Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

murder cases. Four many-volumed cases against six persons took up all three compartments of his massive Chinese expandable suitcase. Due to a lack of funds, he hadn’t been assigned a secretary for his duty trip; as for an assistant, he had never had one.

For the same reason – a lack of finances – the judge had to review cases in the town and simultaneously make arrangements for travel by water. He had to sail 260 kilometers – down the Gloomy River to a particular settlement and back upstream – with a single purpose: to hear a case against Sukhaya and deliver a just, reasonable, and lawful verdict.

Normally, criminal proceedings require some arrangements to ensure that everyone involved attends the trial – the prosecution, the defense, the victims, and the witnesses. In the criminal proceedings against Sukhaya, one of the victims lived in the provincial center and had to be delivered to the small town court (helped with the travel costs), while another witness had to be escorted from prison. Besides, while the judge was scheduling the trial, he discovered some mysterious circumstances associated with the pre-trial restrictions applied to the defendant, who was charged with two attempted murders and an attempt on the life of a police officer.

The deputy provincial prosecutor, who approved the indictment, changed Sukhaya’s pre-trial restrictions from a travel ban to detention. However, the accused woman could not be found in detention – neither in temporary detention at the town police department, nor at the district police department in the settlement she gave written undertaking not to leave. The investigator took the written undertaking away from Sukhaya on her release from custody. The woman had been arrested flagrante delicto in a bloody scene.

A copy of the indictment, made specifically for the defendant, is best served to the defendant in advance. The trial cannot be held until the defendant personally receives the copy and familiarizes themselves with this important procedural document within a legally determined amount of time. The day was saved by the newly appointed prosecutor of the province, who took on the state prosecutor’s role in court. It turned out that he had just assumed his duties on that very day.

On his way back from work, the judge walked down to the river’s violent rapids and watched mighty torpedo-shaped logs rise and splash like Leviathan into the roiling stream of icy brown water, as it cascaded from the skyward mountains down to the Arctic Ocean. The opposite side of the river was snowy and backed by mountains still covered with taiga. He had to head northwest. Trudging to his hotel, feeling at a loss, he was unable to figure out how to overcome the natural barriers and deliver justice. Due to the lack of funds, he could not rent a boat. On his business trip to the North with a binding obligation to carry out a task of extreme national importance, he had less than two dollars’ worth of daily allowance, and his monthly salary was around two hundred dollars.

The judge didn’t see one boat, cutter, or tugged barge on the river. Even fishers were on a break. The local climate hadn’t yet allowed to open the river to navigation. It looked like the only way was to fix a raft from those raging logs and fashion a makeshift sail from the bag. Just like Vyacheslav Shishkov (1873–1945) wrote in his 1933 novel, The Gloomy River,

The merchant drew a cross on the map and said:

“That’s a village on the Gloomy River, Podvolochnaya. You’ll build a raft there or buy a big boat, called shitik, and you’ll dry yourself some rusks. The peasants will tell you what you need. You’ll sail down when the spring comes and the water’s high.”

“Why, Father?” Prokhor asked and looked at his mother. Tears were running from her eyes. “Why would I go there?”

“Well, that’s none of your concern. Listen up.”

For the next hour he was explaining Prokhor what to do.

“The river’s long… three thousand versts long as I heard. It joins the largest possible river, and that one flows right into the ocean. Tunguses and Yakuts live on its banks. This is a place to make big capitals. As you meet merchants in the villages, ask them questions and write everything down. But keep your mouth shut about who you are and why you’re there. You’re just visiting. Well, my boy, that’ll be quite dangerous for you. You may even die, God forbid. I mean, you be careful and keep your eyes open.”

The Gloomy River is running across the earth’s surface from the end to the beginning[145], as though coming back to its source, so the way back in life seems shorter.

This was what Peter Gromov, a seasoned Siberian merchant whose father Danilo was a robber and a murderer, taught his son Prokhor. The victims in the first criminal case failed to heed Peter’s guidance, so they perished in the austere desolate valley of the Gloomy River.

At that point, a comprehensive forensic drug testing and psychiatric assessment of the defendant had already been carried out. The reason was that the court doubted the mental capacity of defendant Kolenko, who was charged with two murders. Kolenko, an orphan, stuttered and had a hearing problem. In his infancy, he was taken from Ukraine to the North, brought up in an orphanage and educated in a provincial secondary school. He was reticent about the injuries he had suffered during his service in the military, and his family fell apart because of his drinking.[146]

The subpoenaed experts found in Kolenko indications of psychopathy associated with chronic alcoholism, which did not hinder the trial.

In the two eventful trial days, the court found the following facts to be true. Two men came to the northern settlement to meet Kolenko, having made an arrangement by phone. They wanted to buy two kilograms of industrial gold and had a