Alibi for the hero. Detective novel

“That’s just how it all happened. I hope you will not investigate this case for a long time, and we will not have complications with the sanatorium management?”

Nikifor Naumovich did not want to answer stupid questions. He dialed a forensic phone number on his mobile phone so that a car-hearse was sent urgently and put the body in a morgue for the required procedures. He called the address of the sanatorium.

“When the body is taken away, it will be necessary to clean the room, since all the towels came from the shelves,” he asked the maid a supplication.

“I’ll try,” she said sadly.

“They say that here such incidents with tsarist people occurred occasionally…”

On the victim were visible traces of the struggle and the hands of the dead old man, tied to the side racks, and caused an unpleasant impression of lost hopes and disappointments in a successful rest at the best sanatorium of the resort city.

“The secret will not be disclosed by any of the personnel, God will give,” the administrator said, assuming the functions of a lawyer.

The frightened maid almost came to herself after the shock, but it was felt that a middle-aged woman could hardly give rants and long lexical expressions. She trembled noticeably and nervously sorted through a bunch of keys from the hotel building.

“Why did not you call us at the picket, and reported to the administrator?” the investigator asked officially, whose eyes radiated warmth and support

“It seemed better to me,” said the woman, leaning against the wall, calming down the words of the investigator.

“Do you have someone at the reception?” the investigator asked again.

This time he turned to the administrator, whose tall figure, physique, healthy complexion and smile aroused the respect of every newly arrived guest. Almost thirty years of service in the internal affairs agencies forced the lieutenant-colonel to choose those with whom he should work and investigate crimes. In this criminal case, none of those present had any doubts about it, he was assisted by lieutenant colonel Seregin, whom Regimov trusted as to himself.

“My colleague replaced me. He has already started his immediate duties,” the administrator replied, moving away from the pantry door, when the investigator carefully took a rough woolen blanket from the shelf, pushing aside the stick for washing the floors with his elbow, so as not to erase the fingerprints on a possible murder weapon.

The three of them with the administrator made a stretcher out of the blanket. They freed the old man’s hands from the wooden rack, untangling the twine ropes used in the trade for carrying heavy purchases by buyers. Put the corpse on the resulting stretcher. Above they threw the same sheet, which Sveta so carefully smoothed, throwing to the top of the stack with sets of linen. They raised a hammock. He bent, but the victim did not immediately take the proper form.

“Once or twice, they took it,” said the administrator, when they carried a load of more than a hundred kilograms to the exit and down the stairs (since the old man was large), to be sent for examination.

A covered police car was already standing near the entrance, preventing the pesky vacationers from monitoring the manipulations of the police. Then spread rumors among the staff of the kitchen and doctors of fiction about the criminal incident that occurred during their vacation at the resort, causing panic to the local population, whose care and attention balanced the daily routine and the regime of people who dreamed of getting a charge of cheerfulness for a whole year.

“Come to us tomorrow at lunch. We have to fill out all the necessary documents on this case,” Seregin said, giving Sveta a place near the deceased next to him when she sat down on a bench in the caravan to escort the victim on her last journey.

“You will answer us now with some questions in the department, and we’ll let you go.”

“I’ll try to collect my thoughts.”

Then she was going to return to her workplace, to do her specific duties on cleaning the deluxe rooms and economy class.

Nikifor Naumovich took a seat next to the driver, and the car moved out of the main gate, passing all the buildings, a dance floor, gardens and flower beds. The administrator went to the main building to calm his colleague, sitting at the computer with a frustrated look, surfacing the Internet page.

The day was just beginning. Holidaymakers resorted to the dining room along the wide paths under the watchful eye of the chief doctor – a tall, fat man in a white coat – Mitrofanov Peter Samsonovich, whose well-being depended on the number of paid procedures taken by his patients. The immense power of the Caucasus Mountains captivated the spirit of the Masters of Sports in mountaineering and foreign tourists who preferred to appear in the dining room on the second shift after the elderly patients had eaten. Athletes after heavy competitions were received with open arms in this sanatorium. Immediately appointed treatment for damaged limbs, spine, internal organs, corrected the posture, and those recovered returned to the system to enter the new Olympic level.

