Бесплатный фрагмент - To me vengeance, I will repay

To me vengeance, I will repay

“…every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy

Chapter 1

Everything got mixed up in Milutin’s house when his wife and children found out that the head of the family had disinherited them. And nothing at the beginning of the Sunday feast foretold how the festive dinner would end for them. It was customary for the whole family to gather at the dinner table once a week, on Sundays, to celebrate the end of the week. And to express their admiration for the generosity of the head of the family, Sergei Ivanovich, who honored them all with his attention on that day.

Milutin, a stout and completely bald man with an ocular beard and buttery eyes, liked to sit at the head of the table and listen to the praise he received from

his housemates. A man of hard fate, who had made his fortune in the antiques trade in the wild 90s, he could rightfully be proud that he was now among the richest collectors in the capital, having avoided many troubles on his winding path to success and big money.

At first today was no different from previous Sundays. Except that during dinner there was a verbal skirmish between his daughters, Marfa and Aglaia, who found no better subject than to discuss in the presence of their father alive who of them, after his death, would get his collection of pictures. At last the squealing cries of his daughters made Milutin lose his temper and he got up from the table and ordered them to stop:

— Sergei, in the end, they have a right to know what and how much they will get after you die. We all walk under God, it’s time to think about the children. Or do you want your collection to go into the hands after your death?

His wife’s words had a most unexpected effect on the collector. He laughed so hard that his monstrous laughter silenced his daughters, who were in a frenzy. Everyone stared at him in bewilderment, but he laughed and laughed and gave everyone present the creeps. He was leaning on the edge of the table with both hands, and arching his back like an enraged beast, standing on its hind legs, its

teeth baring through the protruding hair of its dishevelled red beard. It was the way animals behave when cornered. His laughter was drowned out in a cough through which he managed only to wheeze the word “Choke.

He coughed as if he had come to his senses, collapsed on a chair without strength, and repeated quietly:

— Choke on it!

— What did you say, I don’t understand you?’ forgetting to take the smile off his face, his wife anxiously stared at him, ‘What does this ‘choke’ mean?

— And that means,’ at last Milutin’s voice returned to him, ‘you all get nothing from me. None of you three will get a ruble of my money, or a scrap of canvas from my collection. I have bequeathed all my property to him, Van’ka-Kain,’ he shook his head in the direction of his adopted son, ‘and to your hateful Pronyakin all my pictures, including the gallery building. How’s that for a turn, eh? And he laughed again.

— Mama, he’s crazy!” cried Aglaia, and Marfa threw a plate at her father in a rage, but missed, and the plate crashed to the floor with a deafening rattle.

— You’re not yourself,” the wife grinned happily, and licked her teeth like a toad before eating a fat fly. The doctors will help you, we’ll hospitalize you immediately. I’m going to call a doctor I know at the regional psychiatric hospital and he’ll come and get you. You obviously have a nervous disorder, possibly temporary insanity. Girls, help me tie up your father before the doctor arrives, before he runs away from us and does something bad.

Both daughters jumped up as if on cue and rushed to their father, but his son Ivan, who had been sitting silently at the table the whole time, staring at his plate, came to Milutin’s rescue. The skinny boy stood in the sisters’ way, holding the table knife out in front of him like a sword, holding it with both hands.

— I won’t let you go,” he shouted and started waving his knife in different directions. Run, Daddy, I’ll hold them off.

— Oh, you ungrateful brat, you want to go to jail?’ shouted Milutin’s wife, turning her whole body in his direction, ‘I’ll send you to a juvenile facility as soon as we get rid of your father.

Those few seconds were enough for Miliutin to run out of the room, barricading the door behind him:

— Run along, Ivan,’ he shouted to his son from behind the door, ‘Run to

Pronyakin, he will tell you where to find me.

***

Milutin pulled on his felt boots with cropped cuffs, stomped his feet, checking how comfortably the foot settled on the sole. He stepped out onto the porch of the country house and breathed in the clean air, filled with the scent of the pine forest. It was the only place he felt completely safe now. The perimeter of the whole plot was surrounded by a three-meter deep fence, gates and gate locked from the inside. Only he had the keys. The second set was with his son, who was due to arrive.

“I feel in my heart that I have managed to sneak away from my sisters,” he convinced himself, recalling his own escape. Back at home, Milutin called an old friend, the lawyer Orlovsky, and told him in detail how his wife and daughters wanted to get rid of him, declaring him insane:

— Valera, I wouldn’t be surprised if they killed me. My life is in danger. I’m afraid of them. If anything happens to me, know that they did it.

