A frail old babushka discovered the body as she was taking out her tiny sack of trash, and the camera pans to a dumpster and a cracked toilet beneath a leafless tree. The crime is especially pitiful since the girl’s hands were chopped off. While I’m listening for details, my cat Masha takes scurrilous advantage and leaps onto the table to snag my sausage. What can I do? She’s barely out of kitten-hood and totally amoral. If anyone knows how to discipline a cat, please write me – Constable Katya Kondrashov, Police Department, Kiev, Ukraine. Well, that’s the end of Tatty Akkuratney, but it turns out it isn’t, because when I reach work I’m called into Commander Shulikov’s office. He doesn’t ask me to close the door so I relax a bit. Shulikov says he wants to pull me off patrol duty and loan me to a detective team, and he acts as if it’s completely routine, which if you know anything about the Kiev police department, it’s not. A pair of detectives need assistance with phones and possible travel arrangements, and according to Shulikov I’m available for desk duty.
