The Dnieper isn’t frozen; it’s dark and rippled and cold to the eye. Huge sheets of ice lumber just below the surface, a broken winter landscape succumbed to a river’s perpetually restless undercurrents.
Across the water lie the city’s islands, laid low and bare by frost. Thus, all the more majestic stands the footbridge, tall by any standards, now noble in its emptiness, solitary against the purple sky.
Downstream stands its brother, the Metro Bridge, his back a track for underground trains rising out of the right-bank depths, blue metal caterpillars crawling across the horizon under endless heaven, over scintillating crests.
You’d be forgiven for not noticing the walkway or that slab of cement that stretches along the urban shore, far beneath historical hilltop sites, invisible to pedestrian or passenger car along Naberezhna Road. It’s a twenty-foot wall below, a door stoop in a shadow with steps that lap up the waves.
You’ll almost certainly not have seen John Smith exit a subterranean tunnel onto the walkway and then start making footprints in the freshly fallen snow. Traffic whirs above but ducks quack quietly below. The sky is an open adventure, the water a silent retreat: a bridge to the left, a bridge to the right, a train in the distance, not a person in sight.
But he soon espies a fisherman… in floppy hat and wrinkled raincoat with a rod of rotten wood.
“What are you fishing for?”
“A head.”
“Any luck so far?”
“No, but something is sure to come up.”
“From where, pray tell.”
“From Lisbon way, I daresay; it may even arrive in a box.”
Soon Smith and The Hunched Cornish are enjoying a picnic lunch that includes sardine sandwiches cut into tiny triangles, soggy potato chips and a huge thermos full of thick black coffee.
“It’s sure getting expensive in this city, isn’t it?”
“That’s why I come here… it’s free.”
“And so are we, Mr. Cornish, free to do whatever we want: work, play, or go on holiday. Meet a girl and fall in love, or rape a woman in an underpass. Murder, anyone? An ancient pastime if there ever was one – it helps to have a motive though. Greed has topped the charts since time eternal…”
“How would you know?” interrupts the Freak of a Man with a fishing rod.
“Oh, I’ve experience that exceeds my age, much gained quite recently. Then there is envy – one of my favorites. You’re a writer and your friend is too. He’s got talent, you don’t, and both of you know it, but no one says anything till it’s too late. Then, wham, he’s dead. No need to go into the details of the deed, as the ways one can murder must only be limited by one’s imagination.”
“I’ve got one of those.”
“I never doubted it. It takes one to know one – I always say. But motive and method aren’t enough. There’s the getaway! That is to say: what does one do once he’s taken another’s life. Going back to Biblical times, we find Cain continuing to toil away in the garden until God catches him out with the simplest of interrogational procedures… that is to say, the direct question. ‘Where is your brother,’ he asks. But Cain is no fool either, answering a question with a question.”
The Cornish gets a tug on his line, draws the rod up sharply and then pulls back with all his considerable strength. The great river swells, as if in response.
“But since he gave no forethought to his flight, he’s immediately sentenced to exile to be served concurrently under a lifelong curse. Modern criminals have learned little since then, it would seem, often leaving a trail of evidence that leads right up to their own front porch.”
The Cornish slackens the line, giving it play.
“This sort of imprudence is, furthermore, not restricted to criminals. Take the case of a certain detective who’s found with his victim dead as a doornail and lying on the living room floor. Not chopped up in the freezer or hidden under the bed, but in clear sight of anyone who happens to walk in.”
The rod is now extended fully parallel to the waters its bate has disappeared into… the line racing like the wind over the small, short, cut waves.
“And what does the suspect, a trained investigator with years of experience under his belt, caught red-handed, as it were… what does he have to say for himself?”
His face an angry red, The Hunched Cornish is now struggling to reel in his catch, testing the stretched line to its limits, as if whatever he has on the hook is desperate to put as much distance as it can between itself and its tormentor, knowing that escape is impossible but doing everything in its power to delay the inevitable.
“He plays the birdbrain… can you believe it? Now granted, insanity is a common if flimsy defense, especially when the evidence against one is overwhelming. But this guy’s not as daft as you might assume. No sir. Turns out he’s got a history of mental illness… or at least a string of bizarre behavior conveniently exhibited in the public domain…”
The catch goes into a death roll, twisting and turning and spewing river foam from the depths.
“But here’s the best part: He killed his shrink! Now go figure whether that buries the best witness for the prosecutor or the defense… Madness pure and simple is what I say. But it also eliminates any necessity for flight… from the police, the prosecutors, or what should have been sure and swift punishment…”
The Cornish is now standing, his head thrown back in revelation of a physiognomy best left covered, an expression of hideous pathos exposed to the full light of day, the eyes of a sinner unforgiven by the ages, his horned hands holding a hook with a head swollen by the sea, the mouth still open, the hair tangled and gray.
“It’s Josh Davies,” cries Smith.
January 5, 2015