People Who Walk In Darkness (Inspector Rostnikov)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “I’ll remember,” Sasha said.

  “Good,” she said.

  “Can you make a copy of the woman’s photograph?”

  “I’ll have it printed in the morning.”

  Sasha seemed to have a burst of energy. He rose and shook his head to scatter the cloud that clung to him. For now, self-pity would have to wait. He could not and did not wish to ignore the call to play the game.

  “Let us go,” he said.

  Elena rose to join him.

  “To a few hours of professional evasion from our Ukrainian policeman. He is very clever, I think.”

  “I think so also,” said Sasha. “I would not want it any other way.”

  Jan Pendowski allowed himself a grin, but it was a cautious grin. He was no fool, though he knew from experience that he could be fooled. He had never met a man, woman, or bird in the park that could not be fooled. So he was careful.

  He would have preferred to meet Rochelle Tanquay in his apartment, but she had called and made it clear that, though he could name the place, she would come only if it were reasonably public.

  Jan had made a suggestion and she had agreed on both a time and place. The conversation had been brief.

  He had slipped her the note, in French, under the table at the cafe with Oxana sitting directly across from him. He had written it right in front of Oxana in his notebook and said, “Something I must remember to do.”

  He had been reasonably certain from the way the French woman’s eyes had met his that she would not reveal the message to Oxana. Jan’s goal was dual purpose. Seduction of course, but also possible business which might have to come first.

  Now she approached with a smile, wearing a quite casual black dress with a fashionable white cashmere sweater tied around her neck. He had time as she moved to his table to consider what it would be like to watch her remove those clothes.

  The dark bar was not crowded at this early afternoon hour. The sun was going down and the dim light from beyond the small amber windows cast long, soft shadows that were beginning to merge with the darkness. In a few moments, the man behind the bar, who was one of Jan’s best informants, would turn on a few lights, though not enough to alter the mood. There were a few people in the bar: a furtive couple, the man in middle age, the woman quite young; a lone man who Jan looked at twice because the detective felt that he had seen him somewhere before; and an overly made-up woman in her sixties with two full shopping bags. The couple and the lone man who seemed familiar were drinking afternoon wine. The shopping woman was drinking a tall glass of sterner stuff.

  Jan half rose as Rochelle reached the table and placed her small handbag on the empty chair next to her. She sat facing Jan rather than next to him.

  “A drink?” he asked in French.

  “Wine.”

  The remainder of the conversation was in French.

  A red-nailed finger touched the small earring in her right ear. The last of the sunlight caught a jewel and sent a brief flash of yellow-white. Jan Pendowski was a romantic.

  Jan nodded to the man behind the bar, who had been admiring the policeman’s companion.

  “Small talk?” he asked.

  “A little,” she said. “It delays the scripted seduction you have planned.”

  “Good,” he said. “Do you like Kiev?”

  “Not particularly,” she said as the bartender brought two wine glasses and a small bottle of his finest, which he poured with panache.

  Jan was amused. He said nothing until the man had gone.

  “He wanted to get a closer look at you,” said Jan. “He does not usually provide such service. But I am sure you are accustomed to such attentions.”

  “Have I had men stare at me with less than brotherly intentions? Yes, and may it never stop.”

  They touched glasses.

  “Ukrainian wine,” he said.

  “Not bad. Not French, but not bad at all.”

  “Are we finished with the small talk?” he asked sitting back.

  “You are an intriguing man, if not a sophisticated one.”

  “My charm lies in my Polish stock. Earthy.”

  “And confident,” she said, taking a second sip of wine. “I am not going to bed with you.”

  “Then we can come together on the floor.”

  “Your persistence is admirable. I will amend my statement. I am not going to bed with you tonight.”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  She laughed. He liked it. Her red lips opened and her white teeth spread. And she laughed.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Normally I would expect some effort at seduction but Oxana and I must leave tomorrow, and it has been several months since I’ve been with a man.”

  “Honesty,” he said. “I drink to it.”

  And he did. So did she.

  “We will get back to that,” he went on. “Do you make much money as a fashion editor?”

  “Much? Let us say I do not have to concern myself with the cost of groceries. I get most of my clothing free from designers, and I put all my meals on the magazine’s credit card.”

  “But you are not rich?”

  “I am not rich. Is there a point to this?” she asked.

  “Would you like to be rich?”

  She tilted her head provocatively to one side and said, “No, I wish to gradually descend into abject poverty and end my days selling magazines behind a counter at the Gare de Lyon.”

  “Seriously,” he said quite seriously.

  “I would like to be rich.”

  “Someone at a jewelry shop in Paris, a shop whose name you would recognize, is waiting for a beautiful woman to arrive and present him with a package of diamonds. In exchange for the diamonds, the person in the jewelry shop will give the beautiful woman a wrapped gift box. Inside the gift box will be more than two million euros.”

  “You have these diamonds?”

  “I have these diamonds. Oxana is supposed to deliver them to that shop in Paris, but I am confident she plans to keep the money.”

