The Dead Mountaineer's Inn: (One More Last Rite for the Detective Genre)

13.

I managed to nap for about fifteen minutes before Lel intervened. He licked my ears and cheeks, tugged at my pant legs, jostled and then, finally, lightly bit my hand. At this point, I couldn’t hold back anymore; I jumped up, ready to tear him to pieces, incoherent curses and complaints stuck in my throat, but then my gaze fell on the side table and I froze. On its shiny lacquer top, next to the owner’s papers and receipts, lay a large black pistol.

It was a .45-caliber Luger with an extended handle. It was lying in a little puddle of water, and there were still clumps of unmelted snow sticking to it; with my mouth hanging open I watched one of these lumps drip down the trigger and onto the tabletop. I looked around the lobby. The only one there was Lel, standing beside the table. He tipped his head to the side, giving me a stern and curious look.

Normal kitchen-type noises were coming out of the kitchen, the owner’s soft bass could be heard and there was a drifting smell of coffee.

“Did you bring me this?” I asked Lel with a whisper.

He tipped his head to the other side and continued to look at me. His paws were covered in snow, and his shaggy belly was still dripping. I picked the pistol up carefully.

It was a true gangster’s weapon. Its effective range was two hundred meters; it had a place to put a sight, a switch for automatic firing, and other amenities. The barrel was full of snow. The gun was cold, heavy; its ribbed handle lay comfortably in my palm. For some reason I remembered that I hadn’t searched Hinkus. I’d searched his luggage, his coat, but I’d forgotten to search his person. Probably because I’d thought he was a victim.

I pulled the clip out of the handle: it was full. I pulled back the bolt and a bullet jumped out onto the table. I picked it up to put it back in the clip, but was arrested suddenly by the strange color of the bullet. It was not the usual dull gray or yellow. It was shiny, like it was nickel-plated, but it looked more silver than nickel. I had never seen a bullet like it before in my life. One after another I hurriedly expelled the bullets from the cartridge. All of them were the same silvery color. I licked my dry lips and looked at Lel again.

“Where’d you get this, old man?” I asked.

Lel playfully shook his head and leapt sideways to the door.

“I get it,” I said. “I understand. Wait a minute.”

I put the bullets back into the clip, drove the clip into the handle and shoved the pistol in a side pocket on my way to the door. Outside, Lel rolled off the porch and, falling into the snow, galloped along the facade. I felt almost certain that he was going to stop beneath Olaf’s window—but he didn’t. He circled the house, disappearing for a second and then reappearing again to peer eagerly at me from around the corner. I grabbed the first pair of available skis, fastened them haphazardly on my feet and immediately ski’d after him.

After we had circled the inn Lel shot off, stopping about fifty meters away from the building. I made my way to him and looked around. All of this was strange. I saw a hole in the snow, from which Lel had dug up the pistol; I saw the tracks of my skis behind me; I saw the furrows that Lel had made jumping through the snowbanks; but the rest of the ground around us was unmarked. This could only mean one thing: the pistol had been thrown here, from either the road or the inn. Either way, it was a good throw. I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to heave such a heavy and unwieldy thing so far. Then I understood. The pistol had been thrown from the roof. They’d taken the gun from Hinkus and thrown it away. Or else, maybe Hinkus had thrown the gun away himself. Maybe he had been afraid of being caught with the gun. Or maybe Hinkus himself hadn’t done it, but someone else… anyway, it definitely had to be from the roof. Only an exceptional arm could have thrown that far from the road, and to do it from any of the rooms would have been completely impossible.

“Well, Lel,” I said to the Saint Bernard, “you’ve done a good job. Better than me. I should have shaken down Hinkus more thoroughly, the way old Zgut would have done it. Right? Luckily it’s not too late.”

I set off back to the inn without waiting for Lel’s response. He galloped along beside me, scattering snow, falling through drifts and swinging his ears.

I intended to find Hinkus immediately—to wake that son of a bitch up and shake him to within an inch of his life, even if it cost me a reprimand on my end of year review. It was clear to me now that the cases of Olaf and Hinkus were connected in the most direct way; that their arrival here together hadn’t been an accident; that Hinkus had been sitting on the roof armed with a long-range pistol and a single purpose: to keep a close watch on the immediate surroundings and not let anyone leave the inn; that he was the one who had sent the note as a warning, signing it “F” (he’d sent it to the wrong room, of course: Du Barnstoker couldn’t possibly be wrapped up in this), that his presence here had caused and was still causing someone great difficulties, and that I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to find out right now who that someone was, and why it was happening. There were a lot of contradictions to this version of things, of course. Let’s say Hinkus was Olaf’s bodyguard, and was thwarting his murderer—well, then, why had they dealt with Hinkus himself so lightly? Why hadn’t they broken his neck too? Why had his enemy deployed such an exceptionally humane tactic as capturing him and tying him up? Actually, this would have been easy to explain: Hinkus was clearly a hired man, and they just didn’t want to get their hands dirty with him… Yes! I had to find out who he’d sent that telegram to… I’d forgotten about this the whole time…

