“What was the most memorable performance for you?”
“Concert in Tivastopol.”
(from Rina's interview with ‘Kaleidoscope’ magazine)
The day turned out to be strange and at the same time intense. Yura didn’t have time to move away from the shock caused by the blocking of the channel, as he received a surprise in the form of a greyhound suffering from enuresis. The ‘surprise’ for him, of course, was arranged by his beloved sister. Yura swore profusely. At the same moment, Manya looked out of the kitchen and grumbled that if he screamed like that, he would bring the dog to a heart attack. Then she picked up the shaking greyhound in her arms, carried her into the room and went to get a bucket and a mop. Calmly wiping the puddle, the sister said that her new acquaintance, Gennadiy Sergeevich, needed to leave urgently and he asked to shelter the dog for a while.
“What do I have to do with it?” Yura was surprised and checked whether the nervous dog was already spoiling the computer keyboard.
“And besides, dear brother, the debt payment is dangerous. I have to go away on business, and I can't leave Shusha with Pencil! Therefore, Shusha will stay with you for a while, and I'll be back for him by four,” Manya promised, kissed her brother on the cheek and flew away.
Canned meat and a bag of dry food were found in the kitchen, there were bowls near the radiator, and there was a soft litter near the refrigerator and a plush mouse on it. Looking at the dog's ‘dowry’, Yura thought with longing that Manya seemed to have brought him a greyhound not for a while, but for good. Hearing the shrill barking, he rushed into the room and found Shusha on the verge of a breakdown. The dog squatted on its hind legs, shook its skinny body and bared its sharp teeth. Greyhound was brought into such nervous excitement by a pencil glass in the form of a grinning demonic muzzle. Yura hastily picked up Shusha in his arms and at the same moment felt a moist warmth on his palms.
“Oh, damn you!” he cursed and hurriedly carried the dog to the bathroom. “The trouble is with you! Shit…”
Contrary to fears, the day flowed on calmly. Shusha ate a lot of pate, lay down on the mat, clutched a battered plush toy in his front paws and finally calmed down. Yura brought his laptop to the kitchen, intending to fight to the death with the technical support of the blocked channel, poured himself tea, but he was distracted by a phone call. An unknown girl said that her boss was interested in an article about an amusement park and asked Yura to come to the office for a conversation.
“Are you from the editorial office?” Yura asked.
“No,” she answered after some hesitation.
“Is it by any chance from Dimitri Lebedev's office?”
“Of course not. What makes you think that?” the girl was surprised.
“Well, I was fired from my job because of an article about him. And the channel was blocked.
“Wow!” there was an answer with poorly concealed respect.
Yura agreed to come by five in the evening, deciding that by that time Manya would definitely pick up Shusha. Putting down his phone and pulling his laptop towards him, he began to unravel the ‘rebus’, for which he paid a large sum.
Yura hoped that the informant would share with him versions of Rina's disappearance or details of her breakup with Dimitri Lebedev, but he heard a story about the missing businessman. Some time ago, Vladimir Serov and two of his partners mysteriously disappeared right from the restaurant where they celebrated a successfully concluded deal. The owner of the restaurant was one of Serov's friends, a well-known restaurateur and investor Mikhail Svetakov.
That evening, the company was entertained by Rina's performance. The singer usually didn’t take such orders: she had enough crowded concert halls, but that evening for some reason she agreed to sing in front of three businessmen in private. Rina performed three songs, politely refused dinner and left the restaurant. And after some time, the waiter who brought the dessert found the hall empty. There were businessmen's cars in the yard, security guards were at the door, and three men seemed to have fallen into the ground. No one saw them go outside, no one entered the hall after the singer's performance, not even the waiters. The restaurant, of course, was searched, but no trace of the businessmen was found. Different versions of their disappearance were worked out, the search didn’t stop, but time passed, and the case didn’t move from a dead point. Only recently - coincidence or not - Dimitri Lebedev extorted at a bargain price from Serov's wife those lands, the purchase of which was noted by businessmen.
“Serov and Lebedev…” Yura muttered, looking for news on the topic.
The scandal associated with the purchase of these lands went out without flaring up, but Yura was able to make a general picture. The land was sold by the oligarch Popov. Both Lebedev and Serov applied for the deal. However, Popov and Lebedev didn’t get along, so the lands were sold to Serov. At a very reasonable price.
“Well, well, well,” Yura fidgeted in his chair, having read that the construction of an expensive residential complex had already begun on the disputed site.
Lebedev, having bought land from Serov's wife, didn’t postpone the matter for a long time. Yura's intuition told him that Dimitri clearly had a hand in the disappearance of competitors, and he also tried to bring the search to a dead end. But what does Rina have to do with it? The informant didn’t give an explanation, only added the mysterious word ‘Tivastopol’.
