The Sin Collector

ANDREY

The call came in when they were almost back in the city. Fomin was shouting into the phone that headquarters had gotten an emergency call relaying audio from an important functionary’s office.

“I heard him ranting and raving about something!” Fomin yelled, excited. “A thin voice, like a woman’s, but it wasn’t a woman, and it was—”

“Where?” Andrey asked, cutting him off.

“The army medical office, on Znamenka Street. There’s an entrance on the Boulevard Ring.”

“Why aren’t you there?”

“We’re driving over now, Captain. We’ll be there in five minutes, ten tops. It’s rush hour, you should see the fucking traffic.”

“That was part of his plan,” Andrey said quietly. “Fine, go ahead, do what you can.”

“What was he ranting about?” Masha asked Fomin. She had not missed one shouted word of the phone conversation.

“They sent me the recording,” Fomin said. “I’ll play it, you can listen.”

Andrey switched to speakerphone. At first, all they could hear was a muffled moaning.

“He gagged him,” Masha whispered.

Then there was a terrible voice, high and thin, chanting, “Here we were met by the evil spirits of the last and twentieth Torment, the station of Heartlessness and Cruelty. Cruel are the tormentors of this place, and their prince is terrible, dry and depressed of countenance. Even if a man performs the most outstanding deeds, mortifies himself by fasting, prays ceaselessly, and guards and keeps the purity of his body, if he has been merciless, then from this station he is cast down into the abyss of hell and will receive no mercy in all eternity. I sentence you, sinner, to a hasty descent into hell, by impalement.”

“Did you hear that?” It was Fomin’s voice on the line again. “Creepy, right? Okay, we’re here.”

“Stay on the line,” Andrey told him. He groped under his seat for his police lights, and without slowing down reached out the window and shoved them into place on the roof of the car. They could move faster now, but their progress was still slow, monstrously slow. Meanwhile, Fomin provided them with terse narration.

“We’re here, boss. We’re surrounding the entrance. We’re inside. We’re splitting up, one group on the stairs, the other on the elevator.”

Masha sat next to Andrey, on the edge of her seat. They could hear the pounding footsteps, then a fire-escape door opening with a creak, then more footsteps, and a pause. There was the crash of a door getting blasted open, and then—silence.

“Fomin! Are you okay?” Andrey shouted. “What do you see?”

“Oh my God,” Fomin breathed into the phone. “I’m here. We’re all okay. But this guy—”

“Ask him to describe it,” Masha whispered.

“Uhhh,” Fomin began. “There’s a man sitting in a chair. The chair’s on the table, like a monument or something. There’s, uhhh, stakes sticking out of his ribs. Like a fucking bloody porcupine, for God’s sake.”

There was a sudden burst of shouting, and Fomin’s voice filled the whole car.

“He’s alive! Get him down, he’s alive!”

Masha and Andrey sat transfixed. At the other end, they could hear chaos, chairs crashing to the floor.

“No,” someone else said. “His body was just spasming before death. Get the forensics guys over here.”

Fomin spoke up. “That’s it. He’s dead.”

“Fomin. Listen to me.” Andrey was speaking slowly, knowing that poor Fomin must be in shock. “Go down to the reception desk. Look at the list of visitors the dead man had this afternoon. Look to see when they came and when they left. Hurry! I’ll still be on the line.”

He asked Masha to use her phone to call Anyutin.

“Colonel, sir,” said Masha, her voice shaking. “We know who the Sin Collector is. It’s Nikolay Nikolayevich Katyshev.”

Anyutin coughed carefully. “Intern Karavay, forgive me, but are you feeling all right?”

But Andrey had already grabbed her phone.

“Colonel, we were at his dacha. We found everything. Maps, torture tools. There’s no doubt it’s him. I don’t have time to explain more. We’ve just found a new body. I need you to spread the word, okay? Alert all the traffic checkpoints, send SWAT teams to his home address and to his dacha.”

“What about you?” Anyutin asked. Judging from his lack of objections, Anyutin must believe him. There was something in Andrey’s voice that could not be denied.

“I’ll call you back, sir,” Andrey answered, and he hung up.