After a while he seemed content, and sank back in his chair.
‘You ready now?’ Beg asked.
The man nodded. Beg pulled out the blue ballpoint. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Akmuhammet Kubankiliev.’
The tip of the pen remained hanging above the paper. ‘Run that by me one more time,’ Beg said.
‘Akmuhammet Kubankiliev.’
‘Why don’t you write it down for me yourself?’ He slid the pen and paper across the table. The man’s hand shook as he wrote his name.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Ashkhabad.’
‘All the way from Turkmenistan.’
‘From the madhouse.’
‘You’re a long way from home, my friend.’
‘The further the better.’
The man raised his left hand to scratch at his right shoulder. Man, this guy has it bad.
‘Fleas?’ Beg asked.
The man shook his head. ‘Skin condition.’
‘Ah.’
Forearms crossed at the chest, he tore at his upper body. Beg tried not to watch, but it was impossible. The hands dug at the sweater like starving animals.
‘Do you think you could stop that?’ Beg asked.
The man shook his head. ‘If I could …’
‘But?’
‘It went away for a while …’ He closed his eyes, as though trying to remember something. ‘I left that nuthouse so that I would get better. The further away I got, the better it was. The whole trip — never bothered me for a moment.’
‘And then?’
The man shook his head. ‘This. Here.’
‘What?’
‘Just the sight of that uniform, I start itching.’
‘My uniform makes you itch?’
Kurbankiliev nodded. ‘That, the walls, you people. Everything.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t help you on that score.’
‘That’s what I figured.’
‘I could take my coat off, if that would help.’
‘No, forget it.’
‘We’re going to talk about the head,’ Beg said. ‘We found it in the baggage. What can you tell me about it?’
The man shrugged. ‘Nothing.’
‘One of you killed him. Someone cut off his head. What can you tell me about that?’
‘I wasn’t there.’
‘This is your one chance to get yourself off the hook, if you’re innocent.’
‘I want my teeth back.’
‘Your teeth?’
‘They were in my pants pocket. I was keeping them.’
‘I’m afraid … your clothes.’ Beg shook his head.
‘What?’
‘We threw it all away. They were so filthy.’
‘They took our clothes, then he stole my teeth.’
‘Why would someone want to steal your teeth?’
‘Gold, what do you think?’
‘I’ll have them check it.’
‘First I want them back, man. They’re my teeth. He has to keep his mitts off of my teeth.’
‘Who do you mean by “he”?’
‘That guard, the fat one.’
‘Just a minute,’ Beg said.
He went out into the hall. In one of the rooms he found a phone and called downstairs.
It took ten minutes before the elevator doors opened and the ward stepped out. He was holding something wrapped in newsprint. He handed it to his superior. Beg unwrapped the package and saw Akmuhammet Kurbankiliev’s almost entire set of teeth, the gold molars and teeth set in a gold retainer.
‘These are the ones,’ the ward said, his head tilted hen-like to one side.
‘What were you thinking …?’
The other man shrugged. ‘I was keeping them for him.’
Beg looked at him, while the warder clasped his hands and waited.
‘Dismissed,’ Beg said, and the man vanished in relief into the elevator.
In the interrogation room, Beg laid the packet on the table and slid it over. The man leaned forward and opened it. He slid a finger between the teeth and molars, feeling them. He looked up. ‘These are mine,’ he said.
‘Take a better look if you like,’ Beg said.
The man nodded. He seemed pleased to see his teeth again. Beg averted his eyes, not to see the brown roots. He lit a cigarette and ran a hand over his jaw. The stubble on his chin felt like sandpaper. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s get down to it.’
The man refolded the packet carefully. It remained on the table.
‘What am I being held for, actually?’ Kurbankiliev asked.
Beg leaned back and folded his hands on his stomach. ‘Attempting to cross the border illegally, and first-degree murder. And desecration of a corpse. But because you’re not from around here, the first charge will probably be dropped.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘But of little import. The other two charges, that’s what I’d worry about if I were you. You’ve been assigned a lawyer. You have a right to that. Only thing is: he’s not coming. They couldn’t get hold of him.’
‘So when’s he coming?’
‘Sometime.’
Kurbankiliev nodded in resignation.
‘The head,’ Beg said.
‘I don’t know who did it.’
‘That’s impossible — you people were on the road together for months.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Whose head is it?’
‘Africa’s. The Ethiopian’s.’
‘Why did he have to die?’
‘Don’t ask me. Because.’
‘Let’s not have any misunderstandings,’ Beg said. ‘It’s not wise to underestimate me.’
That wiggling again. When Kurbankiliev wasn’t scratching himself, he was shimmying with his legs.
‘Ethiopia,’ Beg said.
‘Only because that’s where he came from, at least that’s what we understood. Almost no one ever talked with him besides that, I don’t think. Except for the tall guy, for a while.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘I don’t know him. We knew almost nothing about each other. I think he mentioned his name once …’
‘So where’s “the tall guy” now?’
‘Dead, right? Dead as a doornail.’
‘How did it happen?’
A pitying look. ‘Starvation, all of them. Our own natural cause.’
‘How many of you were there?’
‘Fourteen, fifteen when we started. Two of them walked back right away. They were smart — they had it figured out. We didn’t. We walked in exactly the wrong direction.’ He nodded. ‘There were fourteen of us, not fifteen.’
Beg wrote down the number fourteen, and retraced the ciphers with his pen. Then he drew a circle around them. He asked: ‘Why is the Ethiopian dead?’
‘I’m not the one to ask about that.’
‘I’m going to ask you one more time.’
Beg tapped the tip of his pen on the table and looked at the man from beneath his eyebrows. ‘Why is he dead?’
‘Man, I don’t know. I didn’t have anything to do with it.’
‘Goddamn,’ Beg said calmly. He slid his chair back, got up, and left the room. When he returned, he was carrying a claw hammer. He placed it on the table in front of him.
The hammer had now become the room’s burning vortex; outside it there was nothing at all.
‘All right,’ Beg said, ‘let’s try it again.’
‘What do you want?’ Kurbankiliev said. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’
There was shrillness in his voice.
Beg leaned across the table and grabbed the packet of dentures. He unfolded it, and selected one front tooth from among the rest. It was circled by a frame of gold. The root was stained brown. He picked up the hammer.
‘Okay, here we go again: who did it, and why?’