Everything got mixed up in Milutin’s house when his wife and children found out that the head of the family had disinherited them. And nothing at the beginning of the Sunday feast foretold how the festive dinner would end for them. It was customary for the whole family to gather at the dinner table once a week, on Sundays, to celebrate the end of the week. And to express their admiration for the generosity of the head of the family, Sergei Ivanovich, who honored them all with his attention on that day.

Milutin, a stout and completely bald man with an ocular beard and buttery eyes, liked to sit at the head of the table and listen to the praise he received from

his housemates. A man of hard fate, who had made his fortune in the antiques trade in the wild 90s, he could rightfully be proud that he was now among the richest collectors in the capital, having avoided many troubles on his winding path to success and big money.

At first today was no different from previous Sundays. Except that during dinner there was a verbal skirmish between his daughters, Marfa and Aglaia, who found no better subject than to discuss in the presence of their father alive who of them, after his death, would get his collection of pictures. At last the squealing cries of his daughters made Milutin lose his temper and he got up from the table and ordered them to stop:

– Sergei, in the end, they have a right to know what and how much they will get after you die. We all walk under God, it’s time to think about the children. Or do you want your collection to go into the hands after your death?

His wife’s words had a most unexpected effect on the collector. He laughed so hard that his monstrous laughter silenced his daughters, who were in a frenzy. Everyone stared at him in bewilderment, but he laughed and laughed and gave everyone present the creeps. He was leaning on the edge of the table with both hands, and arching his back like an enraged beast, standing on its hind legs, its

teeth baring through the protruding hair of its dishevelled red beard. It was the way animals behave when cornered. His laughter was drowned out in a cough through which he managed only to wheeze the word “Choke.

He coughed as if he had come to his senses, collapsed on a chair without strength, and repeated quietly:

– Choke on it!

– What did you say, I don’t understand you?’ forgetting to take the smile off his face, his wife anxiously stared at him, ‘What does this ‘choke’ mean?

– And that means,’ at last Milutin’s voice returned to him, ‘you all get nothing from me. None of you three will get a ruble of my money, or a scrap of canvas from my collection. I have bequeathed all my property to him, Van’ka-Kain,’ he shook his head in the direction of his adopted son, ‘and to your hateful Pronyakin all my pictures, including the gallery building. How’s that for a turn, eh? And he laughed again.

– Mama, he’s crazy!” cried Aglaia, and Marfa threw a plate at her father in a rage, but missed, and the plate crashed to the floor with a deafening rattle.

– You’re not yourself,” the wife grinned happily, and licked her teeth like a toad before eating a fat fly. The doctors will help you, we’ll hospitalize you immediately. I’m going to call a doctor I know at the regional psychiatric hospital and he’ll come and get you. You obviously have a nervous disorder, possibly temporary insanity. Girls, help me tie up your father before the doctor arrives, before he runs away from us and does something bad.

Both daughters jumped up as if on cue and rushed to their father, but his son Ivan, who had been sitting silently at the table the whole time, staring at his plate, came to Milutin’s rescue. The skinny boy stood in the sisters’ way, holding the table knife out in front of him like a sword, holding it with both hands.

– I won’t let you go,” he shouted and started waving his knife in different directions. Run, Daddy, I’ll hold them off.

– Oh, you ungrateful brat, you want to go to jail?’ shouted Milutin’s wife, turning her whole body in his direction, ‘I’ll send you to a juvenile facility as soon as we get rid of your father.

Those few seconds were enough for Miliutin to run out of the room, barricading the door behind him:

– Run along, Ivan,’ he shouted to his son from behind the door, ‘Run to

Pronyakin, he will tell you where to find me.

***

Milutin pulled on his felt boots with cropped cuffs, stomped his feet, checking how comfortably the foot settled on the sole. He stepped out onto the porch of the country house and breathed in the clean air, filled with the scent of the pine forest. It was the only place he felt completely safe now. The perimeter of the whole plot was surrounded by a three-meter deep fence, gates and gate locked from the inside. Only he had the keys. The second set was with his son, who was due to arrive.

“I feel in my heart that I have managed to sneak away from my sisters,” he convinced himself, recalling his own escape. Back at home, Milutin called an old friend, the lawyer Orlovsky, and told him in detail how his wife and daughters wanted to get rid of him, declaring him insane:

– Valera, I wouldn’t be surprised if they killed me. My life is in danger. I’m afraid of them. If anything happens to me, know that they did it.

To all the lawyer’s objections that he was exaggerating, Milutin excitedly shouted into the receiver that Orlovsky simply did not know them as well as he did. Not satisfied with one call to a friend, he made at least a dozen more calls to

everyone whose numbers he could remember, until his son arrived from town with the latest news about his wife and daughters.

– Tell me, tell me!’ cried Miliutin, running around the table in his office, excitedly, ‘What are they up to?