The administrator, who was present at the discovery of the corpse by policemen – Vladimir Kormushenko, looked proudly at the colorful flower beds, pulled up the uniform and stepped over the threshold of the main building. He stopped at the counter where his substitute, Ira Chetvergova, was sitting at the computer, a tall blue-eyed blonde in a white silk jacket with a badge on her chest. She took the maid – Topilko Sveta to work until the end of the year with a probationary period. She also designed and registered on the second floor of Soshin Vladimir Viktorovich two days ago.

They arrived on the same day by the same train from Tarasov, handed over the passports to Ira, which first aroused Kormushenko’s perplexity, and then, taking into account that both new vacationers are unfamiliar with the resort, internally calmed down. Cursing her for slowness and vanity, hoping that everything will be settled quickly, none of the hotel guests will ever find out about what happened.

“You need to find in the safe the passport of the deceased and transfer it to the police. Let them understand. It’s good that they did not touch me. And where do such brutes come from, capable of attacking quiet old men, one kind of which causes pity and compassion,” thought the administrator, sighing and enjoying the freshness of the summer morning.

A light haze spread over the green mountains. In some places, rocks and steep paths were visible. The cable car allowed holidaymakers to enjoy the panorama of the resort area.

“Hello, are you back already?” Ira asked in a low voice, as if she had eaten ice cream yesterday, stressing the specifics of her work, maintaining always good relations with the whole people of staff: doctors and medical nurses.” “Something happened? Do I understand your silence correctly?”

“Nothing serious happened. It is necessary to increase vigilance, to invite a representative from the travel agency for agitation of convalescent holiday-makers to see the best sights of the Stavropol Territory: Kislovodsk, Mineral Waters, Pyatigorsk and Essentuki.”

“Are you concerned about something?”

“Anyone can not hide anything from you,” Kormushenko answered unequivocally, watching how she casually turned the pages on the plasma monitor, looking closely at her visit to the park of a mountain massif among tall coniferous trees and flowering chestnuts. “I’m tired of running around here and there.”

“Make coffee?”

It meant to go to the automatic machine with different kinds of coffee, choose the most expensive drink, having substituted a ceramic mug of the administrator, to pour in one container at once two portions of a smoking elixir of vivacity.

“I will not refuse. Make me like last time with chocolate. What’s the name of your recipe?” Kormushenko translated the conversation with a colleague on another topic, so that he should not worry himself, but gather his thoughts.

“How is it better to ask for a passport so as not to explain the cause and effect? The rich do not like it when tragedy incidents occur next to them…” a freelance police officer and a long-standing friend of lieutenant colonel Regimov began to ponder over the investigation of bloody crimes, corruption and malicious violations of the law.

He looked with melancholy at Ira, giving her a chance to answer the question posed. Her ideal hairstyle would be envied by any of the announcers on television, where in no way had to penetrate information about the mysterious murder in the pantry dormitory of a prestigious sanatorium.

“Now I’ll find out…”

She took out the utensils from the table. Elegantly stood up, walked to the coffee machine with an elegant gait. Put a simple light brown mug on top. She put the plastic glass in the hole, twice pressed the button, and then, pouring two portions into one cup, she handed Kormushenko, who was sitting helplessly on the edge of a small chair, looking for the key to the safe in the desk. He opened the safe at once, searched through references and passports, but to no avail.

“Moccaccino. Did you satisfied with this name? Probably it was invented by Italians or Mexicans. They have a craving for fantasy, to assign their names to different culinary masterpieces.”

“It’s a wonderful name, and taste is even better.”

Coquettish Ira liked to philosophize on various everyday topics, especially in the presence of her colleague. With him, they got acquainted a long time ago, but met very rarely because of inconsistencies in the schedule and a timetable of duty in the hotel. Kormushenko often had to replace Ira, as she was still working part-time in the neighboring children’s boarding house. By whom? He certainly did not know. However, he heard from vacationers that they saw her surrounded by teenagers in the very center near the fountain.

