Читать книгу Penny Criminal Case - Alexander Cherenov - Страница 4

The place, where the operation group arrived, did not belong to prestigious areas. Uglegorsk, even being a regional center, did not belong to the prestigious cities, despite the glorious nickname of “one of the main stokers of the country”. The city grew on coal and due to coal. This determined the specifics of everything, including the buildings: huts of barrack type grew like mushrooms toadstools in the immediate vicinity of the mines.

Over time, already away from the mines and even at a considerable distance from them, luxurious “Stalinist” houses and “social and cultural facilities” began to be built in the city, which had already begun to remotely resemble such one. Boulevards, avenues, flower beds, and even barrels of kvass and beer began to appear in the wild desert.

But the original “neighborhoods” remained almost intact, except that they slightly “refreshed” the facade. The city stretched over an area of almost a thousand square kilometers, but most of this thousand was occupied by wastelands, from which coal was already taken out and which for this reason had sank considerably, covered with a thick layer of salt and thickets of bitter wormwood, which only could grow on this dead land.

These vacant lots were a link not only between the “Shanghais”, scattered here and there, but also between the “subjects of the administrative-territorial division”. One of these vacancies was now a crime scene.. It was located on the border itself, dividing the territory of the Central and Kirov districts. One side of the wasteland rested in the Central district, the other – in the Kirov one.

“What a beautiful place!” forever resilient Rubin grinned. “I would like to live only here!”

The wasteland was really “pleasing to the eye”, impressing no less horror movie scenery in black and white. There was everything, that was not in the center: domestic and industrial waste in immeasured quantities, numerous dips and bald patches of salt performances, “framing” dumps of rock and even its own lake, which was formed by slime wastewater adjacent to waste treatment plant. The nearest dwelling, which consisted of single-storey houses for two owners and several veteran dugouts from the time of pioneers, was not less than half a kilometer on foot along a loaded track.

A few meters away from our car, there was a respectable – about ten people – a “group of comrades”, who had had time to get acquainted with the “sights” of this death spot earlier. Starkov knew them all, and not for one year: the prosecutor of the Kirov district, the deputy for operational work of the Kirov district department of internal affairs, his deputy – the head of the CID (criminal investigation department), the troika of detectives, the Kirov expert-criminalist, the senior investigator of the Kirov district prosecutor’s office. The “last on the list” was a very colorful local police inspector, with whom Starkov had an “indescribable pleasure” to get to know closely two weeks ago when he was locating the next corpse from among “persons without a certain place of residence”.

These were, so to speak, the “unskilled laborers of the struggle for socialist legality”. Of course, the presence of the law-enforcement “white bone” was also noted – where without it. The “chiefs” were represented by the deputy prosecutor of the region, the head of the investigative department of the regional prosecutor’s office and the head of the criminal investigation department of the regional police department with a couple of their impudent and equally stupid “cops”.

Starkov was not too upset by the presence of the big bosses: they came here “for a tick” and distribution to useless “valuable instructions” from among those, with whom students of the law faculty learn more from forensic textbooks and all the “value” of which is in the positions of the characters, voicing these “valuable instructions”. Starkov knew: in about ten minutes from the demonstration of an official arrogance, these “aces of operational-investigative measures” sped away from here on their personal Volga, and no one would interfere the “laborer” to do their “black” work.

The authorities did not really test the patience of the “hard workers” for long, even “overfulfilling the plan” in terms of the standard of being in place: they did not disappear after ten, but after six minutes. To a large extent, this “efficiency” was facilitated by the appearance of Starkov: this freethinker with fifteen years of experience as an investigator both the regional and city authorities knew too well to try to find out even better.

“Well, the air has become cleaner,” Rubin drew a line under the authorities. “Can we start work, comrade junior counselor of justice?”

Starkov – he is a junior counselor of justice (rank equal to police major) – grinned.

“You offend the aborigines, captain. They are already working. This arrival of ‘leaders’ tore them from the work. Let’s better ask, what they have ‘dug up’ and what they will share with the ‘city bums’.”

“God bless you, Alex, for kindness and affection.”

