She waved him to a chair beside her. “So tell me, what of your investigations?”
Kazakov remained where he was. “I have none. If I did, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
Again that slight arch of the brow. Then she puffed on her cigar as she studied him. “My, you are an angry one. But no one is angry at the Red Veil. I will not allow it. It is as simple as that.” She nodded as if that ended the matter and leaned forward to pat the chair. “Come. Come. Sit. My sources tell me that it was you who led the investigation into the deaths of those children.”
Kazakov stiffened. This was clearly Rostoff asking—he could almost see the detektiv inspektor’s hands making her lips move. Was Rostoff truly so clumsy? Was this woman that obvious or did she just not care? Or was this some game Rostoff was playing that Kazakov couldn’t yet understand? Perhaps a warning not to continue looking into the case as he was doing?
He shook his head and shrugged. “It is not my case anymore. I believe it is closed.”
Frau Zelinka actually pouted. “Come, come. You disappoint me and I so hate to be disappointed. Tell me the story. The Muslim boy, the German girl? Both found one day apart. It was in all the papers along with so much speculation. Surely there is more to such a tragic tale. It is most romantic if what the papers say is true. Of course, it is a warning tale, too. You would be the right man to look into such a sad case, for I think you are a sad man, too.” She shook her head. “So dedicated, or so I’ve been told. Chai? It must be cold outside.” She nodded at the tray with the tea pot between them.
Was it as simple as that? She simply wanted to gossip? Could he learn something from this woman who had advised a president? Perhaps there was something other than money that had her doing Rostoff’s bidding.
He finally nodded at the offered tea and sat on the edge of the empty chair. She leaned forward in what could only be a practiced maneuver and the folds of her kimono bodice slid open to reveal shadows and curves of creamy flesh. His groin tightened. It had been a very long time since he had been with a woman, but Rostoff was not going to learn anything from him this way.
She filled a cup and offered it to him with a smile. “Well? Tell me a story?”
“There’s nothing to tell. It is over. They are dead. At whose hand I don’t know.”
She pouted at him. “You do not play your part in this little party, Detektiv. Always you must play your part or the pleasure drains away. There is so little pleasure in the world today.”
As if this woman would know. He sipped the tea. Sweet from sugar with the mélange of spice that the body would remember and probably crave on a cold night. With a swallow the warmth began a slow flood through his limbs almost as well as vodka did. He drained the cup.
“Good.” He set the cup down and stood, his coat heavy on his shoulders. “I thank you, but I would prefer to simply collect what I came for and leave. I do not play games. Unless you would like to tell me what you know.” And he would not discuss a case with this woman—not even a closed one—most especially that one.
Her face stiffened, turning from the flirtatious to the stone-face business woman. “Have it your way, then. I thought perhaps I could share insights with you. I know this town and its people, Detektiv.” She shook her head and slid an envelope from beneath a divan pillow and tossed it to the floor at his feet.
Before Kazakov could retrieve it, from the hallway came the sound of running feet and a flat-handed pounding on the door. “Frau! Frau Zilinka!”
It was not the voice of the Thai girl.
“Come,” Frau Zelinka said. She glanced at Kazakov as the door burst open. “You may go.”
A woman, presumably one of the brothel’s girls, pushed into the room bringing with her a scent of lavender. She was raven haired and olive skinned, with the aquiline nose of the Mediterranean regions of the Ottoman Empire. She wore a colorful robe of patchwork wool as if she was a peasant, and her hair fell in loose curls from the ribbon she had tied it with high on her head. She had the soft look of someone newly woken—except for the fear in her eyes.
“Frau Zelinka!” Her gaze slipped to Kazakov and she stopped. “I am sorry. I am interrupting.” She edged back toward the door, but Frau Zelinka waved her forward.
“Come, Maria. Detektiv Kazakov is just leaving.”
