Lieutenant Bohdan Mykhaylovych Siryk liked to run along the bank of the Dnieper every morning before work and most nights after he finished, when he could. He enjoyed the exercise and took pride in maintaining his fitness. His desk job in the Interior Ministry's training directorate was a mixed blessing, he thought: While it was routine work that didn't allow him much exercise during the day, the hours were predictable, which allowed him to fit in a three-kilometer jog once or twice daily.
It was sunny this September morning, and the air had taken on a crispness that announced an imminent end to summer. Bohdan ran along Naberezhno-Khreschatyts'ka, often detouring from the sidewalk to run down steps to the moorage and back up again.
As he ran along the riverbank, something unusual caught the young policeman's eye: An unnaturally round, white object floated in the algae-rich green water. He slowed to look closer, then stopped before reaching into a pocket for his mobile phone to report the he had discovered a body.
Bohdan waited as the first policemen arrived, followed by an ambulance and a pair of detectives. He told them what he could and watched as the bloated corpse was pulled from the water and wrapped in a bag for transport to a city morgue. Bohdan could see that only part of the body remained, and that it was nude.
One of the detectives, a heavyset bald man in his 50s who had introduced himself as Pavel, walked over to Bohdan.
"I'll take a wild guess that this wasn't suicide or an accident," he said. "No clothes, no documents, no hands and no head. Not much chance of identifying this fellow unless he had his name and address tattooed on his rump."
"Pretty strange," Bohdan replied.
"I have a high standard for 'strange' these days," Pavel said. "Maybe this was a contract killing, I don't know. I do know that whoever took this old man swimming didn't want him identified."
***
Borys Panchuk didn't love the accordion. He loved what he could do with it.
He remembered the way that his Uncle Sasha could make the box come alive with music, and how peoples' expressions changed when his uncle played.
When Borys was eight, his extended family had gathered to celebrate his mother's 30th birthday. His grandparents were there, as well as a coterie of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. With dinner finished and the dishes swept into the apartment's tiny kitchen, Sasha opened the large black case that held his accordion and began to play. As Borys watched his uncle's fingers fly across the keys and buttons, his own fingers moved on his lap as he mimicked the man's movement. Though Borys wasn't aware of his mimicry, it hadn't escaped his uncle's eye. The next day, uncle and nephew became teacher and pupil, and the instrument's secrets slowly became known to the boy.
That party had ended almost 60 years ago. Most of those in attendance were now dead, Borys thought as he lugged the heavy black case off the Metro train at Hydropark. The people are gone, he thought, but the music would remain as long as he and his well-worn instrument were able to produce it.
It was Sunday afternoon, and the park was bustling with activity. Old women sold dried fish and snacks by the Metro as youngsters hurried past on their way to the beach. The cafes and bars were packed, young mothers pushed carriages and couples strolled. Borys headed to The Square, a small paved patch lined with benches that the park's elderly claimed as their own. Here, men sat playing chess and women congregated in twos and threes. There were few couples among them. Most of those who gathered in The Square once or twice a week did so for the companionship, having lost spouses to age, infirmity and cruelties both natural and unnatural. Borys knew most of the regulars by name, and he knew the songs they preferred. He greeted a few as he took his customary seat on a red bench next to his old partner, Andriy Viktorovych, who was already playing his violin.
Borys began playing in The Square in 1997, a year after his Iryna had died. On warm summer days, as many as 100 retirees would gather there to listen, chat and dance. Some made the effort to thank him for coming.
Evgenia had been one of those people. As he was packing his accordion away five weeks earlier, she had approached him and thanked him for the music. Borys had noticed her earlier that day: She was well dressed and tidy, matronly and with the bearing indicative of a woman of culture and manners. Borys had been impressed with her even before she spoke.
