30 June, 1:00 PM, Czernograd, the Surovy District, Fitz’s
Fritz’s was a little dive, a block away from the riverfront, south of the Spensky Canal, hidden in a warren of narrow streets and tall, despondent tenements that have housed some of the city’s old and well-established poor for several generations now. Here the scent of Nisza’s dampness mixed with smell of piss, burned food and raw onion. Rubbish and dirt slowly accumulated in every nook and cranny and hope withered and crumbled like the autumn leaves and just as unswept. No future here, only the forever yesterday. Igor loved it; there were no tourists here on the lookout for the circus, only locals.
The bar, too, was grimy and felt as worn out like the prematurely aged men slowly drinking themselves into solitary stupor at tiny, rickety tables. It was a great place to meet, because the TV was always loud enough to drown the conversation and one would never run into any other cops around here.
Bohun was already here, sitting right at the rear of the bar, his back against the yellow wall, a half empty pint of lager on the table in front of him.
“Glad you could make it,” he said, as Igor pulled a chair from an empty table on the left and sat down opposite the Senior Detective.
“It’s good to be loved,” he said.
“You want a drink?” Bohun asked him.
“Depends what I’m about to hear.”
Bohun turned towards the bar, raised his hand and having apparently caught the eye of whoever was behind it, sent a sign with his index finger.
“So you have been nosing around the Maciar’s case,” it was a statement rather than a question.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Igor meet and kept his stare, happy to own it.
“I’ve got two rules for people who want to deal with me. Two rules only: don’t fuck with me and don’t waste my time,” Bohun leaned forward, his elbows firmly planted on the table. He clearly didn’t care about his suit and looking at it it was easy to see why not. “Let’s just say that your efforts to investigate Maciar’s alleged gambling proclivities haven’t gone unnoticed.”
People talk, of course. If they talk to him, they will talk to others. Any journalist would understand that very well.
“Are you now going to tell me to lay off the case?” Igor asked.
Bohun laughed and took a swing from his pint. “I might have if I gave a shit. About the case. And about you. And if I was still on the case myself,” he said.
“I didn’t even know you were on the case in the first place,” Igor said.
“And you call yourself an investigative reporter,” Bohun shook his head in mock disappointment.
“Actually, I don’t,” said Igor, “Mostly just accidents, minor court cases and social disasters. Only occasionally a self-staking. Alleged...”
The barman brought in a pint of beer and placed it in front of Igor. No words, no smile.
“So what happened?” Igor asked when the man shuffled off. “Didn’t your fashion sense match the team’s? Or didn’t they appreciate your droll sense of humour?”
“I was on the case because I was the most senior one to first get to the scene,” Bohun said. “Then when we found out just whose body we had on our hands, there suddenly were fewer of us, simple grunts, and more of the suits from upstairs. And then, soon after, a different team walked in, took over, and that was that. Thanks for coming, case closed. Cheers,” he raised his glass.
“You mean a different team, like who?”
“Special Service? Anti-Terrorism Unit? The fuck I know,” Bohun shrugged. “Whoever they were, they took over, kicked out all our people, even the top ones, and very quickly tied up all the loose ends. Now it’s all done and Mathias Maciar, God rest his soul, if he still had one, can sleep peacefully for all eternity under a nice marble slab at the Mogilev Cemetery.”
“And you’re telling me all this why?”
“Because you’re the son I wish I’ve had,” Bohun snorted. “Why do you think, you stupid fuck? Because you’re the only one I know outside of the cop shop who doesn’t buy the official story.”
“Me? I’m just curious,” Igor said. A slight understatement now, in light of the past few days’ worth of digging. In light of the fact that the companion slash lover slash feeder will not get to attend the funeral, wanted or unwanted. No longer grief-stricken, no longer scared, no longer anything. “As, I gather, so are you.”
“After forty-five years on the force you know bullshit when you see it. Sometimes you have to work harder to find it, sometimes it just stares you in the face.”
“So where do we stand?” asked Igor. He wasn’t sure if he liked the melancholy, reflective Bohun, but he was useful. “We have the Prince’s private secretary one early summer night, miles away from home, under a bridge, planting a stake in the ground, saying his final goodbyes to the cruel world – and to his gambling debts, apparently – and taking a dive? Or was he pushed?”
Bohun signaled to the bartender for another pint.
“Glad you should ask that, Svoboda. You see, when our pathologist had a quick look at the body after it’s been taken to our freezer, he noticed two small things that have escaped our initial attention at the scene. The first one, there were very faint indentations on his skin around the writs-“
“-suggesting his hands were tied with something?”
“Good boy,” Bohun nodded. “Something that has been removed as soon as there was no longer any concern that he might use his hands. Secondly, there was a slight irritation of skin around the mouth area. Any guesses?”
“You got me this time,” Igor said. “Passionately kissing a bearded man?”
