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CHAPTER 1
TRAINING DAY BY ANDREI KIVINOVKupchino
Translated by Polly Gannon
"Rise and shine, Eagle Scouts! You've got a report."
Leaving the door to the rec room open and not waiting for us to wake up, Evseyev returned to duty. I wasn't asleep anyway. I was just lying there with my eyes closed on top of an ancient, disintegrating overcoat spread out on some chairs I had pushed together. That was in contrast to Farid Ismagilov, the Tatar, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. I still hadn't learned to fall asleep at three in the afternoon. That was understandable: I didn't have enough practice. Although the idea of a postprandial nap made sense. If there's an opportunity to sleep during the day, use it. That way, at night, you won't keep yawning and nodding off if something happens. Farid, over there, was a guy with a lot of practice.
I got up off the chairs and put on my brown shoes. The standard-issue black ones didn't fit me, so I had to settle for civilian ones. The officers frowned on them, but the civilian population didn't give a damn, so I wasn't worried. No big deal, it's not like shoes are your uniform cap. I straightened my tie, then nudged Farid, still sleeping on the bench.
"Mister Driver, we've got a report to check out. Let's get going."
Farid woke up, rubbed his eyes, and yawned, exhaling a lethal reek of bacon and garlic. A Muslim, he scarfed down bacon for lunch despite the injunctions of the Koran. They called him Driver because he drove the official kozel jeep. In his free time, that is, when he wasn't sleeping. Rank: sergeant; age: thirty-three; disposition: Nordic, sometimes gloomy, with a slight chance of showers. Inclined toward mild, daily drunkenness. Whether he was an athlete or a good family man, I didn't know yet. Rooted for the Rubin Kazan soccer team.
"We'll check it out later. It's our legitimate quiet time."
"Yeah, but felons don't get a quiet time."
Evseyev, the duty officer, was playing a game of erotic Tetris on an office computer, forming a naked minor on the screen. Or, in his words, drawing up a duty roster. This drawing up of a roster was not easy: every time Evseyev got above knee level, he had to start all over again. It irritated him to no end. His assistant was fastidiously interrogating a reticent drunkard who smelled of piss. He steered the man toward the "aquarium" (the drying-out tank) with a gentle kick, and sprayed apple-scented air freshener around the room.
"So, what's with the report?" Farid said, kneading his neck.
Without glancing up from his "duty roster," Evseyev handed us a piece of paper covered with what looked like chicken scratch.
"Here's the address. The paramedics called. Dead on arrival. Forty-two-year-old male. Asphyxiation. Allegedly choked on meat dumplings. Go take a look. If anything seems suspicious, call and I'll send the operative. And if there's no sign of foul play, do the usual routine."
The usual routine. It was my first day on duty, and I had no clue what the routine was. I mean, I knew it in theory — I had taken a three-month course for police investigators — but instructions and regulations were one thing, "the usual routine" was something else. I didn't let on, naturally. I nodded and took the address as though it was something I did every day. If worse came to worst, Farid would tell me what to do. He'd been in the department more than ten years. He'd give me a shoulder to lean on.
When we went out into the courtyard, the weather was doing its best to discourage any sort of work ethic. It was like being in a thriller. Gray thunderheads, spitting rain, slithery mud, a screaming wind. Indian summer had given way to an abrupt early winter. I have to say that in St. Petersburg there's no real spring, summer, or fall. It's one eternal season of early winter. Even in the July heat people escape from here to warmer climes. You've just got to put up with it and not start howling when some Lexus speeds by, splashing you with dirty water. Because St. Petersburg is the president's hometown.
Sopping wet leather shoes were no match for the standardissue leather kersey boots. But they hadn't given me those. Said there was a shortage of kersey leather in the country, and that kersey boots had gone out of style a long time ago, anyway. Not flashy enough, I was told.
Farid chased away a filthy crow sitting on the hood of the kozel and, cursing, tightened the metal wire around the bumper that fastened it to the body of the jalopy. The kozel was even more experienced than the driver. It had lost part of its engine in gang wars. Its gear box and suspension had been severely wounded, and its scratches and battle scars were too numerous to count. It had received a medal of honor for "Endurance," undergone treatment in the field hospital, and continued to serve under the proud moniker of G-Wagen, which some witty cynic had spelled out in black paint on the yellow hood.
After he had tightened the wire, Farid loaded himself into the vehicle and passed me a hand crank. I stuck the crank under the bumper. Mustering up all my strength, I grabbed the handle with both hands and gave it a turn clockwise. Nada.
"Harder," Farid said. "It's not a beer bottle."
"You shouldn't have stopped the engine."
"If you gave me more gas, I wouldn't have to."
Our jalopy started up on the fourth attempt. The joyful roaring of the engine resounded through the courtyard, its blue exhaust filling the air. I dropped the crank under the seat and jumped in. We were rolling. Finally.
We didn't have too far to go. Our precinct was based in Kupchino, a Petersburg bedroom community, settled at one time, according to legend, by merchants. Or maybe not. In any case, nowadays the people who lived here were just the same as the people living in any other part of Petersburg, and probably the entire country. The places we inhabit have no bearing on the way we think and live. That's a proven fact.