The owner called out to me from the pantry and, without saying another word, offered me a mug of hot coffee and a huge sandwich triangle with fresh ham. It was exactly what I needed. He looked at me as I chewed rapidly, and then finally asked:

“Anything new?”

I nodded.

“Yes. A pistol. Only I didn’t find it—Lel did. Also, I’m an idiot.”

“Hm… Yes. Lel’s a smart dog. What kind of pistol?”

“An interesting one,” I said. “Professional… By the way, have you ever heard of a gun being loaded with silver bullets?”

The owner was quiet for a while, his jaw bulging.

“Your gun is loaded with silver bullets?” he said slowly.

I nodded.

“Hmm… well, I’ve read about it,” the owner said. “People load their weapons with silver bullets when they’re planning to shoot ghosts.”

“More zombie mumbo-jumbo,” I grumbled. But then I remembered hearing about this myself.

“Yes, more. Normal bullets won’t kill ghouls. Werewolves, kitsune foxes… frog queens… I warned you, Peter!” He raised a fat finger. “I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time. And now it turns out I’m not the only one…”

I finished chewing my sandwich and drank the rest of my coffee. I can’t say that the owner’s words didn’t give me pause. For whatever reason, it appeared that the single fantastic version of the events that he’d offered was constantly being confirmed, while my many realistic ones were not… Ghouls, phantoms, ghosts… The only problem was that, if this was the case then there was nothing left for me to do but turn in my weapon: as some writer or another said, the afterlife is the church’s business, not the police’s…

“Have you figured out whose gun it is?” the manager asked.

“Yes, we have one ghoul hunter here—a certain Hinkus,” I said and left.

Standing in the middle of the lobby, looking very awkward and unnatural, like a stuffed doll, was Mr. Luarvik L. Luarvik. He stared at me with one eye, as the other peered up the stairs. His jacket looked particularly crooked on him, his pants were slipping down, his dangling empty sleeve looked like a cow had been chewing on it. I nodded and tried to walk past him, but he quickly hobbled forward to stand directly in my way.

“Yes?” I said, stopping short.

“A small but important conversation,” he announced.

“I’m busy. Give me half an hour.”

He grabbed my elbow.

“I beg you to predispose yourself. Immediately.”

“I don’t understand. Predispose myself to what?”

“To giving me a few minutes. It’s important to me.”

“It’s important to you,” I repeated, continuing to make my way towards the stairs. “If it’s important only to you, then to me, it’s not that important.”

He kept a hold on me as if tethered, planting his feet strangely: one with its toes out, the other with its toes in.

“Important to you too,” he said. “You’ll be happy. You’ll get everything you want.”

We were already halfway up the stairs.

“And what exactly are we going to talk about?” I asked.

“About the suitcase.”

“So you’re ready to answer my questions?”

“Let’s stop walking and talk,” he asked. “My legs work bad.”

Ah, he’s getting worked up, I thought. That’s good—I like that.

“In half an hour,” I said. “And let go of me, please. You’re in my way.”

“Yes,” he said. “In your way. I want to be in your way. My conversation is urgent.”

“How urgent could it be?” I objected. “There’s no need to hurry. Half an hour. Or let’s say an hour.”

“No, no, immediately please. Everything depends on it. And it will be quick. Me to you, you to me. That’s that.”

We were already in the second floor hallway. I began to feel bad for him.

“Well, all right,” I said. “Let’s go to my room. Only it has to be quick.”

“Yes, yes, of course, quick.”

I led him to my room, sat down on the edge of the table and said,

“Tell me.”

But he didn’t start immediately. At first he looked around, hoping no doubt that the suitcase was lying somewhere within sight.

“The suitcase is not here,” I said. “Now hurry up.”

“Then I will sit down,” he said, and sat in my chair. “I very much need this suitcase. What do you want for it?”

“I don’t want anything for it. Prove that you have a right to it, and it’s yours.”