Major Bessonov, the deputy head for operational work, approached Starkov with an outstretched hand to greet him. Starkov respected this laconic, unpretentious and sensible “cop”, with which they repeatedly intersected in work, while never crossing each other’s paths.

“Hi, Major. Well, what have you got… we got, I wanted to say?”

“You said correctly: we got,” Major didn’t give too much optimism. “All the dubious ‘laurels’ are ours, of the Kirov district. This is what we have.”

Bessonov, with a meager gesture, invited Starkov to meet the main character of this action: a corpse. Starkov silently went to the body, prostrate in the dirt. The body was without signs of clothing and belonged to a girl of fifteen or sixteen years old. It not only stretched in the mud, but it was smeared with mud: it rained at night, and with the pieces of dirt, that had been blown out of the waste ground, the corpse was further processed.

A piece of a badly brushed stick was sticking out of the corpse’s vagina.

“What do you think: why?” Bessonov glanced at the stick.

Starkov shrugged.

“There are plenty of options, from murder of revenge to…”

“Only for God’s sake, do not hint at the maniac!” Bessonov folded the arms on his chest appealingly. “This ‘happiness’ we just did not have enough!”

“So in fact, you already have it.”

Bessonov darkened even more.

“Are you hinting at the relationship of those corpses with this?”

“Those corpses” were the four bodies of girls aged 14 to 16 years old, which were found in the Kirov and Soviet areas – two in each.

“I do not hint: I think.”

“What are those dead bodies?” Rubin joined interested. “Why am I not aware?”

“Why should you be aware?” Bessonov looked at him gloomily. Major, being a sanguine person, clearly did not sympathize with choleric Rubin: “he is too fussy!” “These are our dead, not yours. We ourselves ‘lifted’ them – we will carry this cross ourselves.”

“And what is the relationship between them?” Rubin did not lag behind.

“Get off me with your questions!” annoyed, as if from an annoying fly, Bessonov dismissed him, moving away to his “cops”.

“Why is he angry with me?!”

Rubin did not think to be offended himself. Including, for this, Starkov, in contrast to Bessonov, liked this firmly built, with a clear northern tan man. In just four months of work in the city, Rubin managed to “elevate the steppe without demeaning the mountains”: he was respected by ordinary “cops” and bosses, he was neither an intriguer nor a sycophant, he did not humiliate anyone and did not kneel before anyone.

“I really do not know. No, I heard something at operational meetings, of course, but city internal affairs department was not connected. I thought that these were ordinary murders, like in Kirov district, like in Central district, like dirt. What is the relationship?”

Starkov blew his lips thoughtfully.

“At first glance, there is no relationship. There, all four victims have genitals cut out.

“What are you saying!” Rubin shook his head sadly. “And you think that all the killings were committed by one person?”

“It seems so.”

The conclusion was given by the forensic scientist, already working with the body, without even turning his face to Starkov.

“There, the nature of the amputation, the ‘manner of writing’ and the cause of death – all victims were strangled by a noose – are obviously from one comrade. I myself went to those corpses, and made an autopsy – so that you can believe me, captain…”

“The cause of death, you say…”

Starks narrowed his eyes, carefully scanning the neck of the corpse.

“Strangulation furrow is available…”

“I think that here, too, death came from strangling with a noose,” the expert nodded in agreement.

“Ana what about this noose?”

The expert looked around and almost indifferently shrugged.

“I did not come across.”

“Victor!”

Starkov raised his forefinger of his right hand above his head, calling Bessonov for “complicity”.

“Did your guys find a stranglehold… or something similar… a rope, for example?”

Having confined himself to a half-turn, Bessonov negatively waved his head. Starkov returned his eyes to an expert, who interestedly twisted his head around the stick.

“What?”

“May I remove this stick?”

“Go ahead!”

Expert gently pulled the edge of the stick with two fingers. Starkov and Rubin bent over the body. Pulling out the stick, still squatting, Tarsky raised it over his head. The whole lower part of the tree was covered in blood.

“Is it blood?”

“Did you count on sperm – and in the same amount?” Starkov grunted.

The expert held elbow bend on the forehead, trying to wipe the sweat.

