«I was young once too, you know,» he said, patting Lapin on the back and inviting him to share his meal. «Stubborn, like you, naïf, kind… And now my life's like an old pair of pants… Why should that be, lad?»
The cramped room smelt of old age and sour milk. Damp rose from the walls that were papered with magazine covers and Lapin, shivering, thrust his freezing hands into his pockets. Seeing this, the old man threw an old blanket round his shoulders and, topping up their tea, got out a jar of jam.
«I'm sure you're thinking: ‘You're not long for this world, old man, so tell me everything you're scared of before you go'… Right?» he said, narrowing his eyes.
Lapin smiled, warming his hands on his steaming cup.
«And if I am?»
The old man didn't say any more, just licked the spoon and stuck it in the jar.
«Are you scared of them?» Lapin asked, trying to get back to the subject, but the old man, popped a spoonful of jam into his mouth, a sign that he had nothing to say.
Lapin looked at the faded pictures on the walls and remembered the events of years gone by that had flared up as news headlines and been instantly forgotten, leaving behind a void and an aftertaste of printer's ink. In the same way, the archives, yellow with age, smelt only of paper and dust while the crimes themselves seemed invented, like a detective story.
«Drop it. You won't dig anything up about them and, if you do, you won't send them to jail. They'll kill you first. And if they don't, you still won't change anything. New ones will come and take their place!» said the old man, frowning. The hopelessness of what he said was contagious and Lapin caught it like a cold.
«Is your Dad still alive?» asked the old man by way of goodbye.
«He's dead,» Lapin replied. Then added, «He didn't kill himself.»
«Not even cockroaches kill themselves,» muttered the old man. «They get flattened with slippers but here in our town, well…»
From then on, the old man would ask Lapin to stop for tea and the investigator felt as though confessions were gathering on the tip of his tongue. He had already lived on his own for a long time and Lapin was his only visitor apart from the demons that cackled in the corners of the room. Lapin grew quite attached to him, talking to him about his job, about his Dad and taking revenge on the gang, about the fact that he couldn't find a single girlfriend in the entire town and about Chief of Police Trebenko who longed to be rid of his pushy junior.
«Come back again,» the old man told him, wiping away a tear. «It's so lonely without you, son…»
Then once, as he left work early in the morning, Lapin saw the old man on the bench just outside the station. There was a wistful, plaintive expression in his colourless eyes and his head hung at an unnatural angle from his broken neck. Putting his arms round the old man, Lapin felt the same cold coming off him that had come off the walls of his room. He went back into his office, wrote out his resignation notice and swapped the police for the Prosecutor's Office.
Whenever Lapin met Trebenko he felt a chill pass through him as it had that morning he put his arms round the dead old man to ask for his forgiveness. Now, coming across the colonel by the veranda, he shivered out of habit and turned up his collar.
«This is the most extraordinary murder in many years,» he told Trebenko keeping his eyes on the toes of his boots.
«Murder's murder. They're all the same,» said Trebenko, pulling a face. «One guy kills another and hey, three's a crowd. There's nothing for the Prosecutor's Office to do here. We haven't got enough room ourselves. Get out of here, Lapin. Stick to your own business.»
The investigator wanted to laugh in his face but, blushing furiously, he stepped back over the striped police tape and with one last look at Coffin's empty table, he ran across the square with the feeling that today, for the first time in several years, he wouldn't need to take anything to help him sleep.
Once Severina had moved in with Saam, Coffin started to spend more time with them. Catching his eye, Saam clenched his teeth and pretended not to see how Coffin was grinning at her budding breasts. Once when they were drinking at the Three Lemons, it was too much and he put his hand on Coffin's.
«There are plenty of girls. Take any one of them but leave this one alone!»
Coffin said nothing, knocking over his glass in silence.
One day he turned up when he knew Saam wasn't home.
«If God made you ugly, it was because he wanted to punish you. If He made you pretty, he wanted to punish those around you…» Coffin spent a long time practising how to say this, trying out various voices but they still came out wrong and, losing his temper, he reverted to his usual tone: «And you're hot!»
Severina's hands shook so much as she poured the tea that she spilt it on the tablecloth. Coffin, jaws working, stared at her for a long time then, knocking over the table, he dragged her off into the bedroom.
At the children's home, the kids had slept head-to-toe and even three to a bed when there wasn't enough room. Girls and boys shared the same rooms. They were in and out of each other's beds, used to being in an institution where everything around them belonged to no-one in particular and to everyone all at the same time. Bodies, included. Outside boys liked the girls from the children's home because they would go to bed without a fuss, unaware of what they should or shouldn't do.
When Coffin left, however, Severina burst into tears. She felt as if there were greasy stains on her body that would never wash off and spent the whole evening in the bath, trying to scrub away his kisses with a loofah.
Coffin began to call round with presents and flowers that he left on the bed-side table and Severina threw out of the window. She said nothing to Saam, scared that he'd drive her away so that when she became pregnant she didn't know whose it was.
She rushed round to the children's home and sobbed on her girlfriends' bosoms. They talked over one another as they offered prescriptions they'd overheard or come up with themselves. Severina tried them all. She sat for hours in a hot bath and hit herself in the stomach. When she went to the toilet in the Three Lemons, a dark red clot came away that she flushed down the toilet and in the bowl she suddenly saw the drunken nanny, keening, «You poor, unfortunate things.»
Saam started to notice Severina blushing and biting her lips till they bled and Coffin grinning at her, and jealousy gnawed at his heart like a horde of mice. One evening, the gang had nothing to do and were knocking back beers, Severina was washing up loudly at the sink and Coffin put down his beer and went to find her in the kitchen. Saam waited a moment, then jumped up after him, arriving just as he put his arms round the girl's thin, bony shoulders and whispered into her ear. Severina gasped and dropped a plate. Coffin jumped back. His stare raked Saam's face.
They went outside and lit their cigarettes in silence. The moon clung to the old weathercock that creaked in the wind and the minutes dragged themselves out like a funeral procession. Saam went for his knife. Coffin grabbed his. For a long time, they stood breathing heavily, neither able to make the first move.
«There are plenty of girls,» said Coffin, lowering his knife in a conciliatory gesture. «You and me, we're like two hands. It'd be stupid for one to cut the other off.»
Saam put his knife away and, after a long drag on his cigarette, he tossed the butt away.