11th November

The dead man was frozen into the lake face down. The Commissar, with his hands in his pockets, frowned at the victim of circ.u.mstances. Only soles covered with thin ice protruded above the surface. A hefty policeman rattled ice around the body with a hook.

"Well then?", at last the law enforcement officer paused, "Breaking?"

"Yeah," the Commissar squatted down. The corpse lay not exactly flat, but at an angle, immersed in ice for a foot and a half. The head was lost in the muddy depths. The commissar sighed. In late October, such frosts unexpectedly struck that by November Lake Wear was frozen to a yard. It will take a long time to hammer

"Brennon!", wheezed over the commissar's head. He looked from the deceased to the immediate superiors. Ayrton Broyd, the chief of the police of the city of Blackwhit, heavily sniffed and wiped sweat from his face. Despite the frost, the long (nearly a dozen yards) road from the coast to the scene turned the fat man into a wet sponge.

"You would go," Commissar Brennon said unkindly, "Grab your pneumonia and die to h.e.l.l."

"They won't wait," said Broyd, holding off his pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, "What's this?"

"Corpse. Drowned. I hope", Brennon reported grimly and stood up.

"What do you mean - hope?"

"Weir froze twenty days ago. And this is the fourth half-wit, drowned in solid ice."

"It's the fourth", the chef thoughtfully stroked the lush sideburns, "This is not good, Brennon."

"Yeah."

"For ten days."

"Yeah."

"So I brought you a consultant."

"Yeah ... what?", The Commissar shuddered, "Whom? In what sense - a consultant?"

"Directly," said Broyd, staring calmly at Brennon from the bottom up, "He will advise you on this issue. If you are unclear what the consultants are doing."

"I see," the Commissar snapped, "Well, where is he?"

"Here," the chief took off his pince-nez and pointed them towards the sh.o.r.e. Brennon, numb, stared at the consultant, and after a minute or two, devoted to close study, quietly, tiredly asked: "Are you kidding me?"

"No," Broyd tapped his cane on the ice for a test, "He, of course, arrived recently..."

"Yeah," Brennon said m.u.f.fledly, unable to express his feelings in words.

"So I break or not?" The policeman asked, fidgeting impatiently around the corpse.

"No!" the commissar barked, not taking his eyes off the consultant. The policeman followed the gaze of his superiors and respectfully remarked:

"Great beast, sir. It's bigger that the one-year-old goby!"

The dog was three feet at the withers. He stood on the sh.o.r.e, his powerful thick legs wide apart, and gazed steadily at the Commissar. The fiery red hair was so thick that a large elongated muzzle sank in a huge spherical mane. However, even under lush hair, it was easy to guess the heavy skeleton, wide chest and cast muscles. On the back of the dog with a touching bagel lay a fluffy, like a squirrel, tail.

The dog lowered its muzzle like a wolf and sniffed snow, looking from underneath at the body and a group of people around it. Then he bared his fangs for a moment, jumped from the sh.o.r.e onto the ice and trotted to the dead man.

"Uh, you're beast!" The policeman whispered admiringly, "Well, he can immediately fall a whole father's hand!"

The dog walked along the ice like a pavement, never slipping, and the commissar envied her. He himself did not catch up only thanks to the policeman with a hook. The dog got to the corpse and got down to business - he began to carefully sniff out the outsole. Ayrton Broyd raised his hat:

"Good morning, sir. I hope we didn't wake you?"

"No," the consultant replied in a soft, low voice. "I never go to bed so early."

It was five in the morning when the Commissar arrived at the scene of the crime. Brennon gave the consultant an unkind look. The commissar despised this breed of two-legged with all his heart - although he could not have called the consultant a complete whip, but only because he was too stately.

The commissar looked down on most of humanity, but this thug was half a head taller than Brennon. Unreasonable mother nature supplied the thug of long legs, strong arms, wide and powerful chest athlete. All this was crowned with a physiognomy like those printed on the covers of novels, which were consumed by dozens of sisters and nieces of the commissar in dozens. Having studied a black mop of hair, a high forehead, an eagle profile, a manly heavy chin and other n.o.ble features, Brennon sighed mournfully. He hated amateurs. And this one, dressed with a needle, ironed and clean to creak, was also from the upper layers.

"Head of the department of murders and especially serious crimes," said Ayrton Broyd, "Commissar Nathan Brennon."

"Yeah."

"Mr. John Longsdale, Intervention Consultant."

The consultant stared at the Commissar with childlike, innocent blue eyes, blinked absently, and asked:

"Where's the drill?"

"What other drill?"

"I need ice and water samples from the lake. This requires a drill."

"We do not have it. But there is a hook," Brennon answered, "You! Give sir a hook!"

The policeman held out a tool to the whip. The dog was distracted from the body and carefully looked at the owner. Longsdale took the hock like a cane, walked around the corpse and hit the ice near his head. The muddy solid sprinkled with small crumbs and went cracked.

"Do you plan to get the body?" Asked the consultant politely. While Brennon picked up his jaw, the whip struck another blow into the hole that formed. In the hole splashed with lake water. Longsdale knelt beside her, pulled off his glove, pulled up his coat sleeve, rolled up his cuffs, and calmly plunged his hand into the dark waters of Weir.

"Well, how?" Brennon asked a little hoa.r.s.ely, still digesting a show of strength.

"Um," the consultant answered, and with the same equanimity he put his hand into the hole on his shoulder. The dog shoved the suitcase that Longseidel brought with him.

"Kindly, open your suitcase and prepare sample tubes," Longsdale said.

"You!" Brennon poked a cop under the ribs, "Come on!"

While he was busy with the fasteners of his suitcase, Longsdale scooped up a handful of some green slime from the hole, muttered:

"Wow. Curious..." dipped a finger into the mucus and stuck it in his mouth.

"Lord," Brennon whispered with quiet longing. He couldn't say so right away that it was worse, the consultant was whipy or the consultant was insane, and only breathed through his teeth intermittently — he heard from the pathologist that this was calming. It hasn't helped yet.

***

Brennon got to his office by eight in the morning. He was called to the lake at half-past four; returning home and having breakfast did not make sense. The Commissar sent the attendant for coffee and pies in a cafe opposite, went into his room and hung a coat on a hanger. The muddy door gla.s.s reflected a rumpled physiognomy; Nathan looked at her without much pleasure.

For many years he did not wear uniforms and dressed with good tailors, because he understood that with such a mug he would most likely be mistaken for one of those who are "Wanted! Particularly dangerous!" Pale, like many very red-haired people, with a protruding lower jaw, which was slightly masked by a short beard; bluish eyes under rare eyebrows - reddish with lack of sleep. Brennon's face was long and bony, and his nose, which was already not perfect, had been knocked down by a dexterous hand in the army slightly to the side. Tall, seemingly thin, at the age of forty-nine he could still bend the poker and turn anyone into a ram's horn. Except for the chief, who drags idiotic consultants to the crime scene, d.a.m.n him!

Brennon threw his frock coat into a chair and went to the window. Blackwhit City Police Department was a four-story red square building on Rocksville Street, a stone's throw from the center. Nearby were a park and a cathedral, and looking at the crowds of townspeople scurrying back and forth, the commissar sometimes came to valuable thoughts. But now there were no crowds; there were no thoughts. Where do they come from at such an early time? Nathan looked from a third floor at a deserted street; the outlines of the houses were lost in the dusk like a gla.s.s on the door in the morning.

There were three corpses yesterday. Two of them were still thawing: a pathologist, a fragile peppy old man of about one hundred and twenty years old, stated in very rich expressions that age and health did not allow him to cut bodies from ice blocks instead of openings. As for the first unfortunate, then, rummaging around on the table, Brennon found a report on an autopsy among the robberies, murders and ****. Reading, in principle, not too joyful, brought the Commissar into such a state that the attendant with coffee and pies stepped into the office cautiously, like an inexperienced trainer in a cage with a tiger.

"Sir..."

"Where is this chiropractor?!"

"In the grave, sir."

The commissar poured coffee into himself, threw on a frock coat and, boiling angrily, went to the coffin - a cold bas.e.m.e.nt room decorated with white tiles, the abode of the pathologist.

"What does it mean?!" The commissar barked and slapped the report on an empty table for autopsy. Francis Kennedy, a short, graceful old man, raised his head from the new report and took off his pince-nez.

"This is the cause of death."

"You are joking?"

"Young man, I never joke with such things. My patient's lungs and heart turned to ice. Thereby..."

"And how did this happen?"

"I can't know, young man," Science is not yet omniscient.

Brennon read the lines of the report again. Death occurred due to complete glaciation of the lungs and heart. Cracks in the ribs... Nose fracture... Soft tissues of the face froze in ice and cannot be repaired...

"So, we can't establish his ident.i.ty either."

"This is a man of about forty-five to fifty years old, five feet and a quarter tall, with a solid build, and a liver condition indicates chronic alcoholism."

"Fine," Brennon muttered, "I have two-thirds of those missing. And you are being driven on the fourth."

"Judging by his clothes," Kennedy melancholy rubbed his pince-nez, "he was from the petty bourgeoisie. These are most often quiet, very decent people. In addition, he is dressed cleanly, neatly, not without panache. Someone clearly cared about him."

"I don't understand," the commissar muttered, "What's this?"