– Daddy, calm down,’ his son tried to sit him down, but he wouldn’t let go, and kept circling around the room, ‘They’re planning to declare you insane. While I was sitting in my room, where Marfa and Aglaia had locked me up after your

escape, I overheard their mother making telephone arrangements with some private medical service. They will arrange for your forced hospitalization when she gives them the exact address where to look for you.

– They’ll find out sooner or later that I’m here,’ Milutin grasped his head in horror, ‘We must escape from here at once. It is urgent! Go and look round, while I am getting ready, to see if we are being followed. If you see anything suspicious,

run back at once. If I fall into their hands, I won’t live. You hear me! You hear me!

– Daddy, calm down,’ the son waved his hands and went out of the office and came back in a minute with a glass of water, ‘Here, sit down, drink the water and calm down. And I’ll go and see, as you ask.

Milutin’s son put the glass on the table, went out on the porch, and, before he went to look around, shouted once more through the ajar front door, “Daddy, drink some water! Do you hear me? Drink some water!

***

Petty Officer Bezdolny is a truthful man and always says what he thinks. This time, he was not shy about his choice of words when he stepped through the open

gate to station 71, where he had been sent to check an anonymous call he had received from the dispatcher that a murder had occurred here.

– Holy crap,’ the foreman whistled, ‘they live pretty lucratively, you can’t tell.

– Yes, people know how to live,” junior sergeant Otchenashev agreed with him, following Bezdolny into the gate. I’ve heard that a hundredweight 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 son Ivan, and had given me his collection of pictures and this building, where we were now remembering our dear Serezha with the kindest words. It was

a matter of honor for me to punish his killers, for he was not just a friend to me. He

was a brother to me. No, not so I said, he was just a part of me, and I will not rest until I get my revenge. I have hired a detective and he will prove how these ungrateful women killed their father and husband.

– Valera, do something, shut him up.

– P-a-a-a-a-a-r-a-a-a-s-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h- h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h. Immediately!’ Orlovsky jumps up from his seat and runs towards Pronyakin, clenching his fists in fury, ‘I will not tolerate an impostor here, Pronyakin! Friends, do not listen to him,’ he says to those at the table, ‘He is a common malicious slanderer. There is no testament that our dear Sergei Milyutin left all his property to his son Ivan and to Pronyakin! I was the deceased’s lawyer for 20 years, and I know what I’m talking about.

– He lies, he lies,’ Orlovsky’s daughters followed Orlovsky in shouting and pointing their fingers at Pronyakin, ‘he is an impostor. Impostor.

When he reaches Pronyakin, Orlovsky tries to hit him, but he easily parries the blow and hits the lawyer back in the solar plexus, after which the latter, bent in

half, falls to the floor.

– So you are a fighter,” says Pronyakin contemptuously through his teeth to the lawyer, while at the same time several strong men, friends of the family, rush up to him and force him out of the room.

– We’ll hire a detective, too,” the widow shrills loudly and shrilly, running up to Orlovsky. We’ll sue him,” she says to everyone present, “for slander and hooliganism. We will defend our honor. No matter what it costs us.

***

Andrei Zhuk was small in stature, puny in build, with three days’ worth of stubble on his chin, eyes as small and quick as a ferret’s, and a cowboy hat on his head. The meeting with Pronyakin did not begin at all as he had planned, but he managed to win this client over, promising that he would be able to find him the missing will.

They met at the Second Breath Liquor House, where nobody cares about anybody. This place is at the bottom of society, where there is no place to go

below: both aristocrats and degenerates come here to recover from their hangovers. From furniture there are only round tables at which you can only stand, and from snacks there are sandwiches with zucchini caviar or herring. That is why people do not linger here. Have a drink, have a snack, go away. An ideal place for business negotiations, especially if things are dark.

And Pronyakin was clearly a man with a dark past and greedy for money. That’s one thing, but in his career as a detective, Andrei had learned to understand people very well.

– I’ll pay you if you make me rich. And I will be rich only when I get my will back,” said Pronyakin for the umpteenth time, tapping his index finger knuckles on the table. Understand? I like you.

“And you don’t,” Andrei answered to himself and began to explain to his client once again that he had to pay for the current expenses during the investigation, regardless of the amount of the agreed fee, at his first request.

– Include your expenses as an extra line in your contract,’ Pronyakin disagrees, ‘But I’ll pay them only when I get my will. I’ll get billions, and you’ll get your 10% of everything I inherit. You’ll be a millionaire in no time. So take a chance, that’s what it’s all about! Look around you,’ said Pronyakin, ‘What have you got to lose? This?

– All right,’ having realized that it was impossible to agree on his own terms with Pronyakin, he decided to take the risk, ‘let’s do as you say. Tell me again everything you know about the will and about Miliutin.

– On the day of his death, he himself called me in a terrible agitation, screaming that he had been ordered.

– Was it just like that, shouting “ordered”?

