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... In spring 2003 the papers were still debating the growth prospects of Russian shares on various exchanges as an investigating officer from Tambov called Demidov carried out the first exploratory questioning of Pichugin ahead of what proved to be his preplanned arrest. On Tuesday 27 May 2003, from half past four to half past six, Aleksey told everything he knew about the missing Mr Gorin. As a former state security officer, he was left bemused after those two hours: Demidov had asked only the vaguest of questions.
Nonetheless, Pichugin conscientiously described the extent of his acquaintance with Gorin, who had worked for a Menatep Bank branch in Tambov. How he attended the christening of Gorin's third son, how he tried to find a job for Gorin's wife, and how, shortly before the disappearance, he had promised to find Gorin a sales job in Rostov-on-Don. How he learnt of Gorin's disappearance by telephone from Olga's mother. Incidentally, Demidov did not inquire about his personal reaction to that misfortune.
Unaware anything was wrong, Pichugin walked away from this seemingly pointless exercise and merely shrugged his shoulders. Big mistake. Without that questioning, his arrest would have looked less convincing. But he had shown up and said more than he needed to, so the wise investigator had put two and two together - here was the criminal! Pichugin was arrested because the investigator had deduced a motive. The prosecution decided that he stood to gain from Gorin's murder. Although there was not a shred of evidence, either direct or indirect!
This was the investigation's big secret, and big problem. This was why they needed that initial questioning - to provide credibility and validity for the conduct of Demidov and the team that took over from him ...
Chapter 2
Who was Aleksey Pichugin?
Pichugin himself might not have foreseen how he would confound this ill-conceived investigation. His former colleagues still in the state's employ certainly had little idea about him. Aleksey was chosen as an easy victim. Everything that later happened in the investigation shows that the officers who proposed arresting him as part of the greater game had not bothered to research his personality or background. The belief that personality is nothing is typical of the present-day Russian system of coercion, a worthy successor to the Soviet one.
The scale of events came as a nasty surprise even to the clear of conscience. Nobody, not even the journalists immersed in Pichugin's case, had any idea of the man himself. We remember nothing of him, apart from a random and indistinct photograph that was shown worldwide. From it, half facing us, as if from the distant past, a tired man looks out. As if 20 years in prison were handed down to a virtual person, a man who never existed on this Earth.
Yet a man's inner being and his habits and character are directly relevant in a murder investigation. They were examined as an important factor corroborating or undermining the charge in the class-based courts of feudal Russia. A father who had sweated and laboured to raise three children of his own was less likely than a childless man to threaten the life of someone else's child. This is of course too simple an inference, life's not like that: education, family background and upbringing and much more besides must also be taken into account.
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