Karimov despised the residents of the town who for so many years had put up with the omnipotence of the gangsters, a venal police force, thieving civil servants and dishonest deputies and not spoken out against them. Flicking through reports, he remembered the years when no wages were paid at the factory and everyone in town had slaved away for food that was allocated by coupon. Not knowing where to put the money, the previous director had spent it abroad and rarely appeared in the town. Karimov, with a fastidious shudder, recalled the workers bowing when they encountered his motorcade in town.
But Savely Savage was made of different stuff and Karimov felt they would have something to talk about if he could only find him before the gangsters did. Karimov was a fatalist through and through and believed that if something was foreordained it would come to pass even if it defied common sense and he continued to cruise the forest roads, certain that he would come across Savely Savage sooner or later. If, of course, it was meant to happen.
The phone card cracked. Savage pushed the broken piece into the voracious payphone but couldn't make his call. He thumped the phone with all his strength and it rattled like a money-box full of coins.
Savely had been ringing his daughter to stop himself losing his mind. Her thin voice was the one remaining thread connecting him to the past. Vasilisa seemed to realize who it was saying nothing at the other end. Her voice would get softer and more playful the way it did when she was little and was asking for a new doll and Savage thought affectionately about his daughter and forgave her everything. Listening to the silence at the other end of the phone, Vasilisa longed to shout at her father, to say horrible things to him and then tell him how awful she felt and how frightened that each new day seemed like the night to her. And so they said nothing, neither wanting to put the phone down first. Afterwards, Vasilisa would lock herself in the bathroom and spend a long time crying, unable to answer her own question as to whether she wanted her father to come home or never to come home at all.
Now the card had broken and the last thread had been snapped. Savage was no longer able to listen to his daughter's voice and he felt as though he was turning into a wild beast, that his skin was covered in bristles and his curved, yellow nails were turning into talons. Like a rabid dog, he might leap at anyone's throat.
He hung around the town rubbish tip looking for the red-haired woman but she didn't turn up. Savage looked for the rest of the tramps. He wandered between the piles of rubbish and, clambering onto the highest mound, he yelled: «Hell-o-o-o! Hell-o-o-o!» Then he fell back on to the stinking heap and laughed. There was no answer. Only the stray dogs growled, giving him a wide birth.
One evening he finally spotted the smoke of a fire in the distance. When he went closer, Savage could see the tramps warming themselves around it. They were baking potatoes on sticks dangled over the fire like fishing rods. Savage was looking for a fight to let off steam and waited for the tramps to attack him and tear him to pieces. Looking at his fierce, crooked face, they moved aside, making room for him by the fire. Someone stuck a potato in his hand and his hairy neighbour, enveloped in a woman's shawl that was full of holes, offered him a plastic bottle of neat alcohol as if welcoming him into a brotherhood. Taking a gulp, Savage looked over the people seated around the fire. Like the grey rats that scuttled around the tip, they all looked the same. Sniffing, they turned their heads from side to side and there was nothing reflected in their small, red eyes but rage against the whole world. A couple of steps away, a man and woman lay together in a pile of rags. They were unembarrassed by the others present and their coupling was as desperate and as primitive as their lives.
Savage imagined he could become king of the tramps, kingpin of the rubbish tip, imposing his laws on the homeless and ordering them about like slaves. They would bring him the best scraps and surrender the best women to him and the female tramps would give birth to his children so that before long all the little vagrants would look like Savely Savage. After a second swallow, the idea no longer seemed crazy and after a third he started to like it.
The red-haired woman came over to the fire. She sat next to Savely, flopping against his shoulder like a rag doll and he was as pleased to see her as a sweetheart.
«Life's hard,» said Savage, staring into the fire.
She laughed, scratching.
«Dying isn't,» chimed in an old chap sitting nearby and Savage nodded in agreement.
The tramps kept a close watch on their bonfire, stamping out tongues of flame that threatened to leap onto the sprawling rubbish, but on this occasion they didn't watch closely enough and smoke suddenly filled the air. In an attempt to put out the fire, they began to pile rubbish onto it but the fire only raged more strongly and they scattered. Savage leapt up, throwing his potato away and the woman grabbed his hand to help herself up. Savely pushed her away instinctively and fled, his hands covering his face.
Later he came to his senses and went back to where the fire had been raging to collect the red-haired woman. Pungent smoke stung his eyes and filled his throat like cotton wool. Savage couldn't find the woman in the haze of smoke. He crawled along the ground, feeling with his hands like a blind man, but the woman wasn't there. He stumbled across two prostrate bodies in the smoke but could tell they were men from their whiskery faces. Savage felt he was about to faint and fled into the forest, hoping the woman had managed to escape the flames on her own. The wail of sirens could already be heard in the distance. Fire engines were speeding towards the tip and the vagrants were hurrying to get away before they arrived.
Lapin was emboldened by the feeling that the mayor had his back. When he was summoned to his superior's office he strode down the corridor, his boots stamping so loudly it seemed as though he wanted the prosecutor to hear him from a distance.
«Captain Lapin,» said his superior, donning his official smile. «Any progress? Is it a case of no case without Savage?»
«I'm going through all the options…»
«Ah, yes, the options.» The prosecutor nodded sympathetically. «You're not getting carried away, are you? After all, the killing took place in front of so many witnesses. Bystanders, the late Antonov, Savage's daughter. You can hardly suspect them of aiding and abetting.»
«Even so, I'm going through all the options,» said Lapin, shifting from one leg to the other.
«Do you want to pin the murder on Saam?» the prosecutor asked, rubbing his temples. «That's stupid. And if you are so keen on him, tackle his other crimes. The gang keep us busy.»
When Lapin demurred, the prosecutor cleared his throat and said, «I've been talking to our boss. Local government thinks highly of you…» He screwed up his face as if it hurt him to say the words. «I see a dazzling career ahead of you if you want it!»
Lapin, mopping his damp brow, made a dash for his own office. On the way, he couldn't resist dropping in on the senior investigator who had been his mentor.
«How's things?» Lapin asked, putting his head round the door.
«Okay,» the surprised response came. «Why?»
The abandoned workers' settlement clung to the town like a baby to its mother but the forest advanced ingesting the deserted streets and houses. Slender young trees were pushing through the cracked and buckled asphalt. Moss had grown all over the walls and roads and birch trees peeped out of the windows like curtain twitchers. Over the years, the furniture left behind in the houses had grown damp and it was enough just to touch, say, a chest of drawers for it to fall apart on the spot. All around lay old photographs, books and the open maws of empty suitcases. «Buy greens. Ring S.» Savage read on a damp-eroded note, left on a table. Where was the person who wrote it? Did he ever buy any greens? Did he ever ring S.?