“There’s still nothing clear: there was rape, there wasn’t… I’ll take smears from the vagina, though…”

Tarsky twisted his head in doubt, and then spread his thumb and forefinger of his right hand and, from a distance, conditionally measured the length of the bloody mark on the stick.

“Stick stuck in twenty centimeters depth. Is it a hint, or what?”

“On what?” Rubin interested examined the stick with his eyes.

“On the size of penis in a state of erection,” Starkov worked instead of the expert.

Rubin puzzled patted the earlobe.

“And why did not cut these… genitals?”

“Who knows,” Starkov sighed. “Maybe, he decided to diversify the range of services.”

“Or, maybe,” the expert connected, jerking to him, “another person was working here.”

“Another?”

Rubin puzzled brow.

“You want to say, he is imitator, don’t you? Does he imitate the one who killed those four girls??

“Maybe, he doesn’t imitate,” Tarsky spread his hands. “Maybe, he is an independent criminal. Although, he is the same beast… Let me pack the stick in polyethylene?”

“Okay.”

“That’s right: there may be prints there too!”

“In the movies,” Starks grinned. “Is there any blood on the part, that that did not stick in the vagina?”

The expert did not even conduct a “re-examination”.

“No.”

“Well, and what traces will we find then? This material evidence is not for examination, but for order… By the way, what about the tracks?”

The question was already addressed not to the expert, but to “local comrades”. This time, Bessonov did not “distance himself from half-turns” and immediately approached Starkov.

“Something we have already found, Alex. Here it is.”

A plastic bag, the contents of which consisted of a plastic comb in the form of a naked girl and a plaster cast from some kind of trace, moved into the hands of Starkov.

“What an interesting thing,” Starkov grinned at the sight of the spicy comb. – Is it prison homemade?”

“You make mistake: Czechoslovak, branded.”

“And the cast?”

“This is the cast of sneakers, also Czech production. Most of the letters from the factory stamp have imprinted well, so our expert has already correctly read: ‘Made in Czechoslovakia’. But…”

“Alex, I found something also!”

Tarsky interrupted Bessonov in a voice trembling with excitement.

“What exactly?”

The expert handed Starkov a metal button with scraps of thread.

“Where did you find it?”

“It was clamped in the left palm!”

Tarsky was bursting with excitement and pride for his unexpected “operational talent”.

“I noticed that her hand was clenched almost in a fist. Well, I though… well, sometimes there you find a tuft of torn hair… there, the epidermis… the blood of the criminal. I opened her palm – and now… But I already held it in my hands…”

The guilty expression on the expert’s face immediately splashed onto the back of the celebration.

“Nothing wrong,” Starkov patted him on the shoulder with a good-natured grin. “If you are again about the tracks, then you need not worry: they are found on such items only in the stupid movies… A curious thing… What do you think about it, Victor?”

Bessonov bent over a button for a moment.

“I think it curious only in one sense: from whom is it? And so… The usual button from a police jacket. Not from the main jacket: from everyday form.”

“Yeah, things…”

Starkov thoughtfully processed his chin.

“Only a maniac policeman, and although a jealous policeman, we lacked…”

Slowly, as if in oblivion, he looked at the body and his face stretched out.

“Fuck you: “I did not even notice the elephant!”

“What kind of elephant?” Bessonov “did not drive” honestly.

“Is the victim’s identity established?”

Bessonov suddenly began to turn his head around, as if he had lost someone and could not find it.

“What are you, Victor?”

“Where did the district police inspector go?” the major muttered. “It’s him, who found the corpse… Ivanov! Lieutenant Ivanov!”

“Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and will find; knock, and will open to you”. Christ was proved to be right once again: in a minute, or even less, from somewhere in the night, from the part of the wasteland, the “borderline” with the Central district, a lanky figure appeared. It was not difficult to recognize the district police district inspector Ivanov in it: there was no other such inconsistent size among those present or in the Department of Internal Affairs staff.

It was a red-haired fellow with a pockmarked face and uncut hairs, always stuck out in all directions from under his uniform cap. How many remarks at the drill he received for “breaking the uniform”, but it was all to no avail!! And, if this district policeman was a person, then only the one, about which they say: “he is still a person!”

