«Who gave you the drugs?»
Severina was silent.
Once, when he was doing the rounds of the bandit dens, he'd come across Coffin. Sitting astride a chair, the gangster had said nothing, staring at the bridge of the fat man's nose and the policeman's shirt had been soaked through. With a nod to his bodyguards, Coffin stood up. He squeezed past the officer who shrank back against the wall when he felt a cold pistol hidden under a jacket against his stomach, and left the flat. From then on, whenever he heard Coffin's name mentioned, the officer felt a cold against his stomach as though he was up against the barrel of a gun and terror crept under his collar.
«Who gave you the drugs?» he repeated, yawning into a hairy fist.
«Coffin,» Severina replied mischievously.
The officer gave a nervous shudder, scratched his nose with his pen but wrote it down. He had long dreamt of giving up police work, tired of his right hand writing something his left would then cross out.
«What were you doing at the school?»
«Dealing…»
Severina looked up at him defiantly and the officer wanted to hit her across the face with all his strength. It was said that Saam and Coffin had shared this girl between them and the fat man didn't want anything to do with either of them.
The police station provided plenty of shocking sights every day but since only the walls had ears all conversations about the gang stayed within its dirty, smoke-filled rooms. In the evenings when the station was empty, the old cleaner swept the conversations away with the dust so that she knew everything that was going on in the little town while the police forgot what they had heard more quickly than they filled in their reports.
The officer stretched his lips into a smile.
«Okay. Since this is the first time, I'll be nice. I'll let you go — for telling the truth.» He sounded so insincere he actually winced. «Mind you don't come back!»
The officer threw open the cell door and, adjusting her skirt, Severina left.
«But it isn't the first time!» she called as she walked away.
Coffin and Saam sat in the car watching the entrance to the police station. Severina emerged from the dirty, scratched door, hopped onto the wall, stretched out her arms and, only just keeping her balance, walked along it, staring fixedly ahead. Slowly, the gangsters began to follow her.
«If we get rid of all our girls, there'll be nothing but old women left in this town,» said Saam, drumming on the steering wheel.
«There are enough to see us out,» replied Coffin with a vicious laugh. Then, suddenly serious, he looked right at Saam. «And it's not all of them, just one.»
«How is she a threat?» Saam asked, shrugging his shoulders in feigned indifference.
«She'll bring people along and show them — they buried so and so here and so and so there. They got their guns over here, brought the drugs in over there…»
Saam snorted like a cat, never taking his eyes off the girl. He knew Coffin wanted to get even with Severina and what Coffin wanted was law.
«So?»
«Do you really think you can do whatever you want? Only until they know the details. After all, you knew I was sleeping with her. And you didn't walk in on us, you put up with it.»
Saam went white and licked his dry lips.
«It's okay,» said Coffin, patting him soothingly on the shoulder. «There are plenty of women. But she was ready as a loaded gun. If it hadn't been me it would have been someone else…»
«A loaded gun has to shoot,» Saam had sneered the evening Savage shot Coffin who never even suspected there was a live cartridge in the gun chamber, inserted by Saam's trembling fingers.
«Sort it out. Trebenko warned us there was somebody digging away at us alclass="underline" one minute there are phone calls from the centre, then someone's freaking out the cops, then the inspectors are sent in. But we've got our own rules here!» said Coffin, blowing his nose and leaving with a slam of the door.
Severina turned round at the sound of the horn and walked over to the car when she saw Saam. He opened the door and the girl flopped down beside him just as she had on the day they met.
«I didn't tell them anything,» she lied, biting her nails. «But they took the gear off me. What do I get for that?»
Saam said nothing, staring fixedly at the street and, turning away, the girl stared out of the window, flattening her nose against the glass. Looking at her from the side, the gangster took in her thin arms and dark, protruding veins.
«Was it Coffin got you hooked?»
Severina didn't answer, hiding her arms behind her back.
The car bounced on the uneven road. There was a squeal then tinkling laughter from the girl and Saam suddenly slammed on the brakes. He lit up and took a long drag. Severina, leaning back in her seat, trapped the wreaths of smoke in her mouth as they spread thinly through the car. As if he had come to a decision, Saam got out of the car and thought as he slammed the door that there could be no going back.
It was quiet out of town. The bare forest was sombre as if it knew why they were there. Severina dawdled along, dragging her feet. Saam followed, struggling to decide whether he should strangle her or use his knife.
The laughter of the waitresses took Saam back to the café. The memories made his throat dry just as it had the day he walked through the forest looking at the girl's delicate neck as easy to snap as a dry branch.
Rumours spread that the killings of Antonov and Trebenko were connected. The police were run off their feet and the townsfolk racked their brains, going over all the gossip and stories and someone began to whisper about an avenger of the people.
«It's got to be the Chief!» people said in the queues. «Maybe he's putting it on? Pretending to be crazy? Remember how brilliant he used to be!»
«Absolutely. What a guy! Honest and decent, not like that Trebenko, God rest his soul.»
«Perhaps it really is him? After all he was the first to see through Trebenko…»
«Why doesn't he bump the gangsters off then?»
«We'll just have to wait and see…»
As he listened to the rumours, Lapin thought more and more frequently about Savely Savage, who was still missing without trace. His story was as big a puzzle as the murders of Antonov and Trebenko. The witness statements were contradictory. There were no motives for the murder. It was a mystery as to where the weapon had come from and there were people who couldn't believe that a seasoned gang member had been taken out by a quiet, inconspicuous engineer who had spent his entire life hunched over drawings of mineral deposits. Lapin was convinced the gang were on Savage's trail and that, God willing, his body would eventually turn up at the rubbish tip or in the forest, another one to add to the unidentified corpses buried on the edge of the cemetery.
Lapin went round to Savage's flat. He tried to read the answers to his questions in the cunning, slightly slanting eyes of his wife and the trembling lips of his daughter who looked sidelong at the investigator. He hovered awkwardly in the lobby uncertain whether to go in and Mrs Savage pulled a face at the sight of his muddy boots.
The phone rang. Vasilisa answered but there was silence at the other end.
«Hello?» she said several times, looking apprehensively at the investigator. «Hello. Who is this?»
Lapin could see that she was upset and took the receiver away from her but the girl hastily rang off.
«They'd already hung up.»
Mrs Savage found a photo of her husband, which the investigator tucked away in his jacket. Whenever a case came to a standstill, Lapin would obtain a picture of the victim and use it to try and work out what kind of person the victim had been, what habits they'd had and what fears. He would try to put himself in the victim's place, talking to him and asking his advice and sometimes getting so far into character that he would shout at the criminal holding the front of his jacket: «I know you did it, you killed me!» He took Savage's photo in the hope of learning what happened the evening Coffin was shot, where Savely was hiding, who he was running away from and what he had planned.