Chapter 8 - In the Jaws of the Law
The police arrived within twelve minutes. The narrow hallway of the communal flat erupted into chaos as neighbors poked their heads out from behind chained doors, their eyes wide with morbid curiosity.
Two officers in bulky winter uniforms pushed their way into the room, followed by an investigator in a leather jacket who carried an evidence kit. The sight of the scattered fake currency, the expensive coat, and Nina weeping on the floor told the investigator everything he needed to know within ten seconds.
“Who is the complainant?” the investigator asked, pulling a clipboard from his bag.
“I am,” Olga said. She handed him the bank withdrawal slip, her passport, and her laboratory identification. “The funds were stolen from my account via forged identity papers today at 14:48 PM. The suspect, Nina Viktorovna Petrova, confessed in the presence of myself and her brother, Igor Viktorovich Petrov.”
“Is this true, citizen?” the investigator turned to Igor, his pen poised over the statement form.
Igor stood frozen. His jaw worked silently. His eyes shifted from his sister—who was looking up at him with pleading, desperate terror—to Olga, who watched him with an icy, unblinking challenge.
This was the crossroads. If Igor lied to the police to protect his sister, he would become an accessory to grand theft. He would cross a legal line from which there was no return. If he told the truth, his sister would be led away in handcuffs, and his family’s delicate illusion of honor would be shattered forever.
“Igor...” Nina whimpered. “Tell them she gave it to me! Tell them she let me borrow it!”
The investigator frowned, turning a stern gaze toward Nina. “Be quiet, citizen. Let him speak.”
Igor swallowed hard. A single bead of sweat cut a clean path through the black grease on his temple. He looked at Olga’s red, cracked hands—the hands that had cleaned his clothes, the hands that had been burned by lab acid to save ruble after ruble for their dream.
And then he remembered the way he had screamed at her in their narrow hallway. The way he had thrown the bankbook at her feet. The absolute, unhesitating certainty with which he had condemned her.
“I didn't know about the theft until two hours ago,” Igor said, his voice trembling so violently he could barely form the syllables. “My sister... she took Olga’s passport from our home without permission. She forged the signature. She bought the coat.”
“Igor, you bastard!” Nina shrieked, lunging at him with her nails. One of the officers caught her by the arms and twisted her back against the sofa bed, snapping steel handcuffs around her wrists with a sharp, metallic *clack*. “You betrayed your own blood! You’re dead to us! Mama will curse you to your grave!”
“Take her down to the car,” the investigator ordered the officers. He turned back to Olga and Igor. “We’ll need both of you at the precinct to sign formal statements. The garment will be seized as material evidence.”
“Take it,” Olga said, handing the Scandinavian mink coat to the investigator without the slightest hesitation. To her, it wasn't a half-million-ruble luxury; it was four hundred and seventy thousand rubles worth of poison.
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As they led Nina down the communal hallway, her screams echoed off the high, cracked ceilings, waking every child and dog in the building. Igor stood in the center of the devastated room, staring at the floorboards, looking smaller and older than he ever had in his life.
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