That first encounter had spawned several more. They met several times a week for coffee or a glass of wine. They had gone to the opera on one occasion, and were finding that they seemed to genuinely enjoy each other's company. Borys found himself feeling guilty when he thought of Zhenia - homage to his dear Iryna, he supposed. At 67, Borys wondered whether he could be falling in love for the second time in his life.
***
Bohdan climbed the four flights of stairs to his apartment in the dark. The man was long past cursing ZhEK for not keeping the lights in the house in working order. Even when they did work, the alcoholics who entered the building at night to sleep in the stairwell broke them.
The policeman remembered the maxim: "Darkness is the friend of the young," to which he added, "and the criminal."
When he reached the fourth floor landing, Bohdan found a woman standing by his door.
"Can I help you?" he asked, trying to make out the woman's features in the low light.
"Bohdan?" the woman said, recognition registering in her voice. "I'm Natalia Chervachidze, Nikolai's daughter. Do you remember me?"
He inserted his key into the lock, opened his door and switched on a light. "Natasha, of course!" he said. "I haven't seen you for years. Please, come in."
Bohdan had grown up in the two-room apartment he now occupied alone. Nikolai Chervachidze had raised his family in an apartment one floor up. Now the old Georgian lived alone, his wife buried. He'd heard that Natalia had married an electrical engineer and was living in Donetsk. He hadn't seen her for some time.
He offered her a chair and slipped around the corner into the kitchen to put on the teakettle.
"How are your parents?" Natalia said after he had returned with the tea.
"They died three years ago last winter," Bohdan said. "There was an auto accident. They were driving back from the Carpathians."
It had been a long three years, Bohdan thought to himself. He had lived with his parents of necessity, as he could never have afforded a place of his own on his salary. Now he shared the flat only with ghosts. He'd continued to sleep on the divan in the living room for almost a year before he could bring himself to sleep in the room his parents had occupied.
"I'm sorry to say it, but I haven't spoken with your father for a while," he said. "Will you be visiting him for a few days?"
"I came to Kyiv to check on papa," she said. "A year ago, we had a fight, and I hadn't talked to him since. When I called last week, the phone had been disconnected." Her voice began to tremble. "I rang the bell tonight and a man answered the door. He said that he owned the apartment now, and didn't know anything about my father. I've been contacting neighbors to see if anyone knows anything, but he's just disappeared."
"I'm really worried." There was a catch in the young woman's voice, and Bohdan felt compelled to reassuring.
"I'm sure someone knows something. People don't just disappear," he lied.
The policeman knew his statement wasn't true: People did disappear. It happened all the time. Some wanted to drop out of sight, to cut familial ties. Others went less willingly, victims of crime or mental instability. Some returned of their own accord, but many - like the man he had found in the river earlier that day - disappeared so completely that even the corpse might be denied a name.
"I wish I could tell you where Nikolai has gone," he said, and told her that he would make some inquiries. "I can check out the people in his apartment. Call me tomorrow evening."
Making what should have been routine inquiries turned out to be more frustrating and time-consuming than Bohdan had expected. He was a bureaucrat, not a detective, but his badge could still open doors - at least a little.
A clerk at the city's central property inventory office was able to tell him that Nikolai had transferred the apartment to Evgenia Stepanova, and that she subsequently had sold the flat to the current tenant. There was no address for Stepanova, and no indication of why Nikolai would have sold or given the apartment to her.
He also learned that Stepanova had been involved in four similar transactions over the past two years. A bottle of Moldovan brandy helped persuade the clerk to promise to copy the transfer documents within a few days.
"I haven't got much information yet," Bohdan told Natasha when she telephoned the following evening. "I think I should talk to his friends. Do you know any of them?"
"I don't, I'm sorry," she said. "It's terrible for a daughter to say, but we weren't close. We argued, and as I told you, we hadn't spoken for a year. I wish..."
Her voice trailed off.
"He did go to Hydropark, to a place for pensioners there, and played chess," she said. "Maybe someone there would remember him?"
