The detective looked him over. He was young, maybe twenty — four, not older than that. He looked like Krivoshein, the way he might have been ten years ago. “Actually, he didn't look like that,” Matvei Apollonovich thought as he looked at the photo in Krivoshein's personnel file. “This fellow is much more handsome.” And there really was something of a model's or actor's perfection in Kravets's face. The impression of perfection was marred by the eyes — actually not the eyes themselves, which were blue and had a youthful clarity, but in the marksman's squint of the lids. “He has eyes that seem to have lived a lot,” the detective noted. “He seems to have gotten over the experience quickly enough. Let's see.”

“You know, you resemble the deceased.”

“The deceased!” The assistant clenched his jaw and shut his eyes for a second. “That means — “

“Yes, it does,” Onisimov said harshly. “He's jumpy,” he thought. “Well, let's do this in order.” He reached for a piece of paper and unscrewed his pen. “Your name, patronymic, age, place of work or study, address?”

“But you must know all that already?”

“Know or not, that's the regulation; the witness must give all that information himself.”

“So he's dead…. What should I do now? What should I say? It's a catastrophe. Damn it, I shouldn't have come to the police. I should have run off from the clinic. What will happen now?” Kravets thought.

“Please, write down the following: Viktor Vitalyevich Kravets, age twenty — four, a student in the fifth year in the physics department of Kharkov University. I reside in Kharkov, on Kholodnaya Gora. I'm here to do my practical work.”

“I see,” the detective said, and instead of writing it down, twisted his pen rapidly and aimlessly. “You were related to Krivoshein. How?” “Distantly,” the student laughed uncomfortably. “Seventh cousin twice removed, you know.”