To me vengeance, I will repay

To me vengeance, I will repay
Alexander Kolosov

A detective story about how two groups of interested persons are engaged in a struggle for the inheritance of an unexpectedly deceased art collector. A huge sum of money is at stake. Each of the parties disputes the right to the inheritance of their competitors, claiming that they are involved in the death of a millionaire. To establish the truth and prove their innocence, the rivals, each for its own part, hire detectives to investigate the mysterious death of a collector.

To me vengeance, I will repay

Alexander Kolosov

© Alexander Kolosov, 2023

ISBN 978-5-0060-2438-0

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

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.