“OK, OK, that’s enough,” Andrei said in annoyance. “Just cut the gab, will you, and let me have the file. I haven’t got time to waste on singing along here with you.”
Still prattling, complaining, and boasting, Chachua lazily got up, shuffling his feet across the littered floor, walked over to the safe, and started rummaging around in it, while Andrei watched his massive, broad shoulders and thought that Chachua was probably one of the best investigators in the department—he was simply a brilliant investigator, he had the highest percentage of closed cases—but he hadn’t been able to get anywhere with this Falling Stars case. No one had been able to get anywhere with this case—not Chachua, not the investigator before him, and not the investigator before that…
Chachua took out a pile of plump, greasy files, and they leafed through the final pages together. Andrei carefully noted down on a separate piece of paper the names and addresses of the two individuals who had been identified, and also the small number of distinguishing characteristics that had been determined for some of the unidentified victims.
“What a case!” Chachua exclaimed, clicking his tongue. “Eleven bodies! And you’re turning it down. Oh yes, Voronin, you don’t know your own good luck when you see it. You Russians always were idiots—you were idiots in the other world, and you’re still idiots in this one! What do you want this for anyway?” he asked, suddenly curious.
Andrei explained what he intended to do as coherently as he could. Chachua grasped the essence quickly enough but didn’t evince any particular delight at the idea.
“Try it, try it…” he said lethargically. “I have my doubts, though. What’s your Building, compared to my Wall? The Building’s a figment, but the Wall—there it is, just a kilometer away… Ah, no, Voronin, we’ll never get to the bottom of this case.” But then, when Andrei was already at the door, Chachua called after him, “Well, if something does come up—you get right back to me.”
“OK,” said Andrei. “Of course.”
“Listen,” said Chachua, wrinkling up his fat forehead in concentration and wiggling his nose. Andrei stopped and looked at him expectantly. “I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time…” Chachua’s face turned serious. “In 1917 you had a little bust-up in Petrograd. How did that turn out, ah?”
Andrei spat and walked out, slamming the door, to peals of laughter from the delighted Caucasian. Chachua had caught him out again with that idiotic joke. It would be better not to talk to him at all.
There was a surprise waiting for him in the corridor outside his office. A disheveled little character with drowsy eyes was sitting on the bench, huddling up in his coat to keep warm and looking frightened to death. The duty guard at the small desk with the telephone jumped to his feet and gallantly barked out, “Witness Eino Saari delivered in accordance with your summons, Mr. Investigator!”
Andrei gazed at him, dumbfounded. “In accordance with my summons?”
The duty guard was rather dumbfounded too. “You told me yourself,” he said resentfully. “Half an hour ago… You handed me the summonses and ordered me to deliver them immediately.”
“My God,” said Andrei. “The summonses! I ordered you to deliver the summonses immediately, damn you! For tomorrow, at ten in the morning!” He glanced at pale, smiling Eino Saari with the white ankle ties of his long johns dangling out from under his trousers, then looked at the duty officer again. “And are they going to bring the others right now?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” the duty officer replied morosely. “I did what I was told to do.”
“I’ll report you,” said Andrei, barely able to control himself. “You’ll be transferred to street duty—herding the crazies back home in the morning—then I’ll watch you in your misery… Well then,” he said, turning to Saari, “since this is the way things have turned out, come in.”
He pointed out the stool to the witness, sat down at the desk, and glanced at the clock. It was shortly after midnight. His hopes of getting a good night’s sleep before a heavy day tomorrow had miserably evaporated. “Right, then,” he said with a sigh, opened the Building case file, leafed through the immense pile of reports, statements, references, and forensic testimony, found the sheet with the previous testimony provided by Saari (forty-three years of age, a saxophone player in the Second Municipal Theater, divorced), and ran his eyes over it one more time. “Right, then,” he repeated. “Actually what I need to do is check a few things relating to the testimony you gave the police a month ago.”
“By all means, by all means,” said Saari, eagerly leaning forward and holding his coat closed across his chest in a womanish kind of gesture.
“You testified that at 2340 hours on September 8 of this year, your acquaintance Ella Stremberg entered the so-called Red Building as you watched, and at that time the building was located on Parrot Street, in the gap between delicatessen number 115 and Strem’s pharmacy. Do you confirm that testimony?”
“Yes, yes, I confirm it. That’s absolutely the way everything was. Only about the date… I don’t recall the precise date—after all, it was more than a month ago.”
“That’s not important,” said Andrei. “You remembered at the time, and it also happens to concur with other testimony… What I’m asking you to do now is to describe that so-called Red Building again, in greater detail.”
Saari leaned his head over to one side and pondered. “Well then, it was like this,” he said. “Three stories. Old brick, dark red, like a barracks, if you know what I mean. With sort of narrow, high windows. On the first floor they were all whitewashed over, and as I recall now, they weren’t lit up…” He thought again for a moment. “You know, as far as I recall, there wasn’t a single lit-up window. Well, and… the entrance. Stone steps, two or three… this heavy kind of door… an old-fashioned sort of brass handle… ornate. Ella grabbed hold of that handle and pulled the door toward her with a real effort, you know… I didn’t notice the number of the building, I don’t even remember if it had a number… Basically it looked like an old government building, something from late last century.”
“Right, then,” said Andrei. “So tell me, had you often been on this Parrot Street before?”
“It was the first time. And the last, actually. I live quite a long way from there, I’m never in that area, but this time it just happened that I decided to see Ella home. We’d had a party, and I… mmm… well, I flirted with her a bit, and I went to see her home. We had a very agreeable talk on the way, then she suddenly said, ‘Well, it’s time for us to part,’ and kissed me on the cheek, and before I realized what was happening, she’d already slipped into this building. At the time I honestly thought that she lived there…”
“I see,” said Andrei. “You were probably drinking at the party, right?”
Saari slapped himself on the knees regretfully with both hands. “No, Mr. Investigator,” he said. “Not a drop. I can’t drink—the doctors advise me not to.”
Andrei nodded sympathetically. “You don’t happen to remember if this building had chimneys, do you?”
“Yes, of course I remember. I really should tell you that the appearance of that building has an astounding impact on the imagination—it’s as if it were standing there in front of my eyes right now. It had this tiled roof and three fairly tall chimneys. I remember there was smoke coming out of one of them, and I thought at the time how many buildings we still have that are heated by stoves…”