Orest Stelmach - The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

“So you and Iskra, you were like brother and sister?”

He hesitated for a moment as though considering his answer, then nodded. “Exactly like that.” He followed up with some nervous laughter. “We used to fight in our teens, mon. Just like cat and dog, you know? But I never had nothing but love in my heart for that girl, and she knew that, yeah she did.”

“Is that why you followed her to De Wallen , got drunk, ambushed her in her apartment, and called her a dyke and a whore?”

That earned me a double take and a stern look, but Sasha quickly reverted to his laid-back self.

“Not my finest moment,” he said, “but I apologized the next day.” His chin rose. He studied me with suspicious eyes. “How did you know… I didn’t tell anyone about that…”

I wasn’t about to reveal Sarah Dumont as my source.

“Were you shocked when you saw her in the window in a green bikini, selling herself to any man that came by?”

Sasha started to clench his teeth, but then smiled as though suddenly realizing that I was provoking him to see if he would lose his cool and what else he might admit to.

“Wouldn’t you have been?” he said.

“Big time,” I said. “But not as shocked as I would have been when I realized that one of her clients was a woman. How did you figure that out? You must have followed that one client. Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t need to follow her. I bumped into her on the sidewalk after she left Iskra’s room on purpose. Just to get a close look at her face.”

I’d seen Sarah Dumont sans make-up and she’d fooled me.

“And you could tell just by looking at her up close that she was a woman?” I didn’t believe him for a minute.

“No, mon,” he said, sounding even-keeled, not overly solicitous or defensive, as though what he was about to say was the gospel truth. “When I bumped into her my hand accidentally touched her between the legs. And there was nothing there, you know? Nothing. That’s when I knew.”

“So then you got drunk and went into Iskra’s apartment and waited for her. Meaning you had a key to her apartment and you could come and go as you pleased, right?”

“No,” he said, without hesitation. “It wasn’t like that at all. I respected her. I never bothered her. Sometimes I’d call her up and she’d say come over for a beer. She used to drink Grolsch and then when she started drinking that Belgian stuff I knew something was wrong. She gave me the key because she trusted me. She lost her key all the time and always had to call her parents to let her in. And she hated when they came by because her mother would always nose around in all her personal stuff. So she gave the key to someone she could trust to be there for her if she locked herself out. She gave it to me.”

I spied moisture in his eyes, not necessarily the kind that grew to tears, but still an honest indication that the topic was causing the speaker genuine distress.

“Did you kill her, Sasha?”

“Me?”

“You were so hurt, so angry, maybe you lost your composure the way we’re all prone to do with the ones we love, the ones we care about so much when they’ve done something that hurts us so much.”

Sasha looked dejected, as though I’d made the worst possible accusation. “No,” he said firmly.

He brought his hand up to wipe his eyes. I noticed the watch around his wrist for the first time. Evidently my agenda and his Rasta-Russian looks had distracted me from spotting it before. It was a stainless steel Panerai chronograph, noteworthy for its elegance and exclusivity. I recognized it because I’d seen Simmy wearing one when he was dressed casually. I didn’t know the price tag, but what was a struggling entrepreneur doing with a watch suitable for an oligarch?

“Nice watch,” I said.

He glanced at and pulled his arm to his side, as though I’d discovered something he was supposed to hide.

“Oh. Yeah, thanks. It was my father’s. He bought it as a gift to himself after he sold his business in Russia.

“It’s nice that you wear it.” I cleared my throat. “Do you know anyone who would have wanted to harm Iskra? A jilted boyfriend? A jealous rival from school?” I almost said “other jilted boyfriends” but I caught myself just in time.

“No one like that,” he said. “But there was that guy in De Wallen . He was obsessed with her. I told the cops about it. I don’t know if they checked him out or not. But then, I don’t even know if they want to solve the murder or not. I mean, Iskra was Russian, and this is the Netherlands, you know?”

“Who was this man?”

“Her bodyguard. At the window. He had a nickname of some kind.” Sasha scrunched his eyes as he tried to remember.

“The Turk?”

Sasha snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”

“How do you know he was obsessed with Iskra?”

“She told me.”

“What? When?”

“That night. When I was in her apartment waiting for her. She blurted out that she was already having problems with a guy at work and she didn’t need any more from me. Next day when I called to apologize I pressed her for details because I was worried about her, you know? That’s when she told me his name. She made me swear to keep it to myself and never go near him. She said he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt me if I upset him.”

“She said that to you?”

“She did.”

“And you told the police this?”

“I did.”

I wrapped things up with Sasha. He gave me his mobile phone number and address without hesitation. I wanted to leave on the most congenial note possible, so I put my hand on his shoulder and thanked him for his help. Some light reappeared in his eyes when he felt my touch and heard my words, and he bid me farewell with a smile.

I’d arrived at the Hash, Marijuana and Hemp Museum mildly intoxicated about what Sasha might reveal about Iskra and its potential benefits to my investigation. I left as sober as the girl who was never asked to dance at the ball. I felt as though I was walking around in circles, literally and figuratively.

On the surface, Sasha’s assertion that the Turk had been obsessed with Iskra presented a new suspect with a potentially powerful motive. If he’d fallen in love with her, he might have demanded that she quit the business. Alternatively, he might have been horrified to discover that one of her clients was a woman. That seemed less likely for a man who worked with prostitutes for a living. More likely was a scenario where Iskra admitted to the Turk that a woman had won her heart. Perhaps that had infuriated him past the point of self control.

But was he the calculating type who would plan and stage a despicable act of cruelty? Did I picture the Turk as a meticulous planner who’d bring a stud finder to mount his victim on a wall with a carpenter’s precision? No, I did not. He was more likely to snap, which was to say he was more likely to snap her neck in a moment of fury. Still, I couldn’t be certain of this.

The only firm conclusion I could come to after my meeting with Sasha was that all leads brought me back to De Wallen .

The Turk worked in De Wallen . And that is where I would have to return if I wanted to speak with him.

I made a U-turn, picked up my pace and headed back toward Iskra’s—and my—office. The red lights were on above the windows of the African girls’ offices on Ouderkerksplein . I could see their fleshy outlines in the windows closest to mine. It was still early by the red-light district’s standard, and there were only a few passersby when I arrived. My office was dark and empty as expected.

I unlocked the door, stepped inside, turned on the interior light, and took a deep breath.