He found Dr. Vostov at the swimming pool. He was sitting on a white-enameled chair, under a broad red-and-white umbrella on a stand, supervising therapy for an ancient quartet in the shallow water. Vostov, a round man of average height, with very curly black hair peppered with gray, was wearing sunglasses, which he had to lift up constantly because he was taking notes. Between notes, he watched a burly woman therapist in the water take the quartet through their routine.
"Dr. Vostov?" Rostnikov asked.
Vostov, absorbed in his work, looked up, surprised. His skin, Rostnikov could now see, was pale.
"I am Inspector Rostnikov, MVD."
Vostov seemed unsure about whether or not to rise. He started up and then changed his mind, lifting his sunglasses to take a look at the policeman.
"I'm supervising," Vostov said quite apologetically. "Would you like to sit while…?"
"It is a bit difficult for me to get up and down,'' Rostnikov said. "Old injury.
I would prefer for the moment to stand."
"You are a patient here?"
"No, my wife. Georgi Vasilievich was a… a colleague."
"Ah," said Vostov. "I see. Yes, I remember. He was some sort of government-"
And then to the therapist in the water: "Work the legs, Ludmilla, the legs. Two more minutes."
His attention returned to Rostnikov, who stood patiently.
"Seawaterinthepool," whispered Vostov. "Buoyant, curative. Seawater and very little sunshine. They come for the sun and sea air.
They're half right. The sun will kill them. Show me a pale man or woman and I'll show you a potentially healthy person."
"Interesting theory," said Rostnikov. "Vasilievich's body. I would like to see it."
Vostov looked bewildered. He rose, tucking his notebook into a pocket of the white hospital jacket he wore open over a rumpled suit.
"I don't know if it is still here," said Vostov. "They called and said they would like to pick it up this afternoon."
"They?" asked Rostnikov.
"Family," said Vostov. "At least I think so. I didn't talk to them."
"Let's look at the body," said Rostnikov.
"Two full minutes more, Ludmilla," Vostov called back as he moved away from the pool.
Ludmilla didn't bother to nod or answer.
Georgi Vasilievich's was not the only body in the cool white room.
"There are three others," Vostov whispered, moving past two waist-high carts on which bodies lay covered with sheets. "Sometimes there are none. Sometimes… you know. Old people, sick people."
"Yes," Rostnikov whispered as they approached the third cart.
Each morgue had its own rules, Rostnikov knew. Hospital rooms of death were equally divided between those in which you were expected to whisper and those in which you were not.
"Here," said Vostov, stopping in front of the third cart and pulling back the sheet.
Vasilievich was smiling. Rostnikov had seen many corpses, knew the rictus of death. This was not such a smile.
"Heart," said Vostov quietly. "Not fully unexpected."
Rostnikov pulled back the sheet, keeping Vasilievich's lower half covered. Vasilievich was a very hairy man. Vostov stood silently, sunglasses now in his breast pocket, while the policeman examined the hands of the corpse, turning them over.
"We will, of course, have him washed completely before his family-"
"Don't," said Rostnikov, moving to the foot of the table to examine the corpse's feet and legs.
"Don't…?"
"Leave the body as it is," Rostnikov said softly. "Where are his clothes, the ones he was wearing?"
That Dr. Vostov did not know. He had to summon an aide, a very tall blond man with an enormous nose, who summoned an assistant, a woman with very thick glasses, who acted as if they had interrupted her in the middle of sex, which was highly unlikely, or food, which was a far greater possibility.
"He died peacefully," Vostov said with a little laugh as they waited, a laugh that was intended to convey that the policeman, who had asked that the body not be touched, was inappropriately thinking like a policeman, that Dr. Vostov had seen far more of death and knew it well and professionally.
"Where was he?" Rostnikov said, covering Georgi Vasilievich's face with the sheet. "Where was he found?"
"On a wooden deck chair facing the sea," Vostov said, pointing upward. "He must have gotten up early. Many of our patients have difficulty sleeping."
"Did anyone see him on the deck before his body was found?" asked Rostnikov. He was moving around the room now, slowly.
"No. You mean when he went out? No. He was found very early, and our-"
Vostov was cut short by the appearance of the woman with thick glasses, who dropped a duffel-bag-sized yellow plastic bag on an empty cart and walked out without a word.
"May I ask what you are looking for, Comrade Inspector?" Vostov asked, moving around to watch the policeman open the yellow bag and remove trousers, jacket, shirt, underwear, sox, and shoes, all of which he examined carefully as they spoke.
"You may."
"Then I'm asking," said Vostov, considering now the possibility that this barrel of a policeman was a bit dimwitted.
Rostnikov dropped the clothes back in the yellow bag.
"I want you to lock this bag someplace safe," said Rostnikov. "You will be held personally responsible. Then I want an autopsy."
Dr. Vostov could not control his sigh of exasperation. Less than a year ago one would not have dared to show exasperation with the police, but this was a new era that had touched even the Crimea.
"But, Inspector," he said as Rostnikov handed him the bag and moved to the door through which they had entered. "People die here almost every day. If we took the time to perform pathology-"
"He was murdered," said Rostnikov. "Please take me to his room."
"Murdered? No, no, no. He had a heart attack. I…" Dr. Vostov moved in front of Rostnikov to face him. Rostnikov stopped and looked at the doctor patiently.
"There is dirt on the palms of both of Georgi Vasilievich's hands," Rostnikov explained as people passed them in the corridor. "That same dirt is on the knees of his trousers. It is not on his face. It is not on his shirt or jacket. When I saw him last night, shook his hand, it was clean, his pants were clean. At some point between the time he left my hotel and the time he was found dead, Vasilievich knelt on the ground with his palms in the dirt. Why would he do that?"
Dr. Vostov pondered the question and tried to come up with an answer, but he had none.
"That doesn't-" he began.
"There is also dirt on the back of his right hand and the knuckle of that hand-"
"He had arthritis," Dr. Vostov almost pleaded.
"The knuckle is broken on his middle finger," said Rostnikov.
"Broken?"
"Someone made Georgi Vasilievich kneel, put his hands out and his head down, and then they stepped on his hand. Take me to his room."
Dr. Vostov shook his head as if this were simply all wrong, as if, given a few moments, he could explain it all. He began walking to the stairway and then up.
"Why would anyone do that?" Vostov asked.
"To get him to tell them something," said Rostnikov, doing his best to keep up with the doctor, who now seemed to be in quite a hurry.
"Wait, wait. You mean some gang, kids, bums… Maybe they were just… maybe robbery, beating for fun," Vostov said. "It happens. Even here it happens.
Kids from the city on vacation with their parents. Bored. Picking on the old people, the sick people," he went on, trying to keep the conversation quiet.
"They didn't take his wallet and money, and they brought him back to the sanitarium. Not kids, not bums. They broke only one knuckle," Rostnikov said.