“Finally, I found a passport for a new guest,” he pointed to the document on the table. “It is necessary to write it out urgently. Rested out to death. Do this now. I’ll wait here,” Kormushenko was pushing out the words as drops regretfully, looking at the glass with a fragrant drink, standing next to him on the table.

“Did something serious happen to him? What about his things? He himself will come for them or there are other options?” Ira had metallic notes in her voice.

She often blinked, straightened her hair, stepped from foot to foot, and relaxed, standing next to her colleague.

“I’ll give the police. Now I’m going to the dormitory, I’ll collect what’s in there and bring it here, and the maid will clean in his room,” Kormushenko assured her embarrassed that he must do everything himself, despite the fact that his duty is over.

“Can you tell me in confidence what happened or is it a political sabotage?” Ira indignantly, making an impenetrable face, consulted exclusively about her quirks. “So what has happened? … The mystery of the 21st century!” she exclaimed pathetically.

In the foyer, no one from the rest holidaymakers was. Everyone was in the dining room, so she poured out the emotions, which had accumulated, on the colleague, who had fallen ill with “zeal”. She was looking at his uniform, silvered gray hair and a tired gaze of blue eyes.

“Leave the passport on the table. Soon a police officer will arrive, and I hurry up there,” the administrator pointed in the direction of the hotel complex.

“I’ll wait for your return.”

He was gone for about ten minutes. When he returned with a small suitcase on wheels, pushing it under the counter, the coffee had cooled down a little. Without emotion, Kormushenko drank in one sip what Ira had cooked with such care and love. Peace-loving holidaymakers with calm manners of behavior were sent to the procedures, who on excursions, booked ahead of time with the agent. The second turn of the guests was drawn to the dining room. Among them, the administrator recognized the famous hockey players of the Russian team. Two strong Americans: one bright red with small curls, and another of African origin, talking calmly about something already sitting at a table in the center of the hall. They finished drinking beer, waiting until they brought the trays full of various snacks.

“It’s difficult to agree with her in an amicable way. Always everything will go to nothing in one fell swoop. In vain I did not make her an offer to marry me before, but I hope she would not refuse me if I started courting her more aggressively. When she was alone but was such a nervous person. It’s just amazing how much positive energy there is in her. Nobody tripped her over trifles,” the newly beloved was inspired, suddenly imbued with sympathy for the administrator.

She once told him at work that her family was rooted in the dynasty of the Caucasian princes. After such a statement, Kormushenko had a desire to go to her meetings, give flowers, sweets to make love to her, marry, start a family, finally. Attend dance parties, meetings of graduates of the university. To compete with Queen Tamara, in his personal opinion, Ira could.

While serving in the Armed Forces and helping refugees in the Chechen and Donetsk territories, he started an army diary, where he marked the events that took place during the day. As a result, it turned out that he brought up his OMON brigade in the right direction. For which he received a medal of a foreign state, which he kept in the far corner of the sideboard next to a photograph of those years on an armored personnel carrier and a helmet in an embrace with his comrades in arms.

“Thank you for your concern,” Kormushenko said disappointedly. “I’ll stay here with you for a while. We need to deal with some of the guests.”

“I think that our employees are beyond suspicion,” suddenly gave her version of Ira, starting to cut her nails, which she did not have time to process and varnish due to lack of time. “I understood everything at once, seeing a covered police car entering the territory of the sanatorium. Someone got into a fight, and they are now looking for the guilty…”

“It’s just that this situation should not interfere with rest.”

“How much it is necessary to invest in work, it’s horrible!” she exclaimed, fanning herself. “Someone has fun, but someone has job…”

“Guests apparently are not so strong enough to go on an excursion. See what their physically depressed faces are.”

Kormushenko greatly exaggerated, as a cheerful crowd of tourists sat down in the approaching bus and went to inspect the mountain peaks, heading for the funicular.