Maria’s eyes widened. “Detektiv!” She turned to him. “It is good you are here. I came to tell Frau Zelinka the police must be called. You see, there is a body…”
Ten minutes later, the envelope forgotten on the floor, Kazakov stood over the body as the city police cars slid into the curb outside the Red Veil. He stood shin-deep in the unseasonably deep snow in Yekaterina Park across the street from the brothel. The woman in the brothel had apparently seen the dead man from her bedroom window. Before entering the Red Veil, Kazakov had stood all of twenty feet from here, but his view had been blocked by a lone pine tree.
The dead man was a drunk by the reek of him. He wore dust-encrusted trousers and a woolen coat so full of holes and filth it appeared he’d once slept in a pig sty. He had dirty brown hair and the angular face of someone whose use of vodka had burned most of the flesh from his limbs.
Kazakov hauled up his collar against the wind. It had shifted to come off the mountains again and carried the full breath of winter. His fingers were cold even in his thick gloves.
There was something about the dead man that didn’t quite work. The man’s hair had the pomade of too much sweat and dirt holding it in scarecrow spikes on his head. He had at least five days’ growth of grizzled beard. Both fit with the picture of the drunkard. So did the spray of broken blood vessels in the nose that had been broken a time or two in the past, but then half the men in Fergana had such noses.
No, it was something else.
He waved off the uniformed officers to set a perimeter and remained where he was, observing. The man was clearly dead. There was no need to check vitals. The deep brown bloodstain on the victim’s chest said that it had happened some time ago.
“So what do we have here?” asked Dr. Khan, coming up beside Kazakov. Kazakov glanced behind him at the street, surprised that he hadn’t heard the M.E.’s van arrive.
“You tell me.”
The slightly built M.E. looked sideways at him. “Something here bothers you.”
“I know what my eyes tell me, but something else gnaws at my brain. I am missing something.” Kazakov shook his head. “Tell me what you see and I will know whether it is my imagination.”
Khan scanned the earth around the body, then knelt beside it. He pulled out a notebook and began to take notes. “Male, mid-forties perhaps. Approximately a hundred and sixty pounds. Alcohol user by the facial capillary damage, but that’s nothing unusual. Strong odor of alcohol.”
“Where is the bottle?” Kazakov asked, looking around. “A drunkard would always have his bottle.”
Like he had his hip flask tucked inside his coat pocket?
Khan glanced up at him. “Perhaps he finished it and threw it away. Or perhaps it was stolen.”
“Or perhaps he never had one.” Where that possibility came from, he wasn’t sure. It flew in the face of all the external evidence. Besides, there wasn’t a Russian male in Fergana who didn’t drink. He glanced over his shoulder at the Red Veil, standing virginal white on its chicken legs in the graying snow.
Khan tilted a brow at him and tugged open the man’s coat. A half-frozen, half-coagulated mass of dark blood that had been held in by the wool slopped onto the snow. Khan leaned in to examine the wound through a threadbare gray shirt.
“Knife wound by the look of it. Single blow. By the position, it got the heart or a major artery. By the amount of blood, I’d guess the artery. Poor fellow bled out.”
The wind gusted and branches rattled in the dry air. Overhead clouds streamed in from the southern mountains, suggesting more snow. From the city came the rumble and blat of morning traffic. Pedestrians had appeared on the sidewalk edging the park and now a few
collected like fallen leaves just beyond the yellow police tape.
“I thought you were reassigned,” Khan said softly.
“Reassigned. Yes. Still in major crimes where Rostoff can keep an eye on me, but now I commit the crimes—taking bribes on behalf of the team.” He shook his head bitterly, then dipped it at the Red Veil where the curtains twitched at each window. “I was visiting. One of the women claimed to see a body from her window.”
He shrugged and knelt across the body from Khan. “She was apparently correct. So what is wrong with this picture of a drunk killed for his liquor?”
Khan leaned in to examine the man’s face. The eyes were the color of cloudy skies, but darkness underneath the milky surface suggested they were brown. The mouth was open.
