Penny Criminal Case

The tube sighed wearily.

“It’s good, that we rejected immediately the version of the guest performer, otherwise we would get even more ‘happiness’! But even so, bro, there are more than a thousand men in our list! And we have no materials for any of them!! But to learn so skillfully cut the pussy can any man in the street if you have the desire!”

Starkov chuckled into the phone: the vis-a-vis was well rounded. But with this “joy of life” ended.

“But you collect waste paper, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course, bro!” the tube immediately came to life. “As they say, ‘the plan for the shaft – the shaft for the plan!’ We work on volume, sparing neither ink nor paper! I have already begun to fill the third volume with papers! The bosses are very pretty with all our work… except for the result.”

Starkov laughed shortly: even despondent, Yun was not discouraged, and if he was discouraged, it was somehow cheerful.

“Okay, Vlad, we will assume that you confessed to me… I have a couple more small questions: did you find anything during the inspection?”

“Nothing. Not a single piece of paper, not a single poop. I am silent modestly about the tracks. No one saw anything, heard nothing. So with your case there is a complete discrepancy here. This is in your case there are a lot of material evidence, but we have nothing! And work with the corpse does not fit: a stick in the hole, the redeployment from area to area…”

The tube “thought” for a moment.

“It seems to me, bro, that these are different cases, and they were made by different people… in the sense of: nonhumans. There is no relationship, except that our corpses and yours are found in depressed areas, at a considerable distance from housing.”

“Are you suggesting that a maniac did this?” Starkov “delighted” colleague additionally.

“God save us, bro!” the tube “crossed” right away. “We do not need such a ‘happiness’!. . And in the killings there is no chronology, no ‘moon’… Just in case – for waste paper – we made inquiries both in place, and in the republic, and to the centre, of course.”

“Have you received a formal reply already?” Starkov “admired” with interlocutor.

“Yes, we have!”

Both of them were silent for a while. Finally, Starkov was the first – and not too optimistic – sighed into the phone tube.

“Ok, bro, thanks for the info.”

“What are you talking about?!” Yun “waved his hand” again. “Is this information?!”

“This is information for thought” Starkov “parried” these words surprisingly seriously. “I have not ‘moved in’ yet, but I feel, that we are marking time… hmm… on the right track.”

“From there” they shortly laughed.

“To the point, bro: we are marking time on the right track!”

“Then let’s wish each other to get to the point as quickly as possible… Good luck, bro!”

Starkov hung up. At that moment, his face was not wearing nothing “from Sherlock Holmes”: the presence of deductive abilities was countered by the absence of an “application point”. But there was a smoke – and Starkov lit a cigarette of a pack almost finished in the night. Immersed in a cloud of smoke, he, unlike the hero Conan Doyle, now completely did not expect, that the “entrusted” case to him would be “a matter of one pipe”. Therefore, it remained to not fool your head with leisurely thoughts, but just to enjoy the “deadly poison” from the famous tobacco factory…

CHAPTER FIVE

The murder was attributed to the Central district, but it was not possible to attribute the place, where material evidence was found, and the place of residence of the current and potential defendants. That is why Starkov immediately requested Kirov detectives about their “catch” and results of “other earthworks, which were made by nose and a horn”.

The guys honestly – and even with great pleasure! – gave Starkov all their poor “wealth”. The composition of the “inheritance” did not strike either with value or quantity: having learned, that the case was transferred to the neighbors, the “Kirov residents” cheerfully “conducted it on the last journey”. No one – not even a pro forma – has already “loosened the soil” with either “nose” or, especially, “horn”. No one did not try to “lure them to the collective farm” with a hopeless appeal to conscience, the “corporate fraternity” and other “proletarian solidarity”. The Kirov neighbors had a lot of sins, for which they were scolded by their superiors.

But before the blessed surrender of authority, neighbors, nevertheless, managed to “open to the world” something. So, the Kirov “cops” “at a waltz pace” ran around the whole district, hooked up the population – and found, that the hairbrush in the form of a naked girl was repeatedly seen half protruding from the jacket of a tenth-grader of a local school, whose name was Petin.

It turned out, that the sneakers with a rare “tread pattern” and the “Made in…” brand of the factory, which took part in collecting material evidence at the scene of the incident, were also not strangers to this character. Moreover: for the past several months, they formed a single whole with his legs. The aim was to make an indelibly-favorable impression on the contingent, especially of the female sex. Judging by the photo, attached to the material, this boy could not attract the attention of the girls, except that the unmeasured number of acne on the face, long nose, huge protruding ears and crooked teeth – but only girls with perverted taste.

Neighbors also “bothered” something along the line of his surroundings. It turned out, that the boy was “surrounded” by a twice convicted father – a subject very much exalted because of a past heavy time and a tendency to abuse alcohol in the present.

Neighbors promised to send information about the button, found in the murdered girl’s hand, “from minute to minute”: within three to four days. The little “harvest” of “Kirov citizens” was exhausted by it: there was nothing more to reap, but they were not going to: “the fields had already been transferred to the neighboring collective farm in the order of delimitation”.

Starkov decided not to philosophize and take advantage of the advice of the unforgettable Ostap Bender: “Of two hares, they choose the one that is fatter”. Therefore, he “decided” to start with the family duet Petukhovs. The first in the queue “to conduct explanatory work among themselves” was Petin Jr. – as the most “material favorable for work”.

The Central detectives already knew about the “happiness”, that fell upon them: the head of the criminal investigation department Major Lapin, with his dead voice, managed to “share the joy” with Starkov. But the detectives have not yet rushed into battle: the initiative is traditionally punishable, and there were enough local battles on the other parts of the front. So they waited for the “guidelines” of the “main victim” from the transfer of the case: Starkov.

And he did not try the patience of the detectives, who “got used to in the trenches”. Having finished the last cigarette, he called the first deputy head of the Central district police department (for operational work), Lieutenant-Colonel Petrov.

“I greet you, sir: Starkov.”

“Dear Alex, come hear: we are all gathered here.”

So, for which Starkov especially valued Lieutenant Colonel Petrov – he had a lot of operational merit – it was for his laconicism and the usual priority of the matter. Petrov did not like to talk a lot, preferring to work with his head, hands and feet – including on the “objects of work”.

Ten minutes later – the “Moskvich-412”, although it was listed behind the prosecutor’s office, was immediately “privatized” by the prosecutor and his wife – Starkov was already entering the building of the Central district police department. On the move, greeting everybody he met, Starkov went up to the third floor. (For some reason, the authorities always love to climb the very “upper loft”: “I can see everything from above – you should know this!”)

Lt. Col. Petrov was not an exception to the rule, although unlike the head of the district department of internal affairs, with whom he had offices next to each other, he was not seen in the inclination to show off his bossy ambition and other “components of the boss’s reputation”. The furniture in his office was simple and “mixed”: the desk and the console, as well as the shabby Viennese chairs were clearly not closely related to each other.

Starkov entered the office without knocking: Petrov hated the timid civilian “May I?” “If you have a business with me, come in; if not, you have nothing to do here!” The lieutenant-colonel immediately got up and left the table with the hand extended for the greeting.

“Hi, bro. Glad to see you… “without a noose around your neck.”

The lieutenant-colonel’s jokes were of the same epoch as the furniture, but the subordinates, as it was “prescribed by the charter”, laughed together, despite the fact, that these jokes could compete with the legendary “thousand Chinese warning” in terms of frequency of listening. Starkov limited himself to a slight deformation of the cheek as a sign of “comprehending” the joker and his joke.

“And I am glad to see you, bro. I would be even more glad, of course, when I saw you ‘in peacetime’, with a bottle of brandy in your hands and a pair of glasses.”

They laughed laconic. At the end of the process, Petrov pointed to a chair and sat down opposite.

“Well, let’s start, bro?”

Starkov raised his eyebrow slightly.

“Sorry?”

The lieutenant-colonel moved his eyebrows displeasedly, even his huge bald head, occupying ninety percent of the head area, reddened with displeasure.

“Do you think we are fools?”

Starkov laughed, and, as if surrendering to captivity, jokingly raised his hands.

“Neither for those, nor for others, Boris! You are my friend, comrade and even brother!”

“Okay,” the lieutenant-colonel smiled too. “You and I drank so much together… all the shit – and you decided that we leave you in trouble?! We never let each other down. Therefore, we will get out of this shit together!”