Our precinct covered fifty hectares, all told, and it counted about 100,000 people. They lived mainly in Khrushchev-era buildings — architectural monuments unprotected by either the government or UNESCO. The people who lived in them were responsible for their upkeep. The ones who didn't drink. I had only spent a few weeks here as a police inspector when I understood that was a clear minority. Very clear.
In addition to watching over the populace, my tasks included regular twentyfour-hour on-call duty. I had to go with the driver to all kinds of events that were not distinguished by any significant criminality: domestic violence, drunken brawls, petty vandalism, and other amoral phenomena that disrupted the peace of ordinary citizens. Naturally, my job was not just to go there, but to react quickly and adequately, adhering to the letter of the law, if possible. And if not — not adhering to it.
As I already mentioned, today was my debut; or, rather, my training day. Like any other novice, I was nervous. Thank goodness, before lunch it all went as smoothly as could be. No mass riots or technogenic catastrophes. A few scuffles between neighbors, and a fight in a café where a crusading customer refused to pay for an order that he had already more than half-consumed. Ismagilov had dealt with all these incidents without much effort. He never even pulled out the Jedi baton, a product of some factory's rubber division, from his broad belt. The fight was broken up and the brazen customer was shaken down for a few rubles with the use of the magic words "detention" and "downtown." Usually the Star Wars began after six in the evening, when the weary proletariat returned home after its labors and grabbed any means at hand for letting off steam and reducing stress. I was hoping that today wouldn't produce many marvels. You can't put too much strain on a lieutenant's shoulders that have yet to be tested, or on the brain of someone fresh out of engineering school.
I had never had to file paperwork on a murder — not when I was in college, or even in the service — so I was feeling some emotional anxiety. I just wasn't used to procedures like this. Actually, I had no experience whatsoever. They had taken us on a field trip to the city morgue during our training, but I pretended I was mortally ill and copped out of it. I had no desire to examine internal organs in their natural state. I'd rather look at a picture in a textbook on forensic medicine, or, better yet, not see it at all. Now I was reaping the questionable rewards of my own squeamishness. Farid didn't seem the least bit bothered by it. He'd seen it all in his ten years with our outfit. It was all still ahead of me, though. But there was nothing you could do about it. I had chosen this path myself when I decided to devote my younger years to fighting domestic crime, and, if I was lucky, to getting a place of my own in the bargain. It was cramped living in one small apartment with my parents and brothers.
Not long ago I had been at a funeral. A relative on my mother's side, an eighty-seven-year-old man, had died. We stood by the coffin in the morgue to say goodbye, everyone crying, of course. A few other coffins containing the deceased surrounded us. Suddenly, a seriously drunk fellow burst in, looked around, and then, pushing aside all my relatives, cried out, "Goodbye, Mama!" and flung himself into my dead relative's crossed arms. In spite of the tragic pathos of the moment, everyone standing around the coffin broke into laughter, myself included. After that everyone started crying again, but not like before. Laughter through tears; a patch of light, a patch of darkness ...
* * *
Next to a shopping center Driver slowed down and dashed out to buy cigarettes in a little dive with the nostalgic name 3.62. I seemed to remember that was how much a half-liter of vodka cost when I was a kid. Farid had a discount there — he checked out their daily scuffles. By the door a soaking wet beggar sat in the rain on a piece of cardboard, exhorting the public through a megaphone to donate money to him for bread. He amplified his voice without shame or timidity, like a guide on Nevsky Prospect inviting tourists on a canal boat ride. "Hurry up, hurry up! Just one piece of bread! Don't pass up your chance to help the needy. You won't be sorry in the next world!"
Coming out of the dive, Farid the Muslim sinned against the Koran yet again. Instead of extending charity as he was supposed to according to the one of the five pillars of Islam, he chased off the beggar. He called it "checking his license."
Our multicultural duo sped over to a nine-story building that rose up just behind the shopping center. A few minutes later the G-Wagen screeched to a halt by the entrance, next to an ambulance with a sleeping driver in it. Farid turned off the engine; leaving an empty cop car with the engine running wasn't advisable. There were always people willing to take it for a spin. This wasn't Beverly Hills, after all. Better to let the inspector spin the hand crank one more time.
I noticed a large warning sign on the moldy wall of the building:
DON'T STAND UNDER THE BALCONY DUE TO THE DANGER OF IT COLLAPSING!
Thanks to the residential supervisor for his concern. Next year the word "balcony" would have to be replaced with the word "wall."