Starkov met this character once only, but one meeting was enough for the character to make an impression on the city investigator. The impression was definitely negative, but unforgettable. The second such “handsome” Starkov saw many years ago, when he passed a real urgent in the army.

And this one was “still the same”: silly, slow, lazy and slob. When he had to speak, he was silent. When he had to go, he stood. When he had to think, he instantly acquired a “cow-eyed look” and picked his finger on his nose. He “thought”, in a word. When it was necessary to do it, without exerting any effort, it was only due to the “cow-eyed” that he instantly “sought reserves” in the person of those, who could no longer wait for the “beginning of the process”.

Everybody scolded him, but none of the authorities had raised a hand to sign an order of dismissal: the man was stupid, but simple-minded. He did not do evil to anyone, because he did not do anything. Others did everything for him, so there was little harm from him. There was no harm. It was not for nothing Starkov remembered lines from one poetic tale: “And we have no court for fools for centuries!”

And only once did Starkov think it was, or in fact, he noticed it, as soon as the “brainless” eyes of the district policeman acquired an evil, intelligent and mocking look for a moment. Therefore, Starkov did not rule out that the inspector simply “entered the image” and did not intend to leave it: after all, “we have no court for fools for centuries!” Nobody saw how he was outside the police uniform. And he combined in his person Ivan the Fool and Emelya from the fairy tale “By the Will of the Pike” (two idlers, who are lucky to become rich).

Incredibly, according to his passport, he was called Emelyan Ivanovich Ivanov. By name and patronymic – hardly in honor of Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev (leader of the peasant uprising in the 18th century). And if it was in honor of the leader, then only in the context of the setting “Let it be at least a day, but it will be my day!” And, perhaps, giving him a name, his parents hoped, that the treasured pike will help him – at least, in the amount of three desires…

“Where the hell was you?” Bessonov “welcomed” Ivanov more on the way. “And what is this with you: material evidence?”

The people, gathered around the major, burst out laughing: there was a huge, black cat with a white “collar” in the hands of the lieutenant.

Ivanov lowered and noisily pulled his nose, pulling the green snot out of her nostril.

“I heard… meows… Well, I and…”

“Did you find the main evidence?” Bessonov continued diligently “wiping his feet”. “Did you solve the crime alone?”

Since the answer was quite expected to re-noisy tightening snot, Bessonov only waved his hand irritably.

“Okay! Is it you, who find the corpse?”

Ivanov, with an incredibly idiotic expression on his face, silently nodded his head.

“Well, and whose is this corpse? Did you know its owner?”

Without answering the question, the district police officer returned to the snot service.

“Answer when I ask you!”

“I didn’t come close,” Ivanov sighed sadly.

“So come now… fuck you!”

The policeman sideways, with a slow step, approached the corpse and, without bending down, began to survey him from the height of his meter ninety. He observed slowly – like everything he did or did not do.

“Well?!” Bessonov could not stand.

Ivanov stretched his lips, making him even more like a hopeless client of a psychiatric hospital.

“Seem… this is… Tanya Kotova. I recognize her by the cat…”

Bessonov stared in awe at the lieutenant. What?!”

Bessonov stared in awe at the lieutenant.

Ivanov, in response, poked his finger into the cat’s neck.

“It’s their cat. So fat and black… with white – only they have.”

“Lieutenant, did you find a cat in the wasteland, or did you bring it with you?”” Starkov added his “legs” too.

“In the wasteland,” Ivanov did not even linger with the answer for some reason. “There.”

And he pointed to the “border line” between the districts.

Starkov suddenly stopped smiling. Looking at him, Bessonov left “footwork” too.

“Alex, you want to say, that…”

“The girl heard the meowing of a cat and went to look for him.”

Starkov pensive look went somewhere sideways.

“This was what our incognito needed…”

“He lured her deliberately, didn’t he?” Rubin joined.

“It seems so. The cat, most likely, was ‘privatized’ at the time. And, if so, then the killer knew in advance, that the cat runs away from home, and where he runs, and where he will be looked for…”

“Pre-planned murder?”

