Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

Chapter Two

Rich man leave your wealthiness

Wanderer, your solemn dress

Seafarer, the sea’s caress

Beowulf, your angriness

Time to take a second guess

Time to make a pact with death

Trans-Siberian Express

“IT IS A BAD idea,” Elena Timofeyeva said. She had almost used the word stupid instead of bad but had caught herself in time. She was standing in the doorway of the apartment she shared with her Aunt Anna. Her right boot was resisting her efforts to make it take leave of her foot.

She looked up at Iosef Rostnikov, who had both of his boots off and had entered the apartment.

“You want help with that?” he asked.

“No.” she said, and with an awkward effort and a mighty pull the boot came off, taking the long woollen sock with it. She almost fell. Perhaps her diet plan needed reconsideration.

Anna Timofeyeva sat in her comfortable chair near the only window in the room. She had been looking into the snow-covered courtyard in the first light of dawn. The children bound for school had not yet made tracks across the field of white that came up to the level of the seats of the benches circling the center of the covered concrete square.

Her cat, Baku, had been sitting on her lap. When her niece and Iosef had opened the door, the cat had lazily leaped to the floor and gone over to sniff at them.

Anna had never been bitter over her tragedy, the heart attacks which forced her to retire as procurator of Moscow before she was fifty-five. Anna had worked her way up from assembly-line worker to Communist Party leader for her factory, to regional assistant procurator, to her final position in Moscow. She had regularly put in fifteen-hour days, frequently worked days at a time fueled by duty, coffee, thick soups, and sandwiches of fatty meat.

The Soviet Union had prided itself on the equality of women. Movies, newspapers, posters showed women as leaders, workers, soldiers, the equal of men. The truth, as she had learned early in life, was the exact opposite. Women were considered inferior, and often those put in token positions of authority were chosen because of their party loyalty and a nonthreatening lack of intellect. Anna Timofeyeva had been a notable exception. She had taken pride in her achievement, but she had taken enormous satisfaction in her work.

And then, so suddenly, it was all over. The brown uniform that she had worn for sixteen years was traded for bulky skirts and sweaters; the large office for a small one-bedroom apartment.

Anna had never married, had never shown or had any interest in men as anything but people for whom she worked or who worked for her. She showed no greater interest in women as friends, companions, confidants, or lovers. She had tried sex with two men and one not particularly pretty but quite slim woman many years earlier. None of the three encounters had given her any satisfaction.

And so Anna sat in her apartment, read, and welcomed the company of her niece, which she would soon be losing when Elena and Iosef married. From time to time Porfiry Petrovich would visit, either to ask for her advice or simply to sit with her and drink some tea. All too often she was visited by Lydia Tkach, Sasha’s mother, who had an apartment down the hallway and around the corner.

It was Porfiry Petrovich whose idea it had been for Lydia to move into the apartment complex. Anna could still pull some strings. Lydia could have afforded much better, but she was content to move half a corridor from Anna and to knock at the door uninvited so that she could relate her woes in a very loud voice to the captive former procurator.

Recently, however, there had been great respite from Lydia. Lydia was seeing a man, a painter named Matvei Labroadovnik. She had told Anna all about him. Anna would have bestowed a medal, one of the dozen or so she had in her drawer in the bedroom, to the man if he were to end Lydia’s daily visits. But, at the same time, she felt uneasy the single time the man had come with Lydia to be shown off. Intuition, which came from years of talking to liars on multiple sides of the law, had taught her when someone was wearing a mask. The man had been wearing a mask of satisfied contemplation. Behind the mask, Anna was certain, was a racing mind. But that was Lydia’s problem. For the moment, he was Anna’s ally.

“Tell Aunt Anna what you want to do,” Elena said to Iosef, moving to the seat opposite her aunt.

Elena and Iosef had been up all night, meeting with the dozen uniformed officers assigned to their case, trying to come up with an idea they could present to the Yak, talking to Paulinin, who, they discovered, was even stranger than usual after the hour of midnight.

Paulinin had kept his right hand reassuringly on the head of the naked corpse of Toomas Vana during their entire conversation in the laboratory. From time to time Paulinin had looked down at the mutilated face of the dead man and smiled reassuringly.

The corpse was as white as the snow falling two stories above and outside Petrovka. The multiple wounds formed an odd pattern.

“We have had a very interesting conversation,” Paulinin said. “He has told me about his life and the woman who killed him.”