– Just like that, he shouted that it was his wife and daughters who did it. And all because he disinherited them. He bequeathed all his money to his son Ivan, and his collection to me. All this he formalized and signed all the necessary papers. He said that when he died, everything should go to Vanya and me.

– What is included in the collection?

– About 5,000 paintings worth more than 7 billion rubles. And this is not my speculation, all of his paintings have been valued by the bank and insured. And also the building of the art gallery on Ovchinnikovskaya Embankment. That’s not even less than half a billion if you sell it. After all, it’s not far from the Kremlin.

But when I asserted my rights yesterday, at the wake, lawyer Orlovsky declared me a liar.

– And who is he, Orlovsky?

– Miliutinsky’s personal lawyer, he handled all of his cases. If anyone should know about the will, it was him. One of two things: either Orlovsky is lying, or he doesn’t know anything, because Miliutin didn’t let him know about it. I’m sure Orlovsky is lying because he’s in cahoots with the widow. I think they’re having an affair. In a word, adultery.

– But this is a criminal offense. If this is true, he risks going to jail.

– For adultery?

– No, for cheating on the will.

– Well, prove it! That’s why I hire you.

***

When Anna entered the room, a burly woman in silk pajamas was sitting in the small living room with a defiantly dressed girl who looked just like her, listening

to her read her poetry.

The first thing that came to Anna’s mind was to say, “A nuthouse on the road,” but then she was introduced to the lady of the house, Mrs. Milyutina.

– This is Anna Vladimirovna, a very experienced detective with terrific references,’ Orlovsky said to the woman. ‘Her friends recommended her to me, in whom I have absolute confidence. We have a delicate case, you know. Anna used

to work as an investigator in the prosecutor’s office, now she works for herself. She will help us expose the scoundrel Pronyakin and deal with his casus belli.

– Valera, I trust you,’ Milutina said languidly, stretching her words as she looked at Anna, ‘Just imagine, Marfa has decided to become a poet. She was just reading her poems to me.

– And how many poems has she written?

– Only two, but it’s just the beginning,” exclaimed Miliutina enthusiastically.

– Well, when we have a hundred or two poems, then we’ll publish the book. In the meantime, let’s return to our sinful land. We’ll have to make an agreement with Anna and get her up to speed.

– Ah, why all the antimonies, if all can be expressed in one word – we want to get screwed.

– And who wants to fuck you?’ Anna enters the conversation, ‘What is he blackmailing you with and what is he trying to achieve?

– What does he want? Money, of course,’ Miliutina stood up, all flushed with indignation, ‘Oh, don’t remind me of that scoundrel Pronyakin. My blood pressure immediately spikes and my heart beats like a bird in a cage. All my husband’s life he was surrounded by shady characters who wanted to profit at his expense. And now that he is dead, one of his so-called friends has accused me and my daughters of killing him!

– And you didn’t kill him, of course?

– Valera, what does it all mean?’ Milutina was sincerely indignant, ‘Does she doubt my innocence?

– Masha, she’s on our side. It’s just the way it is,’ Orlovsky reassured her, ‘answer everything you know.

– Yes, of course not!’ cried Miliutina nervously, and looked at Anna angrily, like a mistress at a guilty servant, ‘We didn’t even know where he had been for the last three days. The police called me and said they had found him dead in our country house. Before he ran away from home, he made a scene and told me and my daughters that he would disinherit us, because his daughters were discussing who would inherit what when he died. It made him mad. I knew right away he was having a schizophrenic episode. This had happened to him sometimes, he had been diagnosed with flaccid schizophrenia at one time. I wanted to put him in an inpatient facility for a couple of weeks to get him back to normal. If he hadn’t run away, he’d be alive now.

– And what was the cause of your husband’s death?

– He died of a stroke. The medical examiner confirmed it, and we were issued a death certificate. Otherwise, how could we bury him?

– And who is Pronyakin and where did he come from?

– Valera, who’s Pronyakin?’ Maria was surprised, ‘It was you who introduced them to Sergei. So tell me, why did you do it?

– Oh, Masha, I didn’t know how this was going to end. In a word, Anna, you need to figure out for yourself who he is and what he’s up to. By the way, he hired a detective, a certain Beetle. He already called me, asking me to meet him.

– What’s the detective’s name?” asked a rather surprised Anna, unable to hide the excitement in her voice.

– Andrei Zhuk. That’s how he introduced himself. It’s a very rare name for our country, – answered Orlovsky, looking at his watch, – Any more questions for me? Because I have some problems that must be solved urgently. I would like to clarify, are you ready to take our case? We will pay you well.

– Just so you know, your Pronyakin hired my ex-husband. Once I was stupid to make a mistake by marrying him. And even took his last name.

– So you’re also a Beetle?” draws Milutina, with undisguised interest looking at

Anna, as if she saw a natural anomaly in front of her, “How interesting.

– It’s so interesting, it’s hilarious. I don’t know how I can deal with Pronyakin, but I want to hurt Zhuk as much as he hurt me.

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