  “As a gift to herself?” said Rochelle.

  “As a gift to herself, yes. She plans to keep the money and go somewhere, possibly New York or Singapore or Australia.”

  “I hope she does not plan to do this before the layout I have planned.”

  “Given our Oxana’s vanity, I am confident she would not miss an opportunity to see pages of herself in your magazine.”

  “Why should you trust me?”

  “You would be very easy to find and I think that while you wish to be very rich you do not wish to lose your identity and your world of Parisian fashion.”

  Her smile answered his question. He was sure he had her.

  “I would not be at all surprised if Oxana plans to kill me to be sure I did not come after her. There are great advantages to her killing me.”

  “She would not have to fly to Singapore.”

  “Precisely.”

  He did not add that he planned to kill Oxana so that he could keep all the money and not worry about her threatening him with the revelation of his history of corruption.

  “How much of this gift would be mine?” she asked.

  “One-third, at least six hundred thousand euros. And there is a bonus.”

  She looked at him with curiosity.

  “I will come to Paris, where we can celebrate.”

  “And that is my bonus?”

  “That is my bonus,” he said with a smile.

  “And what of Oxana? She just accepts her fate and the loss of the six hundred thousand.”

  “She has too much to lose to complain,” he said, finishing the last of his wine and pouring more for both of them.

  It was a statement that did not bear close examination, and Rochelle Tanquay did not engage in even cursory examination.

  “It is much less likely that a French woman who works for a fashionable and famous magazine would be examined by customs than a Russian national,” he said. “The plan has many advantages.”
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  “So I see,” Rochelle said.

  “To our success,” said Jan. “And to tomorrow morning in my apartment, where I will give you the diamonds and we will have a bon voyage party.”

  They clinked glasses as Jan reached over to put his free hand on hers. She turned her hand palm up and held his.

  The lone man drinking in the corner watched them and got up.

  Jan had just enough time after he placed Rochelle in a taxi. They had kissed as he opened the door, a kiss that suggested to him a passion that was to come in the morning.

  He was pleased with himself. Certainly something could go wrong, but he had improvised his way through more than a dozen years as a policeman. He was confident that he could do it for at least the few more days he needed.

  When he got back to his office, the Russians were waiting. He shook hands and slipped behind his desk in the small room. His wooden office chair let out a small screech as he leaned back.

  “Found anything?” asked Elena.

  “Promising leads on your model,” Jan said, looking down at a pad on his desk as if trying to remember her name. “Oxana Balakona. I’m certain we will locate her within twenty-four hours.”

  “And the diamonds?” Sasha said.

  Jan did not like the haunted way the man looked at him, but until proven otherwise he would assume that the Russian had seen too many ghosts, as had many who dealt with the violence of a big city. Certainly Moscow was still more violent than Kiev, though that might well change in the coming years as prosperity spread throughout the former Soviet states.

  “If she has the diamonds, we will get them back for you,” said Jan, confidently folding his hands on the desk and leaning forward with sincerity.

  “Maybe she has turned them over to an accomplice,” said Sasha.

  Elena touched his leg with her hands out of the sightline of Pendowski. It was a warning that they were dealing with a shrewd adversary in his own country.

  “I have a list of modeling agencies if you would like to share it with me,” Pendowski said. “I can take half and you could take half. Speed up the search for Balakona, if you think you can find your way around the city.”

  “I am familiar with Kiev,” said Sasha. “My wife was born here. I’ve been here many times.”

  “Your wife’s family lives here?” Pendowski asked.

  “And so does she,” said Sasha.

  Jan Pendowski nodded and said nothing. He knew all this. He had checked the background of Elena and Sasha for information he might use to slow them down or protect himself. Jan Pendowski knew where Maya Tkach lived with her two children. He knew where she worked. He knew the name of the man she was seeing, another reason perhaps why Tkach looked so ghostly.

  “Here is a copy of the list of modeling agencies I made yesterday,” said Pendowski. “Two sheets. You take the second. I’ve already started on the first.”

  He handed the sheet to Elena. Elena folded it evenly in half and placed it in her bag. She had no intention of calling on any agency on the list. Oxana Balakona had already been found.

  The task had now changed. The one to watch was the policeman sitting across the desk.

  “Then that is all for now,” Elena said, rising.

  “Dinner?” asked Jan Pendowski.

  “No, thank you,” said Elena. “We have a report to write.”

  “Sure? I know a small Mongolian restaurant where they make a yak dish like nothing you have ever eaten.”

  “A roast leg of yak sounds inviting, but not tonight,” said Elena, now standing.

  Sasha rose too.

  “I will drive you back to your hotel,” Pendowski said, also rising.

  “We would appreciate that,” said Elena.

  “I will show you a few sights on the way. They will not be out of the way.”

  On the trip back to the hotel, Pendowski pointed out sights and kept up an engaging line of patter.