“I would say, and our pathologist would agree, that someone had taped his mouth so that our blood sucker would not make any noise.”
But of course. There was no sound. Not a whimper. He should have screamed like all hell, like they all do when they finally die, but he did not scream. Not according to the crazy homeless man in the alley.
“OK, so someone made sure he wouldn’t struggle too much or make too much noise as they dropped him on the stake. Why not simply injecting his with something to keep him doped up, or just whack him on the head?”
A commercial break came on the TV and an ad played out with a vamp promoting an anti-wrinkle cream. The irony was undead. Igor chuckled on the inside.
Bohun didn’t notice. “Firstly, remember he was a sucker. Our lowly human chemicals don’t really work on them the same sure way they do on you or me. Secondly, bashing him into unconsciousness would have been too blatant. You can overlook some slightly irritated skin, but not a trauma to the back of the skull.”
“Can I have a copy of the postmortem report? Surely-“
“Even if I could get you a copy, which considering who was running the investigation,” Bohun made the quotation marks in the air around the last word, “towards the end I doubt very much I could do, the report wouldn’t tell you anything.”
“You mean...?”
Bohun waited until the waiter took away his empty and substituted a full pint.
“Yes, it doesn’t say anything,” he slurped the head off the beer. “Just the official story, no signs indicating anything but suicide. No mention of the wrists or the mouth.”
“But there must be photographs, surely...”
“As I said, both sets of marks on the body were very faint. They did not come up on general crime scene photos we took.”
“What about the pathologist? Surely he can say-“
“Say what?” Bohun chortled. “The official postmortem says there’s nothing there to see. It’s all stamped and signed off from the highest levels of the force and God knows who else. So what is he going to say? And who is he going to say it to?”
Igor weighed the pros and cons, his finger absentmindedly tracing a circle on rim of his glass. Then he told Bohun, not all of it but most of it; the wild goose chase of trying to find out the truth about Maciar’s supposed gambling addiction – some of which Bohun already knew about, but Igor left his cousin out of it – Maciar’s last ride in a three car convoy, his trashed villa – which Bohun was also aware of - the scared housekeeper, the Audi sentinel outside, now both gone.
“Which all adds up to shit,” said Bohun, draining the last from his second pint. Listening always made him thirsty. “We’ve got the official unofficial motive which we can’t disprove, the evidence of force which we can’t prove, a tornado going through his villa which is as consistent with him going out of his mind before topping himself off as it is with any other theory. Oh, and we also have a crazy vagrant under a bridge and a scared housekeeper, who for all we know gave in to her grief. It’s not even a respectable conspiracy theory. Some fucking paranoid little blog wouldn’t touch it, much less your respectable newspaper.”
“Thanks for the cheerful pep-talk,” said Igor. “So we’re fucked. So what? Is that why you wanted to see me? To tell me that something’s rotten but we can’t do anything about it, so hey, let’s just drown our sorrows surrounded by moribund lumpenproletariat?”
Bohun slapped his hand on the table. “Ah, all that rage and passion, and still can use big words. That’s what I like about, Svoboda.”
“All that bluster and gruff, and I still get the feeling that you haven’t told me everything,” Igor replied. “That’s what I don’t like about you, Bohun.”
Bohun smiled. For a moment Igor expected that the pulled back lips would reveal oversized canines, and prove that the Senior Detective, too, was of the same kind as the victim they were discussing. It wouldn’t have surprised him one little bit.
“Another one?” Bohun asked and without waiting for Igor’s response gestured again to the barman. He took out a handkerchief from the inside coat pocket and dabbed at his brow. They waited in silence until the mute in an apron left them with two new glasses and collected the empties.
“We didn’t find many things on Maciar’s body,” said Bohun finally, sipping his third one. Does lunchtime counted as drinking on the job? The Senior Detective probably didn’t give a shit, so close to retirement and all that. “Of course there were clothes, good quality, but nothing too fancy,” he went on. “No wallet or other documents, which is why we had to run the number plates. Some paper tissue in his pocket, three or four loose coins, a gold chain, and a signet ring. Old, valuable, probably from the time he was still human.” Bohun took another sip, and his tongue quickly darted from inside his mouth to lick off the some of the beer dribbling off his lips. “And then there was the watch. Pretty expensive, very good brand. One of our people started looking at it, because it probably cost more than what he earns in a year, and that’s how he noticed that the back panel was not affixed properly. So he pried it open and lo, inside there was a tiny folded piece of paper with some writing on it.”
Igor’s ears pricked up.
“Do you have it?”
“Alas, the suits, when they turned up, took all of Maciar’s things out off our hands, and since the gent did not have any next of kin, as you would imagine, I understand it all got passed onto the Palace.”
“Shit,” said Igor, “what did it say?”
“I can’t remember-“
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Igor threw his head backwards in exasperation.