“I’m ready!” Starkov laughed, and immediately became serious, as if he himself commanded in the manner of Ostap Bender: “Oh, well, leave the laughter!” “Is the ‘object of work’… hmm…ready to work?”

Petrov, right over Starkov’s head, immediately waved his captain Andrey, who was leaning against the window sill.

“Bring him!”

They didn’t have to wait long: after two minutes Andrey pushed a lusty, red-haired and utterly pimply teenager, who was trembling like a classic bath leaf, into Petrov’s office.

“Sit here!” commanded Andrey, seating the newcomer on a chair. The chair was choosen even earlier – in strict accordance with the classics: strictly in the center. “Having arranged a temporary resident”, Andrey stood behind him: this was a classic also.

Petrov slowly – in spite of his lively character, he had already acquired a belly, even more “outstanding” in the context of his “meter with a cap” – got out of the table and approached the person under investigation.

“Did you kill the girl?”

This was a characteristic feature of the lieutenant-colonel: to straighten the road to the truth as much as possible. He never “suffered of all these approaches”, but he worked directly in the forehead – when with words, and when with deeds.

The youngster shook his whole body, although it was possible to confine his head.

“N-no…”

Petrov made a small circle near the chair and the “work object” sitting on it and again “went abreast”.

“Why did you stick a stick in the vagina?”

The “object” shook even more vigorously.

“What stick?”

“What stick?!” baldness of the lieutenant-colonel began to turn purple. “Now you find out, what stick is it!”

He returned to the table, rummaged in the drawer for a few seconds, and took out a rubber hose measuring eight inches in diameter. He patted the hose across the palm of his hand, approached the “object” and spread his legs wide apart, as if strengthening the point of support.

“Do you see this thing in my hands?”

The youngster, from somewhere below, gazed with caution at the “strange object”.

“I see.”

“Do you know what it is?”

Instead of answering, the youngster shook his head.

“Do you want to know?” the lieutenant colonel continued to approach him.

This time the answer was silence: the “object” had not yet decided, which answer would be less painful for him.

“But I will still say,” Petrov smiled somehow not kindly. “This is a rubber hose, but not simple, but filled with sand. Do you know why? And in order for people like you, then did not run to the forensic doctors for a certificate of injury! That’s because this thing leaves no traces! But what kind of ‘unforgettable sensations’ it gives, you cannot even imagine!”

The state of the “object” could already be defined by the words “neither is alive, nor is dead”. But the lieutenant colonel of this “intermediate state” was clearly not enough.

“Don’t you believe me?”

This is a tricky question: “I do not believe.” – “Then get it!”, “I believe.” – “Then confess!” The youngster gave an answer with his head – vertically: he ventured to “believe”. The lieutenant colonel slightly “passed back”: both in the sense of an onslaught, and simply moved one step back.

“Then answer: is it your comb?”

“W-what comb?”

Without looking back at Starkov, Petrov sent a palm over his shoulder, into which Alex promptly put the comb. Petin Jr. glanced at the comb and dropped his head.

“It’s my comb…”

“And the sneakers? Yours?”

Sneakers from Czechoslovakia were immediately offered to the “object”. Starkov raised an eyebrow in surprise: it doesn’t matter who got it, but the guys didn’t lose all the time in vain.

Petin glanced fearfully at the sneakers.

“Mine… probably…”

“What about this crap?”

Petrov stuck a plaster cast from the track right under his nose.

“Is it also yours?”

“What is it?” youngster flinched.

“It’s your sneaker, which was noted at the scene of the murder! The expertise has already proved that it is yours! Answer me, son of a bitch: did you kill?”

Petin convulsively shook his head, but he was prevented from completing the process by a rubber hose, that had passed impressively along his back.

“Aw!”

“It’s not ‘ay!’, but only the very beginning!”

“Mister policeman, I did not kill!” Petin whimpered.

“Still lying, you bastard! If you didn’t kill, how did your comb and the traces of your sneakers end up at the scene of the murder? Answer me!”

The hose was again the stimulating response. But the answer turned out to be the same, however, “in double volume”:

“Aw, aw!”

Petrov turned to Starkov.

“Bro, do you want… how to say this?”

“Do I want to see the sightseeing of the district department of internal affairs?” Starkov came to the rescue with a grin.

“Yes!”

