Free The Twelfth Department by William Ryan

office when they entered.
    “What happened to you?” he asked Korolev.
    Korolev looked down at his clothes.
    “I got caught in the storm—over in Bersenevka.”
    Popov sighed. “You look like you went swimming, that’s what you look like. Over there in Bersenevka.”
    Korolev looked down at himself, hearing an echo of the colonel’s rebuke in Popov’s words.
    “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
    He caught Slivka’s sideways glance out of the corner of his eye.
    “That’s just as well—a drowned rat couldn’t look more drowned than you do at the moment.” Popov paused to smile. “Be sure to get yourself dry when we’ve finished here. It wouldn’t do for you to catch a summer cold.”
    “I will, Comrade First Inspector.”
    Popov waved for them to sit down. He walked to the window, taking his unlit pipe from his pocket as he did so and chewing on its stem. Then he turned and walked slowly back toward the desk, placing his left hand on the back of his chair as he considered them.
    “Investigations don’t usually come and go this quickly,” Popov said. “But we weren’t to know the responsibility for it lay elsewhere.”
    Slivka opened her mouth to speak but a glance from Popov closed it.
    “You’re back on holiday, Korolev. And Slivka, you’re back chasing Gray Foxes.”
    Popov pulled his chair back and sat down, taking reading glasses from the breast-pocket of his jacket and picking up a handwritten sheet of paper from the desk—precise instructions would now follow, it seemed.
    “Any notes you took or other evidence collected must be given to me—I’ll see they reach the right place. If any file was opened with regard to the matter it is to be immediately closed and its contents passed to me, as before. You will not discuss or refer to the investigation into Professor Azarov’s murder—not even among yourselves. In fact, you’re to forget it ever happened. I think that’s all pretty straightforward. Understood?”
    They nodded.
    “Good. Off you go then.”
    Korolev stood up and left the first inspector’s office with Slivka in tow.
    “Are we in trouble of some sort, Chief?” she said out of the corner of her mouth as they descended the stairs.
    “I don’t think so,” Korolev said, “as long as we do as we’re told we should be fine. The whole business never happened, is all.”
    Korolev located the last of his cigarettes in his damp pocket, along with the matches from the car—and was pleasantly surprised when he managed to get them both to light.
    “Well,” he said when they reached the second floor, where their office was. “I’d best leave you to it. Good luck with Shabalin.”
    “Thanks,” Slivka said, nodding. “Good luck with your holiday.”
    What else was there to say? They certainly couldn’t discuss the matter in question. So instead Korolev nodded once again and squelched off down the staircase, across Petrovka’s cobbled courtyard before making straight for the Sandunovsky bathhouse on Neglinaya Street. And there he soaked in a long bath while a white-coated attendant with a boxer’s ears took his clothes from him and promised he’d have them back dry as a bone within the hour.
    So Korolev emptied his mind, allowed his feet to float up till his toes broke the surface and ignored the conversations going on around him. He focused on the ornate ceiling, on the gilded knots and twirls, on the occasional damp patch that marred the decoration, and squinted away the sweat that rolled down into his eyes. It occurred to him that this was as good a way as any to forget all about the day he’d just had. And, after half an hour of floating, a long stretch in the sauna and a few pages of the newspaper, he found he felt more like a human being again. In fact, by the time he come back out onto the street, his clothes dry and ironed, and looking better than they had for some time, he felt as relaxed as anyone had any right to expect these days. The evening sky was a deep blue