Khan frowned. “The teeth are better cared for than I would have expected. See? There is no plaque as one would expect, unless this man is much better at self-care than the usual drunk.” The man’s arms lay at his sides. Khan lifted one of them.
That was what had bothered Kazakov—the fact that both hands rested so neatly. There was no sign of struggle. No sign of warding off a blow.
Khan turned the hand over. “Compared to the clothes…”
“The hands are clean. So is the wrist.”
“And the nails,” Khan said, turning the hand back over. “Look at the nails. No grime ground into the cuticle. No stains on the nails. This man did not smoke. Nor did he live outdoors or do manual labor.”
He looked up at Kazakov. “The hands look as if they have been washed and the skin cared for more than most men do. Perhaps now would be the time that a person in your position would call in another detective.”
“And allow another suspicious death to be written off?” Kazakov glanced over to the uniformed officers standing smoking by their cars. “If I had not been here—if I had not been late making my stop—what would have happened?”
Khan thought a moment, the clouds overhead placing shadows under his eyes. Or perhaps it was everything he had seen in his job. It was not happy work.
He nodded. “They would have called it in as a drunk dead in a knife fight. A detective would have been assigned, but I doubt that I would have ever seen him.”
“It would be the perfect way to get rid of a body—in plain sight.” He met Khan’s dark gaze—until Khan shook his head.
“There are those who would say that you look for trouble, old friend. Isn’t that what got you into your predicament? I know it was the murder of two children. I know it catches in a man’s craw.” His voice faded as if he might say more but thought better of it. Instead he shook his head. “Perhaps this truly is a drunkard killed in a knife fight.”
“A drunkard who bathes regularly and who practices good oral hygiene? You disappoint me, Khan.”
Khan shook his head. He glanced around again as if afraid someone might be listening. “I only concern myself with your welfare… and mine. Something is happening, old friend. Something that bears keeping your head down. There are those amongst the medical staff who recommend against our friendship and there are watchers everywhere.”
Watchers. Kazakov looked up again and caught the twitch of the Red Veil’s curtains.
Indeed there were.
Chapter 3
There was a time twenty-two years ago when Kazakov was a newly minted police officer with a full head of hair and truth was in the air and filled his chest with every breath he breathed.
On this gray November day, seated in his battered government sedan, one of the police fleet of First Autos brought in from China five years ago, it seemed hard to believe. Now the lack of truth constricted his lungs even when he slept. Each morning he felt angry when he woke. And very alone.
The car stank of cigarette smoke from its other drivers, just as Khan’s words stank of warning to let this go, even though he was unclear what this was. A man killed for some reason, his body supposed to disappear in plain sight. But it was clear that the man wasn’t what he appeared. Either he’d disguised himself in a drunkard’s clothing to hide, or someone had dressed him in the clothing to hide who he was.
Kazakov tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to decide which way to go. The smart thing would be to simply walk away—not just from the case, but from the whole job, but policing was the only job he had ever had and the thought of doing something else filled him with dread. Dealing with the dead was easier than dealing with the living—his marriage had proved that. And in a country and a city where investigations were sometimes closed for expediency, or where evidence was fabricated to gain a needed conviction, who would search for the truth if he left?
Clearly, Detektiv Chief Inspektor Rostoff had not intended Kazakov to go haring off investigating anything. He wanted Kazakov put in his place and close enough he could be controlled—probably the only reason Kazakov hadn’t been fired for his initiative in taking forward the Weber-Manas case. Even being on the scene could warrant a reprimand for assuming control when the responsible one should be the assigned detective. If he was truly following Rostoff’s rules, he would have phoned the case in and walked away himself. The way Rostoff wanted it, not the way Kazakov had been trained—not the way any police officer had been trained. But something had changed the department’s practice.
So his choice was clear: investigate regardless of Rostoff’s direction and take the repercussions when they came, or walk away.