Starkov shrugged.

“Well… I think half an hour is enough for me… I will give you as well… and to him…”

As soon as Alex closed the door, he heard three times from the office… no, not “hurray!”: “Aw, aw, aw!” Starkov, who had already set the direction to the dining room for the footsteps, suddenly stopped, silently moved his lips with a pensive look for a few moments, and turning abruptly, he headed in the opposite direction.

In the opposite side was the office of the head of CID (criminal investigation department), Major Lapin. The major, like all real detectives, who did not tolerate bureaucracy, gnashing his teeth, poured over the papers.

“Well, what, bro,” he instantly and even readily broke away from the papers, “did this son of a bitch confess?”

“Not yet. And I doubt…”

Wincing painfully, Starkov patted the earlobe. Lapin puzzled his lips in surprise.

“You think, that it’s not him?”

“God knows,” Starkov shrugged uncertainly. “He is shy for this business… Bro, have you sent a man to check his entourage yet?”

“We have already checked!”

Lapin even jumped up from the table.

“We got sneakers… and so on!”

“Have you been to school?”

The major turned his eyes away.

“Bro… we did not have time… But don’t worry: I will send a detective right now!”

“Do it, bro,” Starkov nodded approvingly. Let him ask the schoolchildren, if this youngster was pestering the girls, and how did they reject him? I am interested in Kotova most of all.”

“We’ll do it, bro!”

The major had already pressed the dial key. A few seconds later they responded from that end.

“Senior Lieutenant Koval. I have not had time to finish the report, sir. If you give me…”

“I’m not giving it!” Lapin “worked on the interception energetically”. “You will finish it later, and now run to the school! Ask if Petin molested the girls? Particular emphasis will be on Kotova: maybe, he harassed her. Pimply youngsters – they are all the same!”

“I’m already running, comrade major!”

Lapin pressed the key with his finger with force, and turned to Starkov with the air of a winner.

“Abgemaht, bro! Requests? Questions?”

Instead of answering, Starkov silently extended his hand to him and left the office.

CHAPTER SIX

On the nature of the work “among the object”, Starkov could have a complete idea even “on the distant approaches” to the Petrov’s office. The characteristic “aw, aw, aw!” was already flowing in a continuous stream, interrupted occasionally by no less characteristic sounds of dull beats, “of course, even remotely having no similarity with non-procedural methods of interrogation”.

The picture, which Starkov opened behind the door, that opened a little earlier, for some reason did not strike the imagination: all in tears and snot, with disheveled red hairs, Petin was actively “subjected to explanatory work among himself” from two sides: Lieutenant Colonel Petrov and Captain Andrey. But everything was “grand, noble”, without deviant assault. Continuous cuffs from Captain, who was standing behind the “client”, fit into the norm fully and corresponded to the “local customs”.

True, a purple-faced Petrov so energetically leaned towards the “object of work”, that he almost rested against his physiognomy, while trying to keep his distance, so as not to catch someone from aggressive acne.

“Will you talk, you bastard?!”

The “creative process” was interrupted by the appearance of Starkov. Petrov slowly moved away from the object, and, turning to Alex, negatively moved his head from side to side.

“I think, Boris, we must give the suspect time to think about his difficult position… almost hopeless…”

Starkov “made a proposal” deliberately in a loud voice, obviously not so much for the lieutenant colonel, as for Petin, who was choked up in snot. Clever Petrov not only did not begin to ask again in surprise, but did not even use a “surprised” shoulder to demonstrate a lack of understanding.

“Captain, take… this… to the camera. Let him sit there and think.”

When the door behind the “object” and the guard closed, Petrov immediately, but very slowly, headed for the tiny rest room behind the commanding chair, where there was a sofa, a refrigerator and even a wash basin. Thrusting his head under the tap and snorting noisily, he freshened up with cold water and rubbed vigorously with a dry towel. Then he removed a bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator, and, without asking Starkov’s wishes, he poured it into two tall glasses of thin glass.

Clutching glasses with Starkov, Petrov swallowed mineral water. Then, noisily puffing and belching, he slowly looked at Starkov.

“Well, what is in the dining room today?”

“Have I been there?”

The lieutenant colonel blew his lips in surprise.

“And what did you do?!”

“I gave the task to Lapin about the school. Marat has already sent Koval there.”

