Maria put the letter back into its envelope and shook her head.

“No, it’s a private matter.”

A day earlier, she had found the note in her letterbox. She might have thrown it out without reading, but for her maiden name on the envelope composed in slanted handwriting, pirouetting this way and that. It tickled her with the hint of a memory, like a dream forgotten before breakfast.

It took them ages to find the building and the entrance. Valery Petrovich still managed to get muddled and took the wrong approach. They walked across a courtyard enclosed by blocks of flats. Young boys played basketball and a girl sat on a swing. Maria gave the girl a push with one hand and pulled along her case with the other.

A hearse and a police car were parked at the entrance.

“Check it out, they must have bought that Renault Duster after the revolution,” the lieutenant said, heading off to greet the officers.

It was sunny and there was a hint of buoyancy in the air. A row of old ladies sat on a bench outside: “Who have you come for?”; “We only have good sorts living here, you know?”; “What floor are you after?”

One of the cops took a look at Maria and cracked a tired joke about how the criminal investigations unit were now hiring the underaged. She turned her back on him in scorn. She wanted to get to work. She went up to the entrance to the block of flats and pressed a buzzer. Nobody answered. She stared at the rubbed-out buttons and listened to the beeps. She wanted to avoid appealing to the old ladies for help, so she studied the noticeboard by the entry instead. Four small numbers had been scrawled with a utility knife into a spot by the hinge, probably by a postman. She keyed in the code and the door buzzed and clicked. A gloomy old-timer emerged with a diminutive terrier on a lead. He was taken aback for a moment, but then greeted Maria, and then the old ladies and shuffled along the street, glancing back.

“Anatolich,” the women shouted behind him. “Don’t let your dog do his business under the window.”

He muttered something. The lieutenant and a detective approached. The three of them entered the building, squeezed into a dark lift and pressed the button for the eighth floor. Leaning back into her corner, Maria watched how the shade from the theft-proof caged lightbulb fell on the faces of the lieutenant and the detective. The lift creaked and groaned as it rose slowly.

The door to the flat was open. They knocked and entered. A woman’s stifled sobbing emerged from within. A broad-shouldered man in a T-shirt and summer shorts came out to meet them.

“Hello. Come in please,” he said, uncertainly.

“Why didn’t you answer the doorbell? Maria asked.

“I guess we didn’t hear it. Mum’s crying, she’s in a total state. She found him as soon as she came back from the dacha.”