Chapter 3 #2
An event worker could've stood here without attracting a second glance.
So could a guest who found the wrong door open.
We spent the evening checking bags and watching for trouble on the main floor, while someone damaged a camera in the service wing.
I want to demand which guard looked the wrong way.
Then I remember my own mask on the desk upstairs.
I was in this building tonight, and I didn't see it either.
Klim studies the damaged housing with me. He doesn't make excuses. I'd rather hear a mistake admitted than spend an hour forcing it out of a frightened man.
“When?” I ask.
“During the launch. We have the recording up to the failure. It doesn't give us a face. The other cameras are working.”
“Save everything. The hours before the party as well.”
“Already in progress.”
I put my hands in my pockets before I can do something useless with them. The square stone on my right hand catches against the pocket lining. Breaking the rest of the camera would satisfy me for perhaps a second. Then we'd have less evidence and a longer search.
“Bring the officers back here,” I say. “Show them exactly what we found. I want the remaining footage preserved before anyone starts changing equipment.”
Klim nods, but stays where he is. “You think Luka?”
“I think somebody wanted that door unwatched. Find out who used it.”
Luka has men willing to hurt people. So do I. A broken camera doesn't tell me which man to put my hands on, and the woman in the photograph deserves more than a quick excuse to settle a business grievance.
We leave the fragment where it lies. As we pass the reserve store, Klim sends one of his men to keep the service wing clear for the officers. He gives the order in the ordinary voice he uses for shift changes. I can hear the extra care in it.
Back upstairs, he sits at the visitor's side of my desk and opens the saved footage on his laptop.
The main-room view shows the launch at its busiest. Costumes overlap as people cross between the booths and the bar, and the camera's height makes the faces small.
A woman can disappear behind a group for seconds at a time without leaving the room.
We watch Beatrice come into view beside the platform, then lose her behind guests moving toward it. Klim marks the stretch for the officers rather than pretending it tells us more than it does. From this angle, the side doorway is obscured.
The blind stretch runs from the side doorway toward the service wing, entirely inside my own building, and neither camera shows me what happened there.
Klim's phone rings. After a few words, he passes it across the desk and tells me it's one of the officers downstairs.
“Bogdan Volkov. I own The Ninth Masque.”
The officer asks whether the club will provide the material Klim has described.
“Yes. Keep a copy of the guest list and the event staff details with it. My security chief will show you the camera. Call Klim if there's anything else about the disappearance.”
The conversation is brief. When it ends, I give the phone back to Klim so he can confirm the handover. There are questions about my other businesses that I won't answer tonight. None of them requires me to hide what happened to a woman who came here to dance.
Klim ends the call, opens Beatrice's photograph again, and sets his phone beside the laptop. A blue comb in her hair catches my eye. Such a small, cheerful thing, meant to catch the light while she danced.
I turn the screen toward Klim. “Keep looking outside as well. She may have left the building alive and still need help.”
He looks at Beatrice's photograph before he nods. I keep my eyes on her smile. Neither of us says what the street search could find instead.
Klim finishes sending the files, then opens the event posts.
People have tagged the club in photographs from booths, the bar, the front steps.
Most show faces pressed together or drinks held toward the lens.
He scrolls until a black cape fills the screen, opening to show a red lining that flashes under the lights.
I recognize the little platform. An angel stands beside it with a crooked halo, smiling as she turns.
“The costume company's account,” Klim says. “Hem & Havoc.”
The clip ends almost as soon as it begins. He plays it again. The frame stays tight on the woman and her cape, cutting away most of the room.
Below it, the caption promises a full launch reel tomorrow.
I reach across and stop him moving to the next post. The cropped picture shows very little, but I know where she was standing. From there, someone holding a phone would face the side doorway beyond the platform.
“Who filmed this?”
“I'll check with them.”
The woman in red told me she made the costumes while her friend did the selling. The angel on the screen is that friend. I want to know whether the two of them filmed it together.
I wanted to find the woman in red for myself. Now she or her friend may hold the only uncropped view of the side doorway.
“Ask for the original,” I tell Klim. “Uncut. Send the contact details to the officers too.”
He saves the public post while I watch the cape turn again. Whoever held the phone is outside the frame, along with Beatrice and the dark opening beside the platform.
The damaged camera can't show me who left by the back door.
I want to see who led her into that corridor.