Half an hour later, I realised Tolik was right. Maybe I had good reason to feel offended by the observers’ invasion of my privacy. But Boris Ignatievich had as much reason as I did.
‘The boss has an alibi,’ I said. ‘Indisputable. For two incidents he has four witnesses. And for one – almost the entire Watch.’
‘Was that the hunt for that Dark One who went crazy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, in theory, you could have killed the Dark Ones. Quite easily. And I’m sorry, Anton, but every one of the killings happens when you’re in an excited state. As if you weren’t completely in control of yourself.’
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘I believe you. What shall I do with the file?’
‘Delete it.’
Tolik thought for a moment.
‘I don’t have anything valuable on here. I think I’ll run a low-level format. The disk’s long overdue for a clean-out.’
‘Thanks.’ I closed the dossier on the boss. ‘That’s it, I’ll deal with the others myself.’
‘Sure,’ said Tolik as he overcame the computer’s righteous indignation and it began digesting itself.
‘Go check on the girls,’ I suggested. ‘And look disapproving for a change. I’m sure they’re playing cards in there.’
‘All in a day’s work, I suppose,’ Tolik agreed. ‘When will you be through here?’
‘In a couple of hours.’
‘I’ll call in.’
He went off to our ‘girls’, two young programmers who dealt with the Watch’s official activity. I carried on working. Semyon was next.
Two and a half hours later I tore my eyes away from the computer, massaged the back of my neck with my palms – it always cramps up when I sit there hunched over the terminal like that – and turned on the coffee machine.
Neither the boss, nor Ilya, nor Semyon could be the unhinged killer of Dark Ones. They all had alibis – and some of them were absolutely watertight. For instance, Semyon had managed to spend the entire night of one of the murders negotiating with the senior management of the Day Watch. Ilya had been on secondment in Sakhalin – they’d screwed things up so badly over there that they’d needed back-up from Moscow …
I was the only one left under suspicion.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Tolik, but I went through the data again anyway. It was all very clear. Not a single alibi.
The coffee was disgusting, sour, the filter couldn’t have been changed for ages. I gulped down the hot swill, staring at the screen, then took out my mobile and dialled the boss’s number.
‘Yes, Anton.’
He always knew who was calling him.
‘Boris Ignatievich, only one of the four can be suspected.’
‘Which one?’
The boss’s voice was dry and official. But somehow I suddenly got this picture of him sitting half-naked on a leather sofa, with a glass of champagne in one hand and Olga’s hand in the other, holding the phone in place with his shoulder, or levitating it beside his ear …
‘Tut-tut,’ the boss rebuked me. ‘You lousy clairvoyant. So who’s under suspicion?’
‘I am.’
‘I see.’
‘You knew it,’ I said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘There was no need to get me to process that dossier. You could have done it yourself. That means you wanted me to be convinced of the danger.’
‘That could be,’ the boss said with a sigh. ‘What are you going to do, Anton?’
‘Start packing my bag for jail.’
‘Come round to my office. In … er … in ten minutes.’
‘Okay.’ I switched off my phone.
First I went to see how the programmers were doing. Tolik was still there with them, and they were hard at work.
The Watch didn’t really have any need for these two worthless workers. Their security clearance was low, so we still had to do almost everything ourselves. But where else could we find work for two sorceresses as low-level as these two? If only they’d have agreed to live ordinary lives … but no, they wanted the ‘romance’ of working for the Watch … So we’d invented jobs for them.
They mostly just whiled away the time, surfing the net and playing games, their favourites being various kinds of patience.
Tolik was at one of the spare PCs – we had plenty of hardware around the place. Yulia was sitting very close to him, twitching her mouse around on its mat.
‘Is that what you call computer skills training?’ I asked, gazing at the monsters hurtling round the screen.
‘There’s nothing better than computer games for improving skill with the mouse,’ Tolik replied innocently.
‘Well …’ I couldn’t think of any response.
It was a long time since I’d played video games. The same went for most other members of the Watch. Killing evil vermin in a cartoon became less interesting once you’d met it face to face. Unless, that is, you’d already lived a couple of hundred years and built up reserves of cynicism, like Olga …
‘Tolik, I probably won’t be back in today,’ I said.
‘Uhuh.’ He nodded, without any sign of surprise. None of us has really strong powers of prevision, but we sense little things like that immediately.
‘Galya, Lena, see you later,’ I said to the girls. Galya twittered something polite, trying to look entirely absorbed in her work. Lena asked:
‘Can I leave early today?’
‘Of course.’
We don’t lie to each other. If Lena asks, it means she really needs to leave early. We don’t lie. But sometimes we might just leave something unsaid …
The boss’s desk was in a state of total confusion. Pens, pencils, sheets of paper, printouts of reports, dull, exhausted magic crystals.
But the crowning glory of this mess was a lit spirit lamp, with some white powder roasting over it in a crucible. The boss was stirring it thoughtfully with the tip of his expensive ink pen, obviously expecting this to produce some kind of effect. But the powder seemed to be doggedly ignoring both the heat and his stirring.
‘Here.’ I put the disk down in front of the boss.
‘What are we going to do?’ Boris Ignatievich asked without even looking up. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, his shirt was crumpled and his tie had slid to one side.
I stole a glance at the sofa. Olga wasn’t in the office, but there was an empty champagne bottle standing on the floor, with two glasses.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t killed any Dark Ones … not these Dark Ones. You know that.’
‘Sure, I know.’
‘But I can’t prove it.’
‘By my reckoning we’ve got two or three days,’ said the boss. ‘Then the Day Watch will bring a formal charge against you.’
‘It wouldn’t take much to arrange a false alibi.’
‘And would you agree to that?’ Boris Ignatievich enquired.
‘Of course not. Can I ask one question?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where does this information come from? The photos and videos?’
The boss paused for a moment.
‘I thought that would be it. You’ve seen my dossier, Anton. Was it any less intrusive?’
‘No, I suppose not. That’s why I’m asking. Why do you allow information like that to be gathered?’
‘I can’t forbid it. Monitoring is carried out by the Inquisition.’
I just managed to bite back the stupid question: ‘But does it really exist?’ My face probably said it for me anyway.
The boss carried on looking at me for a moment or two as if he was expecting further questions and then went on:
‘Let’s get to the point, Anton. From this moment on you must never be left alone. Maybe you can go to the lavatory on your own, but at all other times you must have two or three witnesses with you. If we’re lucky, there could be another killing.’