Sergei, at Karpo’s insistence, had sat in the chair on the other side of the desk. Sergei was a former Mr. Universe contender. He had never finished among the top five, but once, in Helsinki, he had finished sixth. That was where a Danish businessman had seen him and offered him the job he now held, night manager of the hotel health club. The Danish businessman had been gay, but not obviously so. He had let Sergei know his preference for men during their conversation. Sergei was not gay, but Sergei had a family and needed a good job. The experience with the Danish man had not been at all as unpleasant as Sergei had expected. Now, all that Sergei wanted to do was cooperate with the pale unsmiling policeman in black and get back home for a few hours’ sleep.
“What happened last night?” asked Karpo.
“Happened? Nothing unusual. I left about one in the morning.
Mr. Lashkovich was here. And the other man.”
“Other man?”
“He came in when I was adjusting the weight machines. I check them every night before I leave. I heard the door open and heard Lashkovich’s voice. He was not a quiet man. I never really got a good look at the other man. But Raisa did.”
“The cleaning woman,” said Karpo.
“Yes, she got a good look, I think.”
“You left at one.”
“About one,” Sergei said. “Lashkovich and the man were still here. It wasn’t unusual for him to be here alone and lock the door when he left. He was a very influential man and I was told to do what he wanted done.”
“So Raisa and the two men were here alone for a while?”
“Yes, but Raisa was almost finished and probably left shortly after I did. Am I going to lose my job?”
“No,” said Karpo. “Unless you have done something wrong.
Have you done something wrong?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“In that case, you may leave. Send in Raisa.”
Sergei rose quickly, almost tipping the wooden chair over. He was out of the office in seconds.
The door opened again but it wasn’t the cleaning woman. It was Paulinin, distraught, his hair Einsteinian wild, his glasses slipping dangerously. He had come to the hotel at Karpo’s request to examine the pool and the shower and anyplace else where he might find even a trace of evidence.
Though he far preferred to work in his subbasement in Petrovka, the challenge of a crime scene intrigued him almost as much as the viscera of a corpse.
“I just called Petrovka,” Paulinin said, breathing quickly.
“They’ve taken the body, Lashkovich, turned it over to the. . the Tatar gang. I wasn’t finished with it. They’re going to bury him tomorrow. How can I check the evidence I gather here against the corpse if I have no corpse?”
“Who ordered the release of the corpse?” asked Karpo.
“Rostnikov, Porfiry Petrovich himself,” said Paulinin. “Is he mad? How can he take my corpse before I’m finished with it? There was so much more to learn. I was just getting to know him. He was just really beginning to speak to me.”
“Learn what you can here,” said Karpo. “Then we will take time for tea and biscuits. If Chief Inspector Rostnikov gave them the body, I am sure he had good reason.”
Paulinin calmed a bit, brushed back his hair, and adjusted his glasses. Tea and biscuits with the man he considered his only friend was calming, but not quite enough. “Porfiry Petrovich has gone mad,” Paulinin said, leaving the room with a shake of his head.
“That is the only explanation.”
There were many other explanations, as Karpo well knew. Rostnikov could have been threatened, bribed, ordered by a superior.
None of these possibilities was the least bit likely except the last.
Emil Karpo had no time for further speculation. Raisa Munyakinova had entered the small office and said, “Should I close the door?”
“Yes,” said Karpo, pointing to the chair from which Sergei had fled.
The woman closed the door and sat, looking up at the ghostly policeman, who now stood looking down at her from the other side of the desk she had dusted the night before.
Raisa Munyakinova could have been any age from forty to sixty.
She had the stoop-shouldered stance, the haggard and weathered face of the women who cleaned, baked, swept the streets, controlled crowds at theaters. They appeared interchangeable. Raisa was built like a block of concrete, generations of peasant stock, solid, reliable but eroding.
“Tell me about last night,” said Karpo.
“Mr. Lashkovich was killed,” she said softly, avoiding the policeman’s dark eyes.
“You saw him killed?”
“No. I was told this morning by Mr. Swartz, the hotel manager, who told me to come right away. I was asleep. I don’t get much sleep. I have many jobs.”
“You don’t work here full time?”
“No, I wish they would hire me. It would be so much easier than. .”
She trailed off and felt compelled to look at the somber white face above her.
“He was alive when you left?”
“Yes,” she said. “Sergei had already gone. I had done the shower floor and walls. They were mildewed, but I know how.”
“There was a man here with Lashkovich when you left.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding her head for emphasis.
“What did he look like? What did you hear?”
“The man was big, dark. He wore one of those light coats, tan.
He kept his hands in his pockets. He and Mr. Lashkovich argued while Mr. Lashkovich swam.”
“What did they argue about?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I couldn’t hear much in the shower and I tried to stay away from the pool. Mr. Lashkovich swam without any clothes on. He did not care if I saw him. Their voices were angry. The man in the tan coat was particularly loud and angry.”
“Would you recognize this man in the tan coat?” asked Karpo.
“I. . I don’t want to get in trouble,” she said. “I am frightened.”
“The man in the tan coat is almost certainly the one who killed Lashkovich. Don’t you want him caught?”
“I don’t care if he is caught,” she said sadly. “Mr. Lashkovich was good to me, left me tips, but I know he was in a Mafia, that he was a murderer. Let Sergei identify the man.”
“Sergei did not get a good look at him, or at least that is what he says.”
“I don’t know,” said Raisa, her eyes growing moist. “Whoever the man was, he might kill me if I identify him.”
“He may decide to kill you and Sergei anyway, to keep you from identifying him. Your best hope for safety is to identify him so we can arrest him. We have photographs you can look at.”
“I don’t know,” the woman said again. “I’m all alone. I work hard. I don’t want trouble.”
“What we want and what we must do are often quite different,” said Karpo.
The woman sat silently, looking at her thick hands and shaking her head. “All right,” she said finally with a huge sigh. “I’ll identify him if I can. When, where?”
“At Petrovka,” Karpo said. “We have photographs of members of various Mafias. We will start there.”
“We will start there,” Raisa repeated. “They will kill me. I know they will.”
“They will not,” said Karpo.
Something about the certainty with which the ghostly detective spoke made Raisa look up at him. What she saw and felt was a man who kept his word. She was a woman who also kept her word. She had little else left to her.
Night was falling. In the small cafe on Gorky Street, a young man with a baby face fingered the white scar on his nose, drank coffee very slowly, and spoke even more slowly. The two men with him, both considerably older, listened carefully, showing their full attention.
There was something both comic and frightening about the scene, but other patrons did their best not to pay attention or at least to disguise the fact that they were paying attention. It was something all Russians, particularly those who lived in Moscow, learned how to do at a very early age.