4

I was woken up by a loud knock at the door, it had been lighter at the beginning, then it became ever louder until I became aware of it, first in my dream where I was absurdly advancing, on a big green field under the scorching sun in the bluest sky I had ever seen, towards a cannon that was pounding against me; the shell were falling near me without hurting me. I felt that the ineffectiveness of the fire made the cannon furious, its shelling became more intense every moment until it became intolerable. And that was the moment I woke up.

The room was dimly lit by a floor lamp near the armchair. I looked at my wrist watch. It was half past three in the morning.

In a moment I was awake, I jumped on my feet and got dressed with a few quick movements. Then I cautiously neared the door and froze. I heard somebody saying in an angry voice:

"Something has happened. We need the master key here."

Another annoyed voice answered:

"Where do I get it? Why don't you think there's simply nobody there?"

The first man perhaps put his ear to the door and listened, then he said:

"The bitch told he was there dead asleep." He pounded angrily once more.

"By your knocking you'll wake up the whole hotel. Let's go down and ask for the master key."

The last phrase was said too loud for me to believe it wasn't meant especially for me. I heard the fading sound of steps going away.

Ok, guys, let's play, I said to myself. It was easy for me to imagine the first man waving furiously to the other to go away and sticking his ear to the door. Ok, I could stay put for hours. Only three minutes passed when I heard the first man say:

"No way, there's nobody there, or the guy is really smart."

"You never told me why you need him."

"Didn't I? I thought you'd guess. The bitch told he might have a copy of the papers, so..."

"So?"

"So, to be on the safe side, we better..."

I heard nothing more. Their voices faded in the distance, hard as I tried to listen with my ear stuck to the door.

Now I had to move quickly. I put on his jacket and slid out of the room.

Now, I had to be extremely cautious in order not to run into my recent visitors. They could come back any moment, with the master key or with the receptionist. It seemed to me that I heard some distant voices. I was a few meters away from Ann's room. In three elastic leaps I reached it and gave three nervous knocks at the door. There was no reply. I pressed against the door, and it gave way. Without thinking I slipped in and carefully closed it behind my back.

"Ann', I called in a low voice. "Are you there?" There was no reply. For a moment I felt a sharp desire to be having a bad dream. I saw a dim light coming from the room, things scattered on the floor. But there was no live presence of Ann like light shuffling or tapping sounds, the gurgling of water, I would have agreed even to snoring, any live presence would do.

I went in the room, my feet barely obeyed me.

Ann was lying on the bed where I had been with her two hours before. Her posture was not that of a woman peacefully sleeping. Her right arm was unnaturally twisted and tucked under her side, her head was brought back way too far to be good for breathing. But there was a thing that left no doubt about her state. Right under her left breast there was the handle of a stiletto that had killed her.

There was nothing I could do. I came up to her body, bent over it, looked at her face. Her eyes were half-opened, lifeless. Fifteen years before I stayed in the same position, bent over the body of a dead woman who loved me and died under unclear circumstances. On that occasion I was shocked, now I was calm, as if I had expected a similar end for Ann. But I had not wished it, and now I was, besides being calm, infinitely sad. Hadn't life taught me enough to be cynical and pragmatic?

I looked around. There was no silver briefcase, no more. I should have taken it as well, but Ann hadn't allowed me to do so, thinking that I would come back and they would leave together for a country of happy and beautiful life.

I stopped for few seconds more: there was my semen in Ann's body, but was I to bother about it? Moscow police was too overloaded with unsolved cases to do a full-scale enquiry. Ok, it was a murder with rape, nothing in particular, common case in Moscow in those days.

Following some gut feeling I took my handkerchief out of the pocket and wiped the handle of the knife sticking from Ann's breast. It swayed as I ran the handkerchief over it. I couldn't help figuring how that knife's end was stuck in Ann's heart, renting its fibers and nervous channels and thus stopping its beating and Ann's life. It was not a good sensation.

Now I had to leave as soon as possible. I could do nothing for Ann, I had to save my ass.

Patricia had obviously preferred getting him in deep trouble and didn't bother to reward him for the documents. That wasn't like her, as far as I got to know her, perhaps she got in trouble herself.

I cast the last glance at Ann's face, put my lips on her cold forehead. Then I rushed to the door.

I froze as I heard a loud knock at it, I jumped aside and hid myself away behind the farther wall of the wardrobe that stood in the lobby. Then, two or three seconds later, the door opened and two men came in, one of whom said: "May I?". The door closed behind them, they followed without hesitation to the room, where Ann's body lay.

He heard the second voice saying:

"Dead. Who did she say had killed her?"

The first voice said:

"A certain Eric, she didn't know his surname, Swedish."

"Now what? What is that guy doing here?"

"Some sociological research."

"Well, is it worth investigating? On the surface, it doesn't even look like rape. I don't want to look into it, frankly. Let's put it down to a robbery."

After a pause the second voice said with a whistle:

"I don't know if it was robbery, but it was sex, look here". I knew where the man was looking.

"But it wasn't rape, that's for sure." Hell, I knew it wasn't.

"Look around here, while I'm going through her things".

