The Investigator

The Investigator Let’s be honest, the only thing the people I’ve dealt with in my line of work ever succeeded in was not being successful at all. Destiny is something you make for yourself. And that’s not easy. And it’s not within everyone’s power. I’m going to tell you about a single incident from my long and extensive career. It dates back to the start of the 1950s, in what we now call the twentieth century. I’m talking about the case of one Lilia Vorobeichik. At the time, I was a police officer in the city of Chernigov in the Ukrainian SSR. A wonderful place where anyone could listen to the nightingales or the sound of the poplars in the ancient streets, admire the calendar made of flowers in the central square or stroll around landmarks from centuries gone by. Against a background like this, the Vorobeichik case really stood out. I thought as much when it was assigned to me. I ought to point out that back in Civvy Street after the war, a lot of people suddenly found themselves in new occupations. I’d been in military intelligence. More than once, I was sent behind enemy lines to capture potential informers and brought or dragged them back to make them talk. I earned decorations, including the military Red Banner and the Red Star. I lived and breathed respect for the common cause. As a demobbed intelligence officer, I joined the police. I studied and then worked as an investigator. In the event of murders or other serious crimes, a criminal investigator was immediately brought in from our Criminal Investigations Department or the Prosecutor’s Office. But on this particular occasion, things didn’t turn out quite like that. Our chief, Maksim Prokopovich Sviridenko, indulged me, a touch against the book. As a result, it fell to me, a humble investigator, to look into the murder as it stood. A woman, Vorobeichik, had been killed with a knife. A blow to the heart from below, beneath the shoulder-blade. Consequently, there was hardly any blood. Since I was relatively junior, I wanted to take the utmost care with this case so it would be crystal clear that the assignment had been honourably performed. I didn’t keep detailed records so I’m fairly unconcerned. It’s better not to go rifling through the paper work or do any cross checking. Nothing good ever comes of that in my experience. Vorobeichik lay in her courtyard at No. 23, Clara Zetkin Street, where she lived alone, on 18 May 1952. Which is why she was lying there in a polka-dot dress that was the height of fashion. The doctor, a woman, determined that it was the work of a good dress-maker, which led me to think I should find out who the seamstress was. A neighbour of the victim pointed me in the direction of one Polina Lvovna Laevskaya as both dressmaker and friend. Middle-aged, unattractive, with bulging eyes and lips painted into a little pointy heart. Well-known for her skill. In addition, she had a good brain. She was a complicated woman. Alone after all the misfortunes that had befallen everyone and her, by her own reckoning, most of all. And for that she deserved attention and respect. Although that’s by way of an aside. What I knew of Laevskaya led me to one Roman Nikolayevich Moiseenko, who had been romantically involved with the victim. In the context of that particular year, the victim’s Jewish surname immediately caused me misgivings – in case national politics came into it. Although all races here are equal all the same. Especially as a result of the Great Patriotic War. In the normal course of events, Jews were rarely murdered. They are a quiet race, the vast majority teetotal.And, since nothing pointed to a robbery, it looked set to be an innocent sort of case. By which I mean a crime of passion and jealousy, for example. Moiseenko was the prime suspect. That’s generally how it goes. The lover’s first in line. Unless there’s a husband, of course. Furthermore, he worked as an actor at the drama theatre and, word had it, was an enthusiastic drinker of spirits. But at that time almost everybody was. The suspect’s personal profile in that regard had still to be ascertained. The day I first met Roman Nikolayevich Moiseenko, I did a commendable job. I found him looking distracted during a rehearsal for Hulak-Artemovsky’s people’s opera, “Cossacks beyond the Danube”. Moiseenko wasn’t taking part. Instead, he was sitting in the front row, voicing the part of an actress who was off sick. I determined that he was in the auditorium rather than on stage because he was seriously unsteady on his feet and might fall through the stagehands’ trapdoor which was open for some reason, or into the orchestra pit. When I asked him nicely, Moiseenko followed me into one of the dressing-rooms for a chat. Although I did have to take him by the arm while he loudly indicated the way. I asked him straight out whether he knew about Lilia Vorobeichik’s murder and what his thoughts about it were. Particularly since the woman had not yet been buried and her corpse awaited vengeance. I am not a great fan of statements for the record, although these always remain a strict requirement. I prefer to meet the person I’m interested in at their place of residence or work first. At the station, the atmosphere itself encourages the person being questioned to mobilize their forces. Personally, I used to think – still do indeed – that such all-out mobilization is detrimental to an investigation. What’s needed is freedom and the impression that before too long this chap will be on his way and everything will go back to normal. A few days later, I issue the citizen with a summons and by then the mobilization has no effect. It can’t handle that preliminary easing off. Yet that’s precisely what I offer for an ulterior motive of my own. At the time, I preferred to operate using intuition rather than book learning. I was selected