“And what should I do about it?” Yura exclaimed, almost waking up Shusha.
The Internet helped him find out that there was a place near the provincial Tivastopol that was considered abnormal, something like the local Bermuda Triangle. About a year and a half ago, an island suddenly appeared near the city on the river. At about the same time, Rina came to Tivastopol with a concert. Yura scratched his curly head and picked up the phone that rang.
“I'll be there soon!” Manya reported. “Is Shusha alive?”
“Would you rather ask if I'm alive?” Yura sneered.
“Why ask if I can hear it in your voice? I'm on my way, I'll release you soon. So how is Shusha?”
“He's full and sleeping. And before that, he sprinkled golden dew on my palms.”
Manya laughed out loud:
“Be glad that Shusha is not the size of Pencil!”
“Speaking of dogs and our business, Manya. The next time you go to Volkovs, drop the word ‘Tivastopol’ casually in front of them. They say that you visited your aunt in that city and at the same time attended Rina's concert. Check out the concert videos for authenticity.”
“Well, how do you imagine it? Vsevolod gives commands to the dog, and I'm like this to him about the concert in Tivastopol?”
“Manya, come up with something!” Yura pleaded.
However, she cut off:
“That's it, brother, hang up! Before you come up with something else.”
The sister not only arrived at the promised hour, but also gave Yura a lift. It was then that the main shock of the day happened to him: the same ‘malvina’ from the park met him in the office, only now her hair was bright yellow. Yura already grunted in surprise and indecently stared at the girl's long legs covered with yellow tights. It seems that he even whistled softly from such stunning beauty. But the girl pretended that she was not at all excited by Yura's admiring look, introduced herself without a smile and went to her computer.
Vika kept quite cool with him, offered coffee by rote and explained distantly that the boss urgently needed to leave, so she would conduct the interview. Vika said so - an interview, and set a time frame of half an hour. Level eighty performance! Yura grunted, sprawled on the chair opposite and folded his hands on his stomach. He will still see who ‘interviews’ whom!
But Vika was still cold, she didn't miss a single spy question, with which Yura hoped to break through her monolithic detachment. She asked questions and ignored his irrelevant remarks. Not a girl, but an executive robot!
But it is unlikely that she is such by nature! Would a real buka dress so stylishly and dye her hair in ultra bright colors? And the longer he looked at her lemon-colored bristling hair, long eyelashes and smooth forehead, the more he became convinced that he and Vika had already met somewhere. Her name evoked vague associations that still eluded him.
“How do I know you?” Yura hacked instead of answering the question and still confused the girl.
“What?”
Hands with long lemon-colored nails froze over the keyboard, but Vika quickly recovered and hurriedly repeated the question:
“So how did you feel when everything turned black and white?”
“Where did we meet?” Yura repeated stubbornly
“Nowhere!” Vika snapped and looked up at him with eyes of a rich heavenly hue, but immediately looked away, pretending to read the message.
“Time's up,” she said, putting the phone aside. “I need to make an important call. Right now!
“You still haven't said what you do.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“I have. This is a detective agency.”
“What do you really do?” Yura asked, looking at her point-blank. “Why is there such an interest in a non… detective topic?”
“It's not my business anymore. I'm only running errands for the boss,” Vika answered smoothly, like a robot, and got up from her seat to open the door.
Yura reluctantly got up after him. Okay. One zero is not in his favor, the battle is lost, but the fight is for him. Yura took a business card from the table and defiantly put it in his pocket: he would call Vika's boss himself. The guy seemed to him quite pleasant and talkative.
“Well, it was nice… to meet you!” Yura said cheerfully and went out onto the landing.
Vika closed the door behind him, as it seemed to him, with relief.
He went down to the street and looked back at the entrance, feeling even more puzzled than before. On the phone, Vika didn't seem so tight to him. However, analyzing the conversation now, Yura remembered that she was almost silent even then. It was he, delighted with the interest in his blog, who even blurted out to her about the dismissal from the editorial office.
Yura chose a secluded place, from which the entrance to the office building was clearly visible, and pretended to be carried away by reading messages. Soon, Vika's working day will end, she will not linger in the absence of her boss! And he, Yura, has nowhere to hurry today.
Vika really left the office on time and, not noticing Yura, headed for the subway. He hastily put the phone in his pocket and rushed after, keeping at a distance. He wasn't afraid to lose sight of Vika: she was tall, moreover, from afar she ‘semaphores’ with the bright color of her hair and tights.
Vika walked past the entrance to the subway and went along the highway, hurriedly skirting passers-by, then turned into an alley. There she stopped near a two-story building with a fenced area, called and, taking something out of a bulky bag on the move, crossed the yard. Yura waited until Vika disappeared into the building, read the sign and whistled in surprise. A lot of things became clear to him.
