The Sin Collector

MASHA

Masha sat on a narrow bench near the district police station and pretended to listen attentively to the young patrolman Dima Safronov. Dima was glad to be sitting here with this piece of ass from Petrovka, smoking expensive cigarettes, wondering if he should ask her to the movies. After that, naturally, he’d need to get her drunk… But something told him this chick wasn’t much for dive bars.

He was telling her about Kolyan. But there wasn’t much to tell. Guy was a complete and total alcoholic, but there were plenty of those around. Harmless. Not the criminal type. Must have been brought up right, because he didn’t just piss wherever he felt like it. Kolyan had mostly stuck to the neighborhood, so how had he ended up at Kutafya Tower? Did he go there to die someplace beautiful? The cops are thick on the ground there, too. It was a nice enough place to finish off a bottle, but Kolyan had an apartment for that sort of thing. Why travel so far? Later, when that uptight coroner got ahold of him, he found out it wasn’t Kolyan’s heart that had killed him. He’d suffocated to death. The coroner thought a liquid dripped continuously into his throat had made his throat swell up.

“What kind of liquid?” Masha interrupted. She was still replaying in her head the slapstick scene of her running into Yakovlev in the hall. What an idiot she was.

“Vodka, what else? I read the report. You do it drop by drop, it’s some kind of medieval torture. I think they tortured people in China that way.”

“Not just in China,” Masha said, frowning as she felt the shadow just behind her back.

Seeing her eyes go all weird—distant and sad—Dima decided he definitely wasn’t asking the chick from Petrovka out. But he had more to tell her.

“And in his apartment,” he said, “they didn’t find a single fingerprint! Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. On the one hand, any asshole could see that it’s murder. On the other hand, why murder a harmless drunk? Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have?”

“Maybe,” Masha said. That was a perfectly reasonable motive that could explain everything away, and Masha hated it.

Dima tossed his cigarette on the ground and stood up. Masha followed suit, and shook his hand in a very official manner.

“Thank you for your time,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” answered Dima, embarrassed by all these good manners. “Call me if you have more questions.”

“I will.” Masha carefully withdrew her hand from his, just a little later than she would have liked. She had already crossed the street when she turned back and caught Dima watching her go.

“The tattoo on his arm!” Masha called. “The number four. Had you seen that before?”

“No. Kolyan didn’t have a tattoo!” Dima shouted back. “He went around most of the time in just an undershirt, so I would’ve seen it.”

A satisfied smile spread across Masha’s face. She waved good-bye and hurried on.