Scenting the hunters, the dogs started rushing about and jumping on their hind legs as though they could see them through the trees. When the runs were open, they ran round in circles, making up for the time they'd been locked up.
The dogs picked up the scent near the baths and tore into the forest, duplicating the route taken by the fugitives. They sped into an impenetrable thicket, forcing their way through a thorn-bush, and sank into a bog hidden beneath a shaggy blanket of flowering moss. Wild rosemary made them snort as if they were uttering expletives. They appeared to have lost the trail. They turned circles on the spot in confusion but caught Savage's scent again and shot off, noses to the ground.
«What're you doing here?» the returning policemen called after them.
But the hunters didn't reply, keeping tight hold of their shotguns.
The scent, a mixture of sweat and fear, vanished at the river and the huntsmen resorted to guesswork. The one-eyed hunter examined broken branches and looked for tracks on the mossy ground, crushed berries or a torn-off flower. Hillocks rose above the forest like women's breasts and the hunters turned back more and more often, wanting to go home. They no longer believed they were going to find Savage. The dogs trotted along, tails down, forever dashing off after a squirrel or a polecat. The forest grew gloomier and the old man pressed his lips more tightly together, gathering up like a racing dog at a fence. His own dog plodded along beside him as old and mean as his owner.
The town was so small the gang could hold it in their fist and for those who couldn't get along with them, there was always the forest. Then the one-eyed hunter would track down the runaways, setting his dog on people the way others set dogs on wild animals. He preferred dirty banknotes to fox skins and would store them up in a secret hiding place under the floor.
«Why does Saam want to find him? Why doesn't he let the cops deal with him?» asked the lanky hunter, bored and making conversation.
«Probably because the gang are scared he'll find them first!» said the other with a shrug.
«I'm not against him getting his come-uppance. Our lives were calm and quiet till he turned everything upside down! Coffin looked after the town. If you kept your head down, he didn't bother you. What was so wrong with that?»
«Better the gangsters' laws than no laws at all!» said the thickset youth in agreement, ending the conversation.
The tree tops entwined as they leant towards one another like conspirators. The hunters began to feel the forest was creepy. As they watched the old man's back they were frightened he would turn round and run them through with his one eye. The thickset kid kept adjusting his gun and slowly started to fall behind as though he couldn't keep up with their leader. The gap between him and the others got wider and wider and once the old man was no longer visible through the thick fir trees bedecked with black moss, he ran back towards the town. The lanky youth dawdled alongside a spirit stone that rose up from the ground to the height of a man. The Saam believed it was a dead wizard who had turned to stone. When the last hunter saw he was the only one still with the old man, he made a break for it as well, running into the dagger points of protruding dry branches. As for the old man, he grinned and went on, never slowing his pace, and embracing his shotgun like his girlfriend. The one-eyed hunter could sense Savage nearby. It was as though he could feel Savage's hands shaking and the sweat of fear breaking out on his back.
In the morning, there were suddenly so many people in the forest that the whole town seemed to have turned out to pick berries. The townspeople were combing the forest in a never-ending chain. In their waterproof jackets and knee-high boots and armed with guns, rusty rakes and kitchen knives, some of them were angry, their faces furious, while others were having a good time, staring curiously around as if it was a picnic.
«The mayor never did me any harm. I always voted for him,» they told one another.
«And Trebenko was a decent chap too. His dacha's next to ours.»
Karimov had declared a day off at the factory. He had bet Saam a sizeable amount that Savage wouldn't be found and now he was driving through the deserted town, keeping his eyes skinned. He had thought he had plumbed the full depth of human foulness. Now, he realized with astonishment that it was unfathomable. «Truth is like glass,» his foster father had taught him. «You can only see it when lies make it dirty.» Even so, Karimov did not abandon his plan to meet Savage in order to look into his colourless eyes and ask whether he had seen his own death in the other deaths or whether every death, like every life, was different.
A helicopter hovered, a giant dragonfly, above the trees. The women had stayed by the cars which poked their noses through the edge of the forest. They were discussing Savage with so much cold curiosity he might well have been the hero of an evening soap opera. The women turned their heads in unison as though they shared a single neck and spoke in chorus, interrupting one another. Two men, their legs stretched out, sat leaning against a broad tree stump dark with moisture. One was unwrapping sandwiches, the other pouring tea from a flask and both were thinking about going home as they watched people walk past, mired up to their ankles in the swampy ground.
«Such is life! It makes even normal people go off their heads!»
«You think he's normal? They say he chopped Trebenko up and set the garage on fire so that no-one would see he'd carried off whole chunks of him…» The man spread his arms wide to demonstrate the size of the chunks.
«So what? You think he's a cannibal?»
«Well, how do you think he's survived so long in the forest? He's been eating Trebenko!»
The deeper they went into the taiga, the more strained their expressions and the scarier the thoughts they kept to themselves like a gun under their coats while their conversions lodged in the mossy bog. Coming across one another in the depths of the forest, people tried to get away again as quickly as possible.
«Remember: Savage is highly dangerous. If you see anything suspicious, call for back-up. Do not try to catch the killer yourselves. It could make you the next victim!» they were instructed via a loudspeaker by a man in a red armband.
Several military vehicles were parked by an old wooden bridge that had collapsed into the river. The unit commander used them to transport fish, carrying it in the cabs so that the inside stank of rotten fish. A fat-faced officer with a crimson neck was lining his shaven-headed boys up along the road so that those at the head of the line couldn't see those at the other end. Every now and then, townspeople would appear on the road, holding a rake or spade out in front of them like a bayonet, but spotting the soldiers they retreated into the trees. The officer barked out his final instructions and the soldiers dashed into the forest, sinking in the swamp that clutched at their legs, preventing them from running.
Most people were too scared to go into the dark, bristling forest and kept to the roads that divided the taiga brakes, hoping Savely Savage would jump out under their wheels like a hare pursued by hounds, scurrying along paths picked at random.