To all the lawyer’s objections that he was exaggerating, Milutin excitedly shouted into the receiver that Orlovsky simply did not know them as well as he did. Not satisfied with one call to a friend, he made at least a dozen more calls to

everyone whose numbers he could remember, until his son arrived from town with the latest news about his wife and daughters.

— Tell me, tell me!’ cried Miliutin, running around the table in his office, excitedly, ‘What are they up to?

— Daddy, calm down,’ his son tried to sit him down, but he wouldn’t let go, and kept circling around the room, ‘They’re planning to declare you insane. While I was sitting in my room, where Marfa and Aglaia had locked me up after your

escape, I overheard their mother making telephone arrangements with some private medical service. They will arrange for your forced hospitalization when she gives them the exact address where to look for you.

— They’ll find out sooner or later that I’m here,’ Milutin grasped his head in horror, ‘We must escape from here at once. It is urgent! Go and look round, while I am getting ready, to see if we are being followed. If you see anything suspicious,

run back at once. If I fall into their hands, I won’t live. You hear me! You hear me!

— Daddy, calm down,’ the son waved his hands and went out of the office and came back in a minute with a glass of water, ‘Here, sit down, drink the water and calm down. And I’ll go and see, as you ask.

Milutin’s son put the glass on the table, went out on the porch, and, before he went to look around, shouted once more through the ajar front door, “Daddy, drink some water! Do you hear me? Drink some water!

***

Petty Officer Bezdolny is a truthful man and always says what he thinks. This time, he was not shy about his choice of words when he stepped through the open

gate to station 71, where he had been sent to check an anonymous call he had received from the dispatcher that a murder had occurred here.

— Holy crap,’ the foreman whistled, ‘they live pretty lucratively, you can’t tell.

— Yes, people know how to live,” junior sergeant Otchenashev agreed with him, following Bezdolny into the gate. I’ve heard that a hundredweight of land here costs as much as a good car. And here will be not less than a hectare.

— So keep your eyes open,’ the foreman told him, ‘Don’t touch anything without my knowledge. Otherwise you’ll get tired of writing explanations. We are not here for profit, but only by the will of those who sent us here. This master obviously has his own candle factory.

— Maybe even two,’ Otchenashev said, looking enviously at the well-groomed lawn and the alpine rocks on it, ‘Do the rich also have problems?

— The more money, the more trouble. Now let’s go to the gingerbread house and see what we can find there.

— God forbid,” objected the junior sergeant as he followed the petty officer into the unlocked house. In a minute the petty officer was already calling the control room and reporting:

— Hello, this is 13. We got a dead body here. It’s fresh. Please send an investigator with a task force.

The dead man was sitting in a chair with his head back and his hands on the table. While Bezdolny was on the phone, Otchenashev examined the dead man from all sides and noticed a piece of paper sticking out from under his hand. He pulled it out carefully and showed it to Bezdolny. It had “I was killed for a cause” scrawled across it as if it had been written by a child. Without interrupting the phone conversation with the dispatcher, Bezdolny took the note he had found from the junior sergeant and crumpled it into a ball and shoved it into the back pocket of his uniform pants.

— What about the evidence?” objected Otchenashev, to which the foreman threatened him with his fist and, having finished talking on the phone, explained:

— We don’t need evidence in a case that has no prospect of being solved. Let the investigator and the forensic scientist decide if he clinched it himself or if he had help. And you and I didn’t see anything suspicious here. My mother’s woman, you are not Megre, and I am not Sherlock Holmes, after all. They don’t make movies about such cases as we investigate, and they don’t present them with awards.

***

— I, Vitya, am accustomed to all kinds of work from an early age. I can chop down a house. I can build a stove. I can make candy out of any junk. I started my first business back in Perestroika, before the break-up of the USSR,” cackled

Pronyakin, beating his chest and at the same time helpfully looking up into the eyes of the artist Ohaltsev, wishing to make the most favourable impression on him. — That’s why I was so fond of Sergei Milutin, too, because we had similar fates. The whole ’90s we were walking under God, risking our lives. And here’s something like this. Such a thing! I still can’t believe he’s not with us anymore.

Okhaltsev, all rounded and smooth as a seal, with a gray lock of hair and a neat skipper’s beard, moved his eyebrows and, from time to time, pulled importantly: “Yes, however,” he obediently put his shot glass under another shot of cognac, which was served to him by Pronyakin. At last, after another cry from Pronyakin, to the effect that he could not believe that Miliutin was not with them, Okholtsev scratched his beard and let it out:

— And I believe he’s dead. Too many people wished him dead. You, Kirill, have no idea how many lives he ruined and how many he threw away for money. If I were one of them, I’d definitely give anything to get revenge. And here it’s no longer a question of price, but of principle.