In Yekaterina Park, Khan was standing by as they loaded the body onto a stretcher and wheeled it to the M.E.’s vehicle. One of the uniformed police casually stepped on his cigarette butt and left his car to pull down the police tape. So no one else was coming and they weren’t even going to examine the scene more closely for evidence. He gripped the steering wheel and finally couldn’t stop himself. He picked up his mobile phone because maybe there was another way.
He called dispatch and said where he was. He asked who the assigned detective was for the case.
Silence greeted him at the end of the phone. “Everyone is busy at the moment. It was only a drunkard. It has not been assigned.”
Kazakov inhaled and tapped his fingers on the wheel. Here goes nothing. “I was across the street and brought to the body. It may be best to record that I was on scene. If Rostoff wishes, he can assign it to me.”
“I will check,” the dispatcher said and hung up.
Kazakov slumped back in his seat. It was done. He had given himself a cover for looking into the case further—at least until Rostoff came sniffing around. If he ever did. Regardless of the dispatcher’s last words, in the course of a busy day there was every chance that checking with Rostoff would slip the dispatcher’s mind.
For the moment, he could do his job. He climbed out of the car and trudged back up the stairs to the Red Veil. This time his chest did not feel like stones had been piled on it.
At the front door, he knocked as the first snowflakes of the day swirled around his face. The wind had chilled further and he wished that he’d brought his hat from the office. He’d left it there three days before and not reclaimed it. Each time he went into the office it slipped his mind to look for it.
The same sweet-faced Thai girl opened the door.
“I need to speak to Frau Zelinka,” he said and bulled his way inside.
“I am sorry, sir. She is in her bath and not taking visitors.”
For a moment, he considered simply charging in, but that was an approach best saved for another time. For now, he would be civilized, or as civilized as his job allowed him.
“Tell her that I will be interviewing her girl, Maria, and inspecting Maria’s rooms. Where can I find her?”
The Thai girl’s inscrutable beauty was marred by a momentary twitch of the eye that spoke of fleeting resentment. Then the moment passed like frost on a spring day. “You will stay here, please, while I advise Frau Zelinka.” Then she was gone, disappearing down the hallway like a harem girl apparition in some Ottoman palace lost in space and time.
Ka
zakov made a point of not staying where he was put. He wandered into the room on his left. Here it was not a Silk Road caravanserai, but something more akin to the saloons portrayed in the American films that were imported from that outpost of independence from the Anglo-German Commonwealth. Bare wooden tables. A wooden bar with cheap glasses against the wall, and peanut shells and sawdust on the floor. Packs of cards sat neatly stacked on a side table and on the wall hung a pair of what looked like antique revolvers. Another one of America’s exports. After achieving their independence, the Americans were being pushed to relinquish their freedom in exchange for the trade they so desperately needed to survive as a string of small city-states along the eastern seaboard of British North America. The saloons that were presented in the films were long ago replaced by Anglo-German parlors after the Americans lost their hold on the west of the North American continent. So far, according to the news, the Americans still held doggedly onto their independence.
In some ways they were Fergana’s brethren, attempting democracy when democracies had fallen from fashion everywhere else. But half a world of oceans and mountains kept them from conferring on their experiences. It was said that democracy could only work for a small country. None of the large ones had allowed it.
He came out of the room as the Thai girl returned. “This way, please.”
But she didn’t lead him up the stairs. Instead she led him farther down the hallway where the light was dim and, by the dampening of the street noise, he suspected the night noises of the house’s business were less audible to this area’s occupants.
A soft knock on a narrow misted-glass door and the Thai girl pulled the door open. A cloud of warm spice-scented vapor billowed into the hall. “Frau Zelinka will speak with you.”
What now? He stepped into the room and stopped just inside the door. Vapor immediately beaded his skin and hair. It coalesced on the fur on his karakul collar and brought sweat to his face. The room was white tile, poorly lit by veiled lights half-concealed in the corners. They placed a supernatural glow over the mist, and the hard tiles echoed the sound of splashing water.
After Yekaterina Page 4