Bessonov paled: this kind of murder for years “hung” with heavy weights on the authority of the criminal investigation department. Starks sympathetically patted the major on the shoulder.

“Well, Victor, do not die before death… Lieutenant, do you know where these Kotovs live?”

“I know.”

“Lead us.”

Ivanov again hesitated.

“What else?”

“So their… this is… no home. They are at work… probably.”

“Ok, we’ll check it, Alex!” Bessonov waved his hand, frustrated by the prospect of “dead case”.

“Well then…”

Starkov glanced at his watch.

“It’s time to do the protocol. Ivanov… Although, as you were! Victor, invite witnesses!”

For half an hour Starkov produced a protocol for inspecting the scene of the incident. It remained only to sign the protocol, when suddenly…

“Alex, I have still found something!”

Rubin lifted a plastic bag over his head.

“What exactly?”

The captain quickly walked to the open door of the “UAZ”, in the womb of which Starkov designed the protocol.

“Here, take a look!”

In a small plastic bag there were two cigarette butts: one from a filter cigarette, the other from a cigarette “Belomorkanal”.

“Look, Alex: the crumpled cigarette sleeve is characteristic!”

“It’s typical for most of those, who smoke Belomor,” Starkov said with curved cheek. “I myself crush the liner in the same way, so that the crumbs of tobacco do not pour into the mouth along with the puff. So what?”

“What are you, Alex?!” Rubin put his hands on his chest. “Am I talking about you??! I… ‘in general sense’!”

“In general sense…”

Starkov looked around at the cigarette butts again.

“Don’t you think, captain, that these cigarette butts are too clean and dry after the rain, which lashed the whole evening until midnight?”

Zarubin puzzled brow.

“God knows, Alex… Actually, I found them under a piece of bark. Probably, the wind dragged it, it caught hold of the garbage and covered the cigarette butts.”

“Both in the same place?” Starkov shook his head incredulously. “It’s too good to be true… And in general: there are too many material evidence. And all some… from different people… You know, I somehow happened to read one Polish detective story. It is called ‘Too many clowns’. And here it is: too much evidence… Yes, even more such disparate… Yes, there will have to seriously deal…”

Starkov wrote a couple of lines on the found cigarette butts in protocol, gave it to the signature for the witnesses, packed the evidence and quickly sketched the “escort” to the Kirov prosecutor. Formally, this was a violation of the instructions: everything, that was acquired at the scene, was required to be transferred to the city prosecutor, so that he, in turn, redirect it to the prosecutor of Kirov district. But, having received a reprimand from the regional prosecutor, the city prosecutor recognized, though not immediately, the prompt transfer of materials – immediately to the district prosecutor.

“Sir Peter!”

“I am listening to you!” the Kirov prosecutor responded from his “Moskvich-412” (the gift of the “area” to the district prosecutors).

“Accept a gift, so to speak, from a pure heart!”

Noisily puffing, Kirov prosecutor reluctantly got out of the car and glanced reproachfully at Starkov.

“This is a bad joke, dear Alex… Ok, give it to me…”

The prosecutor signed the second copy, made for a carbon copy, and, sighing heavily, went to “Moskvich”. Starkov looked at his watch, at parting sympathizing with Bessonov.

“It’s half past four am. Maybe I can still sleep, at least, half an hour…”

“Forget it!” the elderly “UAZ” driver did not hesitate “to please” the authorities. “They they are now on the radio reported: hangman in the Soviet district. So, get ready for a trip, sir… I don’t know how to get there: gasoline is at zero… Though on yourself drag a car!”

“Next time it will be so!” never discouraging Rubin “was in place” as always. “If you will “make us happy” once again, you will drag a car on yourself!.. By the way, Alex, I’ll be a bit late here: I’ll help the local man. I hope the hanged man will not be offended at me, because I did not honor him, so to speak, with my personal presence?

“You may hope,” Starkov frowned.

“And you? You do not mind, do you? Will you get along with the dead without me?”

“What are you asking me?” Starkov sighed. “I’m not your boss. If you consider it necessary, you may stay here: we will manage without you… Okay, let’s go. A sleep, as I understand it, is canceled for today and is postponed for tomorrow…”