Madness Treads Lightly

CHAPTER 6

Moscow, March 1996

Lena packed her husband’s things in a large gym bag. A van was supposed to come for him from Petrovka, as his workplace was called, in two hours. In the next room, Seryozha was attempting to put Liza to bed and was reading her the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh for the fifth time. For some reason, Liza didn’t want to read any farther, and as the chapter was coming to an end, she would demand it be read all over again. She had no intention of going to sleep, even though it was already past eleven.

“Papa, Papa, Papa!” she said, sighing sadly.

No one had told her her papa was going away. She’d figured it out herself.

“I’ll be back very soon,” Sergei reassured her. “What should I bring you, Liza?”

“Pooh! Bring Liza Pooh!”

“You want Winnie-the-Pooh? A teddy bear?”

“Yes.” Liza nodded gravely.

“A big one or a small one?”

“A big one,” Liza informed him in her lowest voice and spread her arms expressively, showing him the size of the bear she wanted. “And a little one,” she added after a moment’s thought.

“And are you planning to go to sleep tonight?” Sergei asked cautiously.

“Papa, Papa, Papa!” Liza’s lower lip jutted out, corners down. That meant she was just about to belt out a magnificent howl. The only way to avert that was to pick her up and walk her around the room. The moment Sergei carried Liza to the window and started showing her the pretty lights shining in the dark, Lena looked into the room.

“So that’s how we go to sleep?” She shook her head.

“Oh, we have no intention of sleeping at all,” Sergei informed her hopelessly. “Our parents are bad. They have no discipline.”

“Fine, then go see how your papa’s bag is packed.” Lena sighed. “What if your bad mama forgot to put in something important for your bad papa?”

They checked his bag and drank tea, but Liza still had no intention of sleeping.

“Tell me, please,” Lena asked pensively, “if someone—a righty—would ever inject drugs into his right arm, especially his hand?”

“Well, if there was nowhere left in either elbow bend, and if the veins on the left wrist and hand were used up, then he might try. Why?”

“There weren’t any marks on his left hand, just his right. I didn’t see his elbows, but I doubt there was nowhere left there.”

“Is this about Mitya again?” Sergei sighed.

“Yes, Seryozha, it’s about him again. For some reason I can’t stop thinking about it. I noticed the scratches on his right arm and those needle marks, but later his wife assured me he’d never shot up and couldn’t stand drugs. Now it’s done. Mitya’s been cremated. But there are the autopsy results. Olga found a way get them to do an autopsy without waiting in line. I guess she gave them a bribe.”

“And?”

“And the same thing. A high concentration of something in the blood. Of what I don’t remember, but it was some kind of powerful narcotic. And there were ampoules and needles all over the room.”

“Do you know how many unsolved murders there are in Moscow right now?” Sergei put Liza more comfortably in his lap; she was, at last, dozing off.

“Well, I have a rough idea.”

“You and I have discussed this. There’s no point going over it again, especially before I leave.”

“You’re right,” Lena agreed. “But, those scratches on his right arm trouble me.”

Sergei carried Liza, now fully asleep, to her little bed. He came back to the kitchen, put his arms around Lena, and pressing his lips to her temple, whispered, “We still have half an hour left, my dear Miss Marple.”

Senior Investigator Misha Sichkin decided to call in Veronika Rogovets, the model who’d been the main witness to the murder of the singer Yuri Azarov, to his office on Petrovka for more questioning.

The first two interrogations had been conducted at her home, where for some reason she insisted on walking around in a see-through negligee with nothing underneath, not even panties. Basic Instinct, which had been such a hit, must have made a very strong impression on her, because during questioning she behaved exactly like the thriller’s main heroine, carelessly crossing and uncrossing her legs and delivering a seemingly endless stream of clumsy double entendres. When Sichkin asked her how she had spent the night of the murder, she shrugged prettily, jutted out her plump lower lip, and said, “You want to know what we were doing? Making love! I can give you details if it will help the investigation.”

Misha, who’d seen all kinds of things in his day and was hard to surprise, was still a little baffled at why the young woman wasn’t reacting even a tiny bit to her lover’s murder—in her own apartment. She didn’t care about anything other than the impression her beauty made on the people around her. She was so wrapped up in herself that she didn’t even notice that her charms weren’t making an impression on the gloomy investigator.

“Who besides you and Azarov had keys to your apartment?” Misha asked wearily.

“The key to a model’s apartment is more valuable than the key to an apartment filled with money,” Veronika spoke in a low, chesty voice and focused her languid green eyes on the investigator, waiting to see what impression her joke would make.

“Veronika Ivanovna, let’s try to focus on who else might have had keys. He might well be the killer.” Misha sighed heavily and lit a cigarette.

“But he already killed Yuri, so what difference does it make now?” The witness slowly batted her eyelashes.

