She decided to wait for the right moment. In the evening, when the on-duty doctor had left and the orderly had taken the gurney to the next room, Anna was alone with the man. She knew that in this part of the morgue, the cameras hadn’t worked for a long time — the wiring was broken, and no one had repaired it.

She stepped closer and leaned over the man. His face was calm, as if he were simply asleep. But Anna had seen hundreds of such “sleepers” — to her, he was not a human, but an object. She reached out and carefully tried to remove the ring.