A Negotiable Instrument

Chapter Eight - Monday

Sergeant Panin had arrived early. He hadn't been able to sleep, whether due to the vicissitudes of Dunya's borsch, truly food to hold you to the earth, or the little voice that kept nagging at his professional pride, he couldn't be sure. As he had lain staring up at the ceiling, Dunya's prodigious snoring making it very clear that no other diversion was on offer, he had concluded it was a bit of each. Now, as he sat at his desk, once more contemplating the changes that the advent of the telephone had made to his life, he considered the complications that had to be negotiated.

Without the telephone there would have been no possibility to check with anyone at headquarters, and no nagging little voice. He would have released Stangl to those gendarme bastards and got a good night's sleep, borsch permitting. Now, because of the telephone that squatted in the corner of the office staring at him like a malignant toad on a rock, because he hadn't checked, it was all too easy to see who would get the blame if those gendarmes had been up to their usual underhand tricks. He could feel the weight of shit piling up on his head.

Should he telephone now? The odds were that there wasn't a problem. The paperwork had been genuine, the signatures and official stamps all present and correct. He was probably worrying for no reason. There had been another security alert and there were never enough bodies to cope. Maybe the two gendarmes were simply used to cover the shortfall. In that case, making a telephone call now would, at best, make them think he was just an old woman. But what if they wanted to know why he hadn't checked? The fact that he had been tired, hungry, and angry with that bastard Apraksin wouldn't be the answer they were looking for.

On the other hand, what if there was something suspicious going on? The first thing he had done when he got to the office that morning had been to look for the paperwork. He wanted to check it again, to be sure that he hadn't missed anything. It wasn't where he'd left it, but that hadn't surprised him. One of the clerks could have filed it away or, more likely, Apraksin might have shoved it in a drawer so he didn't have to deal with it. He had spent the next thirty minutes looking for it without success. He knew every inch of the station house, and if he couldn't find the paperwork, it wasn't there. If he didn't telephone now and the matter became serious enough to warrant an investigation he would have a lot of questions to answer.

The real problem, as always, was money. The gendarmes were well known for their use of bribery when they thought that bullying wasn't enough to get their own way. They had made no such offer so it was clear what they had thought of him. But how could he prove it? That sort of shit would stick. And all this because he had enjoyed the prospect of his diligence being commended. It seemed a distant prospect now. Still, Dolmatov, the investigator he had spoken to, had taken him seriously. He had seemed competent, which was all too rare these days. Not what he had expected from this new investigative section. Well, he thought with a wistful sigh, what you get for a song you won't have for long. Taking a deep breath, he carefully lifted the receiver out of its cradle.

* * *

Relaxed and refreshed, Tursunov stubbed out his Zefir. It was a first-grade Zefir, an expensive indulgence, but one he thought he deserved. He preferred any grade of Zefir to any other brand, especially the ubiquitous Prima with its harsh tobacco and cheap paper. And as the Laferm cigarette factory was a few of minutes walk from his home on Vasilievsky Island it appealed to his sense of neighbourhood solidarity to smoke one of their brands. He flipped the packet over on his desk, comforted by its substantial weight, the expensive gold lettering, and the Sable Mark. Supplier to the Court of His Imperial Majesty. It was rare for him to keep such exalted company, he mused, and turned his thoughts to the day ahead. He had risen early, while the rest of the house was still asleep. The short walk had cleared his head and he had sunk deep into the welcoming arms of the banya, succumbing to its breathtaking charms. When he could delay no longer, he had walked the few hundred yards to police headquarters on the Fontanka, the warmth that suffused his body acting as a corrective to the early morning gloom that hung over the city like a suffocating pillow. He hadn't needed, or particularly wanted, the cigarette, but he had known it would help ease his passage back into the workaday world.