“It seems that the old man was going to cure us of a cold or take up medical practice in a sanatorium,” Nikifor Naumovich grinned.
“Perhaps it was eliminated by WHO representatives who view mercury as one of the ten major chemical agents or groups of chemicals that pose a significant threat to public health,” Regimov contributed to the study of the heavy metal, finishing the examination of the suitcase and packing things back.
“Here’s the list is ready,” Seregin showed in the computer that he noted how much he liked the wardrobe of the victim, or rather, pointed out every little thing.
“Granatov will be right now. You have to ask him about the properties of mercury. While he is not there, we can not say anything concrete,” Nikifor Naumovich sincerely suggested, rubbing his hands, installing a closed suitcase on the floor, leaving a box of thermometers on the table open.
A swiftly talented and prudent expert appeared in the police officers’ room in his whip-white dressing-gown buttoned up, and on his feet shining Italian shoes, custom-made in the leather goods firm Sergio Rossi.
Granatov has always been very scrupulous in choosing accessories. The genealogical tree of the expert went back to the Tatar dynasty, which moved to the Caucasus. Methods of his diagnosis were liked by all police officers of the State Security Committee, as he never made a mistake in ascertaining the posthumous diagnosis of victims of crimes. He had a good reputation as a connoisseur of medicine. With a Ph. D. thesis, he continued to work in the police. Everyone in his family was a doctor, including his elder brother, a doctor of science, educated in the United States and involved in projects of global importance. He headed a clinic in Miami, Florida, where often visited the younger sibling from this eminent family with numerous medals for inventing implants for hip joints in operations on the femoral neck in elderly women.
All the elite of the show business of this state visited their sponsor when he arranged picnics in his luxurious country villa located on the Atlantic coast. Often the whole company they flew with a return visit to New Orleans, where meetings and parties were held by his friends near the pool with warm water or on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. Many popular and Oscar-winning filmmakers and movie actors such as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolly with her offspring, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Leonardo DiCaprio, Keith Winslet, James Cameron, were present as guests, enthralled by political tycoons, collecting millions of dollars in donations for talented writers, architects and artists from Russia, Germany, Italy, France and Poland.
“I’m away for a minute. What questions for me?” asked Granatov. “I’ve been too busy yesterday but today am just the same have a lot of things to do,” he joked, flaunting his perfect knowledge of the English language, which he acquired, visiting the United States on vacation, studying and working in international youth camps as a paramedic. He usually, ignoring the rules of the police, appeared at work an hour earlier, in order to better prepare for the routine of the working day, and in the remaining assignments was punctual and fulfilling.
“What can you say about such a find in the suitcase of the victim?” Regimov asked the forensic expert, pointing to the thermometers, and Seregin said nothing in a sign of mutual approval of the words of his colleague and comrade-in-arms.
“Mercury in the Middle Ages was treated with a turn of the intestines and syphilis, but later recognized that such methods did not bring the required fruits.”
Granatov, proud of his scientific knowledge and precise statements, waved his head back and smoothed his gray hair with his hand.
“I can say that this is a chemical element of the Mendeleev system with atomic number 80, which belongs to the zinc subgroup. In general, mercury is extracted from rocks in Transcaucasia, in the Urals from cinnabar. They are used to produce ingots of gold by washing slags. It is a polluter of the environment. Especially dangerous are discharges into the water, and the vapors are extremely poisonous,” Granatov was inspired and quickly rapped out his information, just pulled from the Internet, sitting down on the edge of the chair.
“You invited me for this? What’s the matter?” he asked to make his presence official.
“And for that, too. We need your name here on this document: transfer of thermometers and a list of personal belongings of the victim,” said Seregin, pushing to the expert the sheet A-4 just printed on the office equipment – escorting the suitcase with the contents to the warehouse.
Granatov, who had time to prove his competence, took out the imported handle of the firm “Parker”, scrawled underneath the list of Soshin’s things illegible signature.
“Call when you need to,” said the Granatov, and retired from the room to his basement room for further examination of the corpse of the victim, leaving the policemen to stay in good health and excellent spirits.
“Now we can turn the page in the investigation and move on to more pressing problems,” Seregin laughed, when he also clearly put his initials on the inventory.
“What do you suggest?” asked Regimov and smiled cunningly, because he knew what was going on.
“The fox will unravel the matter overnight. Do you remember how she famously put in place all the main suspects in the case of the theft of the exhibits from the Louvre, which, perhaps, the whole French police dreamed of?”
Seregin remembered that Interpol refused to conduct an investigation, he had to throw the hanging – undisclosed case – on a private agency headed by an experienced woman who managed to put all the points on “i”.
“That’s for sure. Energies at her though more than ever and you can take away. A real energizer. She likes to dig in history. Here dwarfs and Lilliputians do not even dream of me now. Quickly she exposed them. After all, in fact, there were no dwarfs… And there were only renegades, terrorists, drug addicts, defectors to the enemy camp and robbers, whom we did not allow to go,” Regimov said, stressing his merits and education.
“This is a thing of the past. Our vacation is developing badly. They wanted to combine business with pleasure…” Seregin’s words affected his colleague like a detonator.
“It is necessary to correct the oversight, as if everything should soon settle down in the presence of material evidence and the absence of a normal alibi for the suspects.”
The police never hid from their wards, which they often had to detain together during the search. Once, in crowded dances in the very center of the city, they jointly defused an explosive device that could work, take more than a dozen lives, destroy a historical Empire-style building when they were called by their super-agent, Alice, who worked under the code, introduced into the most unstable segments of the population.
The detective managed to uncover the plot and the terrorist act. At that time, the Lilliputians, playing the role of underage children, were instructed to hide the bomb. But the super-agent and private police officer Alice, watching them, climbed onto a metal fence surrounding the site adjacent to the park, where a paid dance evening was to take place. She managed to track down, call where to go, call a riot police unit, led by the department for combating organized crime. Terrorists in the face of eight people were detained and placed in places of imprisonment for a long time. Thanks to joint, synchronized actions of the police and their assistant, the bomb, packed with explosives, did not explode.
3. The exploits of Hercules
The Department for Combating Organized Crime, which included Seregin and Regimov periodically, turned to a private detective agency, headed by an experienced detective – Korablevskaya Alice, who received the title of lawyer after graduating from the Academy of Law and defended her thesis there. She had an attractive appearance, preferred sports clothes: jeans, sneakers, she could