The workmen, glued to the net-covered windows, tried to work out what was going on in the house but all they could hear was the sound of the clock drowned in the viscous silence. They couldn't bring themselves to ring the police and, tired of waiting, they went back to the trailer and collapsed onto the old, sagging sofa. They awoke in the morning to the foreman's heavy footsteps. He bundled up his things without a word and left without so much as a goodbye.
From then on, the workmen avoided the house and kept to the trailer. The local officials, grey as mice, wandered around, mopping their sweating brows and wondering what to do. The piled-up boards of the fence rotted in the rain. The gang gradually unwound the building netting, making holes for windows. Investigator Lapin was undaunted, he was certain that clouds were gathering over the gang and, mindful of his conversation with the mayor, he decided to go and see him.
There was a quiet, solemn air about the local government building and as Lapin ascended the red-carpeted marble stairs he felt as if he was in an important department in the capital or the museum he had visited with his class. He had fallen behind and gone down to the café where he sat till the end of the lecture, contemplating the stucco ceiling. But an old woman in reindeer-skin slippers barred his way, bringing him back to his back-water town.
«Where do you think you're going?» she demanded with a menacing lift of an eyebrow.
Lapin sighed and produced his ID. Peering at it short-sightedly, the woman brought it up close to her nose and moved aside with a gasp.
«So very young and an investigator already. I'm sorry I didn't recognize you, duck,» she said, running after him, clasping her hands.
Krotov barely fitted into his chair, like dough spilling out of a pan. He took two tiny glasses out of the desk and a bottle of amber liquid that gleamed in the light.
«How's it going?» asked Krotov and Lapin was so embarrassed he forgot the speech he had prepared.
«We're doing our best,» he muttered.
Lapin was intimidated by the mayor even though he despised this portly individual who taken root in his chair like one of last year's onions sprouting in the cellar.
«You did mention support,» Lapin began, the drink giving him courage. «I really need support.»
The mayor always took fright when asked for something so he drew himself up, pursing his lips. «Supplicants are worse than terrorists,» he would complain to his secretary seeing out visitors who whined that you couldn't get fresh air let alone snow out of the mayor.
«It's not right for a gang to be running the town!»
«True,» Krotov agreed. «The place for crooks is behind bars!»
He filled their glasses and proposed a toast to justice. They drank in meaningful silence as if trying to come up with a solution.
«What is this stuff?»
«Reindeer velvet moonshine,» said Krotov, smacking his lips and filling the glasses again. «Powerful stuff, eh?»
«Certainly is,» nodded Lapin. He drank and lent forward, «So about that support?»
Krotov fidgeted nervously in his chair.
«Support?» he said, wide-eyed. «What kind of support?»
«You know, to put the crooks behind bars… Oh, no, thanks. That's enough,» he said, putting his hand over his glass.
«You insult me, Captain,» said Krotov shaking his head. He poured out more of the moonshine and drank, tipping his head back. «We'll help! Carry on with your work, Captain, searching, digging around and we'll help!»
Lapin brought his chair nearer and looked Krotov in the eye.
«They keep letting them out!»
«Who does?» said the mayor in feigned surprise. He loosened his tie.
«Trebenko, the prosecutor, all of them…»
«Not Trebenko any more, may he rest in peace,» said Krotov, crossing himself. «Dig around, lad. They'll go down. We won't let them out. You have my word!»
«If I drink any more, I'll be on the floor,» Lapin admitted when Krotov poured out the last few drops. «Honestly, I will. Will you have a word with the prosecutor so that he doesn't get in the way? Otherwise, he'll send me away on business. It's happened before.» Lapin drank, wincing. «I knew where they'd buried that businessman, on the building site when they were laying the foundations… But they got rid of me for a month… When I got back, the house had been built.»
«Don't worry, Captain. I'll make a call. There won't be any more business trips,» Krotov promised. Propping the unsteady investigator up at the door, he shook his hand firmly. «Don't let me down, Captain. You're my only hope!»
And Lapin took the marble stairs like an ice run, planting a kiss on the old woman in the reindeer-skin slippers.
As he drove past the jerry-built grey-brick church, Karimov asked the driver to stop. It was a long time since he'd been to church, disillusioned with the platitudes the priest mumbled into his beard. The priest, who believed the world was created in seven days, was a thin man, curved by life into the shape of a pretzel. He depicted paradise as rather like a church, gilded and glittering, and hell as smoke-filled taverns where music was replaced by the gnashing of teeth and the seductive girls, drinking cocktails through straws, were fiendish and foxy demons. Once, sitting through yet another sermon, Karimov, without a word of farewell, walked out of the church, causing the priest to make the sign of the cross over his departing back and to whisper a prayer for the sinner's salvation.
Today, however, Karimov suddenly felt like popping into the little church with its ridiculous, blue-painted domes, looking at the cunning faces of the saints and breathing in the coarse, cloying scent of incense that made fears and anxieties melt away and eyelids droop as if closed with copper coins.
Antonov's wife, eyes cast down, was cleaning the soot off the candles. She gave Karimov a barely perceptible nod when she saw him as though the Lord might not approve of them knowing one another.
His gaze wandered over the icons and a wrinkled, hunched old woman, noticing his haughty bearing, crept over to him, dragging her leg, and gave him a pinch in the side. It hurt.
«People come to ask God for things!»
«I don't need anything,» he replied, laughing and rubbing his side. «I've got everything!»
«They ask forgiveness for their sins!» she whispered, pointing heavenwards.
«You old witch!» thought Karimov, livid. Aloud he said only:
«My sins are His mistakes. He should be asking my forgiveness.»
Karimov headed for the exit but stopped in the doorway, made the sign of the cross, and called out to the hunchbacked woman, «Oh, I don't hold it against Him by the way!»
Karimov, who had previously hated the fanciful polar landscape, took to driving into the countryside, bowling along the bumpy roads, the fire breaks and the stony tundra wastes that lay in bald patches beyond the forest. The chauffeur was used to not asking questions and, unruffled, he kept his eyes on the road. Karimov, however, made fun of himself for still hoping to come across Savely Savage, seeking refuge in the forest from prison and the reprisals of the gang.
He didn't know what he would do if he did find Savage, what he would say to him or why but he couldn't get way from an obsession that had driven out his crazy preoccupation with random killings. Karimov couldn't forget the night he failed to shoot the drunken woman. He was humiliatingly aware of his own weakness and wanted to look into the eyes of the little man who had stood firm and pulled the trigger. He couldn't see any difference between himself and Savage. He didn't regard the murder of an innocent person as a crime and the murder of a gangster as a just punishment. He regarded all murders as murder and all deaths as death.