«Are you looking for Severina?» he asked, lighting up.
Lapin stopped in front of Saam, his shaking hands hidden in his pockets.
«Won't I find her?» he said, answering the question with one of his own. Saam stared at him as if trying to work out whether this was just bravado on Lapin's part.
«I don't know,» he admitted all of a sudden, realizing that the investigator didn't know where the girl had gone. «She disappeared the day Savage showed up. Have you heard anything about him?»
Lapin shook his head.
«Not a thing…»
Saam stepped aside, letting him through.
«Well, if you do hear anything about her, let me know.»
Lapin went past, aware of Saam's eyes on his back.
«And you tell me if there's any sign of Savage,» he said, looking back.
Saam didn't answer but nodded and they went their separate ways, going over the conversation and scouring their words, looks, and gestures for a hidden meaning that wasn't there.
The local paper wrote up Karimov's arrest and put his picture on the front page. Out-of-town TV crews arrived and moved into the room recently vacated by the visitor from Moscow. Even the general from the regional centre who had put in an appearance after the death of Trebenko was content at how things had turned out and full of praise for the new chief of police. True, he couldn't bring himself to visit the town, mindful of the angry snarls the forest had bestowed on him as a stranger.
Lapin clutched at the reporters' sleeves but they only listened if they were talking and talked when they were listening, sniffing out sensational items like pigs in search of acorns.
«The gang rules the entire town in terror. They are law and order,» Lapin gabbled, trotting after a swarthy journalist. «The police have been bought off. The residents have been intimidated. Even crime bosses from the centre are scared to show up here! The town's out of their control and they've written it off!»
«Did you know Karimov?» the journalist asked. He slowed his pace, headlines glittering in his eyes.
«Savage shot Coffin in front of dozens of witnesses. I handled the investigation. Karimov's arrest is sheer lunacy!» the investigator pressed on.
But the journalist lost interest even before Lapin finished talking and dashed ahead, adjusting his camera bag.
There were still faded posters of Savage on the lamp-posts and billboards but the conversation was all about Karimov, building up the story of the murder from police reports and overheard gossip. Blinking as the cameras flashed, the new chief of police recounted the story to journalists, their microphones like guns at the ready.
«Karimov was wilful and stubborn. He looked on the gangsters as scum and who likes that?» he said, leaning back in his chair. He could feel his certainty grow as he talked as if reading from a script. «Karimov himself was scarcely any different to Coffin, well, apart from his expensive suits and his handsome looks. On the inside, he was just another gangster…»
«So what happened that evening?» a narrow-shouldered reporter asked impatiently, licking his lips.
«Coffin was having a snooze on the veranda at the Three Lemons. He spent his evenings in the bar and everyone knew where to find him. Karimov drove up in his car and got out with his bodyguards — he never went anywhere without them,» explained the chief of police.
«Had they had some kind of falling out?»
«Yes, over the protection money Coffin had demanded from the factory. He didn't miss a trick that one. He would have extorted money from God Himself and profiteered on the Devil. There was nothing he wouldn't do and nothing he was afraid of. There are people who live by the law of the land and people who live by the law of the underworld but Karimov lived by his own laws and had no intention of bowing down to a gangster. He gave Coffin an ultimatum. Coffin told him to stick it. They started arguing and when he was threatened Coffin clicked his fingers and asked for his gun.»
«To give Karimov a fright?» asked a journalist, clicking his fingers as if he was copying Coffin.
The chief of police screwed up his face and shrugged:
«His sidekick Saam got a double-barrelled shotgun and Coffin gave it to Karimov. Go on, then, he said. Either you shoot me or I shoot you. He wanted to make him look stupid, for a laugh. Who would have actually fired? But Karimov, not missing a trick, shot him right there in front of everyone.»
The next day the serial killer's story was in all the local papers and on everybody's lips. Examining it like bedding in the daylight, everyone found their own evidence, drawing out of their memory like grips out of hair something they had happened to see, something someone let slip or an encounter that confirmed what the journalists had written.
«Savage was destined to act as the scapegoat!» said a fat man surrounded by curious listeners, raising a finger.
«We're all scapegoats,» said a blue-faced alcoholic with a broken nose. «Of our own destinies!»
The bar was packed and the waitress, flushed from lack of air, fanned herself with a folded newspaper. The customers went from table to table, interrupting one another and breaking into other people's conversations like burglars into a flat. It was noisy. Everyone was arguing, yelling and gesticulating like windmills. No-one was listening to anyone else but they could all hear what was being said because it was what people had been talking about all over town of late.
«They said his daughter's lovely.»
«Not so much lovely as a slapper!»
«It's the same thing! She got mixed up with Antonov and her father went to the Three Lemons to sort things out. Karimov shot Coffin then got in his car and drove off as if nothing had happened. His bodyguards got rid of the finger prints and went to work on the witnesses…»
«Bollocks!» said the blue-nosed drunkard, nearly knocking his glass over as he waved his arm. «Utter bollocks!» He hesitated as he tried to find the right words but spat and just said again. «Bollocks! Can't have happened.»
«Anything can happen here!» said the fat man, shushing him. «Do you remember them turning off the lights? My neighbour gutted his mother like a chicken then said he'd wanted to do it his whole life but hadn't had the guts. He said she'd tormented him, lived his life for him so that she'd had two lives and he hadn't had even one. He went down for 20 years! And he was a nice chap, a geography teacher.»
Lapin stood in a corner behind the counter, sipping his beer. He chased it down with conversations, turning first to one table then another.
«Savage had no choice but to go on the run,» the fat man went on after a swig.
«What about Saam?» said two lanky men, bending over the table like shadufs. «How could he stand it?»
«Oh, he was pleased. Coffin was out of control. They were all fed up of him being so high-handed! On the other hand, the way they see things, it was a betrayal and so they started settling scores just like the bad old days.»
«There's talk about several people going missing…»
«And the shoot-outs? We could hear them shooting every night!» said a man at the next table turning round to join the conversation.
«You could smell the gunpowder in the air,» the lanky pair agreed, nodding their heads in tandem.
«The papers are saying Trebenko was the first to have had enough and to decide to do something. Everyone could see how he stood with the gang. He wanted everything to be nice and peaceful more than anyone.»
«What's Karimov got to do with it? Saam knocked off Trebenko!» the alcoholic with the broken nose said, interrupting. «Remember the Chief? Who beat him half to death?»
«And he got rid of Antonov because he was an important witness!» said the fat man in a louder voice after clearing his throat. «After all, he saw who shot Coffin and his evidence would outweigh the rest.»