Penny Criminal Case. Alexander Cherenov

of the incident. It remained only to sign the protocol, when suddenly…

      “Alex, I have still found something!”

      Rubin lifted a plastic bag over his head.

      “What exactly?”

      The captain quickly walked to the open door of the “UAZ”, in the womb of which Starkov designed the protocol.

      “Here, take a look!”

      In a small plastic bag there were two cigarette butts: one from a filter cigarette, the other from a cigarette “Belomorkanal”.

      “Look, Alex: the crumpled cigarette sleeve is characteristic!”

      “It’s typical for most of those, who smoke Belomor,” Starkov said with curved cheek. “I myself crush the liner in the same way, so that the crumbs of tobacco do not pour into the mouth along with the puff. So what?”

      “What are you, Alex?!” Rubin put his hands on his chest. “Am I talking about you??! I… ‘in general sense’!”

      “In general sense…”

      Starkov looked around at the cigarette butts again.

      “Don’t you think, captain, that these cigarette butts are too clean and dry after the rain, which lashed the whole evening until midnight?”

      Zarubin puzzled brow.

      “God knows, Alex… Actually, I found them under a piece of bark. Probably, the wind dragged it, it caught hold of the garbage and covered the cigarette butts.”

      “Both in the same place?” Starkov shook his head incredulously. “It’s too good to be true… And in general: there are too many material evidence. And all some… from different people… You know, I somehow happened to read one Polish detective story. It is called ‘Too many clowns’. And here it is: too much evidence… Yes, even more such disparate… Yes, there will have to seriously deal…”

      Starkov wrote a couple of lines on the found cigarette butts in protocol, gave it to the signature for the witnesses, packed the evidence and quickly sketched the “escort” to the Kirov prosecutor. Formally, this was a violation of the instructions: everything, that was acquired at the scene, was required to be transferred to the city prosecutor, so that he, in turn, redirect it to the prosecutor of Kirov district. But, having received a reprimand from the regional prosecutor, the city prosecutor recognized, though not immediately, the prompt transfer of materials – immediately to the district prosecutor.

      “Sir Peter!”

      “I am listening to you!” the Kirov prosecutor responded from his “Moskvich-412” (the gift of the “area” to the district prosecutors).

      “Accept a gift, so to speak, from a pure heart!”

      Noisily puffing, Kirov prosecutor reluctantly got out of the car and glanced reproachfully at Starkov.

      “This is a bad joke, dear Alex… Ok, give it to me…”

      The prosecutor signed the second copy, made for a carbon copy, and, sighing heavily, went to “Moskvich”. Starkov looked at his watch, at parting sympathizing with Bessonov.

      “It’s half past four am. Maybe I can still sleep, at least, half an hour…”

      “Forget it!” the elderly “UAZ” driver did not hesitate “to please” the authorities. “They they are now on the radio reported: hangman in the Soviet district. So, get ready for a trip, sir… I don’t know how to get there: gasoline is at zero… Though on yourself drag a car!”

      “Next time it will be so!” never discouraging Rubin “was in place” as always. “If you will “make us happy” once again, you will drag a car on yourself!.. By the way, Alex, I’ll be a bit late here: I’ll help the local man. I hope the hanged man will not be offended at me, because I did not honor him, so to speak, with my personal presence?

      “You may hope,” Starkov frowned.

      “And you? You do not mind, do you? Will you get along with the dead without me?”

      “What are you asking me?” Starkov sighed. “I’m not your boss. If you consider it necessary, you may stay here: we will manage without you… Okay, let’s go. A sleep, as I understand it, is canceled for today and is postponed for tomorrow…”

      CHAPTER THREE

      Until the morning, as “prescribed in the statute”, Starkov could not even lie on the couch for a minute. Until half-past eight, without stopping by the police department, Starkov “landed” from one place of the incident on the other. But the “program of the day” had not yet been exhausted, although Alex himself learned about the “success” that had befallen him, only upon arrival at his “native land”.

      Without going home and barely having time to rinse his hands and face with water from a spring at the last place of the incident, Starkov went to work. (The duty on the city was not considered as such – at least, by the district prosecutor). Having barely crossed the threshold of the office, he was invited by the head of the office to the district prosecutor. And since the call took place early in the morning, boss invited him clearly not “for tea”.

      Without even asking the senior investigator, how the duty went (why be interested, when this is not his own?!), the prosecutor spread his arms out of the way – for some reason with a dejected look.

      “Bad things, dear Alex…”

      “I didn’t understand,” Starkov did not sin against the truth. Knowing the tendency of his boss systematically fall in spirit for any reason and without them, he was in no hurry to be alarmed.

      But the prosecutor was in no hurry to “confess”.

      “How many cases do you have now, Alex?” he went to the senior investigator from afar.

      “Do you really want to ease the burden?!” Starkov allowed himself to grin.

      “And yet, how much?” the prosecutor, who usually surrendered without command, did not surrender.

      “Fifteen. I will transfer fourteen cases to the court with an indictment: five to the regional, nine to the district. One I will stop in the absence of corpus delicti.”

      “Hmm… hmm…”

      The “shyness”, permanently inherent in the prosecutor, was clearly beginning to “overflow”. And Starkov did not hesitate to ask about the reasons – in his characteristic spirit.

      “Boss, what happened? Is the auditor going to us? Is he incognito with secret prescription?”

      The prosecutor, who was not the greatest connoisseur of elegant literature, but at one time at school “passing through” Gogol, smiled faintly.

      “No, dear Alex, an auditor…”

      “He has not reached us yet, has he?”

      “Well, yes… That is… In general, the case you went to yesterday… that is, tonight…”

      “Which one exactly?” Starkov was wary: “the girlish shyness” of the prosecutor was beginning to like him less and less. “I served eight places of the incident on duty. Which one?”

      With trembling hands more than usual, the prosecutor began to shift papers from one edge of the table to the other. At other times, Starkov would have laughed in his heart over the “role of a loader”, which boss had enough for the whole day, but now somehow didn’t have enough mood. The behavior of the prosecutor – the eternal coward and alarmist, although not a bad person (deep in the soul) – he liked less and less.

      Finally, the prosecutor finished the “movement of goods” by organizing an even greater mess on the table, than he had before “time X”.

      “No,