«We live in the civilized world,» he said, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, unable to keep silent. «Why do we need these brutal methods, these killings, spying, massacres, if everything can be decided round the table?»
«The autopsy table?» the gangster joked spitefully so that Krotov felt a pain like a scalpel slice into his chest.
«I'm an old man and I don't like change,» the mayor said. «Let's just let things carry on as they were.»
Grinning, the gangster slowly stood up and made for the exit.
«You leave us alone, we leave you alone,» he said, jaws working. He turned at the door: «We stay friends and everything will be fine.»
The banya was on the stony shore of the lake. Slender pines bent towards the water as if looking at their own reflections.
Salmon was laying the table, taking cutlery wrapped in napkins out of the capacious pockets of her apron. She stuck a finger into the pudding and licked it, rolling her eyes in an attempt to detect the flavour. Salmon was painfully thin, her pointed features sharp as a skull. Her blackened skin hung like torn curtains from her cheeks. She was so ugly that she was kept hidden from customers in the kitchen and told not to show her face. Her cracked lips constantly mumbled some endless story no-one listened to and she was so used to her nickname that she had long since forgotten what she was really called. She cleaned and she washed the pots, humming some tune to the sound of the water and looked enviously at the beautiful, supple bodies of the girls as she helped them make themselves presentable.
«I was beautiful once,» sighed Salmon but the girls just laughed and she laughed with them, revealing a toothless mouth.
The portly banya attendant was cooking kebabs in the yard, bending over a smoky barbecue, while Krotov watched him lazily from the banya window, wiping the steamy glass.
«I used to be afraid to go out. Now I'm scared even to go to sleep. I just can't relax.»
«I'm the same,» agreed Antonov. «Still, he's cleaned up the town. There are fewer robberies.»
«And people,» added the mayor.
«They made mincemeat out of Trebenko,» Antonov nodded and Krotov felt sick. «Do you not think it was Saam?» he asked surprised at his own question.
«He loses more from Trebenko's death than anyone else. The cops and the gang are like Siamese twins. No way could you separate them. You'd have come off worse. Now he's lost his chief protector. This isn't the 90s. It's time to grow up but they just keep on running around with their guns, pretending to be real tough guys.»
«Do you remember Lisping Pashka? He became a mayor…»
«Yeah but there are only a handful of people in his town,» said Krotov, jealous and dismissive, before going on to say, «Normal guys swapped their knives for suits and ties ages ago. Vasya the card trickster, who worked the trains when he was a kid, he's a big man now. I get phone calls…» said Krotov, pointing upwards to show where the phone calls came from. «They say, ‘Sort the gangsters out. Those days are gone'…»
«Those days are gone,» Antonov agreed. «But you can't put them in jail.»
To cool himself down, Krotov scooped a handful of cold water and splashed his face, slapping his cheeks.
«Unless we…» he said, stressing the word «we», «get rid of them, they'll get rid of us. You and I are in the same boat. I told Trebenko too but he was up to his neck in that shit. The cops have been getting above themselves recently. They don't want to do any work at all. They're as close to the gang as they are to their own relatives. The Prosecutor's Office is involved as well. There's no point contacting them.»
Antonov pulled a face. He rubbed his nose. He was about to open his mouth but changed his mind and said nothing.
«I do have one investigator,» Krotov said with a conspiratorial wink. «He's either got accounts to settle with the gang or is, you know,» and he twirled his finger by his head. «Anyway, he's digging away at them like a bulldozer. I'm relying on him. Once he digs up something substantial, we'll get the centre involved, journalists…»
«Maybe it's better not to rock the boat? As it is, we're like a house of cards. Touch one, we all go down,» said Antonov, raising his eyebrows.
Krotov rubbed his temples and wearily took another breath.
«I want to retire. I'm tired. I can stand this any more — talk about the devil and the deep blue sea.»
The door opened a crack and a bleached blond head of curls appeared.
«Are you going to be much longer, boys?» the girl asked with a pout.
All she was wearing was cheap perfume so that the men's eyes began to water and their earlobes went red. Wrapped in their sheets, they had the appearance of Roman senators and, catching a glimpse of themselves in the wide mirror that scarcely had room for them both, they burst out laughing.
The attendant manoeuvred the bottles so that one opened the other. He poured them both a cold beer, looking askance at Salmon who had poked her head round the door. Krotov kept checking his pulse, worried about his heart which was increasingly making its presence known.
«We can survive everything but death,» said Antonov with a grin, collapsing onto a leather sofa.
«Joking's not going to save you,» retorted Krotov, recalling Trebenko's burnt-out garage.
Trebenko's murder stirred up the entire police station. A general arrived from the regional centre. He twiddled his thin moustache nervously and nodded his head, speechless, as he looked at the burnt-out garage.
«What's going on here?» he yelled at the senior police officers who trembled at his stentorian tones. «A pinprick of a town and the whole country knows about it!»
Looking at the hills surrounding the town, however, the general realized that living here was like being on an island, cut off from the rest of the country and even from the nearest settlements which were several hours' drive away or a whole day on foot via swamp and impenetrable depths of forests where the trees were as tangled as fates. Close to the border, the town was surrounded by dense forest and it couldn't care less what happened beyond its limits. Like a prison camp, the taiga has its own laws and this gloomy little town lived by the laws of the taiga that said the fittest survived and а man with no gun was a man with no rights. The general felt suddenly uneasy as if aware that he himself had no rights or protection here and he hastened to get away as quickly as he could, cursing himself for his groundless fear.
«Do you actually know who did it?» he asked from inside the car.
Trebenko's deputy shook his head.
«Gangsters?»
The same shaking of heads.
«Was it revenge? Someone who's been sent down? Just a domestic?» prompted the general. «Do you know but aren't saying or do you just not know?»
The deputy said nothing and the general, swearing, slammed the door and set off the way he had come without so much as a goodbye.
Nothing is hidden in a small town. The walls have ears and the backstreets mouths so that it's only on paper that crimes go unsolved. And yet the case of Trebenko remained blacker than the soot that covered his burnt-out garage. The police officers, buried in paperwork, rummaged through the archives, questioned people who had happened to be passing and the junkies who had left dirty needles with traces of their blood behind the garages but the witnesses only confused matters further.
Saam, who had been caught at the scene of the crime, was the only suspect and the main witness, Investigator Lapin, rubbed his hands contentedly. Crimes that went unpunished in Coffin's times couldn't go unpunished any longer, and rumour had it that the gang were about to be arrested.
«Times have changed,» said Antonov, drawing his head into his shoulders as if he was afraid Saam would go for his throat. «There's nothing I can do.»