1 July, 1:30 PM, Czernograd, Pansky Station
Pansky Station had been built over a century ago in a style derisively known as “railway Gothic” that was much popular throughout Europe at that time. The ornate sandstone facade always reminded Igor of a cathedral, but one that has been flattened and then stretched out by a giant pair of hand, whose fingers then pinched the turrets at each end of the building’s frontage. The large clock high above the main entrance was showing the time at one thirty, the long black wrought iron hands like a profile of a storm-trooper giving a Nazi salute. Igor had no idea where this thought came from.
He parked his car on a side street and dodged the traffic to cross Galicia Avenue that ran due north, parallel to the railway line. In front of the station building taxi cabs were lining up chaotically, no one quite able to work out where the drop off line ended and the pick up line started.
Once out of the airconditioned office and the airconditioned car he felt how hot and muggy it was. The summer has indeed arrived, and definitely with a bang. Ruthenian summers did not usually peak until mid-August, when pavement and walls radiated heat like opened ovens and even the night air continued to press down on you like a heavy quilt. Today, at the start of July, was out of character for this time of the year and for this part of the world. The weather surprised everyone and made them edgy. As he walked towards the station, he could hear car horns blaring, and he thought there were louder and more frequent than usual. Ahead, an ugly argument has broken out between two taxi drivers, voices raised, arms flying around in menacing gestures. He too realised he felt angry, but he didn’t quite know why. Was it because a man – a vamp, whatever; someone he did not know or really care about – was murdered? That happened all the time. Was it because the men in their black cars expected to get away with it? If he possessed such a keen sense of justice, it surprised him; maybe Bohun infected him over their pints of beer at Fritz’s. Or was because he felt like a hound enveloped by a scent that doesn’t let the poor dumb animal rest? Maybe it was just the heat. Like the taxi drivers.
It was cooler inside the station hall. The sign suspended from the ceiling pointed to lockers somewhere to the right of the entrance, toilets and ticket counters somewhere on the left. The crowd was light, mostly locals by the looks of it, except for a group of tanned backpackers chatting in some harsh northern European language while crowded around a map.
He found the lockers at the far end of the building, through a corridor and inside another nave, smaller and dimmer than the main station hall. The metal cabinets stood against the far wall, a phalanx about an average man’s height, beige-coloured, starting with the biggest ones at one end, sufficient to fit in two or three large pieces of luggage, and ending with small ones, the size of post office boxes. Just what exactly so small some people would want to leave at Pansky’s he did not know.
Fortunately for him, the numbering on the lockers was consecutive, with the largest locker on the far left being – predictably - number one. Size mattered. The 144 was towards the other end, one of the smaller sizes, the middle one in a column of three cubes about sixty centimetres on each side.
The second thing that Igor noticed about it – after the number itself, painted in small black numerals – was that the locker’s door was sticking out as if not closed properly. When he bent down to have a closer look, he noticed why. It has been pried open by someone who obviously did not have the key, but perhaps a knife or some other sharp and narrow tool. These were not bank safes made of cast iron; the aluminium sheet, and not a particularly thick one at that, ripped and crumbled easily at the point of invasion. Igor looked around; there were no security cameras watching on. It would have been easy.
Not much point now anymore, but he opened the door.
The inside was almost empty, but for two crumpled t-shirts – they looked small and dainty, probably women’s t-shirts, he decided – an unopened bag of crisps, a blue plastic hair comb, and a empty plastic bag from a well-known local boutique.
For a minute or two Igor stared at the contents of the locker as if it were a still life at a gallery. Then he closed to door again, as far as it could go.
Three conclusions formed in his mind. Firstly, as he already suspected, someone was hours or maybe even days ahead of him in this search, stumbling on the same – obvious – ideas. Secondly, this did not look like a locker that had ever contained any of Maciar’s secrets. Thirdly, it was time for Igor to move beyond the obvious and start thinking laterally, something he was never particularly good at; perhaps a reason he never attempted to write a mystery novel. He was hoping that his competition would be even less successful at it than him. At least in their search; he didn’t care much if they wrote mystery novels.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash