Those Who Follow the Trail

He lived alone in a large house at the edge of the settlement. He taught music at the vocational school. The locals called him “an intellectual.” The musician was often seen in the wine-and-vodka shop. Usually he bought red wine, though he himself didn’t drink alcohol.

One fine day, he suddenly dropped everything and left for Azerbaijan. Well, he left—fine. How long would a southerner last in the brutal North? And no one would have remembered him if, in the prosecutor’s office, a statement about the disappearance of the mother of three children Popova hadn’t been filed.

Investigator Nikolai Semin found out that the “intellectual” had a peculiar hobby: he invited lonely women to his home…