The Shaman of Kupa Piti

by A. Nybo

  Sergei tilted his head in resigned acceptance of Leon’s disbelief. “In a way. He’s not physically invisible, but people don’t notice him. That is how he goes unseen. So yes, he is invisible.”

  “Someone will notice him eventually.”

  “Eventually.” The unspoken implication that by the time anyone saw him it might be too late for Sergei was left hanging in the air.

  Trying to lighten the mood, Leon changed the subject. “Have you any idea when you will be released?”

  “When are you going back to Coober Pedy?”

  “Way to avoid answering, Sergei,” he taunted. “I don’t know. They’ll probably make me go back tomorrow or the following day.”

  “Then that is when I’ll be released. We can go back together.”

  The idea wanted to take flight in Leon’s mind, but sense prevailed. “I don’t think that’s how it works. The doctor might have something to say on the matter.”

  “I can eat, shit, and walk. What more do I need?”

  The comment reminded Leon of the crime scene. “Speaking of which, there was a drum at your house that Evgeni had defecated on.”

  Sergei’s head snapped up from the pillow, deep concern apparent. “Where is it? Is it in one piece?”

  “It’s soiled but in one piece. We’ve taken it for evidence.”

  “I need it back.”

  “For religious purposes?” Leon hoped Sergei realised that was about the only way it could be released.

  A frustrated growl came from the back of Sergei’s throat. “Religion. All right. I just need it back.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Will it still have some of Evgeni’s shit on it?”

  “Probably. The police don’t provide a cleaning service.” The moment he’d answered it, Leon realised how strange the tone of the question was. “Why?”

  Sergei examined him at length before speaking. “Bodily products have very powerful properties in the spirit world.”

  “Are you saying you can use it against him?”

  “Your world is very black and white, Leon. For him, against him, with him, to him.” Sergei’s shrug indicated it was the end of the conversation.

  Their talk turned to safer ground and to a few of Coober Pedy’s miners and how their nicknames might have come about. Seeing Sergei beginning to flag again, Leon wound the conversation up and prepared to leave for the night.

  “Are you sure you’ll be ready to travel back tomorrow if I have to go? You seem to be tiring quickly.”

  “I can sleep as well at home as I can here.”

  “Now that we know you are his target, we’ll organise some protection.”

  Sergei took a sharp breath as if about to speak but then exhaled slowly and nodded.

  With his jacket over his arm, Leon bent to kiss Sergei’s forehead and froze. Their eyes met, and a question was written in Sergei’s.

  “I was not about to do that.” Leon straightened and backed up. “Talk later,” he mumbled and hurried out.

  “What the hell?” he muttered to himself as he walked towards the elevator. How had he come to be so intimate with Sergei that he had unthinkingly bent to kiss him? They had shared one kiss, for chrissakes. A shiver of anxiety ran through him at the strange path things with Sergei had taken. He was approaching that crossroads at an increasing speed. Where are those bloody brakes!

  The profound knowledge that this case was going to change his life, if he survived it, weighed on him.

  As Leon exited the hospital via the sliding doors, his phone rang. He looked at the screen and saw it was Charlie. He pressed Answer.

  “Hi, Charlie, what can I do for you?”

  “Hi, Leon. We’ve had a bit of a development up here.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Rodney was attacked—”

  “Jesus! Is he okay?”

  “Yes, just bumps and bruises, but he was made to say where Sergei was.”

  Turning around, Leon started up towards the floor Sergei was on. “Am I to understand it was Evgeni Volkov?”

  “The only thing Rodney could tell me was that the man had a Russian accent and smelled like wet dog and woods.”

  Leon walked past the sign that denounced the use of mobile phones in the hospital. “Wet dog and woods?”

  “Don’t ask me—that’s what Rodney said.”

  “He didn’t get a good look at his attacker, then?” Leon entered the elevator and pressed the button for Sergei’s floor.

