For the first few months of his life in the capital, Andrey had spent the weekends cabbing around the city in his old Ford, trying to make a little extra cash while getting to know the place. Andrey had never really known what to do with his free time. He didn’t read much, he hated TV, and he definitely hadn’t been raised to frequent the philharmonic. Andrey was a practical kind of guy, so he got into the habit of using breaks in his work schedule to fix things up at the dacha he was renting. He chopped firewood for the stove or did laundry. But that kind of thing wasn’t much fun, either, so he was always glad when they piled on work at the office.
Andrey vaguely understood that he was one of the lucky few in the world who found real satisfaction in the job he got paid for at the end of the month. This satisfaction was just as strong as, say, the pleasure his father had gotten from his weekend drinking bouts, or that his mother seemed to get out of gossiping on the phone for hours. So for Andrey, the commute to work at Petrovka was a secret source of joy.
And then there was the fun of driving. Just a second ago he had cut off a sporty BMW with a snotty-nosed kid at the wheel. What was she going to do with all that horsepower, anyway? Andrey had a good reason for having a souped-up engine, not to mention the pleasure he got from seeing the shock on people’s faces when his cheap-looking car left them in the dust.
“So your daddy bought you a car and a license, but not a brain?” He laughed. “Come on, you can do better than that!” he scolded the anonymous father, who looked, in his imagination, like the Monopoly Man.
Andrey turned skillfully into his usual parking spot. The phone squawked in his pocket, and the low voice of Andrey’s boss, Colonel Anyutin, barked an order: “Report to my office in five minutes!” Andrey scowled.
Five minutes later, he pushed open Anyutin’s office door—only to behold, of all things, a girl. He’d never seen her before, but she was just the type of brat he loved cutting off.
“Ms. Maria Karavay,” the Colonel announced. “Soon-to-be graduate of the law school at Moscow State.”
Well, sure, Andrey thought, his irritation growing. It wouldn’t be some technical school in Nowheresville.
The girl stood up and extended a narrow hand. Andrey ignored it and just nodded once.
“Andrey Yakovlev.”
“Andrey is one of our top detectives,” said Anyutin, the compliment dripping with honey.
Would you like a little lemon with that, Mr. Chief? Andrey asked his boss—silently, of course. Anyutin normally spoke in the sort of choppy prose you’d expect from a soldier, and usually for the purpose of making heads roll.
“I’m entrusting you to Captain Yakovlev. You’ll be working together,” Anyutin continued in a melody like a nightingale’s song. “He should be able to teach you a good deal.”
Teach her? Who is she? wondered Andrey.
Then Anyutin turned to him.
“Ms. Karavay is working on her honors thesis—”
So that’s what her daddy bought her, Andrey concluded.
“On a very interesting topic,” Anyutin continued. “Serial murders passed off as accidents. She’ll be a wonderful assistant to you!”
Andrey forced himself to look at the girl again. She was writing a paper on serial killers? Kid must be sick in the head.
This last thought must have been written all over Andrey’s face, because Anyutin politely asked the girl to step outside a moment. As soon as the door closed behind her, Anyutin spun around to face Andrey. The fatherly expression was gone.
MASHA
Masha leaned against the wall outside Anyutin’s office. It wasn’t hard to imagine what was going on inside. Anyutin was spelling out for the disagreeable dude in cheap Turkish jeans that she was payback for some unofficial deal (as if the guy hadn’t already figured that out) and that he would have to let the payback pretend to help him.
Worst of all, she really was part of a deal, a pawn in someone else’s game. But without that deal she would never have gotten this internship at Petrovka, and she simply had to be here. After having her forced on him like this, Masha thought gloomily, the guy with the jeans was sure to hate her and gossip with all the other male detectives about her, and Masha would be the dumb kid nobody would deign to trust with anything important. Everyone would look at her with that knowing chill in their eyes, and wait impatiently until she finally relieved them of the burden of her presence.
She wondered if she really should have taken a court internship like everyone else, making copies and coffee. That dark train of thought was interrupted by the door swinging open. Yakovlev flew out, his expression even surlier than she’d expected.
“Follow me,” he snapped, then led her down several long corridors to the door of a different office. She took in a windowsill sporting a long-dead cactus, a couple of desks piled with overstuffed folders, and about ten people who paid Masha no attention whatsoever.
Masha felt a glimmer of hope. Having outside parties around made it remotely possible that the detective’s anger would dissipate a bit and that Masha would have a chance to join the team, who, she desperately hoped, would treat her a little better than this clod.
The captain, meanwhile, shoved some files to one side and pointed to the newly cleared patch of tabletop.
“This is your workplace,” he told her drily, putting invisible quotation marks around “work” to make it clear that working was the last thing he expected her to do.
People who got to Petrovka due to their connections were only supposed to sit there and wear out the seat of their pants.
ANDREY
What a pile of crap, Andrey thought as he snuck an occasional glance at his unwelcome neighbor. Sergey sure had picked the wrong time to be out sick. If he were here, they would have dumped this little brat on somebody else.
They say there’s such a thing as love at first sight. Andrey didn’t think he had ever experienced such a phenomenon. But what he felt now was the exact opposite. There she was, this Maria—Karavay, was it? Even her last name sounded idiotic! Sitting at the desk like she had every right to be there. She was tall, which happened to be in style right now (Andrey didn’t like tall girls on principle—the operating principle, in this case, being his own height). Her hair was straight, her eyes some light color that was hard to define, her nose annoyingly proportionate to her face. He was never going to be able to get any work done with her sitting there irritating him. Everything about her pissed him off! Her face, bare of makeup; her hands, nails cut short, no rings; her black T-shirt, black jeans, and moccasins. She sat there looking at him, and waited. What for? he wondered.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” the girl said. Her voice was soft and serpentine. “I know I must seem like a burden.” Andrey felt himself blush, and his Adam’s apple jumped. “But… do you think you could give me some sort of assignment?”
What is this, kindergarten? Baby needs an assignment? Fine, Andrey thought, and gave her a smile he thought must be laden with meaning.
“You’re not a burden, Intern Karavay. As for an assignment… it should be something to complement your academic research, right?” And he grinned even wider, crocodile-style. “Why don’t we have you collect information, let’s say a statistical report, on all the homicides passed off as accidents over the past two years?”