— Vityunya, before he died, he called me and shouted into the phone that they wanted to kill him. That his life was in mortal danger. He was so excited that he

couldn’t speak coherently. And do you know who he suspected of organizing his murder?’ Ohaltsev shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands, gesturing for a name: ‘His wife and daughters! Can you imagine?

— I can’t imagine,” Ohaltsev hiccupped frightenedly and raised his eyebrows up in surprise. It’s not like her. Anything but murder. She and Milyutin may not have been a perfect couple, but she is not capable of murder. To kill, at the very least, you have to be capable of going all the way, crossing the line. It’s something you do only out of desperation: those who have nothing left to lose.

Pronyakin smiled enigmatically and wagged his finger at Okhaltsev:

— You, Vitya, don’t know the most important thing,’ he paused and, pouring the rest of the cognac from the decanter into Okhaltsev’s shot glass, slowly stretched out, ‘He-i-i-i-i-i-i-l-i-xed an-i-i-i-i-xed an-i-i-i-i inheritance. He bequeathed everything to me and his adopted son Ivan. Wo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- o-o-o-o-o!

— I don’t believe it, it can’t be. Why would it be?” Okhaltsev looked at him with amazement.

— Miliutin himself told me so. Why should I lie,’ Pronyakin shrugged him off, holding an empty decanter of cognac in his hands, ‘After the funeral the will will be read, and then you will know for yourself. His lawyer Orlovsky knows about it. Milutin told me that Marina was cheating on him from the beginning of their marriage, and that his daughters were not his.

— The worse for you,’ exhaled O’khaltsev after drinking the cognac in a gulp, ‘The worse for you.

— Why is that?” wondered Pronyakin.

— His whole inheritance was cursed. He was cursed a long time ago, about ten years ago, and the curse has been on him ever since. If all his possessions go to you, the curse goes to you. I would refuse.

— Well, no,’ said Pronyakin, tapping his empty decanter on the table, ‘I’m not one to believe in superstitions. Garçon!’ he shouted at the waiter, raising his hand, ‘Another three hundred of the best cognac and something to eat.

— You’re a risk-taker, Kirill,” Okhaltsev shook Pronyakin’s hand respectfully and exhaled, anticipating the continuation of the feast. — Just like Miliutin.

Chapter 2

After the funeral and before the wake, Pronyakin had a feeling similar to that experienced by young men before a battle. His heart was pounding and his

thoughts could not stop at anything. The funeral was attended by a great number of people, from the nouveau riche, to whom Miliutin had supplied paintings and antique furniture, to the unknown artists who came out of curiosity to see the burial of the richest collector in the city. After the funeral was over, Milutin’s close

friends and the entire family gathered in the central exhibition hall in his gallery in

Zamoskvorechye for a memorial service.

The wake was presided over by Orlovsky, an old family friend and part-time personal lawyer of the deceased. He sat proudly at the head of a huge table in the middle of the room, surrounded on both sides by Milutin’s daughters and his widow, dressed for the occasion in all black, giving the floor to those who wished to speak. It looked as if Orlovsky were holding an auction, drawing numbers in line for the right to speak in praise of the deceased.

Pronyakin waited patiently for his word, and all the time he felt that this evening must be a decisive one in his destiny. At last it was his turn. Orlovsky beckoned him to speak by a wave of his hand. Pronyakin stood up, looked round the huge table, and, overlapping the disorderly murmur of their voices and the clatter of knives and forks on their plates, uttered a loud and distinct voice:

— Miliutin has been murdered, gentlemen! And his family did it to him.” There was an ominous silence in the air. The sound of a fly hitting the window-glass and the roar of a heavy car’s engine in a lane somewhere in the distance were heard.-So they took their revenge on him, for he had bequeathed all his property and money

to his son Ivan, and had given me his collection of pictures and this building, where we were now remembering our dear Serezha with the kindest words. It was

a matter of honor for me to punish his killers, for he was not just a friend to me. He

was a brother to me. No, not so I said, he was just a part of me, and I will not rest until I get my revenge. I have hired a detective and he will prove how these ungrateful women killed their father and husband.

— Valera, do something, shut him up.

