“It looks like suicide,” I said, with my back to Fomin.
“Investigator said the same.”
“Do you think otherwise?”
“I would like to hear your expert opinion.”
“When was he found?”
“Early in the morning. Colleagues found him hanging on a hook from a ceiling chandelier with his neck in this cable-noose. The police said he probably hung there all night.”
“Who removed the body? Police?”
“Yes. I managed to take some photos before that, though. Take a look.” He got out from his pocket a small digital camera and handed to me.
One by one I carefully examined five images taken from different angles. Thin body hanging on the hook; the neck unnaturally stretched; half-opened eyes. I tried to enlarge the image of a neck with a zoom. The way of tightening the noose knot could clarify something. Cruel killer’s hands tighten the noose sharply and strongly, maliciously. One’s own hands always do it timidly, fearing to cause unnecessary pain. But all these images were too small, and the zoom only smeared a neck into cloudy squares. One picture showed a part of a window. Glass at the edges was black, with the bright glare sweeping up from the camera’s flash in the middle. “How early they start working in this party!” I silently reflected, because in September, in Moscow, such a dark window could be no later than at seven in the morning.
“Good photos,” I said and returned the camera. “Anything else?”
“They found it on his table.” Fomin handed me a sheet of paper. It was an ordinary computer printout, but the chosen font was not standard, it was slanted as if handwritten. There were only two lines.
Jumping out of September,
Heavens closer, God is there.
The rhyme was, of course, right to the point. However, it was odd that these last words in his life the poet did not write with his hand, but typed with computer and picked such a flowery font. But who can understand these poets.
“Did they take his blood for analysis?” I asked.
“No, I did not notice. Why?”
“Alcohol, drugs, harsh hypnotics. It can reveal something.” I said. As there was nothing else on the surface I was close to wind up. “Looks like a suicide.”
“I think so too. He was a nervous young man. Very good one but very unbalanced. We grieve so much, all of us.”
“Relatives notified?”
“He had no relatives. At least we heard nothing of them. He arrived from India”