“They will definitely like the monument to Lermontov,” Ira insisted persistently.

“I hope we’ll have a good time.”

It was Sunday. Therefore, she favorably agreed to go to work, as she was busy on weekdays as a steward in a neighboring children’s boarding house and preferred to take care of teenagers who came to rest from training classes on the foothills of the Caucasus, which she undoubtedly had an attraction for.

“Exactly. Let them see where the demons spend their nights,” he added ironically, wiping off the rest of his sleep from his face with a handkerchief.

For luck Kormushenko ten minutes later on the doorstep of the hotel appeared Nikifor Naumovich, to ask some questions to administrators in the course of the investigation of the death of the old man. He had already managed to return on the Ford from the police department, where he left Seregin to interrogate a new maid, tearfully beseeching not to tell her neighbors, about her whereabouts. The administrator recognized lieutenant-colonel Regimov in the investigator and hurried forward to meet him. He went to the counter at the reception.

“Have you noticed any deviations from the routine in the behavior of holidaymakers? Maybe someone longer than the others lingered on the playground or appeared drunk in the dining room?” the investigator began a routine interrogation to direct the attendants to pay more attention to their charges after such an extraordinary event.

“They need to clarify the investigation. All staffing leads to them: documents, mass-workers, entertainers, maids,” – the lieutenant-colonel tried to put everyone in their places.

“For my watch, no one got drunk, especially not rowdy. Everyone behaved quietly and decently,” Ira blurted out, straightening the glasses on the bridge of her nose, which she managed to put on, noticing the incoming investigator to give her face the most truthful expression.

“We need to revisit the record from the CCTV cameras installed on each floor. Maybe there will be a hint of truth to it,” Nikifor Naumovich remembered important details of the investigation, whose first task was to track every person on the floor in the dormitory.

“And who was on duty yesterday?” asked the lieutenant colonel, slowly leafing through a colorful booklet, advertising the sights of the richest sources of life-giving region.

Puzzled, Kormushenko automatically scratched the cropped back of his head, clearly betraying his obvious interest in promptly investigating a criminal offense. He could not imagine that someone could do this.

“Yesterday was my watch. Everything went quietly, calmly without screaming and scandals. None of the guests of the sanatorium asked me questions about the dysfunctional arrangement in the room or discontent of food in the restaurant,” explained the suspect in the murder, the administrator, since the whole gravity of the crime could lie on him because of negligence in the conduct of business.

On the table was a log of entries arriving and departing to a privileged sanatorium with the signatures of those employees who had passed and accepted duty. Excluding cooks, waiters and medical staff, who reported to their chief doctor personally, who had his own laptop, where all the analysis data and the dynamics of treatment of severe patients were made.

Doctors of the sanatorium did their utmost to restore the health of citizens after severe injuries, cardiovascular, chronic, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal diseases, providing a set of preventive procedures: heat and mud, massage, inhalation, electro and light therapy, bar therapy, paraffin-ozocerite and phyto baths.

Some employees rented the rooms there and paid as for a one-room apartment. Including chief doctor Mitrofanov constantly lived next to the outpatient clinic and the examination room. Together with the chef, he worked out the menu for each day. And the investigator’s suspicion fell on him least of all. Since he worked in the boarding house for a long time and got used to all sorts of circumstances that go beyond the ordinary.

“Everything in the kitchen is in order. Along with the national cuisine of the peoples of Russia,” Ira suddenly said with pride, trying with all her might to remove suspicions from her colleague.

“There are no complaints against them,” Nikifor Naumovich decided.

“But it seems that two foreign citizens abuse beer too much, but this is permissible according to our rules,” concluded Kormushenko, leaning back in the chic leather chair next to the administrator’s desk, blocking the inspector’s passage into the small staff storage room.

There he did not need to go, because there, in the closet stored dishes, balls and board games.

“In fact, everything went quietly. How close they are to them here, do not turn around,” Nikifor Naumovich thought minutely, taking a photo in the magazine that seemed to be starting to crack and tear in the investigator’s hands as he leafed through the pages, searching for the necessary line with the surname Soshin.

