Mrs Savage opened a jar of gooseberry jam and licked her fingers.
«Who shot Coffin?» asked Lapin helplessly.
«Karimov,» whispered Vasilisa.
«I'll tell you how it happened,» said Mrs Savage, sinking into her chair, her legs crossed.
Her wheedling tones bound him hand and foot and, as he picked out the tea leaves with a spoon, Lapin listened to the new version of Coffin's murder word for word as he had heard it from other witnesses.
Lapin slammed a heavy file down on his boss's table.
«Shit!»
«They all said the same?» asked the prosecutor, raising an eyebrow in mock surprise.
«Every one of them. And it's so faultless. You can't pick holes in it. Security, gangsters, passers-by, even Savage's daughter. They're all retracting their old statements. They sound like they're reading from a script. No-one contradicts anyone else. New witnesses have come forward.»
«Send the case back.»
«What about Savage?»
«Are you short of witnesses?»
Lapin was flummoxed.
«But they said…»
«Don't you know how they manipulate witnesses?»
«What about Antonov? And Trebenko?»
«You don't really believe that was Savage…»
Lapin clammed up. The prosecutor rubbed his hands as if soaping them up over the sink and looked inquiringly at the investigator.
«But the blood on Antonov's body?» Lapin mumbled, perplexed. «Trebenko's gun that was used at the banya?»
«The only thing we know is that we don't know anything. The blood and the gun could have been planted.»
«By the police?!»
There was a weighty silence from the prosecutor who looked at Lapin over his glasses.
«And Krotov?»
«Who said Savage was even there? Karimov? The whores? We don't know what Krotov had been eating and drinking in the banya. Maybe Karimov helped him along…»
«So why were the gangsters looking for Savage? Why did they offer a reward? What does Karimov get out of all these killings?»
«That's for you to find out.» And the prosecutor buried himself in his paperwork, indicating that the conversation was over.
Lapin backed out of the room, pushing the door open with his back.
The banging of hammers, along with swearwords as sharp as nails that littered the workmen's speech, could be heard in the area from early in the morning. They were knocking together a new fence from freshly-cut planks that smelt of the forest to surround the gangsters' den. The construction netting was torn and it trailed on the ground so that passers-by tripped and got entangled in it. Small boys dragged it away from right under the workmen's noses and raced through the courtyards, turning it into knights' cloaks or sails for their wooden-bench boats.
«What are they saying in town? Are they going to send another mayor?» a gangster asked, cleaning his nails with the end of his knife.
Another shook his head and watched the boys hiding behind the trees and rolling the construction netting into a ball. Perched on a stone, a workman smoked, ignoring the little thieves.
«They changed their minds at the last minute. They're scared of a war. If they brought someone in from outside, he wouldn't know how we do things or our people. Just imagine the chaos!»
The gangster with the knife smirked showing his gap-toothed mouth.
«When you're weighing up cons and pros, it's always cons that win! So who's going to replace Krotov?»
«One of our own. Smart and biddable.»
There was rarely any news from the little town hidden like a needle in a haystack out in the taiga near the frontier, and it was always bad. The regional authorities had decided to send in their own people to restore order but no-one would take the position, avoiding the job like the plague. In the end, in the superstitious belief that it was better to leave well alone, they simply gave up on the town, remembering when its residents had been left without lighting and the town had been as lawless as a prison camp. Trebenko's assistant became chief of police and Krotov's deputy took over as mayor.
A small town is like a communal apartment where people are crowded together, take no pains to hide what they're whispering about and can recognize their neighbours by their smell. These people don't like change, they expect nothing good from it and, so, when they saw the new mayor, the residents sighed with relief. «At least he won't be any worse than Krotov,» they said, gesturing towards the central square.
The new mayor was the spitting image of his predecessor, with an ample belly and a nose that was constantly sniffing, moving from side to side like the rod of a metronome and his face was as round as the template for a circle. Once he occupied Krotov's seat, he began to wear the same type of suits and the wide-striped ties Krotov had favoured. The thin hair he'd previously combed to the left now lay to the right so that he was virtually indistinguishable from his late boss.
Saam sat out on the veranda, rocking on his chair, while the gangster with the scar that split his face in two, cracked sunflower seeds and spat them into his paw.
«Isn't the hunter back yet?» Saam asked.
The gangster shook his head.
«The hunter's getting old,» Saam frowned. «He's never taken so long to track someone down.»
The new mayor left the local government building and, adjusting his shirt that had come untucked, got into a car that dipped on that side. Saam felt as if he'd seen a ghost, as if Krotov, lying naked on the lake shore, had flashed before his eyes.
«Does the new mayor support us?» asked the gangster, picking his teeth.
«He does,» Saam ground out. «Like a noose and a hanged man. Trusting civil servants is like trusting the weather forecast. They promise sunshine and it rains anyway.»
The Chief was wandering around the square, dragging his foot. He took passers-by by the hand but they gently pushed him away and quickened their pace. He had a sausage protruding from his pocket and a dirty piece of string on his leg left over from a tin can the kids had tied on for a laugh. The Chief chased them, the can rattling until it came off when it caught on an iron bar sticking out of the ground.
«Name?» the Chief demanded leaning across the veranda fence to grab Saam by the arm.
«Get lost!» the gangster snarled, nervously pulling back his leather jacket. «And you, get him out of here!» he yelled at his assistant, indicating the crazy old man. «Sort it!»
The gangster with the scar pushed the Chief away with a nasty look.
«Come on, get out of it, Chief! You're stinking the place out!» He turned to Saam and added, «Who would have thought he'd outlive Trebenko?»
«Just put him away in a home, will you? I can't stand the sight of him.»
The working day was coming to an end and miners were coming home from the factory, spreading out through the town like ants. Saam suddenly imagined Savage, chewing on a loaf of bread he'd bought on his way. He jumped up, gazing at a man with a stoop, carrying a worn briefcase, and the gangster with the scar froze as he tried to work out what Saam was looking at.
«I thought I saw…» said Saam, plonking himself down on the chair when he realized he'd got the wrong man. He took out a dirty handkerchief and wiped his sweaty neck.
The Saami took the fugitives in and provided them with a patched-up tourist tent they'd found in the forest. They fed them on cured reindeer meet and a soup of meat, flour and berries, and made Salmon a pine bark infusion. The Saami's faces were cracked like antique portraits and their half-moon smiles looked like they'd been stuck in place. The herders spoke good Russian but asked no questions. They tutted just looking at Salmon, with the skin stretched tight over her bones and her frightful face with its huge, protruding eyes.