Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

'Show them to me.' The Collegiate Counsellor thrust his chin out stolidly, readying himself for the distressing sight.

The first thing that Fandorin saw in the spacious room lit by electric lights was the wooden shelves covered with glass jars with shapeless objects floating in them, and then he looked at the zinc-covered oblong tables. Projecting from one of them, beside the window, was the black neck of a microscope, and beside it a body was lying flat, with Zakharov's assistant working on it.

Erast Petrovich took a quick glance, saw that the body was male and turned away in relief.

'A deep firearms wound to the top of the head, Mr Zakharov, that's all,' the assistant said with a nasal twang, gazing curiously at Erast Petrovich, who was an almost legendary character in and around police circles.

'They brought that one in from Khitrovka,' Zakharov explained. 'But your little chicks are all over there, in the ice-room.' He pushed open a heavy metal door that breathed out a dense, chilly, repulsive stench. A switch clicked and the matte-glass globe on the ceiling lit up.

The doctor pointed. 'There are our heroines, on that side,' he said to Fandorin, who was feeling numb.

The initial impression was not at all horrific. Ingres's painting The Turkish Bath. A solid tangle of naked women's bodies, smooth lines, lazy immobility. Except that the steam was not hot, but frosty, and for some reason all the odalisques were lying down.

Then the details struck his eyes: the long crimson incisions, the blue patches, the sticky, tangled hair.

The forensic expert patted one of them, who looked like a mermaid, on her blue neck. 'Not bad eh? From a brothel. Consumption. In fact, there's only one violent death here: the one over there, with the big breasts; someone stove her head in with a rock. Two of them are suicides. Three of them died of hypothermia - froze to death when they were drunk. They bring them all in, no matter what. Teach a fool to pray and he won't know when to stop. But what's that to me. I don't have to do all that much.'

Erast Petrovich leaned down over one woman, thin, with a scattering of freckles on her shoulders and chest. He threw the long ginger hair back from the pitifully contorted, sharp-nosed face. Instead of a right ear the dead woman had a cherry-red hole.

'Well, who's been taking liberties here?' Zakharov asked in surprise and glanced at the tag attached to the woman's foot. 'Marfa Sechkina, sixteen years old. Ah, I remember: poisoned herself with phosphorous matches. Came in yesterday afternoon. But she still had both her ears, I remember that very well. So where's her right one got to?'

The Collegiate Counsellor took a powder box out of his right pocket, opened it without speaking and thrust it under the pathologist's nose.

Zakharov took the ear with a steady hand and held it against the cherry-red hole.

'That's it! So what does this mean?'

'That is what I would like you to tell me.' Fandorin held a scented handkerchief to his nose, feeling the nausea rising in his throat, and said: 'Come on, let's talk out there.'

They walked back into the autopsy room which now, despite the presence of the dissected corpse, Erast Petrovich found almost cosy.

'Three qu-questions. Who was here yesterday evening? Who have you told about the investigation and my participation in it? Whose writing is this?'

The Collegiate Counsellor set down the wrapping paper from the 'smopackadj' in front of Zakharov. He felt it necessary to add: 1 know that you did not write it -1 am familiar with your handwriting. However, I trust you appreciate the significance of this correspondence?'

Zakharov turned pale; he had clearly lost any desire to play the clown.

Tm waiting for an answer, Mr Zakharov. Shall I repeat the questions?'

The doctor shook his head and squinted at Grumov, who was pulling something greyish-blue out of the corpse's gaping belly with exaggerated zeal. Zakharov gulped and his Adam's apple twitched in his neck.

'Yesterday evening my colleagues from the old faculty called to see me. They were celebrating the anniversary of a certain ... memorable event. There were seven or eight of them. They drank some medical spirit here, in memory of the old student days ... It's possible that I might have blurted out something about the investigation - I don't exactly remember. Yesterday was a heavy day, I was tired, and the drink soon went to my head.' He stopped.

'The third question,' Fandorin reminded him: 'whose handwriting is it? And don't lie and tell me you don't know. The handwriting is quite distinctive.'

Tm not in the habit of lying!' Zakharov snapped. And I recognise the writing. But I'm not a police informer; I'm a former Moscow student. You find out for yourself, without me.'

Erast Petrovich said in an unpleasant voice: 'You are not only a former student, but a current forensic medical expert, who has taken an oath. Or have you forgotten which investigation we are talking about here?' And then he continued in a very quiet, expressionless voice: 'I can, of course, arrange for the handwriting of everyone who studied in the same faculty as you to be checked, but that will take weeks. In that case your honour among your comrades would not suffer, but I would make sure that you were tried and deprived of the right to work in the state service. You've known me for some years already, Zakharov. I always mean what I say'

Zakharov shuddered, and the pipe slid from left to right along the slit of his mouth. 'I'm sorry, Mr Court Counsellor, but I can't. Nobody would ever shake my hand again. Never mind the government service, I wouldn't be able to work in any area of medicine at all. But I'll tell you what ...' The forensic expert's yellow forehead gathered into wrinkles. 'Our revels are continuing this evening. We agreed to meet at seven at Burylin's place. He never completed the course, like many of our company in fact; but we get together from time to time ... I've just completed a job here; Grumov can finish up everything else. I was just about to have a wash, get changed and go. I have an apartment here. At the public expense, attached to the cemetery office. It's most convenient ... Well, if you like, I can take you with me to Burylin's place. I don't know if everyone who was here yesterday will come, but the person you're interested in will definitely be there, I'm certain of that ... I'm sorry, but that's all I can do. A doctor's honour.'

It was not easy for the pathologist to speak in such a plaintive manner; he was not accustomed to it, and Erast Petrovich decided to temper justice with mercy and not press him any harder. He merely shook his head in astonishment at the peculiarly elastic ethics of these people's esprit de corps: a man could not point out someone he had studied with as a likely killer, but there was no problem in bringing a detective along to a former fellow-student's house.

'You are complicating my task, but very well, let it be so. It's after eight already. Get changed and let's go.'

For most of their journey (and it was a long journey, to Yak-imanka Street), they rode in silence. Zakharov was as gloomy as a storm cloud and he replied to questions reluctantly, but Fandorin did at least learn something about their host.

He was called Kuzma Sawich Burylin. He was a manufacturer, a millionaire from an old merchant family. His brother, who was many years older, had taken up the eunuch faith of the skoptsy. He had 'cut off his sin' and lived like a hermit, building up his capital. He had intended to 'purge' his younger brother as well, when he reached the age of fourteen, but on the very eve of the 'great mystery' the elder brother had died suddenly, and the youth had not only remained completely intact, but inherited an immense fortune. As Zakharov remarked acidly, a retrospective fear and the miraculous preservation of his manhood had marked Kuzma Burylin's life ever since. For the rest of his life he was doomed to demonstrate that he was not a eunuch, and he often went to excess in the process.