Elena wanted to ask what the dead man had said, but she still was not sure of the proper protocol with the odd scientist in the dingy laboratory jacket. Was he waiting for her to ask a question or would he be offended by being interrupted in his musings? Iosef had been the one to speak.

“What has he told you about the woman?”

Paulinin, hand still on the dead man’s head, twitched his nose to push his glasses back an infinitesimal notch, and said, “The woman loved him. She loved the others she attacked too. But she was reluctant to tell him, to tell them. She always strikes her first blows someplace vulnerable, the neck, eye, scrotum, nothing consistent, shy about admitting her purpose. She jabs. Here. There.”

Paulinin pointed at various wounds before continuing.

“And then, she strikes hardest at the heart, always at the heart, always the hardest blow. This time it caused her enormous pain. She used her right hand again. She has trouble maintaining her attack. The blade goes this way and that. The thrusts are growing weak. She tried her left hand. Remember?”

“Yes,” said Elena.

“But,” Paulinin went on, “it was not natural, it did not give her satisfaction. You want to know how I know?”

“Yes,” said Iosef.

“Because she went back to the right hand in spite of the pain. The right hand. The heart.”

“She wants to break his heart,” Elena said before she could stop herself.

Paulinin pondered her comment and nodded his head in agreement.

“Yes, something like that. She loves him. You said the little girl on the platform heard the attacker call the man Father.”

“Yes,” said Iosef.

“She loves her father,” said Paulinin. “I loved my father.”

“But you didn’t kill him,” Elena said.

“Of course not,” Paulinin said in exasperation. “And I don’t believe she has killed her father. She is sending him a message he cannot hear. Maybe she will kill him. Meanwhile, her wrist has a very severe sprain, possibly it is broken. She is probably feeling great pain. But that will not stop her from attacking again. The same kind of man, well-dressed, possibly carrying a briefcase, tall, between the ages of forty-five or so and fifty-five or sixty, from what my friend”-and here he gently patted the dead man’s head-“has told me.”

“Why does she attack on metro stations beginning with the letter K?” Iosef asked.

“How should I know?” Paulinin returned with irritation. “I am not a psychiatrist. Maybe her father’s name begins with a K, or maybe something happened to her on a metro platform that began with a K, something when she was a little girl. Now she cannot remember which K station it is. Maybe her name begins with a K. Maybe a million things. When you find her, ask her and tell me.”

They had left Petrovka and walked miles in the nearly empty streets through the snow, talking, and Iosef had come up with his plan. Now he stood in Anna Timofeyeva’s apartment. He reached down to pick up the cat, which did not complain, and said, “I will wear a suit and tie, put a little gray in my hair, carry a briefcase, and travel from station to station spending time on each K platform.”

“He will make himself a target for a madwoman,” Elena said, looking at her aunt.

Anna Timofeyeva was a solid, heavyset woman with a wide nose and a distinctly Russian face. Her best feature was her large brown eyes, which she fixed on whomever she spoke to, giving her full attention, or, in some cases, the semblance of full attention.

“The likelihood of this woman finding you,” she said, looking up at Iosef, “is not great. There is no shortage of potential victims for this …” She almost said “poor woman” but stopped herself and simply said “woman.”

“You see,” said Elena.

“And who knows if and when she will strike again?” Anna went on.

“Her favorite time seems to be between nine in the morning and three-thirty in the afternoon,” Iosef said.

Anna pondered the answer and said, “She is not free to attack early and she must be somewhere in the late afternoon. Perhaps she has a night job. Most likely she has no job at all but she has something to do, somewhere to be.”

“The likelihood that she will find you,” Elena said, “is very small.”

“But,” her aunt said, “what other plan do you have? More police on the platforms? We know you cannot get them. Your plan cannot hurt.”

“Cannot hurt,” Elena exclaimed, rising from her chair. “It can get him killed.”

“The woman is not big,” Iosef said. “I’ll be alert. And there are not really that many men in suits and ties, carrying briefcases, on the metro. They are above the ground in cabs and private cars.”

Elena considered trying to reach Iosef’s father, but Rostnikov was on a train to Siberia. Iosef was his only son. He would surely dissuade him. She could go to the Yak, but she was certain he would see nothing wrong with the plan. He would not be the one making a target of himself on the metro platform, and the Yak had no great fondness for Iosef. Elena considered that it might even be possible to simply order Iosef not to do it. She was the senior inspector on the case. But to issue him an order in this situation might be a blow to their relationship.