“Really, Rina?” Nikolai chuckled.
Wow, what a turn! Despite all the tragedy, the situation seemed to him somewhat comical, especially if you recall the singer's attempts to hide the ‘replicated’ face behind cosmetic masks. But Rina suddenly turned pale, and against the background of alabaster pallor, her dark eyes seemed to be black holes. Her lips twitched, and her face was distorted with fear. And instead of the expected haughty celebrity that would have pointed him to the door, Nikolai suddenly saw a girl scared to the point of fainting.
“Hey?” He was alarmed, instantly erasing his grin. “Just don't faint!”
From confusion, Nikolai switched to a more soft tone, but even this didn’t bring Rina to her senses. He took a step towards her so that he could catch her if she decided to faint. But Rina recoiled, hugged herself and shook her head.
“Damn,” Nikolai swore softly, threw out the unfinished tea from one of the cups and, hastily rinsing it, filled it with water. “Here, have a drink.”
Rina took a sip, but choked and coughed.
“Damn,” Nikolai swore again, but not softly, but in a voice.
He snatched the cup from her hands, tapped her lightly on the back, and then, taking her hand, sat her down at the table.
“Hey...I didn't think you'd react like that.”
He didn’t think, he didn’t think at all, that in this house on the outskirts, the coordinates of which Gennadiy Sergeevich sent in the last message, the missing celebrity was hiding!
Rina said nothing, only lowered her head in resignation and curtained her long hair from Nikolai. What happened to her? And should he get into her problems when he has enough to do?
“Rina? I'm not the one you're afraid of.”
He blurted out at random, but Rina reacted: she pushed back her hair and looked at him.
“Who are you anyway?” she asked dully, also discarding all ceremonies.
Only her familiarity was not friendly, on the contrary, Rina seemed to increase the distance.
“I'm from Vsevolod and Violet Volkovs. Do you know them?”
“Yes,” Rina replied after a pause, in which the fleeting relief in her eyes was replaced by fright again. “These are my friends. Did something happen to them?!”
“Only that they are very scared of your disappearance and have instructed me to find you. Privately.”
“So you…” Rina stretched out thoughtfully and, without finishing, clasped her fingers in the lock and lowered her head again
Nikolai sat down on a chair so that he no longer towered over her, and said:
“They just want to know that you're alive and well.”
“I disappeared for everyone! Even for friends.”
“You hid badly, since you can be found with a strong desire.
“How did you find me?”
“Work secrets,” Nikolai answered evasively.
He couldn't admit to her that he hadn't actually started looking for her yet!
“I wanted to warn Vsevolod and Violet about my disappearance, but I couldn't.”
This time, Rina's voice sounded plaintive and thin, like a girl who has been naughty and scared of the impending punishment. How different her voice was now from the one Nikolai had recently heard on the radio! In that voice of hers - flexible, strong and deep - there was no trembling, there were no tears and despair, even though Rina was singing then about a trapped bird. At some point, Nikolai assumed that her voice would probably be polished during recording, but he remembered a video where Rina performed an a cappella song.
“I can call Volkovs myself. You don't have to talk to them. I'll let them know that you're alive and well, and whatever you want to tell them.”
“How are they?” Rina asked after a pause. “I'm really sorry about what happened. But… it's better for everyone if I stay here. Here or elsewhere. It doesn't matter. I can't go to them, or…”
What has she done to punish herself like that? But he executes the same! And who intimidated her like that? But Nikolai didn't ask, just pulled out his phone from his pocket and found the number of Violet Volkova.
“It's night now,” Rina reminded him. “Better in the morning. And don't tell me anything from me, just that I'm alive and well.”
“Whatever you say,” he replied and got up to leave, because Rina made it clear in her tone that time was up.
But his gaze fell on one of the sheets scattered on the table, and this time Nikolai's attention was attracted by a drawing.
“Stas drew it,” Rina explained reluctantly.
She became nervous again: she jerked forward, as if wanting to get ahead of the ‘guest’ and not let him take the paper, but at the last moment she stopped and hugged herself again.
“Interesting,” Nikolai muttered, examining the brilliantly executed drawing.
The old man depicted an abandoned amusement park, recognizable by the details - a torn-down sign, a racetrack with bushes breaking through the coating, and a ticket booth. In the foreground was a Ferris wheel, in front of which a guy and a girl were standing with their heads up. To his amazement, Nikolai recognized the girl as Vika. And the guy next to her turned out to have a thick ‘cap’ of curls, like the journalist Yuriy Vasilev met the day before.
