Martin Smith - Three Stations

"Keep it low."

"How long can we stay here?"

"We'll see."

The situation seemed ideal: a workers' trailer that had suddenly appeared in an unused repair shed in the yard of Kazansky Station. The trailer had bunks, however stained and filthy, and a potbellied stove. The trailer wasn't going anywhere. Its tires had been flat; now they were shredded.

The shed itself was a steel hangar open at one end to the station's yard. Rails led to trenches deep enough for a man to stand in for undercarriage repair. Or had at one time. Waist-high grass suggested a long spell of inactivity.

"It's spooky."

"Tito will let us know if anyone comes."

Lisa asked, "What if Yegor comes?"

Milka opened a knife. "If he comes anywhere near you again, I'll cut his balls off."

Itsy had no such illusions. She preferred to stay one step ahead of Yegor. Yegor was a grown-up by comparison with anyone in her crew.

"Why would they want a trailer in a train shed?"

"I don't know, but they did and we're going to use it. We can take care of ourselves. And we have Tito. And now we have a baby and that makes us a family."

Victor expounded on tattoos in the cafe at Yaroslavl Station. He touched the screen on Arkady's phone and enlarged the picture as he went.

"Think of a criminal's tattoos as a painting by the School of Rubens, a painting done by different hands at different times, with sections or faces added or obscured, some areas left blank in anticipation of notable events or cramped by bad planning.

"Let's begin with the Madonna and Child. This domestic scene tells us that Dopey was not born to a family of the bourgeoisie but to a family of honest criminals. The tattooing is primitive, although the faces were retouched later. The cat tattoos celebrate an early career as a burglar, and you can imagine from the spryness of these cats how a dwarf can get into all sorts of spaces.

"As he gets older and heavier, he graduates to murder. Three tears for three victims, as if he gave a fuck. He's been imprisoned four times. The barbs on barbed wire tell you how many years. The spiderweb on his shoulder means he's addicted, probably to heroin, because there is a surreal quality to the web reminiscent of Dali."

There was a new vigor to Victor, Arkady thought. For a man who should be struggling with the DTs, he looked surprisingly hale.

"You can trust a criminal's hide more than a banker's business card. The card says he has offices in Moscow, London and Hong Kong even though he's never been further than Minsk. But when a convict wears a tattoo for a crime he hasn't honestly committed, other cons will tattoo 'Liar' right across his face."

"It's good to know there is integrity somewhere in the world."

"The old cachet isn't there. Now every housewife has a tattoo on her ass. Nobody behind bars is satisfied with homemade ink when their girlfriends are trotting around on the outside with their pants half off and a tat that glows in the dark." He broke off to ask, "Worried?"

"They have to send me a letter of suspension and a letter of dismissal. Zurin only sent one."

"You're sure? Anyway, I can't believe that I'm with the man who killed Dopey the Dwarf. Does a curse come with that?"

"Probably," Arkady agreed.

"Don't worry about it. You are so fucked a curse would be superfluous."

Victor ducked out before the bill came. Arkady asked the waiter if he had ever noticed a boy hustle chess in the station.

The waiter leaned in thought.

"A thin boy?"

"Yes. Named Zhenya."

"I don't know about any Zhenya. This one's called 'Genius.'"

"That's close enough."

"He's in and out of the station all the time."

"Has he been in today?"

"No. He might be taking a day off. He had a big bust-up with his girlfriend last night. Right here."

Arkady wasn't sure he heard right. "A girlfriend?"

"A beauty queen."

"He has a beautiful girlfriend?"

"With a shaved head."

"With a shaved head, no less?" The Zhenya that Arkady knew did not hang out with such a trendy crowd. In fact, he hung out with no one at all. "I think we're talking about two different people."

The waiter shrugged.

"A shame. She was special but, like I say, a bitch."

Four men gathered at a round table: Senior Investigator Renko, District Prosecutor Zurin, Assistant Deputy Prosecutor General Gendler and a ministry elder called Father Iosif, who was as silent and motionless as a stuffed owl. He had long since passed the mandatory retirement age of sixty and, presumably, rolled on with year-to-year contracts. No one knew exactly what Father Iosif's status was. No one ever heard him speak.

Zurin had never looked better; fit and eager for the fray. Under Yeltsin, he had been round and apoplectic; in Putin's regime, Zurin ate sensibly, exercised and lost weight. A stack of dossiers tied with self-important red ribbons stood by him.

Gendler had placed Arkady's ID and pistol, a nine-millimeter Makarov, in the middle of the table and noted what an ideal setting for Russian roulette it was.

"Except, you need a revolver," Arkady said. "A cylinder to spin. Otherwise you've pretty much eliminated the element of chance."

"Who needs chance?" Gendler placed a tape recorder on the table. He pressed Record and identified site, date, time and persons present for a hearing on dismissal.

It took Arkady a moment to realize what was transpiring. "Wait, this is a hearing on suspension."

"No, this is a hearing on dismissal."

"I received the letter for suspension late last night. I have it." He passed the letter to the assistant deputy, who laid it aside without reading it.

"Duly noted, a typographical error. However, this is the second hearing. For whatever reason, you did not attend the first."

"I'd like to change the date."

"Out of the question. The panel is assembled. We have a quorum and we have the supporting dossiers and material that Prosecutor Zurin has brought. We can't ask him to cart those back and forth at your convenience."

"I need time to prepare materials."

"It's your second letter. The first letter went out a month ago. Your time for preparation ran out yesterday."

"I received no first letter."

"I received mine," said Zurin.

"Then I would have been suspended."

"You were."

Which explained the lack of caseload coming from the prosecutor. Nothing could hide the triumph in Zurin's face. He had played his part perfectly and so, in his ignorance, had Arkady.

"I was in the office every day."

"Preparing for this dismissal hearing, I assumed," Zurin said. "I didn't get in your way."

Gendler said, "Renko, you brought nothing else to substantiate your defense?"

"No."

"But you have been active. According to Prosecutor Zurin, two nights ago you were seen leaving a sobriety station. Yesterday you altered autopsy reports in an effort to fake a murder."

"The autopsy was not faked. I was assisting on a murder case. We may have a serial killer."

"Today you claim to have discovered a serial killer. Every detective's wet dream. I'm sorry, but in a contest of claim and counterclaim, I have to go with hard evidence, and you don't have any."

Arkady said, "I suggest that we go over the prosecutor's evidence to see how hard it really is."

"We don't have time. We're overwhelmed. So, do you expect to contest your dismissal or not? I should warn you-"

"No."

"You are not contesting your dismissal?"

"I am not."

"He's folding," Gendler told Zurin, half in surprise.

"I heard. So he won't be needing these." Zurin gathered Arkady's ID and gun from the table.

"Not the gun." Arkady clamped Zurin's wrist.

"It's property of the state."