“It’s reasonable,” the lieutenant colonel approved. “It is possible, that the ‘legs’ of this case grow from school.”

“Well, maybe not of the case, but of the version – for sure.”

Starkov slowly sips “finalized” the glass.

“It is possible, that this pimply jerk has a past, albeit of a ‘school bottling’. He probably ‘loves’ girls for the fact, that they ‘love’ him ‘even more’. Conflicts of ‘mutual misunderstanding’ are not excluded… But…”

Starkov shook his head doubtfully.

“You think we waste time with him?!” Petrov joined energetically, immediately determined with the continuation of the insidious “but”.

“It seems so. No, it is necessary to work out ‘in full’, of course. You, bro, put your ‘cop’ into his cell.”

“This has already been done,” Petrov frowned.

They paused.

“What have you gained?” Starkov interrupted pause.

The face of the lieutenant colonel immediately “snapped of vinegar”.

“Nothing interesting.” He shook his hand irritably. “This jerk says that when he came back from school, he stained his sneakers with mud… sneakers, they say, were new, so he decided to ‘wash’ them. Then he allegedly hung sneakers on a fence around the house… well, to dry it.”

“Does he hints, that they were stolen?”

Starkov, as if deliberating, shrugged vaguely.

“The version, of course, is shaky, but theoretically… And what about the comb?”

“It was stolen also!”

Petrov added anger and crimson to the “vinegar” on the face.

“Under what circumstances?”

“He says, that his comb… well, because of this comb, many boys in the class were jealous. And, so, allegedly, when he was on physical education, someone ‘took away’ the comb from the locker room.”

Petrov shook his head and, with a frown, “aimed” at Starkov.

“What do you think?”

“We need to check it,” Starkov didn’t even bother to think. “That’s why we need information from school… Although…”

Starkov chewed his lips, with doubt on his face.

“It may well be, that this pimple invented the story with a comb for the ‘excuse’. He could lose his comb easily at the scene of the murder…”

“And I have the same opinion!” Petrov caught fire immediately.

Starkov twitched his cheek condescendingly.

“Don’t get excited, bro. Listen first. I’m not saying that a comb, lost or abandoned at a crime scene, is proof that this jerk is murderer. Even if we prove the loss of a comb in the right place, we cannot draw the necessary conclusion from this.”

Petrov moved his eyebrows displeasedly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“He could lose his comb there before the time of the murder, and after. For example, knowing, that the girl is always looking for the cat-reveler in the same place, he could watch her out there to clarify the relationship, but he was late: someone had already found out his relationship with her before him. The jerk got scared, of course, fled the crime scene and lost the comb!”

The lieutenant colonel sighed sadly and shook his head slowly.

“You are right, bro. It could well have been… And what remains for us?”

“And what remains for us?”?”

Starkov did not become “artistically”, a la Sherlock Holmes, to think using tobacco and a proud profile.

“Well, first of all, we will work out Petin Jr to the end.”

He raised the little finger of his right hand.

“Then we have a couple of cigarette butts… By the way, does this jerk smoke?”

“I did not ask!” Petrov wrinkled face irritated. “There was no time: I beat out the confession…”

“Okay, we will find out. Farther…”

Starkov bent the second finger.

“We have a button, that looks like a police one. So, here…”

“Wait, bro!” the lieutenant colonel interrupted him energetically, picking up the phone from the levers jerkingly. Twisting the disc, he began to nervously stamp around the apparatus. “Major Bessonov? Lt. Col. Petrov bothers you!.. Nothing… your prayers!.. Listen, bro, I immediately – to the point: you ‘threatened’ us to work out a button… well, that – on the killings in the wasteland!.. Worked out? Well, ‘report’!. . What?!..”

For some time, the lieutenant colonel was standing as a pillar, staring blankly somewhere past a telephone into a wall, on which “there were no patterns and no flowers grew”. Then, jerking off the stupor, he “returned” to the conversation.

“Give him immediately here, bro!.. What does it mean: ‘He will come himself’? ! No, bro, you provide him with a ‘personal carriage’, but put your guard, so that your ‘guardian of the law’ will not run away from custody! I ask you, as a friend!.. Well, that is another thing! We are waiting for the ‘guest’ with impatience! By!”