— P-a-a-a-a-a-r-a-a-a-s-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h- h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h. Immediately!’ Orlovsky jumps up from his seat and runs towards Pronyakin, clenching his fists in fury, ‘I will not tolerate an impostor here, Pronyakin! Friends, do not listen to him,’ he says to those at the table, ‘He is a common malicious slanderer. There is no testament that our dear Sergei Milyutin left all his property to his son Ivan and to Pronyakin! I was the deceased’s lawyer for 20 years, and I know what I’m talking about.

— He lies, he lies,’ Orlovsky’s daughters followed Orlovsky in shouting and pointing their fingers at Pronyakin, ‘he is an impostor. Impostor.

When he reaches Pronyakin, Orlovsky tries to hit him, but he easily parries the blow and hits the lawyer back in the solar plexus, after which the latter, bent in

half, falls to the floor.

— So you are a fighter,” says Pronyakin contemptuously through his teeth to the lawyer, while at the same time several strong men, friends of the family, rush up to him and force him out of the room.

— We’ll hire a detective, too,” the widow shrills loudly and shrilly, running up to Orlovsky. We’ll sue him,” she says to everyone present, “for slander and hooliganism. We will defend our honor. No matter what it costs us.

***

Andrei Zhuk was small in stature, puny in build, with three days’ worth of stubble on his chin, eyes as small and quick as a ferret’s, and a cowboy hat on his head. The meeting with Pronyakin did not begin at all as he had planned, but he managed to win this client over, promising that he would be able to find him the missing will.

They met at the Second Breath Liquor House, where nobody cares about anybody. This place is at the bottom of society, where there is no place to go

below: both aristocrats and degenerates come here to recover from their hangovers. From furniture there are only round tables at which you can only stand, and from snacks there are sandwiches with zucchini caviar or herring. That is why people do not linger here. Have a drink, have a snack, go away. An ideal place for business negotiations, especially if things are dark.

And Pronyakin was clearly a man with a dark past and greedy for money. That’s one thing, but in his career as a detective, Andrei had learned to understand people very well.

— I’ll pay you if you make me rich. And I will be rich only when I get my will back,” said Pronyakin for the umpteenth time, tapping his index finger knuckles on the table. Understand? I like you.

“And you don’t,” Andrei answered to himself and began to explain to his client once again that he had to pay for the current expenses during the investigation, regardless of the amount of the agreed fee, at his first request.

— Include your expenses as an extra line in your contract,’ Pronyakin disagrees, ‘But I’ll pay them only when I get my will. I’ll get billions, and you’ll get your 10% of everything I inherit. You’ll be a millionaire in no time. So take a chance, that’s what it’s all about! Look around you,’ said Pronyakin, ‘What have you got to lose? This?

— All right,’ having realized that it was impossible to agree on his own terms with Pronyakin, he decided to take the risk, ‘let’s do as you say. Tell me again everything you know about the will and about Miliutin.

— On the day of his death, he himself called me in a terrible agitation, screaming that he had been ordered.

— Was it just like that, shouting “ordered”?

— Just like that, he shouted that it was his wife and daughters who did it. And all because he disinherited them. He bequeathed all his money to his son Ivan, and his collection to me. All this he formalized and signed all the necessary papers. He said that when he died, everything should go to Vanya and me.

— What is included in the collection?

— About 5,000 paintings worth more than 7 billion rubles. And this is not my speculation, all of his paintings have been valued by the bank and insured. And also the building of the art gallery on Ovchinnikovskaya Embankment. That’s not even less than half a billion if you sell it. After all, it’s not far from the Kremlin.

But when I asserted my rights yesterday, at the wake, lawyer Orlovsky declared me a liar.

— And who is he, Orlovsky?

— Miliutinsky’s personal lawyer, he handled all of his cases. If anyone should know about the will, it was him. One of two things: either Orlovsky is lying, or he doesn’t know anything, because Miliutin didn’t let him know about it. I’m sure Orlovsky is lying because he’s in cahoots with the widow. I think they’re having an affair. In a word, adultery.

— But this is a criminal offense. If this is true, he risks going to jail.

— For adultery?

— No, for cheating on the will.

— Well, prove it! That’s why I hire you.

***

When Anna entered the room, a burly woman in silk pajamas was sitting in the small living room with a defiantly dressed girl who looked just like her, listening

to her read her poetry.

The first thing that came to Anna’s mind was to say, “A nuthouse on the road,” but then she was introduced to the lady of the house, Mrs. Milyutina.

— This is Anna Vladimirovna, a very experienced detective with terrific references,’ Orlovsky said to the woman. ‘Her friends recommended her to me, in whom I have absolute confidence. We have a delicate case, you know. Anna used

to work as an investigator in the prosecutor’s office, now she works for herself. She will help us expose the scoundrel Pronyakin and deal with his casus belli.

