To me vengeance, I will repay. Alexander Kolosov

of land here costs as much as a good car. And here will be not less than a hectare.

      – So keep your eyes open,’ the foreman told him, ‘Don’t touch anything without my knowledge. Otherwise you’ll get tired of writing explanations. We are not here for profit, but only by the will of those who sent us here. This master obviously has his own candle factory.

      – Maybe even two,’ Otchenashev said, looking enviously at the well-groomed lawn and the alpine rocks on it, ‘Do the rich also have problems?

      – The more money, the more trouble. Now let’s go to the gingerbread house and see what we can find there.

      – God forbid,” objected the junior sergeant as he followed the petty officer into the unlocked house. In a minute the petty officer was already calling the control room and reporting:

      – Hello, this is 13. We got a dead body here. It’s fresh. Please send an investigator with a task force.

      The dead man was sitting in a chair with his head back and his hands on the table. While Bezdolny was on the phone, Otchenashev examined the dead man from all sides and noticed a piece of paper sticking out from under his hand. He pulled it out carefully and showed it to Bezdolny. It had “I was killed for a cause” scrawled across it as if it had been written by a child. Without interrupting the phone conversation with the dispatcher, Bezdolny took the note he had found from the junior sergeant and crumpled it into a ball and shoved it into the back pocket of his uniform pants.

      – What about the evidence?” objected Otchenashev, to which the foreman threatened him with his fist and, having finished talking on the phone, explained:

      – We don’t need evidence in a case that has no prospect of being solved. Let the investigator and the forensic scientist decide if he clinched it himself or if he had help. And you and I didn’t see anything suspicious here. My mother’s woman, you are not Megre, and I am not Sherlock Holmes, after all. They don’t make movies about such cases as we investigate, and they don’t present them with awards.

      ***

      – I, Vitya, am accustomed to all kinds of work from an early age. I can chop down a house. I can build a stove. I can make candy out of any junk. I started my first business back in Perestroika, before the break-up of the USSR,” cackled

      Pronyakin, beating his chest and at the same time helpfully looking up into the eyes of the artist Ohaltsev, wishing to make the most favourable impression on him. – That’s why I was so fond of Sergei Milutin, too, because we had similar fates. The whole ’90s we were walking under God, risking our lives. And here’s something like this. Such a thing! I still can’t believe he’s not with us anymore.

      Okhaltsev, all rounded and smooth as a seal, with a gray lock of hair and a neat skipper’s beard, moved his eyebrows and, from time to time, pulled importantly: “Yes, however,” he obediently put his shot glass under another shot of cognac, which was served to him by Pronyakin. At last, after another cry from Pronyakin, to the effect that he could not believe that Miliutin was not with them, Okholtsev scratched his beard and let it out:

      – And I believe he’s dead. Too many people wished him dead. You, Kirill, have no idea how many lives he ruined and how many he threw away for money. If I were one of them, I’d definitely give anything to get revenge. And here it’s no longer a question of price, but of principle.

      – Vityunya, before he died, he called me and shouted into the phone that they wanted to kill him. That his life was in mortal danger. He was so excited that he

      couldn’t speak coherently. And do you know who he suspected of organizing his murder?’ Ohaltsev shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands, gesturing for a name: ‘His wife and daughters! Can you imagine?

      – I can’t imagine,” Ohaltsev hiccupped frightenedly and raised his eyebrows up in surprise. It’s not like her. Anything but murder. She and Milyutin may not have been a perfect couple, but she is not capable of murder. To kill, at the very least, you have to be capable of going all the way, crossing the line. It’s something you do only out of desperation: those who have nothing left to lose.

      Pronyakin smiled enigmatically and wagged his finger at Okhaltsev:

      – You, Vitya, don’t know the most important thing,’ he paused and, pouring the rest of the cognac from the decanter into Okhaltsev’s shot glass, slowly stretched out, ‘He-i-i-i-i-i-i-l-i-xed an-i-i-i-i-xed an-i-i-i-i inheritance. He bequeathed everything to me and his adopted son Ivan. Wo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- o-o-o-o-o!

      – I don’t believe it, it can’t be. Why would it be?” Okhaltsev looked at him with amazement.

      – Miliutin himself told me so. Why should I lie,’ Pronyakin shrugged him off, holding an empty decanter of cognac in his hands, ‘After the funeral the will will be read, and then you will know for yourself. His lawyer Orlovsky knows about it. Milutin told me that Marina was cheating on him from the beginning of their marriage, and that his daughters were not his.

      – The worse for you,’ exhaled O’khaltsev after drinking the cognac in a gulp, ‘The worse for you.

      – Why is that?” wondered Pronyakin.

      – His whole inheritance was cursed. He was cursed a long time ago, about ten years ago, and the curse has been on him ever since. If all his possessions go to you, the curse goes to you. I would refuse.

      – Well, no,’ said Pronyakin, tapping his empty decanter on the table, ‘I’m not one to believe in superstitions. Garçon!’ he shouted at the waiter, raising his hand, ‘Another three hundred of the best cognac and something to eat.

      – You’re a risk-taker, Kirill,” Okhaltsev shook Pronyakin’s hand respectfully and exhaled, anticipating the continuation of the feast. – Just like Miliutin.

      Chapter 2

      After the funeral and before the wake, Pronyakin had a feeling similar to that experienced by young men before a battle. His heart was pounding and his

      thoughts could not stop at anything. The funeral was attended by a great number of people, from the nouveau riche, to whom Miliutin had supplied paintings and antique furniture, to the unknown artists who came out of curiosity to see the burial of the richest collector in the city. After the funeral was over, Milutin’s close

      friends and the entire family gathered in the central exhibition hall in his gallery in

      Zamoskvorechye for a memorial service.

      The wake was presided over by Orlovsky, an old family friend and part-time personal lawyer of the deceased. He sat proudly at the head of a huge table in the middle of the room, surrounded on both sides by Milutin’s daughters and his widow, dressed for the occasion in all black, giving the floor to those who wished to speak. It looked as if Orlovsky were holding an auction, drawing numbers in line for the right to speak in praise of the deceased.

      Pronyakin waited patiently for his word, and all the time he felt that this evening must be a decisive one in his destiny. At last it was his turn. Orlovsky beckoned him to speak by a wave of his hand. Pronyakin stood up, looked round the huge table, and, overlapping the disorderly murmur of their voices and the clatter of knives and forks on their plates, uttered a loud and distinct voice:

      – Miliutin has been murdered, gentlemen! And his family did it to him.” There was an ominous silence in the air. The sound of a fly hitting the window-glass and the roar of a heavy car’s engine in a lane somewhere in the distance were heard.-So they took their revenge on him, for he had bequeathed all his property and money

      to his