“-but fortunately one of the bright sparks working under me took a photo and filed it innocently away, thinking nothing of it.”
Igor’s head returned to vertical.
“Where I had the good fortune of coming across it,” Bohun continued, “and removing it, before we got politely asked to hand over all our files concerning this matter to people who are obviously much more important and knowledgeable that us, the shit-for-brains cops.”
“And...?”
“Here it is,” Bohun took out his wallet, and then a photo print out of it, handing it to Igor above the table. “Wouldn’t want it to get dirty in this filth,” he smirked, his elbows on the table and he knew it.
It was a quarter of an A4 page, folded twice. Igor opened it up. The original piece of paper was a little rectangular scrap with torn off edges, about one by three centimetres of grey set against the white plastic desk top.
It said “PANSKI 144”, written in sharp, neat strokes. That’s all.
Igor read it again.
“What the hell does it mean?” he looked at Bohun.
The Senior Detective shrugged. “Fucked if I know, Svoboda. But it must mean something, otherwise our dead bloodsucker would not have been hiding it inside his expensive watch. It might actually have nothing to do with why someone decided to suicide him, but at this point in time this is the only thing we have. The only thing we have left.”
“Can I keep it?” Igor asked.
“Be my guest,” said Bohun. “I’ve got my own copy. So I can stare at it in my spare time or when I can’t get to sleep at night because the prosecutor had a bad day and decided to let some scumbag punk go for the lack of sufficient evidence apparently. But I’m digressing. Anyway, I’m getting too old for this da Vinci code shit. You’re the hack.”
They sat in silence for a while, except for the high-pitched voice of a race caller on TV, speeding up like an auctioneer with a diarrhea, as if his patter could make the field run faster.
“You know why I like it around here?” Bohun finally asked.
“The rich aroma and the ambiance?” Igor took out a cigarette. Smoking was banned in bars and restaurants in RiG, but at Fitz’ not many things were enforced. He wondered why he didn’t light up earlier.
“I mean here, you fool,” Bohun waved his arm around, “this part of town.”
“Do tell me.”
“Because things are simple around here. When we find a woman strangled in her bed, we’ve got her lover or husband in custody within 24 hours. When someone gets broken into, it’s usually the same old bunch of neighbourhood hoodlums we can pull almost in an instant. When a guy gets roughed up, it will blindingly obvious within an hour or two who did it and why…”
“If you people actually bother to send in a cop car down here to investigate such minor matters,” Igor interrupted.
“I’m talking in theory here, Svoboda,” Bohun sighed. “It’s not like any of these people ever expect to get caught anyway. No one ever does. But they kinda accept the rules of the game. Life is shit, they do a shitty thing, there will be shitty consequences. The eternal cycle of life, fertilised by the manure of human existence.”
“I'm touched by this home-spun philosophy lecture,” said Igor. "Why do I have the honour?"
“Because I don’t like it when some people bend the rules to try to get away with things. When they think that they’re so untouchable, so above it all, that their feet don’t even touch the shit the rest of us mere mortals are waddling through up to our knees everywhere we walk.”
If Igor didn’t know him better, he would think that Bohun was now in his bitter drunk phase. But he wasn’t drunk, certainly not anywhere near on three pints of beer. He was just bitter. And old and tired. And probably worried about his pension, about the handful of creature comforts of the last few years before the cancer or something else catches up to him and gets him. The last few years of realisation, every day after day, and every sleepless night after sleepless night, that all you’ve ever done in your life made not one ounce of difference, that for all the shoveling, the avalanche of shit, the glacier of excrement and refuse and filth would inexorably press on and ground everything into dust and cover the earth. And floating above it, safe and clean, those who would never play by the rules and yet would always win.
“I didn’t know you had a conscience and a moral compass,” Igor said. “Things we never stop learning about others...” He stopped, because suddenly his carefully studied cynicism seemed all very sophomore.
“And you’re a journalist, Sloboda, because of the high social status of the job and because it gets you laid with those too young or too stupid to know better?” Bohun raised his basset hound eyes. “Isn’t that right? And that’s why you are nosing around now, even though you’re not supposed to?”
There was nowhere to extinguish the cigarette, so Igor dropped it into his almost empty glass. It fizzed and died on the amber bottom. “I’m just naturally curious,” he said. “And maybe it will lead me to fame and fortune. So I can get even more of that status and even more of that pussy.”
“And maybe it will lead you to a bullet in the back of your head,” Bohun shook his head. “The people who can do this to the Prince’s private secretary can confidently do it a nobody like you without blinking an eyelid.”
“Thanks for the encouragement – and the compliment,” Igor stood up, and fished in his pocket for change. He threw a ten tallar note on the table, next to ashtray glass.
“You’re welcome,” said Bohun. “Keep me in the loop.”
“Will do.”
“And what’s the magic word?”
“I love you, Bohun.”