  “We are in Andriyvsky Uzviz, a part of the Old Kiev Preserve. Once this was the shortest way to connect the princely Upper Town with the commercial Podil. Now it is a place for outdoor fairs and concerts. There are art galleries, shops, artists’ studios. This is the place to come to find antiques and paintings. You should take some time to come back here. I will be happy to show you around.”

  “Thank you,” said Elena.

  In front of the hotel, he arranged to meet them in the early afternoon after they had spent the morning on their list. Elena and Sasha agreed. As he drove away, Elena said, “Perhaps we should watch him tonight.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” said Sasha. “He seems particularly interested in our spending the morning looking for a modeling agency that is certainly not on the list in your pocket.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Elena agreed.

  It was the third day. In two days, if the current team of detectives under Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had not made impressive progress in their investigation, they might all be looking at new and not very satisfying assignments.

  She wondered, as they took the elevator up to their rooms, if it might be possible for Rostnikov simply to be reassigned to another department, or even another city, and bring his own team with him. She wondered about her relationship to Iosef. She wondered if she should call him. She wondered if maybe she should have accepted Pendowski’s offer of roast Mongolian yak.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You know this man, Lillita?” asked Porfiry Petrovich.

  The little girl looked at old Boris sitting in the corner of the meeting room with his arms folded. He was bored. He had seen enough of little girls being paraded before him. He had told the one-legged policeman that the ghost girl was not one of the girls in Devochka.

  Lillita was no more than ten. She was very thin, but not because food was unavailable. He had spoken to eleven little girls so far this morning, and all of them had been examples of baby fat or healthy fullness. This one was different. She had short, dull amber hair, a pinched, sad face, and moist eyes. Her lower lip jutted out just slightly in what may have been a pout. She wore a dark woolen skirt and a yellow shirt with buttons. She kept pulling up her sleeves, and they kept slipping down.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s Boris.”

  She had not bothered to look at the old man.

  “You know what his job is?”

  “He goes into the mine. He knows the mine. He takes people around.”

  “I am responsible for much more,” said Boris defensively.

  The girl shrugged. She didn’t care. She had been doing her best to keep from looking at the plate of cookies on the table next to her.

  Rostnikov had moved his chair in front of the table to be closer to the girls, but he was careful to gauge the distance so that he allowed plenty of space.

  “Have a cookie,” said Rostnikov. “Have two cookies.”

  The girl rose slightly from her chair and reached over to take two cookies.

  “Spasiba,” she said, holding the cookies lightly in her hand.

  “You know about the dead people in the mine?” asked Rostnikov, reaching for two cookies.

  “Yes.”

  “You knew Anatoliy Lebedev?”

  “Old Lebedev,” she said, watching Rostnikov eat a cookie. “I did not know the American.”

  “He was a Canadian.”

  “They are the same very much,” she said, putting a cookie cautiously to her mouth.

  “They might not agree,” said Rostnikov.

  Boris mumbled something, wanting to be heard but not wanting Rostnikov to know that he wanted to be heard. It was a very Russian way of making a point. And so, Boris had mumbled, “I will be dead and buried before he finishes talking to little girls and feeding them cookies.”

  Lillita Kapronopovich took a deliberate bite of her cookie.

  “You think there is a girl with a lantern who wanders through the mine?” asked Porfiry Petrovich.

  “Yes,” the girl said.

  “Who is she?”

 
“A ghost.”

  “Whose ghost?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve heard, but I would like you to tell me.”

  “The ghost of a girl who died in the mine,” she explained, “the old mine, when it first opened, the year my grandfather was born. They had little girls carrying lanterns and crawling into holes where adults could not go. The roof fell down and crushed her. Only her lantern was left. She haunts the mine now because she knows she should not have been sent down there. She knows. She tricks men into going into little spaces and then kills them.”

  “She makes the room fall?”

  “She stabs them in the face,” said the girl sweetly, finishing her cookie.

  Boris groaned. He had heard twenty versions of this tale from little girls this day and most of them had gotten it wrong. Boris knew the true story, though he was not quite sure how he had heard it. He took it on faith that his version was the right one.

  “I have two girls around your age at home in Moscow,” Porfiry Petrovich said.

  “You are too old to have little girls.”

  “They are not my children or my grandchildren. They and their grandmother live with my wife and me.”

  “In Moscow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it really warm half of the year in Moscow?”

  “It is,” he said.

  “I think I will live in Moscow when I get older.”

  “St. Petersburg is better,” said Boris, and then added, “What am I saying? I don’t want to be followed by little girls. Forget it. You are right. Moscow is better.”

  The girl gave Boris a tolerant look.

  “Who told you the story of the ghost girl in the mine?”

  “My grandfather,” the child said.

  “Where is he?”

  “In his little room cleaning his guns. He thinks the Japanese are going to come and try to kill us all. He is a little crazy.”

  “I think I would like to talk to your grandfather,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

  “Why?” asked Boris. “She told you. He is crazy.”

  “I will humor him.”

  “Can I go now?” asked the girl.

  “Yes, and take two more cookies.”

  She got off the chair and took two more cookies.