“We duplicate this information. We put it on the computer, “commented Ira’s actions, moving back in the chair with the rollers from the counter at the reception and allowing the investigator to leaf through the long files with the relatives’ tables, which came with whole families.

“You can see for yourself.”

“Well thank you. Now let’s look at the numbers. Do they coincide with the entries in the magazine,” said the policeman, accustomed to looking for a rational grain in every investigation.

He sat down at a table, on a nearby round stool, neatly, so as not to break and began to catch the same information that was entered in the paper original, leafing through, studying each squiggle and scribbler. To his delight, he noted that there were no corrections here or there.

“Here’s a suitcase and a passport. These things are from the room of Soshin. You can take it,” Kormushenko hesitated, not knowing how to say, so as not to scare the information, inexhaustible on the fiction, Ira.

“Good. I will keep in mind,” Nikifor Naumovich agreed, nodding, to take with him the personal belongings of the murdered elderly man for transfer to the examination, in the hope that there would be at least some clue to investigate the crime. “It turns out that this guest worked for a long time as a doorman in a restaurant, a bricklayer at a construction site in Beloyarsk. He took big bribes while standing at the entrance. We have already made a request to the place of his permanent residence. Soon his relatives will arrive. It will be necessary to place them.”

“Let’s keep in mind,” the administrators agreed.

Nikifor Naumovich for some time considered the documents, and then, giving vent to Irena’s imagination, said anxiously, taking out a small parcel from his package:

“Here, pass this sheet to the laundry or clerk, and you can take the blanket too.”

The policeman pointed to the second bulky sack with the emblem of the sports club, which he found in his office and brought for service purposes.

“I’ll take care of this myself,” reassured his caring Ira – the manager, the laundress and the administrator in one person, taking from the investigator’s hand the things from the pantry used to drag the corpse of the murdered porter from the basement to the police car.

She worked at several rates to earn a cooperative apartment, the prices of which grew year after year.

“You can shake out the blanket, but you do not have to wash it. There’s no blood there,” Nikifor Naumovich said without irony. “We are grateful to you for participating in the operation to eliminate unworthy elements in the sanatorium,” he continued, in order to emphasize the importance of their actions.

The lieutenant colonel placed a police certificate on the table to the hotel administrator for the discharge of the murdered old man from the sanatorium. The whole procedure took Ira a matter of seconds.

Having finished reading and photographing what seemed to him the most suspicious, the investigator from under the counter took a suitcase on the wheels, to which Kormushenko pointed it to him, put the passport of the murdered man in the outer pocket of the carpetbag, discharged from the sanatorium thanks to the efforts of the administrator, at the same time photographed the list of all staff members and business hours. What was not so much, but fifteen people trained to work in the tourism business: two administrators, a gardener, a chef, three waitresses, three doctors, two nurses and three maids.

“One new maid provided a typed abstruse recommendation on the computer from a previous job, signed illegibly without deciphering. It is good that her personal data is in my notebook. But there is no handwriting. Here, too, is a minus,” Nikifor Naumovich criticized himself, tearing the evil on the road surface as he approached the police Ford, stacking the suitcase in the luggage compartment, and then jerked violently off the resort mainline white off the sun. The strange phrase “a woman with work skills” made the experienced investigator question the veracity of these words, but he was not the head of the resort, so he immediately threw away the reflections on this matter. Since the experienced staff in the summer season is always not enough.

“We will sow all those who have a weighty alibi, and the others will be questioned without pressure. Someone will certainly open, some absurd, accidentally dropped phrase, or gesture will slip through. Then business will take a different turn. All CCTV cameras worked perfectly. The image did not flash. Apparently, someone dragged the corpse into the pantry, pre-inserted the standard image on the computer, which led me astray when I watched from my post behind all the doors of the dormitory. It was my watch. Means, I, too, can be taken under suspicion. Something is not glued to this matter,” he reasoned, ignoring the fact that he had already approached the two-story police building.