Luarvik L. Luarvik shook his head and said,

“No. I am not going to prove it. The briefcase is not mine. At first I didn’t understand. But I thought a lot, and now I understand. Olaf stole the suitcase. I was ordered to find Olaf and tell him, ‘Return what you took, Commandant two twenty-four.’ I don’t know what this means. I don’t know what he took. And you keep saying ‘suitcase’. This fools me. It is not a suitcase. It is a casing. Inside is a device. Before, I didn’t know this. When I saw Olaf, I figured it out. Now I know: Olaf was not killed. Olaf died. From the device. The device is very dangerous. Its threat is to everyone. Everyone will become like Olaf, or perhaps an explosion will happen. Then it will be even worse. Do you understand why we need it quickly? Olaf was a fool, he died. We are smart, we won’t die. Give me the suitcase quickly.”

He babbled along in his flat tone, looking at me out of his right eye and then left eye in turn, tugging relentlessly at his empty sleeve. His face remained motionless, except that from time to time his thin eyebrows rose or fell. I watched him, thinking that his manners and grammar were the same as they had been before, but that his vocabulary had increased significantly. Luarvik had gotten better at speaking.

“Who are you anyway?” I asked.

“I’m an emigrant, a foreign specialist. Exile. Political refugee.”

Yes, Luarvik had gotten better at talking. But who could have expected all this?

“An emigrant from where?”

“No need for such questions. I can’t tell. I promised. It is not an enemy to your country.”

“But you already told me that you’re a Swede.”

“A Swede? I never said that. I’m an emigrant, a political exile.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “An hour ago you told me you were a Swede. That you were a Swede for the most part. And now you deny it?”

“I don’t know… I don’t remember…” he muttered. “I don’t feel good. I’m afraid. I must have the suitcase soon.”

The more he urged me on, the less inclined I was to hurry. It was all clear to me: he was lying, and lying very badly. “Where do you live?” I asked.

“I can’t say.”

“How did you get here?”

“Car.”

“What model of car?”

“Model?… Black, large.”

“You don’t know the model of your own car?”

“I don’t know, it’s not mine.”

“But you’re a mechanic,” I said gleefully. “How the hell can you be a mechanic—not to mention a driver—without knowing anything about cars?”

“Give me the suitcase, otherwise it will be bad.”

“And what are you going to do with this suitcase?”

“Take it quickly away.”

“To where? You know that an avalanche has blocked the road.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll take it away. I will try to discharge it. If I can’t I’ll run away. Leave it there.”

“Excellent,” I said, springing up from the table.

“Let’s go.”

“What?”

“In my car. I have a good car, a Moskvitch. We’ll take the suitcase. We’ll take it away, have a look at it.”

He didn’t move.

“It’s no need for you. It’s very dangerous.”

“That’s okay. I’ll risk it… Ready?”

He sat without moving a muscle or saying a thing.

“Well, don’t just sit there,” I said. “If it’s dangerous then we need to hurry.”

“This won’t do,” he said finally. “Let’s try another. If you won’t give me the suitcase, then maybe you’ll sell it. Ah?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting down again at the table.

“I give you money, a lot of money. You give me the suitcase. No one will know, everyone is satisfied. You found a suitcase, I bought it. That’s all.”

“And how much will you give me?” I asked.

“A lot. As much as you want. Here.”

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a plump packet of bills. I had seen such a packet of notes only once in real life: at the state bank, where I had been working on a forgery case.

“How much is that?” I asked.

“Not enough? There’s more.”

He reached into his side pocket and pulled out another packet just like the other one and tossed it on the table in front of me.

“How much money is this?” I asked.

“What does it matter?” he asked, surprised. “It’s all yours.”

“It matters a lot. Do you know how much money this is?”

He kept quiet, his eyes focusing, then drifting apart.

“No. You don’t. And where did you get it?”

“It’s mine.”

“Give it a rest, Luarvik. Who gave it to you? You came here with your pockets empty. It must have been Moses: no one else has that kind of money. Am I right?”

“You don’t want the money?”

“Look here,” I said. “I am going to confiscate this money, and then I’m going to charge you with attempting to bribe a government official. This is going to be a very bad thing for you, Luarvik… The only thing left for you to do is tell me the truth. Who are you?”

“You are taking the money?” Luarvik asked.

“I’m confiscating it.”

“Confiscating… Excellent,” he said. “Now where is the suitcase?”

“You don’t understand what ‘confiscating’ means?” I asked. “Ask Moses… Come on, who are you?”

Without saying a word, he stood up and headed for the door. I grabbed the money and went after him. We walked through the hallway and then down the staircase.

“It’s no use not giving me the suitcase,” Luarvik said. “It won’t be good for you.”

“Don’t threaten me,” I reminded him.

“You will cause great misfortune.”