After his conversation with the model, Misha Sichkin was dripping sweat, as if he’d been unloading train cars in one-hundred-degree heat. In summoning the witness to Petrovka, he’d hoped that the official location and the impossibility of wearing only a negligee would have a slightly sobering effect on the model.

She’d shown up half an hour late. She was wearing scarlet leather shorts, black lace stockings, and a see-through black gauze blouse unbuttoned to her navel with nothing underneath. After reading her the official warning about the consequences of giving false testimony and having her sign a document to that effect, Misha started all over again.

“How did you spend the afternoon and evening immediately before the murder?”

“I already told you. We were fucking.” Veronika raised her eyebrows. “I already told you everything.”

“Fine. That evening you made love with the dead man.”

“Wait a minute!” The beauty raised her hand in protest. “How can you make love with a dead man? That’s necrophilia! You’re confused, Mr. Investigator.”

“Veronika Ivanovna, I’m getting the impression that you’re refusing to give evidence.”

“Really?” She flashed a blinding smile. “I am answering all your questions.”

“You have yet to answer a single one of my questions,” Misha reminded her gently.

“What do you mean?” The model’s little hands flapped in fright. “Then what have we been doing all this time?”

“What have we been doing? I’ve been trying to question you as a witness to a murder, and you’ve been staging a farce. I don’t think the official investigation into the murder of your lover—in your apartment, I might add—is the appropriate setting for a demonstration of your feminine charms. It’s like this, Veronika Ivanovna: either you answer all my questions, or you can write an official refusal to give evidence.”

“Are you threatening me?” In the model’s beautiful green eyes, Sichkin noted an icy hatred so fierce that it shook him a little. All of a sudden he realized that she was behaving like this because he wasn’t reacting to her beauty. She had no control over this. For her, all the people in the world fell into two groups: those who were taken in by her beauty and those who weren’t. For her, the latter were enemies, no matter the situation. That was how she was wired, and he couldn’t blame her for it. But he, Investigator Misha Sichkin, was an idiot because he hadn’t figured it out right away.

“Veronika Ivanovna”—Misha sighed and shook his head—“you don’t seem to want to understand one simple thing. The sooner we find and arrest Azarov’s killer, the sooner you, above all, can breathe easy. You’re young and pretty, and you have your whole life ahead of you. But there’s a killer out there who’s been in your home. How do we know he won’t show up one more time—to pay you a visit personally?”

“Whatever for?”

“Whatever for is a completely different question.” Misha smiled enigmatically. “I’m afraid for you, Veronika Ivanovna. Here I am, looking at you and thinking there really are wonders in this world, dazzling, stunning women like you. It’s offensive that nearby, somewhere very close, there’s scum about, a killer capable of destroying that beauty in one stroke.”

You’re a poet, Misha! Sichkin congratulated himself. Now we’ll see whether she really is the idiot she appears to be or if she’s just faking it. It would be better for her to be an idiot. Otherwise, she either knows the killer and has been doing everything in her power since the very beginning to keep him from getting found out, or else… but that can’t be possible; she has a solid alibi. Several people, regular runners and dog walkers, saw her in Victory Park. And she has no motive.

“But I really don’t remember who might have the key! I’m such a scatterbrain, so forgetful. I’ve lost it a hundred times.” Veronika smiled disarmingly.

Her icy demeanor had been melted a little by his crude flattery, but she still had no intention of answering his questions.

Fine, Misha decided. I’ll try one last angle, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll put a tail on her. Her refusal to answer his questions was moving her from the witness column to the suspect column. I wonder whether she understands what she’s doing?

“I understand that we’re both sick to death of the subject of keys,” Misha said gently, “so let’s wind it up. Try to remember when you lost your keys and whether you changed the lock after that.”

“I think I did. But maybe not.” Veronika wrinkled her low brow, trying hard to remember. “You see, I haven’t been able to focus on all those everyday trifles since I was a child. Even in school I was always forgetting everything—my notebook, my textbook. I even developed a complex and nearly went nuts. I kept being afraid I’d forgotten some shit or the other. But then I started working with a good psychotherapist, and I learned how to fight the complex. My memory didn’t improve, though. I still forget everything, but now I don’t give a shit.”

“And what psychotherapist are you working with?” Misha smiled and leaned back in his chair.

“Oh, she’s a marvelous doctor. She treats all kinds of complicated psychological complexes. She cures schizos without medicine. You know, all those psychotropic medicines, they’re so dangerous, even more than narcotics. But I’m afraid she would be too expensive for you.” She smiled slyly. “You were asking for yourself, weren’t you?”

“You’re a smart woman. You don’t miss a trick. I really was asking for myself. In my work, a good psychotherapist is essential. Watch out or you’ll lose your marbles. Will you give me her phone?”

“No.” Veronika shook her head. “It’s too expensive for you, and I doubt she’s taking new patients. She’s got enough work as it is.”

