«The minute he turns up, ring me!» barked Saam in the end. «Don't forget, he's dangerous!»
«And what'll you do to him?» Mrs Savage asked and Vasilisa held her breath, her hand clapped over her mouth.
Saam didn't answer and from his expressive silence Vasilisa realized that her father would not be coming home.
Closing the door behind the gangsters, Mrs Savage went into the kitchen, splashed some vodka generously into a glass and drank it down in one gulp. She recalled how once her husband came to her room at night when he'd had a drink. She was already asleep and her husband spent ages feeling along the wall to find the light switch.
«For goodness sake?! For goodness sake?!» said Savage, lurching from one side to the other. He wanted to shout: «I'm a person too. I'm suffering from a loneliness that I drown by watching TV and you, the only people close to me, bait me like a wild animal!» Instead, he became tongue-tied and simply kept saying, like a wind-up dolclass="underline" «Me… person… you… wild animals! Me! Person! You wild animals!»
«Will you shut up?» his daughter yelled, banging on the wall. «You're keeping me awake!»
And Savage, his arms flailing like a windmill, plodded back to his own room, still mumbling the truth that had suddenly been revealed to him: «Me — person, you — animals…»
«Savage can't be living in the forest!» said Saam confidently. «Someone's hiding him! Have you checked out all his friends?»
«He didn't have any friends. We've been round to all the people from his class and the people he worked with. They were so scared they'd have been only too happy to hand him over but they don't know where he is.»
The gang were sitting in their small house, hunched over a map and pointing to where Savage might be hiding.
«The dachas?»
«The caretaker says someone's been into a couple of properties and stolen food but that's normal.»
Saam made a mark on the map.
«Have you been to the old workers' settlements?»
«Yes. There's no-one there.»
Saam sniffed angrily as he rocked on his chair. He was amused when Savage shot Coffin. He bore no grudge against him. He looked on him as the weapon by which he took revenge on Coffin for Severina and for his position as second fiddle for so many years. Saam was disoriented by Trebenko's death and his blood ran cold when he was shown Antonov's disfigured corpse. He was sure he was dealing with someone as ruthless as himself, someone who'd stop at nothing, who would take revenge for being humiliated and wouldn't stop until he'd taken out everyone he hated.
«I know it's him,» he spat through the gaps in his teeth. «The little man has taken on the role of justice but that's what we do and people are happy with it!»
He jumped up and paced the room, and the gang, quiet now, awaited his orders.
«Get the hunters involved. Ask the tramps at the tip. If he really is in the forest he'll turn up for food there sooner or later.»
Saam felt he had been driven into a corner. The police had gone quiet after Trebenko died. They avoided Saam. They didn't attend meetings or take his calls and he didn't know what was happening inside the station. When Saam lost control of something, the ground went from under his feet.
A nondescript official appeared at the door with some papers and announced that the little wooden house was to be demolished. Saam felt giddy. He couldn't make his tongue work. He couldn't say a word and just stared, disconcerted, at the visitor.
«A swimming pool's going to be built here,» the terrified official explained, swallowing hard. «It's an old house. It's falling down,» he gestured at the room. «Its time was up a long time ago.»
«And yours!» A gangster with a wide scar that split his fierce face in two took a knife out of his boot.
«Oh!» the official gasped, clasping his hands to his chest.
«Stop it!» yelled Saam and the gangster, grinding his teeth, put the knife away.
Leaning over the table, the gangsters scratched their heads unable to understand who would be so bold as to raise a hand against them. The official, meanwhile, putting his paperwork in his briefcase with trembling fingers, kept talking:
«I'm a little person. My job is to provide information. I don't decide which buildings need to come down or go up…»
«No, but I do!» said Saam, interrupting.
He could tell how unconvincing he sounded and silence hung in the room like an axe.
When the official had gone, the workers arrived. They wound building netting round the house like a shroud and the gang cut a hole in it so that they could go in and out of the house. The workers walked around timidly, measuring up the house, but couldn't bring themselves to go inside. When they started to cut down the fence with a whir of their electric saws, people came rushing out of the surrounding houses to watch. The gang sat at their table and poured out their drinks in silence, listening to the sounds from outside. Saam cracked his fingers, gnawing on his gloomy thoughts, while the others attempted to read them in his small, mean eyes.
The gang often remembered Coffin: in his day, not even stray dogs had come up to their house. Behind Saam's back they began to talk about treachery, something for which there was no forgiveness, not just from people but from God, who had turned his back on the gang.
«Coffin never kept his gun loaded,» ground out the gangster with the scar. «Saam was the one who loaded it.»
«They were a fine pair, fighting over a chick!» said another through gritted teeth. «What about us?»
«If we get rid of Saam, we're finished for sure! Let's just hang on a bit!»
Saam could sense the murmuring that was starting up in the gang and could turn to mutiny. As he lay chain smoking at night he could hear Coffin laughing as though he was watching him from Hell and making fun of his failures.
Swathed in netting, the house without its fence looked naked and defenceless and the gangsters, cowering and drawing in their heads, shrank in size. They sharpened their knives and didn't put a foot out of doors if they could help it but the workers still hesitated to start the demolition. After hanging around for a few days, they brought along a metal trailer. In it, they set up an old, stained sofa, a couple of camp-beds and a crooked table. The workers came out to answer calls of nature among the willow trees and they rattled their bottles on the way back from the shop, shaking their fists at the gangsters.
On one occasion, the foreman, who was well and truly hammered, banged on the door, shoving away the workmen who were trying in vain to hold him back. Barely able to stand, he insisted that the gangsters should be gone there and then. Even when the gang dragged him inside he continued to threaten to demolish the house, residents and all.
The gangsters flung the foreman into the corner and then took up their seats, their massive malice-filled shadows surrounding him. Sitting astride his chair, Saam took a strong-smelling cigarette from the packet and licking his dry lips, lit up and puffed out smoke rings. The foreman, who had instantly sobered up, shrank back against the wall and could tell from the gangsters' faces that things were not looking good. A clock struck the hours in the next room, counting off the time that went endlessly on and on. Every time it struck, the foreman's hope that the workers would call for help diminished still further. Laboriously and with seeming reluctance, night tipped over the half way point and still the gangsters said nothing, still as statues. With a girlish sob, the foreman dropped his head onto his chest but the gangsters were unmoved. Only towards the morning did they begin to yawn, opening their gap-toothed mouths while tiredness and boredom appeared in eyes that were red with lack of sleep.