“Stop lying,” I said. “If you don’t want to tell the truth that’s your business. But you’re already in it up to your ears, Luarvik, and now you’ve dragged the Moseses in with you. There’s no easy way out anymore. The police will be here any minute, and when they are, you’ll have no choice except to tell the truth… Stop! Not that way. Come with me.”

I took him by the empty sleeve and led him to the owner’s office. Then I called the owner and in his presence counted the money and wrote out a statement. The owner counted the money too—it was more than eighty thousand: what I would make over eight years of impeccable service—and signed the report.

All this time Luarvik stood off to one side, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. He looked like a man who wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

“Sign it,” I said, handing him a pen.

He took the pen, looked at it intently and then laid it carefully on the table.

“No,” he said. “I am leaving.”

“As you wish,” I said. “That won’t change your situation.”

He turned around immediately and left, banging his shoulder against the doorframe. The owner and I looked at one another.

“Why did he try to bribe you?” the owner asked. “What did he want?”

“The suitcase,” I said.

“What suitcase?”

“Olaf’s suitcase, the one that you have in your safe…” I took the key out and opened the safe. “This one.”

“That’s worth eighty thousand?” the owner asked with respect.

“Probably it’s worth much more. This is turning out to be some murky business, Alek.” I put the money in the safe, locked the heavy door again, and put the report in my pocket.

“Who is this Luarvik?” the owner asked thoughtfully. “Where did he get that kind of money?”

“Luarvik didn’t have a penny when he came here. Moses must have given it to him. No one else could have.”

The manager raised his fat finger, intending to say something, but then changed his mind. Instead, he rubbed his chubby chin, barked “Kaisa” vigorously and then walked out. I was left sitting in the office. I proceeded to think things over. I went carefully back over the smallest, most insignificant-seeming events which I had witnessed at the inn. I realized soon that I could remember a lot of them.

I remembered that at our first meeting Simone had been wearing a grey suit, and that at last night’s party he’d been wearing a burgundy one, and that his cufflinks had featured yellow stones. I remembered that when Brun begged a cigarette off her uncle, he always pulled them from behind his right ear. I remembered that Kaisa had a small black birthmark on her right nostril; that when Du Barnstoker wielded his fork he raised his pinky finger elegantly; that the key to my room looked like the key to Olaf’s room; and many other useless details like this. I excavated two whole gems from this dung heap. First, I remembered how, on the evening of the day before yesterday a snow-covered Olaf had stood in the middle of the hall with his black suitcase and looked around, as if expecting a more heartfelt welcome, and how he looked past me towards the curtained-off entrance to the Moseses’ part of the inn, and how it had seemed to me that the curtain had been swaying—from a draft, I had assumed. Second, I remembered that while I’d been standing in line for the shower, I had seen Olaf and Moses descending the staircase hand in hand…

All this made me think that Olaf, Moses, and now Luarvik really did make up a single party—a party that did not want to let it be known that it was a single party. And if I remembered that I had discovered Moses in the memorial room next to my room five minutes before I found the note referring to the gangster and maniac on the ruined desk in my own room; and if I remembered that Moses’s gold watch had been planted (clearly planted, and then removed again) in Hinkus’s trunk… and if I remembered that Mrs. Moses was the one person, excepting maybe Kaisa, not in the dining room at the moment when Hinkus was overpowered and stuffed under the table… if I remembered all that, then the picture grew more curious.

Hinkus’s statement that one of his trunks had been craftily turned into a piece of false baggage fit this picture well, as did the fact that Mrs. Moses had been the only person who had seen Hinkus’s double personally. For it was impossible to say that Brun had seen Hinkus’s double: the only thing she’d seen was his coat. She didn’t know who’d been wearing that coat.

Of course, the picture still had quite a few blank and completely unclear spots. But at least the balance of power was now clear: Hinkus on one side, and the Moseses, Olaf and Luarvik on the other. At the same time, judging by the complete ridiculousness of Luarvik’s actions and the openness with which Moses had given him money, the situation did appear to be approaching some sort of crisis… And then it entered my head that maybe I’d locked Hinkus up in vain. In the coming confrontation it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have an ally, even one as questionable and obviously crooked as Hinkus.

So that’s what I’ll do, I thought. I’ll sic the gangster and maniac on them. After all, Moses probably thinks Hinkus is still lying under the table. Let’s see what he does when Hinkus suddenly appears at the table for breakfast. As for who jumped Hinkus and how they tied him up, not to mention who killed Olaf, I decided not to think about those things for now. I crumpled up my notes, put them in the ashtray and set them on fire.

“Breakfast, everyone,” Kaisa squeaked somewhere above me. “Breakfast.”