Liza Alexandrova-Zorina - The Little Man

«What about the cops? The witnesses?»

Pipe held a small leather suitcase out to Saam. Bound packages protruded like ribs. The gangster wanted to open it and count the money but had second thoughts.

«That's for current costs. You get the rest when he's sent down.»

«That's not our style. We're very straight-forward here, nothing fancy.»

The old man laughed and stuck his unlit pipe in his mouth.

«Putting a bullet in your rival's forehead's tacky. You don't get to see him suffer. Later you'll start to envy him. You'll be bent over with lumbago and immediately think: ‘His sufferings are already over.' You look in the mirror and see a relic! Women look the other away, children are frightened. And you'll be remembered as an ugly old man as if that's all you'd ever been. Whereas he died young and will be young forever. You're still a novice but at my age you stop being scared of dying. Because you understand that nothing's more terrifying than life.»

Saam's nose itched from this chatter. He couldn't get used to the old man silently moving his lips while what he said came from the device held to his throat. Saam wriggled on his chair, unable to make up his mind to agree yet scared not to.

The old man impatiently fingered the tie that snaked around his throat. Then he tapped the gangster on the hand:

«I'll tell you an amazing story that happened in the town of X a couple of months ago,» he squeaked. «It was evening and people were going home from work. The streets were crowded. A gangster, Coffin, was sitting on the veranda of the Three Lemons with his pals.» Pipe left a long pause after every sentence. «A car braked outside the bar. Karimov got out. It's hard to remember what started the argument but Karimov and Coffin began making threats against one another…»

«So what did they argue about?» Lapin asked, reading through the statement.

«Seems to be about the protection money Coffin extorted from some of the workshops,» said Saam with an enormous yawn. He didn't bother to put a hand over his mouth.

The office was dirty. Cigarette butts stank in the ashtray and the sun glinted off the walls. The investigator was sitting on the table with a thick telephone directory underneath Saam's statement, while the gangster slouched in front of him in the only chair, rocking backwards and forwards as if it were a swing.

«Catching him lying is like trying to nail a sunbeam to the wall,» Lapin thought.

«You can't have truth without lies. Like good and evil,» said Saam as if reading his mind.

He'd come to see Lapin without ringing first, announcing on the doorstep that he wanted to make a clean breast of things. The investigator was so stunned he couldn't speak. When the gangster said it wasn't Savely Savage but Karimov who shot Coffin, intimidating Saam into saying it was Savage, Lapin felt completely out of his depth. He couldn't tell what Saam was up to but he had a suspicion the gangster was playing it blind, wanting to make use of him by taking him for a ride as always.

«Why would Karimov pick a fight? He's not involved. He'll be removed the same way he was appointed — here one day, the other end of the country the next. Why would he quarrel with Coffin about the workforce?»

«Karimov's not like the managers before him. He's stubborn and arrogant. He's canny.»

«You need more than that to kill someone.»

«You don't need much to kill someone,» said Saam pulling a face. «For Karimov the town's the town and the factory's the factory and our authority doesn't extend to its territory. People even say his problems started back in Moscow. Word got out about some scheme or other… He obviously decided he couldn't be doing with any complications. There was an inspection coming up.»

It was as if the old man had materialized behind the investigator, with his electronic voice and spiteful chuckle, crumbling bread for the sparrows darting about under the table. Saam felt he was just moving his lips while Pipe provided the sound like a ventriloquist and his doll. Saam could tell that not once in his long life had Pipe ever lost. Not for nothing was Saam aware that, beneath the scent of expensive perfume, Karimov smelled of a damp, airless room, cold barley porridge and unwashed bodies. Saam trod cautiously through life like a cat on a windowsill. He never played against people who were always lucky so when he took the packed suitcase from the old man, he agreed to play by his rules.

Lapin reminded Saam of the penalty for perjury but the gangster shrugged and practically laughed in his face.

«But I'm here of my own accord.»

The investigator didn't know what to think.

«So how did Karimov kill him?»

«Coffin said, ‘Shoot me!'» said the bouncer from the bar.

«Why?» asked Lapin, shuffling his feet.

«How should I know what goes on in their heads?» The bouncer threw up his arms. «Maybe he was trying to be funny. Maybe he just thought he wouldn't shoot. Saam brought the gun out and everyone was laughing because they didn't think it was loaded. But Karimov checked and when he knew it wasn't empty, he went and fired.»

The bouncer was one of the main witnesses. He'd been standing so close to Coffin that his trousers were spattered with blood. When Saam left, Lapin, confused by his version of the murder, immediately went to the Three Lemons. The investigator had a bad feeling and it didn't let him down. As soon as he started asking questions about the murder of Coffin, there was the bouncer, wringing his hands, and confessing to having lied when he gave his statement about Savely Savage. Lapin, however, didn't believe this hasty confession, blurted out by the bouncer as if he'd been carefully rehearsing his role.

«But you said something completely different before,» Lapin said, showing the bouncer the record of his interview.

The man's shoulders drooped in poorly acted contrition:

«Yes, but you know how intimidating they can be. How many people have just vanished? And why? Because they said the wrong thing, or did the wrong thing, or looked in the wrong direction… We live in terror: the gang on one side and the big guys from Moscow on the other. And I have a family to feed. If you lose your job, you won't get another one.»

Lapin believed the gang had got to Savage and settled their scores over the murder. Why had they decided to hang it on Karimov though? He suspected Saam wanted to blackmail the manager of the factory but he couldn't put the pieces of the mosaic together. There were fragments missing and now they had suddenly started to make a completely different picture. Lapin was losing sleep as he racked his brains over the puzzle.

«Then what happened, after Karimov fired?»

«He got in his car and drove off. They're not scared of anything. They come here and think they can get away with anything! And we're like outsiders in our own homes!»

«So why did you give evidence against Savely Savage?»

The woman snivelled, wiping her face with a handkerchief. Lapin remembered this witness very well: she'd been hanging washing out on the balcony. She gave evidence as if she was recounting her favourite soap opera and her hands, unused to being idle, had either fiddled with her crumpled, stained skirt or adjusted her uncombed hair. Watching her fidget, Lapin lost the thread of the conversation. The woman liked thick soups and would throw in whatever came to hand and when she told a story she would season it with lead-ins and sayings tossed into the narrative like spices into a boiling pot.

«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.