"Tomorrow is Saturday," Bohdan said. "I could go there in the afternoon. Would you come with me?"
"Of course," the woman said. "I need to get out of the hotel room anyway."
"Fine, then," Bohdan said. "Tomorrow."
The Kyivan sky was blue and cloudless and the air was cool. On the beach where a few weeks earlier hundreds of people had sunbathed, only a handful of hardy souls now lay. Bohdan and Natalie walked through the park to The Square, which was occupied by two dozen pensioners.
Natasha began showing a photograph of her father to people and asking if anyone knew him. Bohdan walked up to an elderly man unpacking an accordion and sat down.
Borys Panchuk looked at the young man beside him.
"You're a little young for this crowd," he said, smiling. "Are you a musician, or a lover of accordion music?"
"I'm not a musician," Bohdan said. "I'm a good audience, though."
"Not many people under 90 come here," Borys said with a chuckle. "But promise me that you won't steal our women and you can stay."
"Agreed," Bohdan said. "Actually, I'm looking for someone - Nikolai Chervachidze. I heard that he comes here."
"Came here," Boys said. "He left Kyiv a while ago. I heard that he went back to Georgia. Nice fellow. Came here for years, then nothing. Never even stopped to say farewell. That surprised me, because he was a one of the regulars. But people aren't like they used to be."
Borys had unpacked the accordion and had slung it over is shoulder. He played a few tentative notes and flexed his thin hands. "What do you want with Nikolai?" he asked.
"His daughter lost contact with him," Bohdan said. "I'm trying to help her get in touch. Have you been playing here for a long time?"
"Almost every decent weekend for seven years," he said. "Since my wife died. I like to entertain, to bring a little real music to this park. Not like that disco music the kids play."
He looked around the square, expectantly. "I usually play with Andriy. Where is he anyway? He has only a violin to carry, not this elephant."
"The men listen to the music, and some sing along," he continued. "But the women feel the music, out here under the trees and beneath the sun. The women lose their inhibitions, they forget their aches and pains for a while. They forget their dead husbands and pair off with each other. The men appreciate the music, but the widows dance!"
An old musician with a violin case walked up and stood before Bohdan.
"Ah, Andriy!" Borys exclaimed. "We've been waiting for you." To Bohdan, he said. "Please allow my colleague to take a seat so we can begin. And remember our agreement."
"Your ladies are safe," Bohdan assured him, returning the old man's smile. Then he looked across the square and spied Natasha, talking with a clutch of 60-somethings.
"They know papa," Natasha said. "They say he went back to Georgia, but nobody knows anything specific. Only rumors."
"That's what I heard, too," Bohdan said.
"It doesn't make any sense," Natasha said. "Papa's family has been in Ukraine for two generations. We don't have any close ties with anyone in Georgia."
"It's convenient, isn't it? I wouldn't check the Tbilisi phone book just yet."
Evgenia Stepanova sat on a bench in The Square, talking with two other women. She sipped a cup of kvas, and listened to the bore to her right describe her late husband's last agonizing days after a bout with emphysema.
"I know how you feel, dear," she said when the woman finally paused for breath. "I've buried three husbands, myself."
"Three! My God," said the woman sitting to Evgenia's left. "How awful!"
"The first one died after eating bad mushrooms," Evgenia said. "As did my second husband."
"How awful," the woman on her left repeated.
Stupid cow, Evgenia thought as she continued.
"How did the third husband die?" the gullible woman asked.
"He was beaten to death with a hammer," Evgenia deadpanned. "He just refused to eat the mushrooms!"
After a moment, the gullible woman giggled, but the other woman, whose husband had recently succumbed to lung disease, gave her a reproachful look. The joke had offended her, Evgenia supposed, but she didn't care in the least.
The two women on the bench with Evgenia could not have suspected that there was some truth to her black humor.
