“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?