  “He said he did, but when I asked him to describe him, he became confused. Maybe one of those hits to the head did more than we originally thought. Anyway, I was ringing up to warn you. Rodney did apparently tell the man that Sergei was in Royal Adelaide Hospital.”

  “Okay. I’m going to go and see whether Sergei can be released, and if so, move him to someplace safer here in Adelaide. How long ago since the attack?”

  “All up about four hours.”

  Leon checked the time. “Are there any flights from Coober Pedy after 6:00 pm?”

  “No.”

  “Good. We’ll need a watch on the airport. I’ll get Sergei moved tonight if possible.” He was about to hang up when he remembered the drum. “Oh, and Charlie, could we work on getting that drum released on religious grounds?”

  “Yep. I think we’ve got all the evidence we can from it.”

  “Talk later.”

  “Night, Leon.”

  Over the next hour and a half, Leon moved between the nurses’ night desk and Sergei’s room while they waited for a doctor on the hospital end and the contact the AFP had given him to organise a place for Sergei to stay. A loan vehicle was arranged, along with a second policeman.

  Eagerness to leave obvious, Sergei dozed on top of the bed, fully dressed. After four days in hospital, Leon would’ve been keen to leave as well. The on-call doctor released Sergei with instructions for having his stitches removed. The increasing frustration in Sergei’s expression as the doctor explained wound aftercare puzzled Leon until he realised that as a noaidi, Sergei probably knew as much about it as the doctor. According to what Leon had read, shamans were healers too.

  They finally got in the elevator, and the moment the doors closed, Sergei leaned against the back wall. “I’m finally free.”

  Leon smiled. “C’mon, it wasn’t that bad.”

  “Not for the first two days, but after that I felt smothered.”

  “Unfortunately for you, you’re merely exchanging doctors and nurses for cops.”

  Sergei waggled his eyebrows. “Yes, but I don’t mind if you smother me, Leon.”

  “Stop,” Leon warned as the elevator doors opened. “I think this is our ride.” He pointed towards a policeman who stood by the reception desk.

  Chapter 9

  AFTER A good night’s rest, Sergei emerged from the bedroom to find Leon sitting with Constable Simon Fraser, who had been assigned as the supporting day-duty police officer.

  “Morning, Mr. Menshikov,” said Simon.

  “Morning, Doris.” If he irritated Simon enough, the officer might get the message and call him Sergei, as he’d asked at least a dozen times. The whole Mr. Menshikov thing had worn thin the first morning after the first hour. By lunchtime Sergei had wanted to strangle the Menshikov out of Constable Fraser, but he suspected it had more to do with his frustration at being in close quarters with Leon and not being able to touch or be familiar with him in any way. Three days in the safe house had passed, and Sergei was feeling hemmed in and edgy.

  Neither Sergei nor Leon greeted each other, or even acknowledged the other’s presence. The tension in the house was becoming palpable. Sergei put a few Weet-Bix in a bowl and drowned them in milk. He took it into the lounge room and turned the TV on. Although his mouth had healed to the point that he no longer needed his food to be soft, his Weet-Bix hadn’t been informed of that fact.

  A few minutes later, Leon arrived with two coffees. He set one in front of Sergei and took up residenc
e in one of the lounge chairs. “What do you think Miro’s murder was all about?”

  Sergei turned the sound on the TV down. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really make any sense—to me anyway. I’m sure it makes perfect sense to Evgeni.”

  “Any ideas on what the kangaroo limbs replacing Miro’s was about?”

  Sergei shook his head. “There was nothing about his murder that made me think….” He was about to say shamanism but didn’t want to say it within Simon’s hearing. He glanced towards the kitchen. “Noaidi,” he added quietly. “But then I don’t know anything about the other murder. There may be a sequence. I don’t know how much Evgeni is following the Karelian and how much his own Kola Sámi heritage. There seems to be a mix of the two. I recall Evgeni reciting verses at one point. I assume they were Kalevala.”