She looked up at Iosef cradling the cat in his arms. He was no fool and he had several advantages in the situation. He had been an actor. He would not overact his role as a businessman. He was an ex-soldier, a combat veteran of the Afghanistan disaster. He had a keenly developed sense of danger.

Elena had little choice.

“All right,” she said, stepping in front of him and reaching out to pet Baku. “But I will be there every moment.”

Iosef smiled.

Inna’s mother’s name had been Katyana. Inna’s mother had been perfect. Katyana, Inna thought as she sat at the table, her wrist wrapped tightly and resting under a bag of ice, had betrayed her daughter by dying.

Inna adjusted the bag on top of her wrist. The wrist no longer hurt in the same way. It was now either numbly frozen or burning.

Inna’s life was no life. She took her pills and existed to please her father. There was nothing else. She was trapped, too frightened and too dependent to walk away. Where would she go? She had no other relatives. What would she do? She had no skills.

Viktor Dalipovna was her life. She had to take care of him. What if something should happen to him? Things happen, you know. He could have a heart attack, be killed in a robbery, get hit by a car or truck. One of the women he sometimes spent the night with might kill him in his sleep for the money in his wallet, his watch, his ring. He did not take good enough care of himself in many ways. His diet was bad. Inna fed him healthy meals. She never argued or disagreed with him. She snuck vitamins into his food, cut every speck of fat from his meat, even watered his vodka but ever so slightly.

Inna looked around the room. She would have to get up soon, retape her wrist, work through the pain, get her father’s dinner ready. Had she taken the medicine? She couldn’t remember. Had she meant to? Probably not. She was not supposed to take too much. But she had been taking none of it.

She put the question to her mother, whose ghost sat across from her on the other side of the table. The dead Katyana was the same age as when she had died, a mature, plump, pretty woman.

“Did I take the medicine?” Inna asked.

“Yes,” her mother said. “Don’t you feel it?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps you did not take it,” Katyana said. “We can count the pills. We can keep count so you will know. Prepare a sheet of paper, write the date. Make a check mark when you take the pill.”

“Yes,” said Inna, but she knew she would not do it. It was curious. Each day, she woke up certain that she could keep track of everything, pills, shopping, cleaning. She needed no list. But then she discovered that she could not remember if she had taken a pill or eaten lunch. In the grocery, she could not remember if the night before she had onions or potatoes or whether the night before she had served his favorite salad, sahlad eez reedyeesah, sliced, radishes with salt and sour cream. That particular dish did not matter. He would not care if he had it every day.

“It is just the idea of not being able to remember,” she explained to her dead mother.

“I know,” Katyana answered. “How is your wrist?”

“It … I don’t know.”

“Take off the ice,” her mother advised. “You have had it on too long.”

Inna removed the top bag of already melting ice and slowly lifted her hand. “It hurts,” she said.

“You might have to go to the clinic,” her mother said.

“They would know what I have been doing,” she answered.

“How? A woman hurts her wrist. How would they know?”

“I am not good at lying.”

“Then you will suffer.”

“Yes,” she said, biting her lower lip to hold off the pain as she moved her hand.

“A little suffering is not a bad thing,” her mother said. “But when the suffering is more than a little you should do something.”

“I will be fine,” Inna said.

“I worry about you,” her mother said.

“Why?”

“Because you are crazy. You are crazy and you don’t take your medicine. You know that both of these things are true.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I cannot stop. I will grow even crazier if I stop. I love my father. He must know. I must drive it into his heart. He must know. He must reach over and smile sadly and say something, anything, like ‘You are my daughter.’”

“He is not that kind of man,” Katyana said.

“I know,” said Inna, resting her throbbing arm in her lap. “I must go shopping.”

“Make a list,” her mother said.

“I don’t need one,” Inna said.

“This is not a good day for you to show your love,” Katyana said gently. “Do not go in search of your father on the trains.”

“I search for both of us, for you,” Inna said.

“I know, but not today.”

“Tomorrow?” Inna asked, almost pleading.

“Tomorrow, if you must,” her mother said with a smile.

“I will be nothing if I do not go,” Inna tried to explain. “I will disappear. My body will be here but I will have no thoughts, no meaning. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” her mother said.

“I don’t, but I know it is so.”

And then her mother was gone. It was always like this. She would be there and it would be quite natural. She would not be there and that would be natural too. Inna knew her mother was dead but she did not have to address this reality. In fact, she chose to address no reality at all other than keeping herself reasonably clean, taking care of her father, and keeping the knife very, very sharp.