I cautiously looked out of his hiding. One of the men went to the bathroom, I heard him opening the door and clinking things. The other was bent over the trunk, rummaging in it.

"I don't understand why should the guy have killed the girl? Did she have money, or what? That woman..."

"I wouldn't rule out that the killer was that woman herself."

"That doesn't change much. We don't know her reasons either. What's that?"

"I don't know. A letter, perhaps."

"Let me see." There was a rustling sound, then he said:

"In English."

"Nothing doing. Found any money?"

"Small change. Ah, no. There's something here". Then, after a pause:

"Well, that's something. Oh, not bad. Have you paid up your Toyota?"

"Not yet, why?"

"I think, you could well do with this."

"Are you serious?"

"Why not? Don't look at me that way. She's dead and your enquiry isn't going to bring her back to life, but this pad will certainly make you feel better. Ok, I don't insist, I'm only..."

Then a ringtone resounded and one of the voices said:

"Yes?"

Ten seconds after he said:

"Ok, we're coming." And added turning to the other:

"Another anonymous call. Another murder here, in this hotel. A woman. It seems an epidemic."

"Who's the victim?"

"I don't know. Room 35. I'm giving a call to the forensic team and have them come here, a plenty of work to do."

As they were headed to the exit, I heard them saying:

"They were overloaded, hardly could come now. We had eight murders only today."

"That's nothing, the other day I had twenty corpses in twenty four hours."

"How come?"

"Heavy shooting among three gangs."

"Will you be sealing off the room?"

"It would be better, to spare a fainted chambermaid and another hysterical call."

Then there was the ripping sound of a tape and, after a while, paces going away.

I had to run away. Or to stay, to find out who was the victim from Room 35. My heart was beating madly, my head was heavy. Were the two murders tonight connected?

I had no other way to learn it, if I didn't go up to the second floor.

At the staircase my feet turned to the second floor. I was walking now without haste, with a dull and slightly blessed expression, dragging my feet and slightly swaying, as if coming back from a night binge.

I was going along the corridor, occasionally touching the wall with my right hand, then changing the side and touching the wall with my left hand. Looking drunken gave me a big advantage over a sober man. There is a generally tolerant attitude in Russian culture towards the drunken. They are like innocent children, they can harm and hurt, but they are not considered guilty, at least from a particular moral point of view. Such attitude was extremely tenacious, perhaps, because anybody, without exception, could find himself drunken till the loss of consciousness, so it was a sort of popular solidarity that lived along with the official intolerance and open war against alcoholism.

I was to take advantage of such attitude, as well as of the fact that the investigators didn't know what Eric, the Swede they were looking for, looked like.

At the fourth door on the right I found what I sought. I heard through half open door the two familiar voices. I put my ear to the gap.

"...got in with a master key, or how?"

"Maybe she opened the door to a familiar voice. There is no trace of forced entry."

"Let's leave the conclusion to forensics."

I made the gap wider and slipped in. The room was an exact copy of the Ann's. But there was another striking similarity between the two places. Here, too, there were a lot of personal things, especially woman ones, scattered all over the floor. The other victim was also preparing to leave, and in haste. I tried to make myself invisible, or at least to get myself inconspicuous as long as possible, getting forward with small sliding steps. Then they noticed me.

"Hey, what are you doing here?", cried out one of them, a short and broad-shouldered man of about forty with cropped hair.

I stayed put and visibly swayed holding against the wall, blinking with exaggerated astonishment. Then I said in English, drawling and stressing the words in unnatural way:

"Who are you? What are you doing in my room?"

"Is this your room?" said the other man in good English staring at me with a suspicious look. He was rather tall, was wearing glasses on his rough-hewn face and was bald.

I swayed again and drawled:

"What the hell?" and made two long steps forward towards the lounge room where there was the sofa and a pair of woman shapely legs with black stockings.

The shorty tried to stop him, but I pretended to be too surprised and almost fell on the floor in my unstoppable desire to get into the room.

"Who is this woman here? Why is she lying on my sofa?" I was at the height of my amazement.

"Are you living here?" repeated the bald man.

I gave him a very amazed look and said:

"Sure, number 25. Who's that?"

"You're mistaken, mister", said the bald. "You shouldn't have drunken so much. You have mistaken the floor. This is the third floor. Yours is the second."

I frowned, pretending to try hard to understand. Then I put my both hands on my breast and said with an exaggerated humiliation:

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I am. I'm sorry, I mean it. I'm going away, at once. What time is it?" Here I made a big circular movement with my left arm to look at my watch and failed to stop it at the right point, it fell on my belly and then down to the left pocket of the trousers. The shorty sighed, took my arm, turned me around and slightly pushed me towards the door. Then he said to the other in Russian:

"I'll take him to his room."

That was not what I needed, but the other came to my rescue. He said:

"I don't think it's necessary, take him to his floor and drop there."

"Ok."

Once in the corridor, I asked the man, drawling and twisting the words:

"But who's that woman?"

The shorty shook his head and mumbled something.

But I didn't need his answer. The moment I stepped into the room to see whom the legs which I had seen when I entered the room, belonged to, I recognized Patricia Hewlett lying dead on the sofa with a knife stuck under her left breast.