Nikolai didn't even notice how she came up and stood so close that their shoulders almost touched. He could feel the warmth emanating from her body, and the subtle smell of either shampoo or cream. But more than her warmth and fragrance, he was suddenly excited by the fact that Rina actually turned out to be short and thin. For some reason he thought she was as tall as Vika. Maybe the deceptive impression was formed because of magazine photos in which Rina next to Dimitri didn’t seem small? So, this Lebedev is really short. Nikolai chuckled to himself and marveled that such a small ‘bird’ Rina had such a powerful voice.
He wanted to ask her a lot of questions: to ask where she got these printouts, did Gennadiy Sergeevich give them to her, or did Rina accidentally pick up the envelope? But at the last moment, Nikolai held back: for her, he is just a detective who was hired by her friends. And it's noticeable how tired Rina is: without hiding, she yawned and glanced at the exit with a hint. It is unlikely that she will agree to continue the conversation.
“I'm already leaving.”
Rina nodded, but when he touched the door handle, she suddenly called his name:
“Nikolai! Do you... do you have a place to spend the night?”
“I'll go to the city, look for a hotel.”
“It's unlikely you'll be checked in at night,” she muttered and shivered as if from the cold.
“So I'll sleep in the car,” Nikolai shrugged.
He's not picky. It happened to sleep on the bare ground.
“I have a spare room,” said Rina after a pause, in which, apparently, she made a difficult decision. “If you want, sleep there. It's been... a hard day.”
He tried not to betray his surprise and the fact that he was glad of her invitation. With deliberate indifference, he turned to Rina and put his hands in his pockets.
“Well, if I don't embarrass you.”
She hastily, betraying nervousness, removed a black strand that had fallen on him from her face and shook her head. Nikolai realized that it wasn't about Rina's hospitality, but that she was afraid that he would betray her. And so it turned out. Rina resolutely raised her dark eyes to him and, in a tone from which the notes of doubt disappeared, demanded:
“Leave me your phone for tonight.”
“I wasn't going to call anyone, Rina. But if it makes you feel better…” with these words, Nikolai handed her the phone. “Only if my wife calls, don't answer, but wake me up. To avoid family scandals.”
She didn’t notice the sly laughter in his eyes and did not hear the joking intonations, understood everything literally and nodded with the most serious look. He wanted to ask Rina not to run away in response, but said nothing, took a stack of clean underwear from her and went to lie on the sofa in the room assigned to him.
Nikolai didn’t manage to fall asleep right away: the day turned out to be too difficult for his thoughts to dissolve in the silence of the night. After Gennadiy Sergeevich sent him photos of a tree, a crack and a river in which a dead fish was swimming, Nikolai couldn’t sit still, left the office on Vika and rushed to this place. And now, trying to fall asleep in the house of the missing singer, he tried to understand what kind of new rebus Gennadiy Sergeevich had made for him.
Maybe if he hadn't dropped Gennadiy Sergeevich the coordinates of the places where something terrible started to wake up in the morning, the colonel would have remained alive. At first glance, his death seemed natural: Gennadiy Sergeevich was no longer in good health and could well have died of a heart attack. Only now he died near the house of the missing singer, who, moreover, had these strange printouts!
Fatigue still won: thoughts began to get confused, and before falling into a viscous nightmare, Nikolai had time to think that Rina's attempts to keep incognito were really funny.
He dreamed of something disturbing and creepy: a river with funnels of whirlpools, from which terrible figures emerged to the surface, dead birds raining black hail from the darkened sky. Nikolai woke up suddenly and, not really coming to himself, jumped out into the corridor.
The door to the next room was open, but Rina wasn’t in the bedroom. Nikolai saw the disassembled bed, the bedspread that had fallen to the floor and, worst of all, an open and half-empty closet. Rina seemed to be packing in a hurry. Already realizing that she wasn’t in the house, Nikolai quickly looked into the bathroom and into the kitchen. He saw his phone on the kitchen table, but when he pressed the button, the screen barely flared up and went out: during the night the phone was completely discharged. Cursing, Nikolai jumped out into the yard and calmed down a little when he saw his car where he left it.
He was about to return to the house to get the phone left in the kitchen when he noticed that the sky had darkened, as before a thunderstorm. A black cloud covered the forest, which then floated with unprecedented speed, changing shape every now and then, as if giant bees were swarming inside. Nikolai involuntarily stepped back to the open door. Suddenly, the cloud seemed to be torn in half, and black lumps fell out of it. For a few moments he watched in a daze, as already in reality, and not in a nightmare, dead birds were falling to the ground. Not only the details of the dream flashed through my memory, but also the misinterpreted little things: the bedspread thrown by Rina on the floor, the clothes left in the closet and, most importantly, a spot on the window pane with a pen glued to it.
“What have you gotten yourself into, songbird?” Nikolai muttered, running down the porch to the car to rush to the place over which a terrible cloud hung.