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morgue.
    “The body had already arrived, laid out on the table, covered, just as usual. But what was different was the man sitting on the next table. He was wearing a suit, smart, expensive, so I didn’t think he was a policeman; a lawyer maybe, a government official, whatever. But he didn’t have that nomenklatura look. He was thickset, maybe forty, with the face of a former boxer, all shadows and scars. He sat there on one of the tables, legs swinging, smoking as if he didn’t have a care in the world, in his favorite bar with a cold beer in front of him.
    “I told him that I didn’t allow smoking in the operating room. He looked at me, then at the end of his cigarette, raised an eyebrow.
    “‘You’re worried about his health?’ he said, waving the cigarette in the direction of the body.
    “‘No, but I’m worried about mine,’ I said. He just smiled, looked at his cigarette again, and gusted a blue cloud in my direction. His smile never managed to climb as far as his eyes.
    “‘I think you’ll find the cause of death was a heart attack,’ he said. ‘Tragic in such a young man.’
    “I pulled back the sheets, and looked down at the body.”
    Usupov paused, then reached over and took a cigarette from my pack that lay on the table. He lit it with the uncertain gesture of a nonsmoker, coughed as he swallowed the smoke.
    “Bad?” I said.
    Usupov nodded, swallowed, trying to recapture his normal air of detachment.
    “I’ve seen a lot of shit that people do to each other, Akyl,” he said, and I watched the burning end of his cigarette tremble, as if caught in a sudden wind. I waited for him to speak. From a man who’d spent so much time in the presence of the dead, his silence told me more than I wanted to know.
    “He was about twelve, I guessed, but hard to tell from the bruising on his face and chest. Small, undernourished, thin enough so I could see the broken ribs outlined against his skin. The left cheekbone shattered, so his face had collapsed in on itself. Two teeth on the right side slicing through his cheek. His facial injuries came from a hammer; I could see the circular imprint.”
    Usupov paused, snapped his fingers to drag the receptionist away from her phone.
    “Vodka, the good stuff,” he said. I shook my head, watched the girl walk away. We waited in silence until an open bottle and brimming glass sat in front of him. Usupov emptied the glass in one swift movement, shuddered as the alcohol blazed in his mouth and throat.
    “Go on,” I said, quietly, not wanting to break Usupov’s rhythm.
    “Bite marks—from more than one mouth—on the boy’s thighs. A compound fracture of the left tibia. And bruising from what looked like heavy boots. Not just kicking but stamping, so I could see the tread on the soles. More than one pair of shoes.”
    He poured more vodka, watched it spill over the lip of the glass.
    “All the time I was examining the body, the man watched without a reaction. I might have been preparing dinner. Then I turned the body over.”
    Usupov emptied the glass in a single shot.
    “He’d been raped, Inspector, by more than one man, from the amount of sperm I found. Penetrated with something sharp. There was blood on the back of his legs, more bite marks on his shoulders. Twelve, Inspector, that’s how young he was. The same age as my eldest.”
    I said nothing. There are times when the dead bear witness to such horror that silence is the only possible alternative to a scream of despair. I pushed the thought of a vodka for myself to one side. The clock continued to tick, like a pulse refusing to give up.
    “The man said, ‘I told you, a heart attack,’ and he stood up, mashed his cigarette out on the floor. It left a blue-black mark on the tiles, the same shade as the bruises on the boy’s face. The man stood in front of me, the tobacco on his breath heavy on my face. He had a killer’s cold eyes, black, impossible to read. He held up a crumpled piece of paper,