Life had not been kind to Evgenia, but it had made her strong. Other people lived for their families, their mates, their children and grandchildren. Evgenia lived for Evgenia, which was perfectly fine with her: she saw herself as an intelligent, strong and independent woman.
She had grown up in a communal apartment shared by four families in a building occupied by employees of the H. I. Makarov Rubber Plant. She had hated living next to the filthy factory in a house that reeked of tired bodies and burned rubber. The plant that produced gaskets and molds spewed rubber and polymers out its smokestack day and night. The fine particulates that filtered in through the apartment's windows and doors adhered to clothes, dishes, furniture, and even hair. Life in the communal flat was a dirty, noisy and cramped affair devoid of privacy. It was a joyless existence for Evgenia, and when she left the place for teachers' college, the 17-year old girl vowed never to set foot in the place again.
Evgenia still showered three times a day. Almost 50 years after she left the filthy communal flat by the factory, she still smelled burned rubber in her hair and on her clothes.
She had maintained only sporadic contact with her family since leaving for university. She detested her father, a fat, uncouth alcoholic who cleaned machinery at the plant until his death at age 54. She tolerated her mother, who had worked in the plant's cafeteria. She had been a gentle woman devoid of either ambition or curiosity, Evgenia felt. Ultimately, she had determined that they were undeserving of her concern.
She had similar ambiguity toward her brother, Ihor. Ten years her junior, she really hadn't known him growing up. Not until their parents were both gone and Ihor moved to Kyiv did she acquaint herself with little Ihor, the man. He had their mother's mouse-like timidity and their father's thirst for vodka. Between alcoholic binges, Ihor barely managed to make a living as a notary in one of the city's poorer districts.
Evgenia's one attempt at marriage had failed within a year. She liked the quiet boy she had met in university. He had been bright and funny and a hard worker, but even on two teachers' salaries, money was a problem. They had lived with his parents in Rivne for a short time, then shared a one-room apartment. Evgenia had ended the relationship - she had always been in control - because she was ill-suited to cohabitation. She didn't need the companionship, the extra work, the clutter or the prospect of children that living with a husband entailed. One day she simply packed her things and left for Kyiv. As the door closed behind her, she put the man and the marriage out of her mind, forever. She moved on.
Over the years, she lived in a succession of apartments, always alone, though sometimes, of necessity, in one room of a communal. She vowed that the day would come when she would have a place of her own - large, airy and immaculately clean. This dream was near impossible for a divorced Soviet woman, though she spent hours imagining how she might attain it. She once considered buying counterfeit papers showing that she was married with three children so that she could qualify for a place of her own, but she eventually abandoned the idea, as the risk and expense of that proposition was too great.
It wasn't until many years had passed and the Soviet Union had collapsed that she found a way to achieve her dream, however delayed the gratification might be. She was almost there, she thought. Four steps had been taken. Two more steps and the dream would be fulfilled.
***
On Wednesday of the following week, Bohdan stopped by the property office to collect an envelope containing the documents pertaining to the transfer of Nikolai's apartment, and the other flats that had been sold by the mysterious Evgenia Stepanova.
That evening, he tore open the envelope and extracted a thick sheaf of documents. It looked like the bottle of brandy had been a good investment, he thought.
He examined the contract transferring Nikolai's flat to Stepanova, and the one transferring it to the current tenant. Everything looked in order, and each of the forms were neatly stamped and sealed. Nikolai's signature was there, as was Stepanova's.
None of the documents pertaining to Stepanova's other transfers were extraordinary, either, except that in each case, the seller was a single man, and the buyer was E. F. Stepanova.
Bohdan looked more closely at the documents: She had acquired, then sold, four flats over less than 20 months. Cumulatively, the flats were worth a total of nearly Hr 600,000.
The policeman was about to turn off the light and head to bed when he decided to shuffle through the documents one last time. Four acquisitions, four sales, 20 months. Too easy, he thought. And then he spotted an unusual commonality: each of the documents bore the stamp of the same notary. One man had prepared all of the documents. His address on the documents, as required.
