a truck?'
'A van.'
'All right, take them away,' said Geser. 'To some waste ground, well away from the city. Let them be inspected there.'
'And then?'
'And then...' Geser said pensively. 'Then bury them.'
'Are we not going to send them back to their families?'
Geser thought it over. Then suddenly he turned to me.
'Anton, what do you think?'
'I don't know,' I replied honestly. 'Disappeared without trace or killed ... I don't know which is better for the families.'
'Bury them,' Geser ordered. 'When the time comes we'll think about it. Perhaps we'll start quietly exhuming them and sending them back to their families. Invent a story for each one. Do they all have documents?'
'Yes, they were lying in a separate pile. All neat and tidy, the work of a perfectionist.'
Yes, Gennady had always been neat and tidy. He used to lay down polythene sheeting when he drilled holes in the wall, and then carefully cleaned the floor after himself...
'How could we have failed to notice him?' Geser asked in a voice filled with pain. 'How did we fluff it? A vampire killed more than fifty people right under our very noses!'
'Well, none of them are Moscow locals,' Garik said. 'They're from Tajikistan, Moldova, Ukraine...' He sighed. 'Working men who came to Moscow looking for a job. Not registered in Moscow, of course. They lived here illegally. They have places along the main roads, where they stand for a day or two, waiting to be hired. And he's a builder, right? He knew everyone and they knew him. He just drove up and said he needed five men for a job. And he chose them himself, too, the bastard. Then he drove them away. And a week later he came back for some more...'
'Are people really still so sloppy?' Geser asked. 'Even now? Fifty men died, and nobody missed them?'
'Nobody,' Garik said, with a sigh. 'That dead piece of filth... he probably didn't kill them all straight away ... he killed one and the others waited for their turn ?for a day, two, three. In this room. And he put the ones he'd drunk in two polythene bags so they wouldn't stink and stacked them in the corner. The radiators on that side are even switched off. He must have started in the winter...'
'I really feel like killing someone,' Geser hissed through his teeth. 'Preferably a vampire. But any Dark One would do.'
'Then try me,' said Zabulon, casually moving Garik aside as he entered the Saushkin family's sitting room. He yawned and sat down on the divan.
'Don't provoke me,' Geser said quietly. 'I might just take it as an official challenge to a duel.'
A deadly silence fell in the apartment. Zabulon screwed up his eyes and gathered himself. As usual, he was wearing a suit, but without a tie. And for some reason I got the idea that he had chosen the black suit and white shirt deliberately, as a sign of mourning.
Olga and I waited, watching these two Others who were respon sible for what happened on a sixth of the world's land surface.
'Geser, it was a figure of speech,' Zabulon said in a conciliatory tone of voice. He leaned back on the divan. 'You don't think I was aware of this... excess, do you?'
'I don't know,' Geser snapped. But from the tone of his voice it was clear that he knew perfectly well that Zabulon had nothing to do with this business.
'Well, let me tell you,' Zabulon said just as peaceably, 'that I am every bit as outraged as you are, or perhaps even more so. And the entire community of Moscow vampires is outraged and demands the execution of this criminal.'
Geser snorted. And Zabulon finally couldn't resist making a jibe.
'You know, they don't like the idea of their food base being undermined
'I'll give them a food base,' Geser declared in a low, grave voice. 'I'll keep a lid on the conserved blood for five years.'
'Do you think the Inquisition will support you?' Zabulon asked.
'1 think so,' said Geser, finally turning round and looking him in the eye. 'I think so. And you will support my request.'
Zabulon lost the game of stare-me-down. The Dark One sighed, turned away, looked at me and shrugged, as if to say: 'What am I to do with him, eh?' He took out a long, frivolous pink cigarette and lit it. Then he said:
'They've gone completely wild...'
'Then you make sure they don't go wild.'
'Their children can't grow up without this, you know that. Without fresh blood they never reach