  Something was weighing on Leon, but Sergei didn’t want to push him. His blue eyes were trained on the TV, but his glassy gaze suggested his attention was directed inward. Maybe he was concerned about sharing confidential information, or maybe he, too, was feeling the strain of the close quarters.

  Leon set his now empty cup on the coffee table and leaned back in his chair. “If you saw a picture of a decapitated head with all its orifices sewn closed, would it mean anything to you?”

  “Ah, a hypothetical,” Sergei mused, knowing full well this was no hypothetical. “Is the neck sewn also, or is it open?” The way Leon’s eyes shot to him informed Sergei he had hit on something notable.

  “Open.”

  Mouth drawn down at the corners, Sergei nodded. “In tradition, Sámi believed the soul resided in the ears, and the neck is the passage it travels to the body. With so many entrances and exits in the head, to capture a soul, one would need to leave only one escape—which by necessity would have to be the neck.”

  Leon’s brows drew inward. “Why by necessity?”

  “The soul can leave the body quickly. There would be little time to secure exits after the neck has been cut.”

  “So the victim would have to be alive when the other exits were secured?”

  Sergei tried to ease the horror on Leon’s face. “Alive but not aware. It would be too difficult to perform such a thing with the presence of awareness.” Trying to piece it all together, Sergei pursued the topic. “Could such a thing be found at a golf course?”

  “Perhaps, but it might not be very clear if it was. But such a thing could definitely be found in a place such as Murmansk.”

  Asking Leon for the victim’s name would put him in an untenable position, but there was no way Sergei could know whether it was tied in with what was occurring here. However, there was only one way he could see it being connected. He hesitated, unsure how he would react to the answer if it was affirmative. Sergei glanced at Simon to ensure he was otherwise occupied. “If it were to happen in Murmansk, or nearby, say in a neighbouring country, is it possible the victim might be related to me?”

  The surprise in Leon’s eyes allowed Sergei to relax, but it was soon followed by thoughtfulness. “Not that I’m aware of, but I would follow up on the neighbouring country idea if that were the case.”

  Sergei felt as if all avenues of communication had been closed to him without his drum and that an integral part of himself was missing, as though he had lost the ability to see or hear. He needed his drum. And he needed a plan to deal with Evgeni.

  “I have to go back to Coober Pedy,” he told Leon quietly.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then when?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe once we know Evgeni has left to come to Adelaide.”

  “How would you know? As he hasn’t been seen in Coober Pedy, going unseen in a place as large as Adelaide would be easy.”

  Leon looked out the window.

  Sergei tried to determine if there was a particular reason Leon was stalling. He leant forwards and kept his voice low. “Then you need to tell me everything you know. I can’t be left exposed like this. I either need you to tell me, or I need my drum.”

  Leon searched Sergei’s eyes like he was trying to find a missing thought. He looked over his shoulder towards the dining table where Simon sat. Turning back he pensively ran both hands through his hair and locked his fingers behind his head.

  Having seemingly reached a decision, Leon straightened and lowered his hands. “If I do, you can’t say a thing. Not a fucken word.”

  Sergei couldn’t help but smile at the irony of the situation. If Leon thought some evidence of a murder that had already taken place was powerful enough to keep a secret, then he didn’t know what a real secret was.

  “I mean it, Sergei.”

  “You are the only person I have ever told about the tupilaq. Ever. And you are worried I might say something several people already know?”

  “Not the same thing,” warned Leon.

  Sergei leaned back, his forearms casually resting on the length of the armrests and his ankles crossed. “No, you’re right. What is worth more, a man’s profession or a man’s life?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “For who? Grigori Mishurin might disagree—if he were alive.”

  “Fuck you,” hissed Leon, before standing.

  “Anytime, Doris,” he called after him as Leon stalked from the room.

  Sergei wished he could feel victorious, but cornering Leon like that wasn’t enjoyable. Maybe he hadn’t been fair, but what was fair about any of it anyway? Fairness was merely a construct created so people could live together. No fairness was needed for them to die together—or apart.