Bohdan decided that he would have to pay a visit to Ihor Filipovych Kyrylenko, Notary. But first, he picked up the telephone. It was time to tell Natasha what he had learned.
Kyrylenko's office was difficult to find. Only a small sign marked the door of an otherwise residential apartment house a few blocks from the Kharkivska Metro station. It was a bad house in a bad neighborhood.
An old woman sat on a kitchen chair by the door to the building, mending a shirt.
"I'm looking for the notary," he said. "What room is he in, please?"
"The bar-room, probably," the woman said, looking across the street at a cafe-bar. She smiled at Bohdan, exposing a mouthful of stainless steel teeth.
"There's a notary three blocks that way," she motioned with the hand that clutched the sewing needle. "Don't waste your time on that alcoholic. Nobody else does."
"Thank you," Bohdan replied, "but I have to see Kyrylenko this time."
Kyrylenko sat alone in the small bar, a bottle of cheap vodka and a plate of pickles in front of him. Bohdan sat down and the watery-eyed notary watched him suspiciously.
"What do you want?" he said, taking a gulp of the vodka.
"I need to find Evgenia Stepanova," Bohdan said. "I have business with her. Police business."
Bohdan pulled out his wallet and showed his credentials to the man, whose eyes widened.
"I don't know anything," he stammered, pouring another 50 grams of vodka into his glass.
"Maybe you know these names," he said, opening the file folder containing the transfer documents. He read the name of each person who had sold a flat to, or purchased a flat from Stepanova. He read eight names in all, plus Stepanova's and Kyrylenko's. "Maybe you know what they have in common?"
Kyrylenko looked at the documents, and shook his head.
"My sister," he said. "It was all her doing. I just did the legal work."
"You know, of course, that it is a violation of the law of Ukraine to notarize a document for a close relative?"
"I am more afraid of Evgenia Filipovna than I am of any law," he said. Then he asked Bohdan a question that surprised him: "Can it be over, now?"
As he finished what promised to be his last bottle of vodka for many years, Ihor explained that his sister targeted lonely retired men, befriended them and then coerced them to sign over their apartments to her. As Evgenia held them at knifepoint, Ihor would tie them up and leave for an hour. When he returned, the men were dead, bludgeoned by a hammer blow to the back of the head. They would remove the bodies at night and dispose of them in the forests outside Kyiv. Evgenia buried the clothes, hands and heads, and dumped the bodies, wrapped in blankets and weighted with rocks, in the Dnieper.
When the apartments sold, Ihor said, his sister would give him a small sum - $1,000 or $2,000. The rest she said she was saving to buy a flat of her own, in a new building, and with fine furniture.
"It was all she talked about," Ihor said. "It was her dream."
"It was a nightmare for me, though. I think about those men. All four of them," he said. "She promised, just two more times. Two more, then she'd have what she wanted from life."
It was early evening when the detectives knocked on Evgenia's door. She didn't answer at first - she seldom did. But the insistent banging continued, and when she angrily unlatched the door it was quickly pushed open. She was arrested before she fully understood what was happening.
Natasha wept as Bohdan explained what he had learned. She knew that her father had been killed, and was coming to the realization that his body might never be found. She returned to her home in Donetsk. Kyiv now held nothing for her but bitterness.
The next Sunday was colder, crisper than the one before, and there were fewer pensioners gathered at The Square. Bohdan walked past, watching the men play chess, and the woman talk in small groups. The sound of accordion music wafted over the voices, and the policeman saw old Borys on his bench, as usual.
Borys looked a bit sadder, perhaps. His friend Evgenia hadn't come by. You have no idea how close you came to death, my friend, Bohdan thought. Then he walked further down the path, toward the Metro station.
"Life goes on," he said, speaking only to himself.
B. Micto is the pseudonym of a Kyiv writer.
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