer squatted down on his haunches and clutched at his belly. His face turned serious and thoughtful. That’s right, you think about how you ought to behave with the girls.

Senka turned into a quiet passageway and unfolded the letter.

’Dear Innokentii Romanovich,I have learned from a reliable source that you have learned from a reliable source that I am in Moscow. Although we have never had any great affection for each other, I hopenonetheless that the orgy of atrocious crimes in the area entrusted to your care concerns you, as a servant of the law, noless than it does me, a man who left behind his former service and the cares of Moscow a long time ago. And therefore, I wish to put a business proposition to you.Tonight I shall bring together at a certain convenient location the leaders of the two most dangerous gangs in Moscow, the Prince and the Ghoul, and you and I shall arrest them. Then a ture of that place will not allow you to bring a large number of men – you will have to make do with one deputy, so choose your most experienced police officer. I am sure that the three of us will be enough to carry out the arrest of the Prince and the Ghoul.The person who will deliver this letter to you knows nothing about this business. Sheis an ordinary street girl, a simple soul who has undertaken to perform this errand for me for a small payment, so do not waste your time questioning her.I shall call for you at twenty minutes past three in the morning. Being an intelligent and ambitious man, you will no doubt realise that it would not be a good idea to report my proposal to your superiors. The greatest possible reward you would receive is the benevolent disposition of the municipal authorities. However, I am not a criminal, and I am not wanted by the police, so you will earn notitles or medals by informing on me. Youwill reap far greater dividends if you agree to take part in the undertaking that I propose. Fandorin.’

Senka knew what ‘dividends’ were (that was when they paid you money for nothing), but he didn’t understand that last word. It must mean ‘adieu’, or ‘please accept, etc.’, or ‘I remain yours truly’ –basically, what people wrote to give a letter a beautiful ending. ‘Fandorin’ had a fine ring to it. He’d have to remember it in future.

He licked the envelope and glued it shut, and a couple of minutes later he was walking into the courtyard of the Third Myasnitsky police station. Curse and damn the lousy place. Invented for tormenting people and trampling on lives that were miserable enough already.

There were several cab drivers standing at the gates, holding their caps in their hands. These violators of the laws of the road had come to ransom the numbers that had been taken off their cabs. That cost about seven roubles a time, and even then you really had to grovel.

Inside the yard there was a jostling circle of men wearing loose shirts with belts. They looked like a team of Ukrainian carpenters who had come to Moscow to earn money. The foreman, with a long, droopy moustache, was walking round the circle, holding out his cap, and the others were reluctantly dropping silver and copper coins into it. Clear enough – they’d been working for the builder without the right piece of paper, and now the coppers were tapping them for half their money. It happened all the time.

They said that sort of thing never used to happen here under the old superintendent, but it’s the priest who sets the tone of the parish.

The moment Senka pushed open the oilcloth-covered door and stepped into the dark, filthy corridor, a bumptious fat-faced copper with stripes on his arm grabbed him by the hem of his skirt.

‘Well, look at you,’ he said. Then he winked and pinched Senka on the side so hard that Senka could have torn his hands off. ‘Why haven’t I seen you around before? Come to get your yellow ticket amended? I do that. Let’s go.’

He grabbed Senka by the elbow and started dragging him off. Senka knew he was lying about that ticket – all he wanted was to use a girl for free.

‘I’ve come to see the superintendent,’ Senka said in a stern squeak. ‘I’ve got a letter for him, it’s important.’

The copper took his hands off. ‘Go straight on,’ he said, ‘and then right. That’s where His Honour sits.’

Senka went where he’d been told. Past the hen coop, full of tramps who had been picked up, past the locked cells with the thieves and criminals (the darlings were singing that song about a black raven – lovely it was, a real treat). Then the corridor turned a bit cleaner and brighter and it led Senka to a tall, leather-bound door with a brass plate on it that said: ‘Superintendent: Colonel I. R. Solntsev’.

Senka’s polite knock was answered by a stern voice on the other side of the door.

‘Yes?’

Senka went in. He said hello in a squeaky voice and held out the letter. ‘I was asked to deliver this to you in person.’

He tried to clear off straightaway, but the superintendent growled quietly: ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

The fearsome colonel was sitting at his desk eating an apple, cutting slices off it with a narrow-bladed knife. He wiped the blade on a napkin, then pressed a knob somewhere, and the blade disappeared with a metallic click.

Solntsev didn’t open the envelope straight off; instead he examined his visitor carefully, and his eyes lingered for a long time on her false bosom. (Ah, Mr Nameless had overdone it there, stuffed in way too much cotton wool!)

‘Who are you? A streetwalker? Your name?’

‘S-Sanka,’ Senka lisped. ‘Alexandra Alexandrova.’

‘What’s this letter about? Who’s it from?’

Solntsev fingered the envelope suspiciously and help it up against the light. What should Senka say?

‘A client gave me it . . . Give it to the colonel, he told me, hand it to him in person.’

‘Hmm, intrigues of the court of Burgundy,’ the superintendent muttered, opening the envelope. ‘Stay here, Alexandrova. Wait.’

He ran his eye over the letter quickly, jerked upright, unfastened the hook of his stiff collar, ran his tongue over his lips and started reading again, taking his time now, as if he was trying to make something out between the lines.

He took so long, Senka got bored. Luckily, there were photographs hanging on the walls and newspaper cuttings in frames behind glass.