  Turning the TV back up, Sergei lay on the couch and alternated between watching the programs, dozing, and trying to figure out what Evgeni was doing. At one point when he was dozing, he dreamed a kangaroo was in his house. He woke himself up speaking to it and was surprised to find himself not at home.

  The front door slammed, and Sergei sat up and rubbed his face. Leon came into the room and sat down.

  “Simon has gone to get some lunch,” said Leon.

  “Already? I just had breakfast.” Sergei could get used to this lazy life, so long as he was allowed to touch his most frustrating housemate.

  Leon moved to sit on the edge of the chair opposite. “The murder in Murmansk was not any of your family, but I don’t know about any murders in Finland committed around the same time. I have someone looking into that. The first murder here was similar, but from what forensics can tell, the victim hadn’t been decapitated. There were traces of sinew stitching the ears down, and a few on the eyes, but scavengers had done a number on the corpse, so there was no way of knowing about the mouth and nose. Strangely, there was a kangaroo skeleton in the grave beneath the human remains.”

  Sergei narrowed his eyes. “Can you describe the skeleton?”

  Leon blinked. “It was the bones of a kangaroo. What’s to describe?”

  “Were they clean? Were they set out in order? Mixed up? Bundled together?”

  “There was no meat left on them, but they didn’t appear sun bleached or anything, if that’s what you mean. They were reasonably fresh. And they were set out in an anatomically correct order, as if it was still living. Why?”

  “Setting them out like that is a form of reverence for the dead. Evgeni plans to use the kangaroo in some way.”

  “What do you mean use it? It was dead. And buried, so to speak.”

  “Da, but if the human hadn’t been decapitated and yet the orifices had been sealed, that would suggest an attempt to keep the spirits separate, but bound together in death. He wanted to keep the kangaroo spirit pure.”

  “But then why did he need to kill a person if it was the kangaroo’s spirit he was after?”

  Sergei stared out the window. “I don’t know.”

  LEON GLANCED at the screen on his ringing phone. He pressed the Answer button. “Good evening, Lars, good to hear from you.”

  “Well it is only afternoon here, so good afternoon, Leon.”

  Leon smiled. It sounded like L
ars was enjoying the opportunity to practice his English. “I assume you’ve got something for me?”

  “Indeed I do. Evgeni Volkov had arrests for numerous minor crimes, which tapered off as he grew older, and his last recorded conviction was four years ago when he was twenty-five years old. In fact, there appears to be no record of Evgeni Volkov after that age at all. He seems to have disappeared altogether, but he was never reported missing, which would suggest to me that he assumed a different identity for some reason.”

  “Any theories on what that reason might be?”

  “I have, but so long as you understand this is pure conjecture.”

  “I understand.”

  “Sometimes if a particularly ‘useful’ person has a criminal record, their boss will give them a new, clean identity so their relationship isn’t ‘seen’ as a criminal one. This is used very sparingly, of course; otherwise it would defeat the purpose. The police can’t look into every connection a crime boss might have, and the boss certainly wouldn’t organise a new identity for someone known to be close to them as that would also draw attention. But there is that occasional person with unique talents, and Evgeni Volkov might be one of those people.” Lars paused. “Then again, he might have organised the new ID for himself because he wanted a clean start.”

  “Since he clearly hasn’t forsaken a criminal lifestyle, I think we can abandon the new-start theory,” said Leon.

  “Of course, there is a possibility he needed a new ID to travel internationally. A criminal record would draw unwanted attention,” suggested Lars.

  “Very true. Did you manage to check into possible Finnish murders I spoke to you about earlier?”

  “Yes, but nothing showed up that appears to have any relation to Sergei Menshikov. How did you say Menshikov was involved in this?”

  “Volkov believes he is responsible for Grigori Mishurin Senior’s death.”

  “Is he?”

  Leon trotted out the facts. “There’s no evidence to suggest there’s a connection. Sergei Menshikov had been in Coober Pedy for a year before Mishurin’s death, and to our knowledge he has had no connection with anyone in Murmansk since.”