Finally, Friday had arrived in St Petersburg. However, that did not mean the weekend was something to look forward to. It had been raining endlessly throughout September, and the cold, crisp winter air from the Siberian steppes was all he was longing for. Another couple of bodies can be added to Piter’s homicide statistics, he thought. He was proud of the local nickname for the city that Russians traditionally had called the ‘Window to the West’. St Petersburg had, throughout time, seen more violence than most cities, but the city offered so much more than brute force and death. However, not even his fondness could dispel the stench from the water in the harbour that stung his nostrils. The reek inadvertently brought doubt to his mind. Will my beloved city ever be worthy of the name of the pure apostle? wondered the old detective inspector while rubbing the bridge of his nose. Most likely not in my lifetime. Drained, he pulled the zipper down on the body bag closest to him and scanned the face of the young woman with a listless look. His brain concluded that she had undoubtedly been beautiful when the blood flowed through her veins, but this result was not relayed to his heart. He pulled the zipper down further, nudging her arm out and examined her hand. Definitely not accustomed to hard work. Her nails are neat and not vulgar, xiilike those of the street girls, he noted and resealed the bag. With a sigh, he turned towards the second body bag and pulled the zipper down. He paused at the sight of the man and tilted his head. Clearly Slavic features? The question echoed in his head as he zipped the bag shut. He pulled two passports from his trench coat and dragged on the cigarette between his yellowing fingers. ‘Only identification are these passports. Hmm, interesting. A Russian woman and a Danish citizen by the name of Holger Berg,’ he muttered, and he stared over the oil-black water of the harbour as he sucked more nicotine into his lungs. The drizzle had thickened, but he did not take any notice. In the cold blue light of the police cars, he suddenly felt as tired as his old trench coat. There had recently been far too many days like this one for him to remember, and his icy blue eyes had seen too many dead bodies for these two to ruin his weekend. Not that the end of yet another week had any significance; he felt as vigorous as the seagulls huddled up on the quay. He stuck the cigarette between pursed lips and massaged his cheeks to try to reenergise himself. But in vain.
The detective inspector’s cold eyes examined the photos in the passports once more before placing them in the pocket of his trench coat. He took a last drag of the cigarette and discarded the stub on the floor with a shrug of his shoulders. Mechanically, he snubbed it out with the toe of his shoe and headed for the small group of chain-smoking men sheltering from the rain behind a battered white ambulance. A couple of police divers were busy gathering up their gear. The divers shivered in the rain, and not even some slurps from a vodka bottle seemed able to stop the cold from getting a hold of their bodies. They were desperate to finish their work and get home and did not waste time in looking xiiiup. The dive into the waters of the harbour would linger in their bodies for a while.
‘Sir, we don’t yet know exactly what happened, but the deceased male and female were probably involved in the shooting incident in the area last night,’ said a young police officer, pushing his cap further up his forehead.
‘A dock worker reported seeing the bodies in the water. At first, he thought they were wreckage,’ another constable eagerly chipped in.
‘They were both dead prior to falling into the harbour. The cause of death is multiple fatal gunshot wounds. Not drowning. There is unlikely to be any water in their lungs, as neither body sank to the bottom. But I can verify all of that once I have completed the autopsy,’ he added, pulling off his rubber gloves and vainly adjusting his suit.
The detective inspector nodded acknowledgement at the young forensic expert. The cranes on the dock, moving containers as if they were Lego bricks, had his full attention. At a distance, the cranes looked like giants performing a slow-motion ballet with their long, graceful arms, and the rusting ships surrounding them were audience. It was hectic around the clock in the industrial harbour. Profit never rests, he thought, and noted that a massive tanker had just docked; the quay where it had moored was crawling with workers who saw to it that the cargo was safely unloaded and forwarded to its final destination further east. There is no need to complicate this case, thought the detective inspector as he walked to his trusted but somewhat battered Moskvich. It was most likely just another internal conflict between ever-growing drug gangs, and as usual, the perpetrators would not be found. Everybody knew that, so no one expected anything of the police. Not even xivthe police themselves. And that made it somehow easier to accept widespread violence in society. Anyway, today’s headlines are tomorrow’s fish paper, he thought as he climbed behind the wheel. It was a contemporary model izh-4I2ie, but its frugal instrumentation could leave no doubt that its design was still that of a model from 1976. It’s Friday, and the tourism season has finally ended, he reminded himself, and smiled at the thought that loud tourists, eager to spend their money, no longer queued in front of the Winter Palace with their video cameras. The absence of tourists meant, statistically, a fall in the crime rates, and he looked forward to a quiet weekend with his fishing rod. My first couple of days off in a long time, he thought as he turned the ignition key. The sedan shook as the four cylinders coughed in protest at being awakened. He ignored it and floored the accelerator with resolve. The car sped out of the wharf towards the properly asphalted roads that would take him to the city centre.
Just like the foreigners who had vanished from the city, the trees had been stripped of their leaves by the wind. Their lack of colour was an omen of winter, when St Petersburg would again be reduced to a memory of bygone grandeur. Naked, grey and despairing, with its delipidated monuments and enervated buildings, neglected as orphans. It was back to business as usual: at the international restaurants around Nevski Prospekt, staff had nothing better to do than pass the time with foul-smelling cigarettes and sweet tea. It was also a return of disillusionment – an everyday marred by unemployment, falling incomes and steeply rising prices. Only the nouveau riche oligarchs could maintain a life sanitised of sorrows – something they were at pains to tell everybody when they arrived on any scene, in their big luxury cars, xvwith their wives, or mistresses, competing shamelessly to wear the most designer brands at any one time.
For Russians on the street, the winter promised only a return to rising alcoholism and violence from the extremist groups so well prevalent in the city, thought the detective inspector, tiredly. Cases of overt attacks on, and even murder of, foreigners were no longer rare. Nationwide neo-Nazi organisations could often boast more than 3,000 members.
The detective inspector changed lanes and let his mind drag him back to the quay. Something didn’t add up. A Dane with Slavic features, hard to see on the passport photo. And a young woman who looked more like an academic than a prostitute. The gearbox screamed as he pushed the car into the third. Now I’m going home to pack my gear, and come Monday, they will be forgotten, he tried telling himself as he focused on the wipers, which were fighting a battle with the rain on the windscreen. Something just isn’t right. He flicked his lighter, a clumsy imitation of a Zippo, and lit another cigarette. The flame reflected in the windscreen blinded him momentarily, and he squinted, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs as his thoughts kept circling the Dane. Who was he? And what was he doing in St Petersburg with a woman who seemed a fish out of the water in the crime scene? He inhaled once more and tried again to concentrate on the windscreen wipers, now losing their battle with the rain: it only seemed to be getting worse, and the outcome of the battle looked increasingly like a given.xvi