Penny Criminal Case

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

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

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

“Answer when I ask you!”

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

“So come now… fuck you!”

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

“Well?!” Bessonov could not stand.

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

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

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

Bessonov stared in awe at the lieutenant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alex, you want to say, that…”

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

Starkov pensive look went somewhere sideways.

“This was what our incognito needed…”

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

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

“Pre-planned murder?”

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

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

“I know.”

“Lead us.”

Ivanov again hesitated.

“What else?”

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

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

“Well then…”

Starkov glanced at his watch.

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

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

“Alex, I have still found something!”

Rubin lifted a plastic bag over his head.

“What exactly?”

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

“Here, take a look!”

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

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

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

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

“In general sense…”

Starkov looked around at the cigarette butts again.

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

Zarubin puzzled brow.