"Smith, Martin Cruz - Wolves Eat Dogs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

Timofeyev pressed a handkerchief against his nose. Arkady saw spots of red.

"Nosebleed?" asked Zurin.

"Summer cold," said Timofeyev.

Opposite Ivanov's apartment was a dark office building. A man walked out of the lobby, waved to Arkady and gave a thumbs-down.

"One of your men?" Hoffman asked.

"A detective, in case someone over there was working late and might have witnessed something."

"But you're not investigating."

"I do whatever the prosecutor says."

"So you think it was suicide."

"We prefer suicides. Suicides don't demand work or drive up the crime rate." It also occurred to Arkady that suicides didn't expose the incompetence of investigators and militia who were better at sorting out dead drunks from the living than solving murders committed with any amount of forethought.

Zurin said, "You will excuse Renko, he thinks all of Moscow is a crime scene. The problem is that the press will sensationalize the death of someone as eminent as Pasha Ivanov."

In which case, better the suicide of an unbalanced financier than assassination, Arkady thought. Timofeyev might lament the suicide of his friend, but a murder investigation could place the entire NoviRus company under a cloud, especially from the perspective of foreign partners and investors who already felt that doing business in Russia was a dip in murky water. Since Zurin had ordered Arkady's financial investigation of Ivanov, this U-turn had to be executed with dispatch. So, not a maюtre d', Arkady thought, but more a skillful sailor who knew when to tack.

"Who had access to this apartment?" Arkady asked.

"Pasha was the only one allowed on this level. The security was the best in the world," Zurin said.

"Best in the world," Timofeyev agreed.

Zurin said, "The entire building is covered by surveillance cameras, inside and out, with monitors that are watched not only at the reception desk here but, as a safeguard, also by technicians at the headquarters of NoviRus Security. The other apartments have keys. Ivanov had a keypad with a code known only to him. He also had a lock-out button by the elevator, to keep out the world when he was in. He had all the security a man could wish for."

Arkady had been in the lobby and seen the monitors tucked into a round rosewood desk. Each small screen was split in four. The receptionist also had a white phone with two outside lines and a red phone with a line direct to NoviRus.

"The building staff doesn't have Ivanov's code?" Arkady asked.

"No. Only the central office at NoviRus."

"Who had access to the code there?"

"No one. It was sealed, until tonight."

According to the prosecutor, Ivanov had ordered that no one enter the apartment but him Ц not staff, not a housecleaner, not a plumber. Anyone who tried would appear on monitors and on tape, and the staff had seen nothing. Ivanov did his own cleaning. Gave the elevator man the trash, laundry, dry cleaning, lists for food or whatever, which would be waiting in the lobby when Ivanov returned. Zurin made it sound like many talents.

"Eccentric," Arkady said.

"He could afford to be eccentric. Churchill wandered around his castle naked."

"Pasha wasn't crazy," Rina said.