The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield

pause.
    “Plus a quarterly bonus for overtime.”
    “I’ll give instructions for you to be paid a bonus of five hundred out of the special fund. For devotion to duty in the face of danger. And so, until tomorrow. Come in, and we’ll work on the various scenarios.”
    And the door closed behind the astonishing visitor.
    THE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION Division really was quite unrecognizable. There were unfamiliar gentlemen with files under their arms trotting along the corridors, and even his old colleagues no longer waddled along but walked smartly, with an upright bearing.
    In the smoking room—miracle of miracles—there was not a soul to be seen. Out of curiosity Erast Fandorin glanced into the former refreshment room, and, true enough, standing there on the table in place of the samovar and the cups was a Baudot apparatus, and a telegrapher in a double-breasted uniform jacket glanced up at the intruder with a strict, interrogatory glance.
    The investigation headquarters was located in the office of the head of division, for the superintendent had been relieved of his duties as of the previous day. Erast Fandorin, still rather pale after the painful procedure of having the stitches removed, knocked on the door and glanced inside. This office had also changed: the comfortable leather armchairs had disappeared and their place had been taken by three rows of simple chairs. Standing against the wall were two school blackboards, completely covered with charts of some kind. It looked as though a meeting had only just ended—Brilling was wiping his chalk-dusted hands with a rag, and the officers and agents, talking intently among themselves, were moving toward the exit.
    “Come in, Fandorin, come in. Don’t hang about in the doorway,” Brilling said, hurrying along Erast Fandorin, who was suddenly overcome by timidity. “All patched up? That’s splendid. You’ll be working directly with me. I’m not allocating you a desk. You’ll have no time for sitting down anyway…It’s a pity you arrived late. We’ve just had a most interesting discussion concerning the ‘Azazel’ in your report.”
    “So there is such a thing? I wasn’t mistaken?” said Erast Fandorin, pricking up his ears. “I was afraid it was my imagination.”
    “It wasn’t your imagination. Azazel is a fallen angel. What mark did you get for Scripture studies? You remember about the scapegoats? Well, then, in case you’ve forgotten, there were two of them. One was intended for God, for the expiation of sins, and the other was for Azazel, so that he wouldn’t be angered. In the Jewish Book of Enoch, Azazel teaches people all sorts of nastiness: he teaches the men to make war and make weapons and the women to paint their faces and abort their young. In a word, he’s a rebellious demon, the spirit of exile.”
    “But what can it mean?”
    “One of your Moscow collegiate assessors expounded an entire detailed hypothesis about a secret Judaic organization…He told us all about the Jewish Sanhedrin and about the blood of Christian infants. He presented Bezhetskaya as a daughter of Israel, and Akhtyrtsev as a lamb slaughtered on the sacrificial altar of the Jewish God. Such a load of nonsense. I’ve heard enough of those anti-Semitic ravings already in St. Petersburg. When disaster strikes and the causes are not clear, they immediately start talking about the Sanhedrin.”
    “And what is your hypothesis…chief?” Fandorin asked, pronouncing the unaccustomed form of address with a certain trepidation.
    “If you’d be so kind as to look this way.” Brilling walked across to one of the blackboards. “These four circles at the top are the four scenarios. The first circle, as you see, has a question mark. This is the least likely scenario: the killer acted alone and you and Akhtyrtsev were his random victims. Possibly some maniac obsessed with demoniacism. That leaves us at a dead end until further similar crimes are committed. I’ve sent off