We ducked into the entrance hall. It was so leaky and damp it seemed to be raining inside the building. I went up in the ramshackle elevator. Farid walked up to the fifth floor. They say that after a certain incident he had become "elevator shy." Once, some big bosses decided to check on how one of the then-inspectors was dealing with a routine domestic violence call. The bosses were big in the literal sense too — two of them two-hundred-pounders at the very least. The inspector was also not given to shunning God's bounty, judging by his amplitude. Plus Farid himself. The higher-ups didn't want to walk all the way up to the last floor, so they all squeezed into the elevator together. The elevator up and ground to a halt halfway; it couldn't cope with the load. To add insult to injury, not one of them was carrying a cell phone or a walkie-talkie. They called out to the residents for help. Like, "We're police, we're responding to a call, we're stuck! Call the repair service!" "Ah, the pigs? Well, you got just what you deserve!" It's no secret how ordinary citizens view us, in spite of the heroes on TV. Some of them even started jeering. "We're going to rip off your car while you're in there sweating!" Farid nearly had a stroke. They stood there in complete darkness between the fifth and sixth floors for nearly two hours, praying that the cable wouldn't snap. Since then Farid refuses to set foot in an elevator, even in his own building. He takes the stairs, and only the stairs. Besides, it's good for the heart.
The apartment where the drama was being played out was a completely ordinary, no-frills, working-class affair. Two small rooms, a kitchenette, and a narrow hallway. The deceased was lying on a bed in the room closest to the entryway, where his wife and son had carried him. His wife — his widow, rather — wasn't sobbing, as I would have expected. She sat silent at the head of the bed and stared at her husband. She was in shock.
A paramedic filled us in. The wife and son had been watching TV, while the head of the family was in the kitchen eating. He was a construction worker and was grabbing a quick meal; the construction site was next door, and it was cheaper to eat at home. He was running late, and swallowed a dumpling whole, it seemed, without chewing it. When he was choking, trying to cough it up, he fell and broke a plate. When the wife and son ran into the kitchen, he was writhing on the floor, clutching at his throat. The son rushed to the telephone, the wife tried to extract the dumpling, but it was lodged there and wouldn't budge. Asphyxiation. The paramedic had no doubts about the cause of death. An accident. He had removed the dumpling from the dead man himself.
After leaving us their number, the paramedics rushed off on another call. I went into the kitchen. A broken plate on the floor, a few stray dumplings in the corners — those were the only traces of the incident. I would probably agree with the paramedic that it seemed impossible to contrive an accident like that, to "make it happen" on its own. And there was no reason to, either. I was young and inexperienced, of course, but just by looking at the wife I could state with certainty that homicide was out of the question.
The son came into the kitchen: a kid, about sixteen, pale as a wall poster bleached by the sun. "I'll clean it up now," he said, nodding toward the shards.
"Don't do that. Go get the neighbors. We need two witnesses. And get your father's ID too."
While he was trying to talk the neighbors into coming over, I called Evseyev and reported the situation.
"Question the next of kin, and cough up a report for sending the body to the morgue," the duty officer said. "And get back here on the double. More reports are about to start pouring in. I'll send someone to pick up the body."
That was about what I had planned to do. Cough up a report and question the relatives, as they taught us in the training course.
I went back into the hallway. Without entering the room, I asked the widow to help her son find the documents. The woman nodded and left. I stood in the doorway, unwilling to go in and be face-to-face with the dead man. Like I said, I wasn't used to it. It's one thing at a funeral, but another thing entirely in domestic circumstances. I wasn't squeamish or suspicious, I didn't believe in the living dead, but I couldn't shake those zombie movies from my mind. Maybe I could just draw up the report right here in the doorway? I thought. It's not a murder, after all. There's no need to search for evidence or find fingerprints. Especially since they already moved the body from the kitchen into the room, disrupting the original circumstances of the incident ...
I peered at the dead man. He was clothed in the dark-green jacket that construction-site foremen usually wear. He must have really been in a hurry, since he didn't bother to take it off while he was eating. Poor guy. The paramedic had wrapped a bandage around his head and jaw, like someone with a toothache. Suddenly I imagined that the fellow was about to sit up, take off the bandage, and smile, saying that it was all a joke and everyone was invited in to finish off the dumplings.
"What's holding you back?" Farid's voice sounded somewhere behind me.
"I'm just not used to it, that's all."
"Aw, c'mon, he won't bite." He entered the room calmly and leaned over the builder's face. "It's as clear as day. He died all by himself. Nothing to be afraid of."
Sure. He won't bite ...
The neighbors arrived: two old ladies. As you'd expect, both of them shaking their heads, "what-a-pity" and "woe-is-me." I asked them to come into the room and observe the examination. I sat down on a stool by the head of the body and took out an official form. If this had been my hundredth case, I wouldn't have been nervous. I could have filled the thing out with just my left hand in five minutes. But a debut is a debut, so the whole thing took about forty minutes. I didn't want to show my inadequacy. Recalling the instructions they gave us during the course, I began describing the circumstances from the general to the specific, as clearly and legibly as possible, and without making any spelling errors. This wasn't exactly easy. First, I'm no Leo Tolstoy, and second, a dead man lying right next to you doesn't exactly inspire confidence. I couldn't find the right words. I kept losing my train of thought, so I ended up describing the clothes the dead man was wearing twice. I had no time to do it over, and you weren't allowed to cross things out, so I just left everything as it was. Farid checked in on me a few times and tried in annoyance to hurry me up. The old lady witnesses patiently carried out their duties as citizens, whispering about what a wonderful neighbor he had been, although sometimes he took a drop too much. I could have done with a little drink myself. Just a tad — for the confidence.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "St. Petersburg Noir"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Akashic Books.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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