«And could I really see who fired the shot when I was on the second floor? My eyes are bad as it is. I can't see anything beyond my nose.»
«But you said you saw…»
There was a sour smell in the flat that made his gorge rise. From the corner a one-armed man, his spindly legs with their varicose veins dangling off the bed, fixed him with empty sockets.
«What else could I do? They made threats! ‘Say it was Savage or we'll make short work of you!' I've got a daughter who's divorced, grandchildren, a husband who's worked all his life in the quarry and it's crippled him. He's worse than a child… Yes, I've sinned. I accused the wrong man!» she said and crossed herself in front of the paper icon hanging on the wall. «It surely can't be any worse in Hell than it is here.»
Lapin shrank back, looking automatically over his shoulder.
«So who were those people?»
«Who knows? Scary ones. I even thought they were devils come to get me.»
«Coffin's men?»
«Of course, not,» the woman said, waving her arms. «Definitely not. I know all the gangsters. They're from round here, they're our lads. No, those were from somewhere else but I can't remember their faces.»
«Was Savage even there?»
«I can clearly remember him getting into the fight. A round-shouldered little chap, not someone you'd notice, not much hair. I used to see him in the office at the factory sometimes. I think he worked there.»
Biting his pencil Lapin looked at this new witness who had suddenly cropped up in the case. His head was spinning. The old witnesses had changed their statements, saying they had testified against Savage under duress and new witnesses were practically raining down.
«Why didn't you come to us straight away?»
«I thought about it first. There were plenty of people without me. The square was crowded. ‘What are things coming to?' I thought. ‘Now the director will be going to prison!' But when I read in the paper that Savely Savage not Karimov had killed Coffin, I started to wonder if I was going crazy. I even told my wife I'd seen the director kill the gangster. She really lost the plot, screaming that I'd had too much to drink and just imagined it but I hadn't had a drop that night.»
«So what, you can't believe your own eyes?»
«Who can?» said the witness. He smiled a cunning smile that showed off a gold tooth. «If everyone says I'm the Pope and it's in the papers and on TV as well, are you not going to believe it, Captain?» he asked with a wink.
«I'm used to believing my own eyes,» replied Lapin, irritated, as he made notes in his pad.
Re-reading the new statements, however, he felt as if he was seeing double, like a man who was drunk. Lapin considered Savage as the murderer and then Karimov and found both scenarios equally outlandish.
Thinking back to the conversation in the bar, he imagined holding a gun aimed at Coffin and couldn't say whether he would have shot him or not. Once again, Lapin heard the voice of his father as he told his mother about the gang, his face buried in his hands. He put his head under the cold water tap to wash away the troublesome memories that rang in his ears like bells.
Savage's daughter was born on the day Leo becomes Virgo so every morning she bought the horoscope for both signs and selected the forecast she preferred. She kept a well-thumbed deck of cards hidden under her pillow and used it to seek advice. She couldn't bring herself to share this with her mother. The girl knew only one way of telling fortunes. She was taught it by a wizened old lady in the south, who rented out a little house by the sea. And Vasilisa laid the cards out endlessly until the aces turned to sixes and the queens to jokers, predicting what she wanted.
«I'm not lonely when I'm on my own but I am lonely when I'm not on my own,» she admitted once to her mother whose unhappy female lot she wore like hand-me-down clothes. Mrs Savage put it down to a phase.
Vasilisa skipped school with her friends, going through pockets for change to buy beer. Hiding in the entry-way, the girls sat on the steps, tucking their handbags beneath them. They passed the bottle round like a pipe of peace, each girl swallowing the beer through a deep drag, like a man's, on her cigarette in a bid to get drunk more quickly. Vasilisa used to spend the evenings in the Three Lemons, leaving crimson traces of lipstick on cigarette butts left glowing in ashtrays, on glasses and on men's shirts. Now, however, the security guards wouldn't let her into the bar and the phone appeared to have gone dead. When she skipped school, she roamed the streets aimlessly, managing to go three times round the whole town in a day. Pictures of her father had been posted over the adverts on the lamp-posts and Vasilisa felt as if he was watching her every step.
«If he puts in an appearance, we'll take the money and get out of this dump for good,» snapped Mrs Savage, pulling a torn-off poster out of her bag.
Vasilisa turned her mother's comment over in her head, kicking a crumpled beer can down the street. When she was little, her father used to take her to the neglected children's playground. The wooden swings were out of order, the rusty slide had collapsed and broken bottles littered the sandbox, but she and her father liked it there. Her feet took her along the familiar path, but where the playground used to be the place was empty as a beggar's palm. Vasilisa suddenly felt orphaned, lonely and of no use to anyone.
«Shall we go?» A heavy hand came down on her shoulder.
The girl had no chance to come to her senses before she was grabbed by the neck and dragged off to a car parked by the side of the road and pushed onto the back seat, her head pressed to her knees.
«Don't move!»
Vasilisa was taken to the wooden house the gangsters met in, tied up and tossed onto a sofa in a large room. Two grubby boys stood guard, cracking sunflower seeds and spitting shells into their fists. Vasilisa sobbed, her head buried in a greasy pillow that smelt of sweat and tobacco. One of the boys awkwardly stroked her shoulder.
«Don't cry. We won't touch you.»
The other boy brought a mug from the kitchen. He rolled Vasilisa over and gave her a drink, spilling icy water on her face and chest.
In the evening, the gangsters huddled round with their battered faces and malicious eyes that wandered under her clothes.
«So has Daddikins turned up? Has he called round? Or phoned? Sent anyone?»
The girl shook her head.
«Where's he hiding? Do you know?»
«I don't know. I don't know anything…»
The gangsters exchanged looks.
«Maybe she really doesn't know?»
«Never trust a chick. She'll tell you lies even when there's nothing in it for her.»
«Please, please don't do anything to me,» Vasilisa sobbed. «I haven't done anything wrong!»
«What do you mean? This is all because of you! Four dead, the best in town, and all because of one little slut!» spat one of the gang, rubbing the spittle into the floor with his foot.
Mrs Savage hung around outside the wooden hut, unsure whether to knock. Vasilisa hadn't come home last night and, after ringing round her friends, Mrs Savage had a feeling the gangsters who had been keeping watch in their courtyard of late, squinting up at the windows of her flat, had to have been involved.
«What d'you want?» a fair-haired lad who reminded her of someone asked, frowning.
«I need to talk to Saam,» she cooed plaintively.
«He's busy!»
«My daughter's gone missing. I'm scared to go to the police. Maybe Saam knows where she is…»
«Don't go to the police,» said the boy, pulling a face and unlocking the door. «Don't trouble trouble…»