— Valera, I trust you,’ Milutina said languidly, stretching her words as she looked at Anna, ‘Just imagine, Marfa has decided to become a poet. She was just reading her poems to me.

— And how many poems has she written?

— Only two, but it’s just the beginning,” exclaimed Miliutina enthusiastically.

— Well, when we have a hundred or two poems, then we’ll publish the book. In the meantime, let’s return to our sinful land. We’ll have to make an agreement with Anna and get her up to speed.

— Ah, why all the antimonies, if all can be expressed in one word — we want to get screwed.

— And who wants to fuck you?’ Anna enters the conversation, ‘What is he blackmailing you with and what is he trying to achieve?

— What does he want? Money, of course,’ Miliutina stood up, all flushed with indignation, ‘Oh, don’t remind me of that scoundrel Pronyakin. My blood pressure immediately spikes and my heart beats like a bird in a cage. All my husband’s life he was surrounded by shady characters who wanted to profit at his expense. And now that he is dead, one of his so-called friends has accused me and my daughters of killing him!

— And you didn’t kill him, of course?

— Valera, what does it all mean?’ Milutina was sincerely indignant, ‘Does she doubt my innocence?

— Masha, she’s on our side. It’s just the way it is,’ Orlovsky reassured her, ‘answer everything you know.

— Yes, of course not!’ cried Miliutina nervously, and looked at Anna angrily, like a mistress at a guilty servant, ‘We didn’t even know where he had been for the last three days. The police called me and said they had found him dead in our country house. Before he ran away from home, he made a scene and told me and my daughters that he would disinherit us, because his daughters were discussing who would inherit what when he died. It made him mad. I knew right away he was having a schizophrenic episode. This had happened to him sometimes, he had been diagnosed with flaccid schizophrenia at one time. I wanted to put him in an inpatient facility for a couple of weeks to get him back to normal. If he hadn’t run away, he’d be alive now.

— And what was the cause of your husband’s death?

— He died of a stroke. The medical examiner confirmed it, and we were issued a death certificate. Otherwise, how could we bury him?

— And who is Pronyakin and where did he come from?

— Valera, who’s Pronyakin?’ Maria was surprised, ‘It was you who introduced them to Sergei. So tell me, why did you do it?

— Oh, Masha, I didn’t know how this was going to end. In a word, Anna, you need to figure out for yourself who he is and what he’s up to. By the way, he hired a detective, a certain Beetle. He already called me, asking me to meet him.

— What’s the detective’s name?” asked a rather surprised Anna, unable to hide the excitement in her voice.

— Andrei Zhuk. That’s how he introduced himself. It’s a very rare name for our country, — answered Orlovsky, looking at his watch, — Any more questions for me? Because I have some problems that must be solved urgently. I would like to clarify, are you ready to take our case? We will pay you well.

— Just so you know, your Pronyakin hired my ex-husband. Once I was stupid to make a mistake by marrying him. And even took his last name.

— So you’re also a Beetle?” draws Milutina, with undisguised interest looking at

Anna, as if she saw a natural anomaly in front of her, “How interesting.

— It’s so interesting, it’s hilarious. I don’t know how I can deal with Pronyakin, but I want to hurt Zhuk as much as he hurt me.

Chapter 3

— The rich are called rich because they live richly,’ Varsonofyev moved the ashtray on the table closer to him and crushed the butt of his cigarette in it, ‘I don’t know what you want to find, Andrei, but you won’t get anything here. We don’t kill the rich in Istra, the rich die here.

His voice is heavy, hoarse, and kind of slow. For the past hour Andrei Zhuk has been trying to find out if the captain found anything suspicious during his examination of the place where Milyutin died, and instead of answering his questions, Varsonofyev successfully shares his life experience with him:

— I gave you the coroner’s report, I showed you the inspection report. What more do you need?

— There was a call that Miliutin had been killed, wasn’t there?

— I think it was one of his neighbors who called. Came into the lot when he

saw the gate was open. Then into the house, because it wasn’t locked. Found a dead man and called, in a panic, thinking he’d been murdered. And then ran away because he was a coward. People in this village are nervous because they have money and they’re afraid of everything. We didn’t find any traces of violence on

the corpse and nothing was missing from the house. The deceased’s wife confirmed it. And the autopsy showed that he died of a brain haemorrhage. He’s lucky he didn’t die in agony. Otherwise we would have had to take him to the hospital, he would have been lying there like a vegetable, demanding care, and then he would have presented himself anyway. But this way, he’s off the hook and right in the dungeon. I mean, to the cemetery.

