Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

'But what about the verbal portrait of Zakharov?' Lyalin asked, his voice trembling. 'I expect we're going to put him on the wanted list, aren't we?'

'No, we're not,' Fandorin replied absent-mindedly, and strode off rapidly towards his wonderful carriage, leaving the experienced detective totally bemused.

Vedishchev was waiting in the Collegiate Counsellor's office on Tverskaya Street. 'The final day' Dolgorukoi's 'grey cardinal' said sternly instead of saying hello. We have to find that crazy Englishman. Find him and then report it, all right and proper. Otherwise you know what will happen.'

And how do you come to know about Zakharov, Frol Grigorievich?' Fandorin asked, although he didn't seem particularly surprised.

"Vedishchev knows everything that happens in Moscow'

'We should have included you in the list of suspects, then. You put His Excellency's cupping jars on and even let his blood, don't you? So practising medicine is nothing new to you.' The joke, however, was made in a flat voice and it was clear that Fandorin was thinking about something quite different.

'Poor old Anisii, eh?' Vedishchev sighed. 'That's really terrible, that is. He was a bright lad, our shorty. He should have gone a long way, from all the signs.'

'I wish you would go to your own room, Frol Grigorievich,' was the Collegiate Counsellor's reply to that. He was clearly not inclined to indulge in sentimentality today.

The valet knitted his grey eyebrows in a frown of annoyance and changed to an official tone of voice: 'I have been ordered to inform Your Honour that the Minister of the Interior left for St Petersburg this morning in a mood of great dissatisfaction and before he left he was being very threatening. I was also ordered to inquire if the inquiry will soon be closed.'

'Soon. Tell His Excellency that I need to carry out just two more interrogations, receive one telegram and make a little excursion.'

'Erast Petrovich, in Christ's name, will you manage it before tomorrow?' Vedishchev asked imploringly. 'Or we're all done for.'

Fandorin had no time to reply to the question, because there was a knock at the door and the duty adjutant announced: 'The prisoners Stenich and Burylin have been delivered. They are being kept in separate rooms, as ordered.'

'Bring Stenich in first,' Erast Petrovich told the officer, and pointed the valet towards the door with his chin. 'This is the first interrogation. That's all, Frol Grigorievich - go, I have no more time.'

The old man nodded his bald head submissively and hobbled towards the door. In the doorway he collided with a wild-looking man - skinny and jittery with long hair - but he didn't stare at him. He shuffled off rapidly along the corridor in his felt shoes, turned a corner and unlocked a closet with a key.

But it turned out not to be any ordinary closet: it had a concealed door in the inside corner. Behind the little door there was another small closet. Frol Grigorievich squeezed into it, sat down on a chair with a comfortable cushion on it, silently slid opened a small shutter in the wall and suddenly he was looking though glass at the whole of the secret study, and he could hear Erast Petrovich's slightly muffled voice: 'Thank you. For the time being you'll have to stay at the police station. For your own safety.'

The valet put on a pair of spectacles with thick lenses and pressed his face up close to the secret opening, but he only saw the back of the man leaving the room. So that was an interrogation, was it? - it hadn't even lasted three minutes. Vedishchev grunted sceptically and waited to see what would come next.

'Send in Burylin,' Fandorin ordered the adjutant.

A man with a fat Tatar face and insolent eyes came in. Without waiting to be invited, he sat down on a chair, crossed his legs and began swinging his expensive cane with a gold knob. It was obvious straight away that he was a millionaire.

'Well, are you going to take me to look at offal again?' the millionaire asked merrily. 'Only you won't catch me out like that. I have a thick skin. Who was that who went out? Vanka Stenich, wasn't it? Ooh, he turned his face away. As if he'd not had plenty of pickings from Burylin. He rode around Europe on my money, and he lived as my house guest. I felt sorry for him, the poor unfortunate. But he abused my hospitality. Ran away from me to England. Began to despise me - I was dirty and he decided he wanted a clean life. Well, let him go; he's a hopeless man - a genuine psychiatric case. Will you permit me to smoke a small cigar?'

All of the millionaire's questions went unanswered. Instead, Fandorin asked his own question, which Vedishchev didn't understand at all. At your meeting of fellow-students there was a man with long hair, rather shabby. Who is he?'

But Burylin understood the question and answered it willingly: 'Filka Rozen. He was thrown out of the medical faculty with me and Stenich, distinguished himself with honours in the line of immoral behaviour. He works as an assessor in a pawn shop. And he drinks, of course.' 'Where can I find him?'

'You won't find him anywhere. Before you came calling, like a fool I gave him five hundred roubles - turned sloppy in my old age, thinking of the old days. Until he's drunk it all to the last kopeck, he won't show up. Maybe he's living it up in some tavern in Moscow, or maybe in Peter, or maybe in Nizhny. That's the kind of character he is.'

For some reason this news made Fandorin extremely upset. He even jumped up off his chair, pulled those round green beads on a string out of his pocket and put them back again.

The man with the fat face observed the Collegiate Counsellor's strange behaviour with curiosity. He took out a fat cigar, lit it and scattered the ash on the carpet, the insolent rogue. But he didn't start asking questions; he waited.

'Tell me: why were you, Stenich and Rozen thrown out of the faculty, while Zakharov was only transferred to the anatomical pathology department?' Fandorin asked after a lengthy pause.

'It depended on who got up to how much mischief Burylin said with a laugh. 'Sotsky the biggest hothead amongst us, actually got sent to a punitive battalion. I felt sorry for the old dog; he had imagination, even if he was a rogue. I was under threat too, but it was all right: money got me out of it.' He winked a wild eye and puffed out cigar smoke. 'The girl students, our jolly companions, got it in the neck too - just for belonging to the female sex. They were sent to Siberia, under police surveillance. One became a morphine addict, another married a priest - I made inquiries.' The millionaire laughed. And at that time Zakharka the Englishman wasn't really outstanding in any way - that's why he got off with a lesser punishment. "He was present and did not stop it" - that's what the verdict said.'

Fandorin snapped his fingers as if he had just received a piece of good news that he'd been expecting for ages, but then Burylin took a piece of paper folded into four out of his pocket.

'It's odd that you should ask about Zakharov. This morning I received a very strange note from him, just a moment before your dogs arrived to take me away. A street urchin brought it. Here, read it.'

Frol Grigorievich twisted himself right round and flattened his nose against the glass, but there was no point - he couldn't read the letter from a distance. Only it was clear from all the signs that this was a highly important piece of paper. Erast Petrovich's eyes were glued to it.

'I'll give him some money, of course,' said the millionaire. 'Only there wasn't any special "old friendship" between the two of us; he's just being sentimental there. And what kind of melodrama is this: "Please remember me kindly, my brother"? What has he been up to, our Pluto? Did he dine on those girls that were lying on the tables in the morgue the other day?' Burylin threw his head back and laughed, delighted with his joke.