«Hey, you. Lose the syringe!» he yelled and the boys, seeing a tattered tramp threatening them with a stone fled. «If I see you again, I'll kill you-ou-ou!» His cry floated above the garages.
Savage remembered a teenager who used to spend the night in the entrance hall to his block of flats. At the time, Savage was on leave, spending it as he had for many years in front of the television, counting the days till he went back to work.
As usual, he woke up at the crack of dawn before the alarm went off but he had nowhere to go and was lolling in bed, listening to the sounds from outside. In the hubbub that reached him from the courtyard, he could pick out the shrill notes of his wife demanding that somebody call the police. When he looked out of the window, he could see his assembled neighbours.
Savage went out onto the landing. He could hear the disputes here too.
«He's blocking the way!»
«You have to step over him!»
«It's high time the door was locked. Otherwise, all the druggies come in. They've turned the entrance into a drug den!»
Someone shouted that the neighbourhood police officer would arrive any minute and people began to drift off. The entrance door slammed and, muttering imprecations, an old lady from the second floor began to climb the stairs, already out of breath.
«They'll pick him up now!» she said triumphantly to a neighbour who had poked her nose out of her door.
«There's no getting away from them,» said the neighbour, nodding her head and adjusting a funereal headscarf. «It would be better if they all dropped dead.»
Hanging over the banister, Savage could see a teenage boy curled up on the floor and he ran down, taking the stairs two at a time. The boy was lying with his eyes open, staring at a fixed point and his set face with its twitch recalled a theatre mask. Savage tapped his cheeks and tried to lift him up. Clutching his shoulder, the addict dutifully got to his feet.
Surprised at his own determination, Savage dragged the boy into the flat and shut and locked the door. His wife was at work, his daughter had gone to school and Savage had been left to his own devices until the evening.
He laid the boy on the bed, took off his dirty clothes and threw them in the washing machine. The boy's hair smelled of acetone. His complexion was sallow and his eyes still as glass. Savage wanted to call an ambulance but hadn't even picked up the phone when the boy went into the kitchen, dragging one of his feet.
«What's your n-n-name?» Savage asked, taking him by the chin.
«K-k-kostya,» the boy replied, imitating him.
Savage didn't take offence and offered him a glass of water.
«Do your parents kn-n-ow you sniff glue?»
«They're dead.»
Kostya lifted the lid of the frying pan. He rolled up the burnt omelette he found there and popped it into his mouth.
«Do you live in the ch-ch-children's home?»
«No, on the street. They wouldn't take me. I'm nearly eighteen.»
Savage was astonished. The boy looked about thirteen. He was short and painfully thin.
«You c-c — can't live on the street,» said Savage, cutting slices of bread.
«Where else? I'll get a room in a hostel in a couple of months. I'll survive. I eat out of skips. There's always loads of stuff.»
Savage watched the boy stuffing the bread into his mouth as if he was afraid it would be taken off him and he felt awkward. Pretending he had something in his eye, he wiped away the tears that had welled up.
The doorbell rang. Putting a finger to his lips, Savage indicated that the boy shouldn't make a noise and smoothing his fuzzy hair, he went to open the door.
«We had a call that a drug addict has been sleeping here,» the officer barked, without any greeting.
«Wh-wh-who?» stuttered Savage.
«Sorry to have disturbed you,» said the officer, ringing the bell next door.
When Savage went back into the kitchen, the boy was deftly going through the cupboards, looking at the jars of food. Lowering his head, the boy began to sniffle.
«I'm sorry, Uncle. I won't do it again… I only get to eat scraps and I'm really starving…»
Savage was embarrassed and, unable to find the right words, he put his arm round the shoulder of the boy who carried on sobbing, brushing the tears away with his fist.
«It's okay. I'll get a room and start a new life!»
While Savage ironed the freshly washed clothes with a sizzling iron so that they would dry more quickly, Kostya wandered around inspecting the flat. Savage was afraid some trinket would go missing and his wife would create a fuss so he put the iron aside and kept an eye on him. Even so, Kostya managed to sneak a couple of rings out of the jewellery box.
Savage saw him out, giving him a packet of groceries and a couple of jumpers, making Kostya promise to come back the following afternoon.
But Kostya didn't show up. Savage wandered around the entrances to various blocks of flats in the evenings, looking into basements that had been left open and gazing out of the windows. He was afraid that Kostya had got confused and would turn up at the weekend or in the evening when his wife and daughter were at home but the boy had disappeared.
Then, when Savage had forgotten all about Kostya, he suddenly came across him with his parents. His mother had the swollen red face of a drunk and his father looked like a living corpse.
Savage ran over to the boy.
«Y-y-you said you were an orphan! Why d-d-did you d-d-disappear?»
«What do you want? Beat it, yeah?»
Kostya had changed in six months. He looked like he had Down's syndrome. His nose had swollen up and his mad eyes gawped crazily. He went through Savage's pockets and took out a couple of crumpled banknotes. Then he rushed to catch up with his parents who had gone on ahead.
As Savage watched him go, he was overflowing with an unspent love that nobody needed.
He had thought he would never see Kostya again but a few days later, he suddenly felt someone tugging at his sleeve as he queued for bread.
«Uncle, spare something… For a bit to eat…»
He dug into his pockets and scraped together some change.
«Where are your parents?» he asked.
«I'm an orphan,» said Kostya, taking up the old refrain. «I live on the rubbish tip. I eat whatever comes my way. My parents died a long time ago…»
Rubbing his swollen nose, Kostya turned to the woman who was next in line.
«Aunty, aunty, can you spare a little…»
Savage had a catch in his throat. He remembered the colourless hair that smelt of acetone and the whiny voice, and he thought that Kostya was probably already dead and there was only Savage to make amends for the absurdity of the boy's life, crumpled and tossed away like an empty bottle of acetone.
Karimov often imagined being a serial killer. He entertained a fantasy in which he would steal out into the night and walk the empty streets, sticking close to the houses and hiding from the dull gleam of the streetlights that turned faces into wax masks and shadows into lead. Somewhere in the distance, a solitary individual who had stayed late with friends would appear and Karimov would hide behind a tree and wait for him to draw nearer. Then, he would jump out in front of him, stab him in the side and, leaving him there on the road, he would go home and, after smoking a single fragrant cigar, he would go to bed. Walking past the police cordon the next morning, he would look at the body, draped in a sheet, and be unable to remember the face of whoever lay beneath it.
Shaking a boxful of matches onto the table, he laid them out one by one, calculating that if he killed one person every week, it would come to 50 in one year, 500 in 10 years and 1,000 in 20 years. No motive, no evidence — chance passers-by chancing to be killed by a chance murderer. Who would ever suspect him?