— Did he have any papers with him, a will or a note?

— We found him at a table with nothing on it but an empty glass. Apparently he drank some water and gave up. It happens,” Varsonofyev lit a cigarette, blew a

puff of smoke in Andrei’s direction, closed his eyes tiredly, “is it okay that I smoke?

— Oh, Silych, Silych, you didn’t help me as a cop, you didn’t give me a single clue. What am I going to tell my client now, who is convinced that Miliutin was killed?

— And you tell him the truth, then you won’t have to lie.

***

“Well, it’s all over, and thank God!” was the first thought that came to Andrei Zhuk when he told Pronyakin the whole truth that it was impossible to prove the murder of Miliutin, just as it was impossible to challenge the conclusion that his death was a natural cause.

They met in the same place where they had met the first time, at the Second Breath tavern. He handed him a copy of the medical examiner’s report and waited with undisguised interest for his client’s reaction. When he had finished reading it, Pronyakin nervously crumpled the paper into a small lump and tossed it on the table toward Andrei with the words:

— Well, no so no. Then find the will. I’m sure whoever stole it is responsible for Milutin’s death. Can you do that, cowboy?

— Do you have any ideas, Kirill, who could do it?” quipped Zhuk, surprised that Pronyakin didn’t fire him right after he failed to collect the evidence.

— I know for a fact that it was the widow and her daughters,’ said Proniakin, tapping his knuckle eloquently on the table and pointing to the crumpled-up death certificate; ‘and she must have had help from one of Milyutin’s many enemies. And he had a lot of enemies. Start making a list of them.

— And who will tell me their names?’ asks Andrei, ‘The list must be long, long, long?

— We need to find the artist Okhaltsev. And talk to him. Properly, heart to heart. I’ll give you his number. Call him, but be sure to call him,’ he throws 500 rubles on the table, ‘I’ll take a piss, and you buy us something to drink and eat.

“If they send you to get a drink, then it ‘s time to tell the customer to go to hell. Otherwise it will be even worse. But 10% of 7 billion is not lying on the road. For that kind of money you could clean the floors here.

In the end, self-interest trumps pride, and Andrei buys two shots of vodka and two herring sandwiches.

***

— You didn’t cheat me, thank God, you didn’t. You ordered exactly what you were supposed to order. Let’s drink to it,’ Pronyakin greedily downed a shot of vodka and then savored his drink with a sandwich with herring and chopped green onions, ‘How I miss it,’ he closed his eyes and sniffed greedily, ‘I love such places of power, where people don’t pretend. You and I are completely different, but our goal is the same — to escape from here, never to return. I don’t know about you, but people make me sick. I want my own ivory tower and nobody around. I want complete solitude.

— Tell me, Cyril, what will you do with the paintings after we find the will and they become your property?

— I might as well burn them. In public. That would be an act of conscious vandalism. All five thousand paintings, including the famous Shtyrev. I may be cursed into eternity, but it would be more glorious than Herostratus.

— May I join your company,” the painfully familiar woman’s voice made Andrew’s whole being shudder. In front of him stood his ex-wife, wrapped in a strict pantsuit, like a knight in armor. How irresistible she was; time had only done her beauty good.

— Madam, what brings you here?’ admiringly exhaled Pronyakin, ‘Would you like to join us? Vodka?

— willingly, boys,’ Anna confidently squeezed herself between the two men and felt how each of them, touching her, frantically released endorphins, which greedily absorbed her aura, ‘But, first, I would like to talk to you.

— With us two or with us one?” specifies Pronyakin.

— With you, Kirill Aleksandrovich. I have nothing to say to Mr. Zhuk.

— And how do you know me?” surprised Pronyakin.

— Who doesn’t know you after the scandal you caused at the wake of the collector Milyutin? The whole of Moscow is talking about you. I am detective Anna Zhuk, I was hired by the family of the deceased to represent their interests in the case to protect the honor and property of the family. I would like to ask you, how did you find out about the will, do you have a copy or the original and do you have evidence of the murder of Milyutin by his family?

— Oh, oh, oh, why did the damned charming girl have such a prosecutorial tone? I felt at once like a defendant in court,” tried to joke Proniakin, but seeing Anna’s determined mood, decided to get out of harm’s way.

— I’ll go away for a few minutes, and Andrei will take my place,’ said Pronyakin in a curt voice, and beckoned the detective after him, whispering in his ear conspiratorially, ‘Keep her here till I get away. She needn’t know that we have nothing but suspicions.

— So are you going to tell me everything you know?” reminded Anna, displeased that Pronyakin was whispering to her ex-husband and was clearly up to something.

— I’ll tell you everything I know, but not until I get back,” Promised Pronyakin and ducked into the corridor leading to the restroom, at the very end of which there was an emergency exit to the street.

Left alone, the former spouses gave vent to their feelings and began to quarrel, continuing the verbal altercation interrupted several years ago.

— Are you still as secondary as your ridiculous cowboy hat? Still playing John

Wayne, even though you’re not a figure!

— Do you want me to dress like Sherlock Holmes? Smoke a pipe and wear caps and tweed jackets? You’re still the same fury in heels. All you can do is bite

people.

— Well, let’s just say I won’t bite you You’re not even human.

— True. Then who am I?

— You are an imbecile. Your intelligence is equal to that of a monkey.

— Whoever said anything about macaques, not you. The monkey and the glasses. And by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, you were tricked. Pronyakin’s gone and he’s not coming back.

— Your office? And where will you take him then, since there’s nowhere lower to fall? Only the subway is lower!

— Madam,’ a customer at the next table interjected, ‘you don’t drink on the subway. It’s forbidden. Only the pit on Khokhlovka is lower. There’s no roof over your head there at all.

Anna looked at the uninvited interlocutor with such scalding contempt that he, with the words: “I’m leaving, I was wrong,” hurried to move to the far corner of the liquor store, away from Anna.

— It’s amazing,’ Andrew adjusted his hat, as if to see if it was in place, ‘It’s been a long time, and you still hate me. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that you took this case just to annoy me.

— You’re right, as always. At the same time, I’ll make some money, help the widow get rid of the parasite.

— Jesus Christ, Anna, fear God. Do you really think that Pronyakin is lying? If there was a will, that’s easy to establish. And if Pronyakin isn’t lying about the will, he’s not lying about anything else. At the very least, Miliutin was threatened. Otherwise, why would he hide from his family?

— Because he was manipulated. He’s schizophrenic. Didn’t you know that? Somebody told him they were going to kill him, and he believed it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Pronyakin. And rest assured, I will unravel this intrigue, get to the truth, and expose the scoundrel.

Chapter 4

— It’s a little immodest, but so sweet that I want to tell,’ says Andrei, looking at her with laughing eyes, ‘I will tell you the name, and you will confirm or deny it to me.

— God, how interesting. I’m all a ball of nerves,” readily agrees the notary’s assistant, with whom Andrei is openly flirting.

— Two buddies fell in love with a fallen girl. Who they met in a brothel. And they made a wager between them. If the girl chooses one of them, the other will

bequeath all his possessions to her chosen one, and he will go to a monastery. Can you imagine? As they say, don’t stand in the way of high feelings.

— It’s crazy how romantic,” the assistant was intrigued.

— And so it happened. The lovers were married, and the groom’s friend disappeared for several years until they received the news that he had been killed in Kamchatka. He did not go to the monastery, but took a job as a ranger in a bear reserve at the very edge of the earth, where he was mauled by a bear cub while rescuing a group of tourists from Moscow. It was these tourists who told our couple when they returned home that all of his property now belongs to them after his death. But, unfortunately, the original will perished along with its owner in Kamchatka: it was drenched in the hero’s blood. He kept it on his chest as a memory of his oath all this time. And now, I, a private detective, am forced to go around all the notary offices of our city and ask pretty notary’s assistants like you, whether you have not met the surname Milyutin when executing documents?

— Milutin, Milutin?’ The notary’s assistant, pale as an angelic shadow, with brightly painted lips and thickly tinted eyes, wrinkled her convex forehead and suddenly exclaimed joyfully, ‘I remember! We had Milutin two weeks ago. He

was so funny and disheveled. I thought he wasn’t himself. His eyes were running and his hands were shaking. He was making a will.

— And what is the record that the will was notarized and the state duty was paid?

— Of course, in the civil registry. He wasn’t alone, by the way-this crazy guy. He had a lawyer with him, a flamboyant one, trying to calm him down.

— And why did you, dear Oksana, think he was a lawyer?

— And he called himself that. As if it were a privilege.

— Isn’t that him, by any chance?” Andrew took out his smartphone and showed the girl the photo of Orlovsky.

— He, he,’ she exhaled happily, and looked at the detective in surprise, ‘Only our crazy man is hardly the hero you are looking for. Yours died in Kamchatka, and made his will several years ago. You should make a written request to all the notary’s offices and wait for an answer.