"Six knifes' wound. Student from the campus. I will finish by ten."

"Yeah," Brennon went to the cutting table, as his subordinates said fearfully. In the end, killings, robberies and **** are also not expected, and the Commissar temporarily threw out the icy dead from his head.

***

By noon, Brennon figured out the things that had acc.u.mulated in the evening, locked a couple of young men in the cell who stabbed him in a tavern, and finally escorted the student's sobbing mother. As much as he sympathized with her, but hunger prevailed over him more and more. The commissar tied a spare tie, put on his hat and went for food.

Opening her bakery directly opposite the police department, the widow Mrs. Van Allen was right. The flood of policemen, employees of the town hall and the bank, the reverend fathers from the cathedral and other starving people turned out to be so great that soon the bakery turned into a small cafe with takeaway food and a small dining room. Brennon was the first to appreciate Mrs. Van Allen's culinary gift and enjoyed special favor as a regular customer.

Often, looking at the widow, the Commissar thought that something could have come out of them if he had not been such an inveterate bachelor. At forty-six, Valentina van Allen, the mother of five, retained a figure that many young ladies would envy: tall, stately, blond, with a serene look, a chiseled profile and curvaceous, rounded shapes. Today, however, the beautiful widow was worried about something. She personally wrapped the Commissar with a cinnamon pie, counted the change, and asked:

"Mr. Brennon, if you are not too busy, could you answer one question?"

"Yes, ma'am, of course," the commissar answered, taming the brutal hunger with an effort of will. There was an alarming wrinkle between Mrs. Van Allen's eyebrows.

"Tell me, do you think ... is it safe on the lake now?"

Brennon stole up.

"Why did you decide that?"

The widow's blue eyes clouded over.

"The milkman's boy saw a body being brought from the lake sh.o.r.e on a pretext."

Thinking briefly that the boy would now become the hero of the day for the whole street mob, the Commissar immediately sighed. Sometimes he regretted that he did not work in the middle of the remote taiga or the Mazandran jungle.

"But why are you asking? About the lake?"

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"But Christmas and holiday celebrations! And there is always an ice rink on the lake. Have you forgotten?"

The commissar silently cursed his stupidity. This is what happens when one working day ends at midnight, and the next starts at four in the morning. The approaching Independence Day and Christmas completely flew out of his head.

"I don't ask you for details of the investigation and I don't want to sow panic in society, but my children want to go to the rink, and I'm worried..."

"You understand that I cannot answer you," Brennon said, but continued softer, "But if you persuade your children to refrain from walking by the lake, it will be for the better."

The cafe owner smiled gratefully, but the commissar realized that her alarm had not abated. He left the Sh.e.l.l after half an hour, shrouded in the scent of cinnamon and a hot honey drink. Nathan was surrounded by a feeling of pleasant satiety, and even the frozen dead could not poison this moment of unwise happiness. He was about to cross the street and return to the department, when he suddenly noticed a strange animation near one of the houses.

Rocksville, the main street of Blackwitch, was designed by an architect who was probably very pessimistic about life from childhood. Rocksville straight as an arrow pierced the city from north to south, squeezed by high fences of gray stone. Sometimes they were interrupted by black wrought-iron bars, and behind them were square, heavy, squat houses, dark blue, black and dark gray. A piercing wind walked the street all the time, and at night it sometimes seemed to the Commissar that he was wandering in the darkness in the cemetery.

Among others, house 86 stood out especially - a two-story mansion, densely blue below, gray-gray above, under a black roof. The lattice in the stone fence consisted of sharp, like claws, corners, and behind it began a densely overgrown garden. Once there was a fire in which the whole family died. Then one of the urban rich bought a house, renovated, but could not live there and moved out. The mansion stood empty for several years. But now, in front of the wide open grate, three carts were lined up with someone's good, and a certain lean thug in black led the loaders scurrying back and forth.

The commissar stopped nearby and, putting his hands in his pockets, carefully looked around the house, carts and lean thug. He was young — about twenty-five or twenty-six — and he must have grown a black beard and mustache for the sake of solidity. The rest of his face was lost in the shadow of a too wide-brimmed hat. In general, the costume of the young man was impeccable, like the costume of a butler from a good house. True, for the butler he seemed too young and skinny - Brennon often saw butlers weighing two hundred pounds and whitened with gray hair.

"We drive in, huh?" He sternly asked the guy. He looked at the commissar over his shoulder; black eyes flashed from beneath the hat.

"Commissar Brennon, the police," Nathan showed the badge, "What is it here?"

"Mr. Longsdale is moving into the house he bought, sir," the butler said m.u.f.fledly.

"Yes?!" the commissar thought in surprise and almost asked: "Why?" It would seem that if a person has so much money - why not buy a cute mansion on the outskirts, in a good area, among the same cream of society ... And do not get confused by the police with their tricks!

