Chapter 11
Detective Rostova's Inquiry
Detective Elena Rostova, investigating unrelated suspicious activities, crosses paths with the fringes of the smuggling ring. Her professional skepticism is piqued, but she lacks the full picture Anya possesses.
Detective Elena Rostova felt the familiar prickle of unease that often preceded a tangled case. It was a sensation she’d learned to trust, a low hum beneath the surface of the mundane. This time, the unease stemmed from a series of seemingly disconnected reports: a fishing trawler flagged for unusual cargo manifests, a series of anonymous tips about clandestine meetings in dimly lit dockside taverns, and a peculiar uptick in petty theft near the port, almost as if someone were testing the waters, or perhaps, just creating a distraction.
She sat at her desk in the cramped, perpetually sun-drenched precinct office, the smell of stale coffee and yesterday’s paperwork clinging to the air. Sunlight, usually a welcome guest, felt almost intrusive today, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the shafts of light. She tapped a pen against a folder, her brow furrowed. The information was fragmented, like shards of a broken mirror, reflecting only distorted glimpses of something larger and more sinister.
Her gaze drifted to a photograph pinned to her corkboard, a grainy image of a nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Klaipėda. It had been flagged for a minor environmental infraction, a chemical spill that had been swiftly cleaned up, but something about the facility had lodged itself in Elena’s memory. The owner was a shell company, the leaseholder untraceable. It was a loose thread, and Elena abhorred loose threads.
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