by the Party to enter the police when I was demobbed from the army. And I saw myself primarily as a human being rather than a stickler for the law. I was thirty-two. Roman Moiseenko turned out to be a handsome man, considerably younger than Lilia Vorobeichik. At the time of her sudden death, she was thirty-eight. He was twenty-seven. Nature itself seemed to have destined Moiseenko for a career on the stage. Black brows, hazel eyes, a cascade of dark hair, his figure, his height etc. etc. He was the complete opposite of Vorobeichik. Before she died, she had bright red hair and her eyes were blue. As for her height, she was tall and just a tiny bit overweight. Some people like to show photos taken at the scene of the incident because they bank on shocking the suspect. I didn’t. After the war, no-one could be shaken by the sight of death. Moreover, things are always worse in the imagination than in reality. I know that from my own experience. Moiseenko looked at me calmly and directly. He didn’t smell too good, his breath reeked of several days’ worth of stale alcohol. “What’s there to talk about?” he said. “I killed Lilka.” I wasn’t happy with such a quick confession, especially taking Moiseenko’s personality into account. With the utmost severity, I said, “You are misleading the investigation.” He lowered his gaze but stuck to his guns. You can’t argue with an unforced confession. At that point, everything has to start going on the record and so on. The main thing was that the murder weapon hadn’t been found. There were two knives of the right size in the victim’s house. They were identical, sharpened and almost new.There were other styles of knife too but they were very small and clearly blunt. All the knives were clean, as clean as knives can be that are in daily use. A close neighbour testified that there had been a third knife too. One that apparently looked just like the other two apart from having, as the late Lilia used to say before she died, a blade made of special steel. She would boast about it, demonstrating its sharpness against her own finger nail. This made it possible to suppose that that very knife was the murder weapon, missing, whereabouts unknown. There was a thorough search but without the required result. Incidentally, concealing the murder weapon attested to the perpetrator’s sober state of mind. When the balance of his mind is seriously disturbed, a malefactor tends to panic and dispose of the weapon at the scene of the crime, not always out of remorse but seemingly in sheer surprise at what he has done. It went against Moiseenko that the neighbours had seen him in the courtyard not long before Vorobeichik was found dead. Moiseenko gave a good verbal description of just where the knife had gone in. But that didn’t mean a thing since rumours about the killing had spread quickly. Before the officers of the law arrived, the local women had come running at the scream of a neighbour who had popped into Vorobeichik’s for something and, quick as a flash, they had passed on a description of the corpse and so on. At the morgue, Moiseenko conducted himself with dignity and gazed at Vorobeichik with honest, open eyes. My quick action earned me plenty of praise from the top brass. However, the day before the court hearing, Roman Nikolayevich Moiseenko committed suicide by hanging. He didn’t leave a note as he didn’t have a pen or pencil about his person and, since he was neither a writer nor a revolutionary in the Tsar’s torture chambers, he hadn’t requested anything to write with in advance. His personal confession outweighed any arguments for continuing the investigation. There was no shortage of other work. Those were hectic times. The incident receded as other business came to the fore. One July evening, I was walking along Clara Zetkin Street at dusk. Taking a stroll before bed. For some reason, I had chosen a different route – from where I lived to the River Strizhen.Perhaps I felt drawn to go and look at the military hospital, where I’d spent a long time recovering from wounds at the front after we won the war and where good fortune had brought my wife, Lyubochka, and me together. She was an auxiliary nurse on the surgical ward. Suddenly, I caught a clear glimpse of a shadow at the gate to No. 23. The shadow reminded me of Citizen Vorobeichik. I didn’t doubt for a moment that it was she who had closed the gate, looked back and given me the once over. The gate slammed shut. The catch caught on the inside. I continued on my way. And, of course, once I’d recovered from the surprise, I realized I’d seen a relative of some kind, there to inherit. The incident wasn’t worth a fig, as they say. But I had been so struck by the likeness that it very much piqued my interest. The next morning I approached the house on Clara Zetkin Street. The gate was ajar, giving me legitimate access to the courtyard. I knocked at the door. It was opened by an old woman of Jewish appearance. So Jewish that her headscarf was even tucked behind her ears in the Jewish way and only then tied under her chin the way decent people do. There was a good smell in the house, like bread or baking. Since the kitchen was right next to the doorway, I immediately spotted some large circles of dough on the table, thin as could be and riddled with tiny holes. There was also a little wheel with a wooden handle for evenly distributing the holes. The old woman’s apron was covered in flour and there was flour on the floor. I wasn’t born yesterday. I knew this was “matzo”. Special food for their Passover. From my own experience and from the nature of my work, I knew that this Passover was over. Furthermore, not only was matzo making not welcomed by the Soviet law-enforcement agencies, there were examples of it leading to convictions that cost the offenders dear, including lengthy prison sentences.