"What is this coffin for him?" Over the past years, the house has not become lighter or more pleasant. Nathan did not like Longsdale almost as much as the mansion itself, and yet - to live in such a place?.. But the Commissar did not have time to continue the interrogation - there was a clatter of hooves, a clatter of wheels, and the crew drove past Brennon. He stopped in front of the department, and Ayrton Broyd rolled out of the carriage like a ball. After him, a huge red dog jumped to the ground, then Longsdale, and finally Francis Kennedy got out. Everyone hid in the building, and Brennon hurried to the duty station.

He came in when the chief, having gathered a large audience, made a fervent talk about the city fathers, the mayor and the bishop. Brennon coughed loudly on the phrase "a bunch of moronic idiots." As the police listened to the authorities in reverent silence, his cough sounded like a shot from a cannon. The dog turned his face and gave the commissar a long, appraising look. Longsdale absently examined the room and was not interested in what was happening.

"Yes, Brennon?" asked Broyd irritably.

"As far as I understand, sir, the mayor refused to cancel your festivities on the lake?"

"Yes! They do not see anything dangerous happening! Just think, four frozen alcoholics! They..."

"They're not alcoholics," Longsdale suddenly said, "At least today. He is dressed very well, and in his hand is a cross. Most likely, this is someone from among the ministers of the cathedral. The laity do not wear such large crosses."

There was a tense silence. The big-eyed son of a b.i.t.c.h, Nathan thought.

"Why do you think so?" Muttered Broyd. Longsdale looked at him in surprise.

"Didn't you notice? Around the arm in which the cross formed a cavity in the ice. In addition, the ice is quite transparent. Everything is seen."

"Brennon..."

"The autopsy of the first deceased in my office, sir."

"Everything to me," said Broyd.

"I want to see the first corpse," said the consultant.

"He's still in the cutting room ... I'm sorry, I wanted to say in the morgue, sir," Brennon added, addressing his superiors. The dog sniffed the floor and stomped to the stairs leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt. The consultant (the devil knows what issues) calmly walked after.

"Hey!" shouted Broyd, but his cry went unanswered. Brennon watched with pleasure as his superiors slowly turned purple, and asked:

"Return him back?"

"I don't remember allowing this young man to play in my morgue," Mr. Kennedy added coldly. The police chief was breathing noisily and rus.h.i.+ng into the chopping room.

Longsdale had already thrown off his coat and frock coat on the open autopsy table and thoughtfully studied the body of the first drowned man, starting from the head. The dog, resting his forepaws on the edge of the table, sniffed the deceased from the bottom up.

"What do you allow yourself!" cried Mr. Kennedy, "Immediately remove the dog!"

Longsdale glanced across the old man with a childishly transparent gaze.

"As I understand it, you pulled out your heart and lungs?"

"Uh ... yes," the pathologist mixed somewhat, "There was an interesting phenomenon that I identified as the cause of death."

"The lungs and heart are completely frozen," Brennon translated for the chief. Broyd took off his hat and ran a handkerchief across his forehead. His anger flared easily, but also subsided just as quickly.

"So it's interference," he concluded.

"There are no interventions," Kennedy said gruffly, "There are alcoholics who first flood their eyes with everything that burns, and then they see fairies, goblin, ghosts ... Where?!"

Having completed the study of the body, the dog confidently moved to the chamber for storing the insides and paw turned the handle. Longsdale ducked into the room. Mr. Kennedy burst into indignation.

"Broyd! What thug is this?!"

"A consultant," the chief answered melancholy, "on interventions. On the other side."

"What the h.e.l.l is he..."

The consultant is back. He managed to put on his cotton gloves and carefully held his completely icy lungs and heart. Brennon blinked in amazement. He saw this for the first time. He decided, after reading the report, that the ice simply covered the organs from above, but now it turned out that the lungs and heart seemed to be carved out of it entirely.

"What the h.e.l.l is this?" He muttered, and gently poked his lung with his fingertip. It was completely icy to the touch. Longsdale examined the heart in the light. Brennon thought for a moment that he would begin to lick him from the consultant - and before this thought really took shape in the mind of the Commissar, Longsdale licked his heart.

"Are you completely crazy?!" Nathan snapped, s.n.a.t.c.hing the dead man's heart from him until this idiot decided to gnaw him.

"The cause of death was not glaciation," said the consultant, "Apparently, the deceased died of a heart attack. However, myocardial damage can easily be attributed to the consequences of glaciation, therefore..."

"Heart attack?" asked Broyd, "But why the h.e.l.l did he have a heart attack?"

"I suppose out of fear," Longsdale answered calmly.