Penny Criminal Case

“Only half an hour, as my ass leaned against!” – continued to resist Starkov, already realizing, that “resistance is useless”. “Fear God, you godless sinner!”

“Alex, there is nothing to do – a penny job!”

Starkov raised himself on his elbow and swung his legs from the cot to the floor.

“That’s all: sleep well, so to speak…”

He began to grope his shoes under the cot. Finally, he felt, with a painful grimace on his face, stuck his legs in them, and, groaning, slowly got up.

“Well?”

“The ordinary case, Alex: murder. There is nothing special.”

Continuing the “return to life”, Starkov dejectedly shook his head.

“Ordinary” and “nothing”… Oh, our sins are grave… Where… this “ordinary” and “nothing”?”

“In the Kirov district!” Major added cheerfulness. “So calm down! I’m telling you: a penny job! There is no to do there, in all fairness! You will go… you fool around there a little bit… well, there, the protocol of the inspection… witnesses… all this crap – and you will transfer the material on territoriality in the morning! All right, so here’s the deal! What the hell I teach the genius of the investigation!”

Stoller “knew the statute”: the investigator of the prosecutor’s office on duty in the city carried out primary measures at the scene of the incident, and if this place was not his “place of residence”, he transferred the collected papers to the prosecutor’s office from the area, that had “lucky” to acquire another corpse.

It was supposed to report to the city prosecutor, of course – according to the instructions – but after several cases of stupid red tape, which “successfully damaged” the investigation “without delay”, it was decided to immediately transfer the “waste paper” to territoriality. The task was simplified by the fact that, despite the duty officer of the city, the prosecutor, the investigator of the prosecutor’s office and the local detectives always traveled to their area. It is understandable: they also work on the case, because nobody cares about someone else’s grief! And a “foreign” investigator, most often, just riding his time out, imitating an attack of labor enthusiasm.

Already it became clear to everyone, that the initial (theoretically) stupidity of the city prosecutor and the head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate was suddenly confirmed by the harsh practice of investigative life. And how it began: the general meeting of the “investigative asset” of the city, slogans like “Together we will destroy crime in the city!”

But it is not for nothing that they say: “Negotiation – celebration, calculation – consternation”. Truly, well-intentioned, the path, as a rule, is lined up in the wrong direction. The person on duty around the city only “was serving a duty” – and all for the same reason: nobody cares about someone else’s grief! Everyone has “their own rattles”! For the “alien uncle” no one was going to drag the yoke – you never reap your criminal field!

And how this “one for all – and all for one” window dressing harmed the normal work of the on-duty investigator! After all, immediately after the surrender of the duty – angry, tired, and sleepless – you had to go to your place to the area, where your own murders, witnesses and the undetermined number of cases waited for you. No, of course, “according to the regulations”, the duty investigator on the day of delivery of his duty in the city was relieved of work in his area for the whole day, but who will do it instead of him?!

And the authorities first cut down this day-off to four hours, and then completely abolished it: “the state pays you such a huge amount of money, and you will be idle?” (“A huge amount of money huge money” is one hundred and thirty rubles a month for a novice investigator for a round-the-clock working day, without weekends and holidays! Is this not a “plunder of the working people”? !

“The locals are already there,” Stoller as if overheard the thoughts of Starkov. “All of them: the prosecutor, the investigator, and the detectives. Our operational team is waiting for you in the ‘UAZ’. You will pick up the forensic expert on the way – and that’s all!”

Stoller’s face radiated enthusiasm. It was easy to understand him: the man had less than seven hours before the shift of duty – and less than six months before retirement. Therefore, he tried not to stick out with punishable initiatives, but quietly sit out their twenty-four hours, so just as calmly return the ass to this chair in three days. The man had already “served his time” by as detective, a district police officer, even an investigator of the district department of internal affairs, and now he was not eager to perform feats in praise of public order. The solid belly, that has grown in the last three years, was a clear proof of that.

Already holding the doorknob, Starkov glanced at his watch.

“Hmm, leep is no longer possible…”

His words were “the bitter truth”: the duty was not set from the very beginning, when immediately after coming on duty he already served the first customer-hangman. Then the dead people went in a jamb, and by midnight there were already half a dozen of them. The first and only time Starkov managed to lean his back on the cot only at one in the morning, and after half an hour, Major Stoller had already “pleased” him with the prospect of another trip to the scene of the incident…

In the old “UAZ”, which was kept only by the enthusiasm of the chauffeur in matters of “taxing colleagues” with spare parts and gasoline, the entire small team has already gathered. The senior detective of the City Department of Internal Affairs, Captain Rubin, and the expert-criminalist, Major Pavlovsky, are located in the backseat. The place next to the driver according to tradition was given to the duty investigator of the prosecutor’s office.

“Good morning”, sir!” Rubin laughed. “Long time no see: probably, half an hour too, how! You, probably, miss the corpses already!”

“It’s “funny,” Starkov didn’t smile. “Well, let’s go for the “ripper!”

Investigators and detectives sometimes called forensic doctors as “rippers”. There were, of course, other “options” – even abusive, but these “nicknames” were received by either” favorite” experts, or, on the contrary, “unloved ones”.

It was about ten minutes to go to the forensic medicine bureau during the daytime: you had to stand at traffic lights more. Now, at night, the “yellow eye” gave a “green light”, the road was clear, “dead”, only occasionally “animated” by a lone taxi. Therefore, we arrived in five minutes. The medical examiner Tarsky was already waiting for the group on the porch at the entrance to the bureau.

“I am glad to see everyone… again,” he grunted in response to Rubin’s feigned-sympathetic grin. Rubin was already pushing Pavlovsky in the back, making room for Tarsky’s fat ass.

“Let’s go,” Starkov waved his hand, frowningly browed. Shuddering with all the elderly guts, moaning and groaning pitifully, the car, as if trying to be strong both for itself and the road, carefully drove away from the porch…

CHAPTER TWO

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.