***

All night long, Anna was catching mice. That’s easy to say, catching mice. It’s not an easy thing to do, and like any job, it requires a lot of intelligence. Try to get the information you need from the darkest corners of the Internet, the web of information flows, where it is easy to get lost, constantly moving the mouse on the table and looking at the numbers and lines on the monitor. But Anna is no stranger to looking for a needle in a haystack. She hacked into one website, hacked into another, went through the firewall, and got her way — she found out everything the big government people knew about him: where he was born, who he married, who he sued, what he was good for in this life.

His whole life appeared to her in the form of dry facts of his very unremarkable biography on the monitor screen. It turned out that Pronyakin’s real

surname was Gorodov, he was born on April 1 in Kostroma, and he spent his childhood in Moscow. His father served in the police, and his mother taught art at the Stroganov School. After finishing the 8th grade he entered a technical college, qualified as a car mechanic, and then got a job at a car dealership as a salesman and consultant. Married, left his wife and child. Since 1984 he was wanted by the

police for fraud. He borrowed five and a half thousand roubles from a friend of his, promising he would buy him a car without waiting in line, using his connections in the car dealership. But the friend never saw the money or the car.

In 1986, he was sentenced to three years of suspended imprisonment with confiscation of property and compulsory labor for fraud, serving his sentence at construction sites in the Yaroslavl region. He was released early for good behavior. He settled down in Yaroslavl, opened a cooperative for recycling recyclables and a construction firm that manufactured wooden log structures.

In 1991 he moved to Moscow and married the widow of the owner of the first cooperative bank in the USSR, taking her last name. A year later he was widowed. And after that unfortunate event, his biography consisted entirely of a series of marriages and funerals. And each time he changed his last name, marrying under the last name of his wife.

He became a relatively recent Pronyakin, just three years ago, having inherited two apartments, a country house in Rublyovka and a chain of massage parlors after the death of his last wife, which he immediately sold to a well-known thief in law, with whom his wife had a conflict of interest.

The wife’s parents did not believe that their daughter had died accidentally and suddenly, and appealed to the prosecutor’s office to investigate the causes of her death, accusing the new widower of organizing the murder of his wife in order to take over her property. Anna was not even too lazy to find out the name of the investigator who tried to handle the case: he still worked in the prosecutor’s office.

“We should talk to him,” Anna decided, “it’s amazing that no one has yet seen the obvious connection between all these deaths. They are not accidental. And every time Pronyakin got away with it. How is that possible?”

If it is clear to Anna that Pronyakin is a marriage swindler and swindler who skillfully manipulates people, then it is completely unclear why he changed his last name with amazing tenacity, as if he wanted to start life anew. “Zero in on my

past? Start all over again? But why, if the goal was still the same — to cheat himself of someone else’s good? But he was a child, just like me: he went to school and studied the code of the builder of communism,’ she wondered, ‘what made him become such an outrageous scoundrel? Was it money? He gave up his son so as

not to burden himself with unnecessary worries on the road to enrichment.

Anna is convinced that the change of surnames is not accidental, that there is some secret behind it. “What are you hiding, Heifetz-Tverdokhlebov-Izyumov- Larin-Osmurkin-Pronyakin, honored widower and experienced catcher of women’s hearts? What do you live for? What is your purpose, what do you seek?”

Anna took her eyes off the monitor and looked out the window to see that the night had passed and it was morning. It’s 8:00 a.m., and it’s time to make a call. Anna finds the right number in her phone’s “contacts” folder and makes the call.

— Peter, good morning. Do you recognize it?

— Ah, it’s you, Anyuta! How many years, how many winters. Why so early?

— Do you know an investigator named Kuritsyn? He works at the prosecutor’s office, in the Butyrsky Division.

— Do you know how many people work here? More than a thousand. I’ve seen his name in bulletins, but I don’t know him personally.

— Can you help me meet him? It’s an old friendship.

— For you, Anyuta, at least with the head of the investigation department himself. I’ll call you back and let you know when and where.

— Thank you. That’s what a true friend means.

— A friend is not a husband. It is a permanent category, not a variable one. Friends are not abandoned, they are only found in order to stay with them forever.

***

Andrei Zhuk had already tried several times, though not as vigorously as he did now, to get Okhaltsev to discuss the question of Milutin’s enemies, and each time he encountered a reluctance to discuss this painful subject for Okhaltsev. Finally, after a second decanter of cognac and a destroyed dish of red caviar sandwiches, Okhaltsev’s tongue was loosened.

— What do you know, detective, about artists?