The police were first to arrive in response to the shots.
«Did he manage to hit many people?» asked an officer without any preliminaries as he jumped out of the police car. His shirt buttons were fastened up wrongly and an empty holster flapped at his side.
«No, not really,» said the attendant dismissively. «One girl got a bit of a scratch. She'll survive to get a husband.»
Karimov, wrapped in a white robe, was smoking on a rock. His hooked hawk's nose made him seem like a giant bird on its nest. The girls were fussing over the one who had been wounded, washing off the blood and bandaging her arm with the shreds of a nightie. As he walked past the table laid in the courtyard the officer took an apple, wiped it on his sleeve and bit in to it eagerly. Suddenly, he stood stock-still. There on the shore, arms flung wide, lay Krotov, naked.
The officer threw the apple core away.
«What about him?» he asked, pointing at the mayor.
«Looks like his heart. He was going under. We dragged him out but he was a goner. I nearly dropped dead with fright myself when I heard the shots.»
Smoke was rising from the neglected kebabs and a smell of burning hung in the air. The attendant kicked the barbecue over, scattering the burnt meat, and poured water on the charcoal from a crumpled plastic bottle.
«A good thing it was his heart,» said the officer, opening his notebook. «That way, we're not involved.»
The attendant lifted an eyebrow.
«There's always trouble with these high-ranking corpses. There are phone calls from the centre every day as it is.»
A car slammed on its brakes. Saam leapt out. The corner of his mouth twitched edgily as if he was laughing. His face and his thick neck were covered in red blotches and his Adam's apple jerked nervously. He bounced as he walked along, surrounded by his bodyguards. He shot mean looks in all directions, his damp hands hidden in his pockets so that no-one would suspect his terror. He had hurled the telephone away from him like a scorpion that had stung him when he heard that Savage had turned up at the banya. Saam could sense that Savage was getting closer and closer to him, picking off everyone to whom he, Saam, was close.
The banya attendant took refuge in the steam room pretending to be cleaning to keep out of Saam's way. He had seen Salmon run off into the forest. She still hadn't come back and the gangster had told him to keep her close, like the apple of his eye. Embarrassed by her ruined face, Salmon never went further than the lake and now she had disappeared and the attendant's knees were shaking so much that he was wondering whether to flee into the taiga himself.
«Look at that!» said Saam, walking around Krotov.
Obscenely fat, the mayor looked like a slab of dough slapped onto a chopping board. He evoked no pity even as a corpse. Saam took off his windcheater and threw it over the lower half of the body.
«You worried about his prostate?» drawled Karimov puffing out smoke rings.
«Worry about yourself,» grinned Saam. «Death's catching.»
Karimov laughed, nodding. He had already felt fate threatening him with a knife and wondered whether it would hit him in the back or in the chest. He looked with distaste at Krotov's obese white body and a wave of dumb indifference swept over him. In a detached fashion, as though he was standing on the sidelines, he was afraid his own death would be just as dull and stupid, dealt him by a madman at the back of beyond, in a town where malice was blacker than the polar night and the people, like the stone idols worshipped by the Saami, stayed put, overgrown with moss. Karimov felt fatigue leaning on him like a drunken woman, and he had a strong wish to get out of this town where death was more frequent than conception.
«Offer a million as a reward!» Saam told his henchmen, dispelling his thoughts.
Karimov grinned and lit the next cigarette in his chain.
«Do you believe anyone's going to try and catch him? He's more likely to become a hero of the people.»
Saam shook his head:
The polar sun hung above the horizon at night as though nailed in place. Four hunters walked through the forest, gloomily clutching their guns. The dogs had picked up the trail and were barking hoarsely as they pulled on their leads. Their wet fur bristled as if every hair was on the alert, ready for the chase. The bog squelched under foot. The hunters' heavy tread left dents in the soft moss. The depressions immediately filled up with water and before the men vanished into the trees their traces had disappeared as if no-one had ever been there.
The hunters lived in old wooden houses that even the dogs avoided. The dilapidated, two-storey blocks, clustered on the edge of the forest were known as «stumpies». Each contained eight flats, the residents living as one big family, their doors never locked. Neighbours could tell the creaks of the cracked and pitted staircase apart, knowing that when the old one-eyed hunter was coming home the stairs moaned like a woman but when his drunken wife stole in they squealed like the whispers of tattle-tales.
There was a smell of rotten wood, dirty washing and a burnt stove. The flats had no bathrooms and people washed in huge tubs, pouring the water out into the street. In the winter time, dirty mounds appeared at the entrances, the children sailing down them with a shriek. The residents of the «stumpies» could be recognized by their shaggy faces and bent, stooping figures that were the legacy of their crooked houses. Many of them had dogs which they let in for the night and out again during the day so that animals formed a pack and went careering around the streets.
When there was a knock at the old hunter's door, his neighbours glued their ears to their doors, listening to what Saam would have to say.
«Take people and dogs and comb the forest. He doesn't appear to be armed.»
«And when I find him?»
«You know what to do with him better than I do. I don't want to see him.»
«How much do I get for his hide?»
The neighbours held their breath but no matter how they strained to hear, they couldn't make out Saam's answer.
Ropes were stretched across the entrance hall with children's tights, colourful blouses and sheets drying. His heavy boots stamping as if putting nails in a coffin, Saam went downstairs and the stairs sobbed under him like a young widow.
When the one-eyed hunter left in his camouflage gear, there were three people waiting for him in the yard.
«It's dangerous in the forest,» said a thickset youth who lived on the same floor, adjusting the rifle slung over his shoulder.
«You're getting old for hunting. You won't manage on your own,» agreed a neighbour from downstairs.
The third neighbour said nothing, working his jaws. He merely indicated the double-barrelled shotgun sticking out of his bag.
The old man looked them over with his one eye, grinned without giving them an answer and they all four set off for the forest.
The dog runs were out of town, set back from the road. They were home to the hunters' huskies, pining with boredom behind their netting. When Savage's daughter was a little girl, she would run there to feed the dogs. Vasilisa would wait until her father set off for work and her mother, after quickly making dinner, went to a friend's until late. Then, she would stuff her pockets full of bread and go off into the forest. She didn't wear a watch so she hid the alarm clock inside her top so as not to be late for her parents getting back. When they saw her, the dogs would hurl themselves barking at the netting and, uncertain about going closer, Vasilisa would toss them the bread which the dogs swallowed instantly with a greedy yelp. As she went home, she picked blueberries and stamped on any inedible mushrooms because it seemed a shame just to leave them. At home, the little girl would put the alarm clock back on the shelf and dash into the bathroom to wash the blueberry stains off her lips. Once, however, when Vasilisa got home from her walk in the woods, her father was already warming up yesterday's soup on the stove and realized from his daughter's blue lips that she'd been off in the forest. Savage began to think his daughter was growing up to be like him, a solitary dreamer, getting on better with the forest and with dogs than with people. He hoped that when she grew up, they would have things to talk about. From then on, however, his wife never left the little girl by herself. She took her with her to the shops and to her friends' and, Savage, seeing how quickly Vasilisa acquired her mother's mannerisms, began to regret he'd come home early that day.