Daria Desombre: The Sin Collector

“Huh.” Innokenty picked up the map again and looked over the points that Masha had marked. “Can I hold onto this for a couple of days? If I think of something, I’ll call you.”

“Take it. I can make another copy.” Masha smiled happily.

She loved it when Innokenty took her up on a riddle. It felt like they were kids again, conspiring together. Of course, Kenty was all grown up now, a prominent antiquarian, as he called himself. He owned a private gallery downtown, and judging by his designer shoes and the platinum cuff links on his bespoke shirts, monogrammed A. I. for Innokenty Arzhenikov , Kenty’s little shop was bringing in some money. Yes, her old friend had become quite a dandy, and since Masha had never moved beyond her simple black wardrobe, people often wondered at the odd pair. And they were both so different from everyone else, such introverts. Masha knew he deserved all the credit for their relationship lasting all these years.

“What does that map remind me of?” Innokenty murmured as he directed the last bite of cake into his mouth. “No, it’s hopeless. I’m never going to remember with my stomach this full.”

Where Andrey ate lunch, they were not serving asparagus with a nice Chablis. Nobody was wearing cuff links. Where Andrey ate lunch, it was smoky and stuffy, but the customers didn’t take off their coats to eat. They dined at plastic tables on sandwiches of suspicious origin. They drank beer.

Andrey was sitting across from Arkhip. Arkhip’s real name was Arkhipov, and he was Andrey’s informant. Arkhip thought Andrey was an okay guy, so he held up his side of their arrangement in good faith. For his part, Andrey never threatened to lock Arkhip up, but despite the valuable information he shared, he’d never developed warm feelings for the man. He was kind of grossed out, honestly, by Arkhip’s acne-covered face, narrow as a knife blade. And Arkhip had a way of moving that face closer and closer as he told you things in confidence, his breath smelling of yesterday’s dinner.

“Yelnik went straight a long time ago,” Arkhip whispered as he took another gulp of cheap, foamy beer. “After the last trial, nobody had any jobs for him. He went and lived out in the country. He wouldn’t see anyone he used to know. He was, like, stay away from me, let me keep my nose clean in my old age. As if! Turka said some army men used to go see him.”

“What army men?” Andrey asked, chewing on his stale sandwich.

“How would I know? Important guys, I hear, even though they always came dressed like civilians and drove crappy cars.”

“Then how did your guy Turka know they were soldiers?” Andrey asked suspiciously.

“Whaddya think?” Arkhip sputtered. “Their posture, first off. And the way they walked, like they were in a parade, and faces like bricks. Looked at you like they were expecting a full report. Definitely no lower than a colonel.”

Andrey thought for a minute, took another sip from a mug of warm swill the café called coffee, and frowned.

“Listen. Last time Yelnik was in, who did he do time with?”

“I can find out.”

“Do it. Send me a text.”

“Okay.” Arkhip wiped his mouth. “I’m off.”

Andrey just nodded.

So, Yelnik had gone straight. And then someone killed him. What was the logic in that? Punishment for getting out of the game? Some old score that had to be settled? And what did these military types have to do with any of it? He remembered the grimace on the dead man’s face. The hollow body. The worthless, rusty coins. Some sort of mysticism? Andrey decided it was time to pay a visit to Yelnik’s place in the country. He headed for the counter to pay for his lunch and Arkhip’s.

In the hallway, Andrey ran into his intern—literally—as he charged around the corner with his characteristic fury. They bounced off each other like tennis balls, and the girl fell down hard, gasping. Andrey was scared at first that she was hurt, but then he saw the papers scattered all around her, copies of photographs.

He awkwardly sat down next to her and began gathering them up, quickly at first, then more slowly. The numbers on the murder victims at Bersenevskaya waterfront looked black in the photocopies, but Andrey vividly remembered how they had been written in blood. A close-up of a biceps tattooed with a 4 . His own memory served up the image of the fourteen on Yelnik’s neck. Andrey got up off his haunches the same time the girl did. She was as red as a lobster.

“So you’re doing some investigating, then?”

The intern nodded nervously.

“Very good,” said Andrey, surprising himself, and suddenly realized that Intern Karavay’s eyes were exactly level with his. Those expressive eyes—light green, with dark, almost wet-looking lashes—were embarrassed on the one hand, but on the other defiant. Her pursed, pale lips bent into a smile when he said those words.

“I’ll do my best,” Karavay said, and she walked away around the corner.

Man, she’s tall! thought Andrey, without resenting that quality for once.

He needed to get some things together and head to Tochinovka, the village where Yelnik the hitman had attempted to retire.

Masha sat on a narrow bench near the district police station and pretended to listen attentively to the young patrolman Dima Safronov. Dima was glad to be sitting here with this piece of ass from Petrovka, smoking expensive cigarettes, wondering if he should ask her to the movies. After that, naturally, he’d need to get her drunk… But something told him this chick wasn’t much for dive bars.

He was telling her about Kolyan. But there wasn’t much to tell. Guy was a complete and total alcoholic, but there were plenty of those around. Harmless. Not the criminal type. Must have been brought up right, because he didn’t just piss wherever he felt like it. Kolyan had mostly stuck to the neighborhood, so how had he ended up at Kutafya Tower? Did he go there to die someplace beautiful? The cops are thick on the ground there, too. It was a nice enough place to finish off a bottle, but Kolyan had an apartment for that sort of thing. Why travel so far? Later, when that uptight coroner got ahold of him, he found out it wasn’t Kolyan’s heart that had killed him. He’d suffocated to death. The coroner thought a liquid dripped continuously into his throat had made his throat swell up.

“What kind of liquid?” Masha interrupted. She was still replaying in her head the slapstick scene of her running into Yakovlev in the hall. What an idiot she was.

“Vodka, what else? I read the report. You do it drop by drop, it’s some kind of medieval torture. I think they tortured people in China that way.”

“Not just in China,” Masha said, frowning as she felt the shadow just behind her back.

Seeing her eyes go all weird—distant and sad—Dima decided he definitely wasn’t asking the chick from Petrovka out. But he had more to tell her.

“And in his apartment,” he said, “they didn’t find a single fingerprint! Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. On the one hand, any asshole could see that it’s murder. On the other hand, why murder a harmless drunk? Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have?”

“Maybe,” Masha said. That was a perfectly reasonable motive that could explain everything away, and Masha hated it.

Dima tossed his cigarette on the ground and stood up. Masha followed suit, and shook his hand in a very official manner.

“Thank you for your time,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” answered Dima, embarrassed by all these good manners. “Call me if you have more questions.”