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Fog hangs over the harbor when an archivist is found dead clutching an old photograph. Former investigator Elena Morozova follows brittle ledgers, damaged footage and a brother’s secret letter. In a small coastal town, each recovered document pulls a dangerous past back into view.
The sea looked guilty at dawn, as if it had swallowed a secret and could not keep its face straight. A low fog hugged the breakwaters and turned the steel teeth of the pier into the pale, rusted ribs of some great animal. Elena Morozova parked on the muddy road above the quay, the heater still fighting to unfreeze the glass, and listened to the town breathe. Gull cries cut across the harbor like punctuation marks.
She had been awake before the phone rang; old instincts did that to a person. The message had been abrupt: Mikhail Sazonov—call to say he had to show her something—meet me by the old piling. She had left her apartment with a coat thrown on and a cup of lukewarm coffee in her hand, thinking of a man who catalogued other people's pasts and who would, of all people, understand why she preferred to ask questions in a room rather than in a courtroom.
There were uniforms and flash tape and a ring of faces. The local officers from the harbor detail tried to look professional under too-thin jackets. A woman in a high-visibility vest barked into a radio about tide charts and securing a scene. Elena threaded between them without a badge and without permission. People in this town had a habit of telling each other what they wanted to believe; the police were no exception. "Accident," one of them kept saying, as if repetition would shape reality.
The body lay lengthwise against the wooden planks, half in shadow. Mikhail's grey coat was unbuttoned, soaked at the hem; his hands were curled, fingers clenched on something small and dark. His face was pale in the way of sleep that had stopped at the wrong hour—lips slightly parted, eyes half-closed. A bruise darkened the temple like spilled ink. The stench of salt and old diesel and the metallic tang of blood mixed in the cold air.
Elena crouched. Police made a cordon and politely obstructed her. She ignored them and read the scene the way she always had—first shapes and placements, then the contradictions. There were scuff marks on the boards, a smear like someone had tried to drag the body, but the swell of the tide had washed most of the prints away. A broken watch lay near the elbow, its hands frozen at three minutes past four. Near his breast pocket, a sliver of paper protruded—yellowed and folded, as if someone had tried to hide a confession in the warmth of his shirt. She nudged it with the tip of a gloved finger and eased it free: a small photograph, edges softened by years and salt.