“Oh well.” Misha sighed. “I’ll have to get through my poverty and misery without a psychotherapist.”

You slipped, honey, he noted gaily to himself, and now you’re trying to sweep away your trail with your tail, like that fox in the story.

“Was Yuri Azarov also seeing the good doctor?” Misha inquired casually.

“Yuri was as normal as a stump.” Veronika sighed. “He could have used a little crazy, a few strong emotions, some foolish acts of heroism.”

Both of them! I’m chipping away now! Misha thought. For sure, that psychotherapist needs a good vetting before she’s questioned. There’s something shady about this doctor. Was she the one who prepped this doll so well for her interrogation? This could be very interesting.

“So you like reckless acts of heroism, then?” he asked.

“Of course! Life’s so boring without it. I love the broad gesture, so that sparks fly. But Yuri was a skinflint, pardon the expression.”

“So maybe they killed him over debts?” Misha suggested, and he thought if she latched on to that now, then he definitely had to consider her a suspect.

“What else?” Veronika grinned. “I personally have no doubt of it.”

“So why did you need him, Veronika Ivanovna, if all he had was debts? With your beauty, surely you could find someone better.”

“Why did I need him?” She thought about that and touched her lips with a sharp nail. Her nail polish and lipstick were the same color—bright red. “Probably for variety,” she spoke dreamily and nipped her nail.

Leaving Petrovka and sitting behind the wheel of her nice new red Zhiguli, Veronika Rogovets replayed the entire conversation with that idiot of an investigator and was pleased with herself. Regina Valentinovna had been right when she had said they were all fools in the scheme of things, and no man could resist Veronika’s charms. Even that stupid cop, no matter how hard he tried to resist her, eventually succumbed to her charms and swallowed the whole yarn she spun.

The only slipup was when she’d blabbed about Regina. But she’d caught herself in time and shifted the conversation to a different topic. Regina had asked her not to mention her at all; she didn’t name names and she didn’t give him her phone number. It was as if Regina had a crystal ball; Sichkin had picked right up on her importance. He had a pretty good eye. It was all right, though, she’d given him the slip.

She did wonder who had offed Yuri, though. These stupid cops weren’t going to find him, whoever he was. You couldn’t do anything on that kind of salary. All they did was loaf and take bribes. Obviously no one had bought this Sichkin yet.

Veronika Rogovets had disliked the police since she was a kid. She hadn’t had any run-ins with them lately, but she knew from experience that they were all bastards and mercenaries. The only people who became cops were newcomers from the provinces and morons. Maybe they were even the ones who had offed Yuri. After all, he’d sung at Thrush’s birthday party, and there’d been two cops there. Maybe to keep Yuri from ratting them out, they offed him.

She’d done well zeroing in on the debts. That Sichkin had been happy to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. He’d be looking for Yuri’s creditors now. Well, let him look!

In fact, Azarov had had no debts. He never borrowed or lent. He really was a skinflint. Veronika didn’t figure that out until after their seventh date, when she asked for a diamond ring like the one Irina Moskvina had. Naturally, she could have bought herself the ring; it only cost fifteen hundred dollars. But buying yourself diamonds was a bad omen. You had to be given them or else inherit them, otherwise they brought bad luck.

Veronika knew everything about stones. At home she had an entire shelf of books about the mystic and healing properties of stones. The fact that a diamond had to be given by a lover was a fairly basic and well-known fact. Veronika had told Azarov this when she parked her car by the Princess Dream jewelry store on Tverskaya Street. You could buy on credit there, and Azarov had three cards in his wallet. But he didn’t buy Veronika the ring. He didn’t even go into the store with her; he stayed in the car and wasn’t the teeniest drop embarrassed. Veronika wanted it so badly she had to buy it for herself.

She reminded Azarov of the incident often and bore a grudge. She nearly told him to go to hell, but at the time she couldn’t. She was in his third video, and that was good money, so it wasn’t worth arguing with him.

She’d even discussed the problem with Regina.

“It’s easy to twist a hero’s arm,” Regina had said. “And boring. But you need to learn to twist Azarov’s. It’s excellent training that will stand you in good stead later. If Azarov doesn’t start spending money on you, you’ll only have to crook your little finger at others. Don’t be in such a hurry to break with him.”

Veronika was a fine pupil. She didn’t break it off with Azarov. But the diamond had brought bad luck, only not for Veronika, but for Azarov, who had been too cheap to buy it for her. They killed Yuri. His karma had been bad—cheap, low-quality karma. But she wasn’t going to explain that to the idiot cop at the Petrovka. He didn’t even know words like that.

Veronika had very high-quality karma—not just high but super-high. And if something wasn’t right, Regina Valentinovna would correct it right away. She could sense these things. Even over the phone, she could adjust Veronika’s aura if need be.