the noise and heat of the club. ‘Unless it was just bluster,’ he added. ‘Like Briakh.’
‘You’re right about Briakh. Ha! Blusterer Briakh.’
‘What about you?’
Petrov’s face was close to his. His eyes were wide and black and shiny. Lom smelled the fumes of sweetness and alcohol on his breath.
‘I have an idea,’ said Petrov. ‘I have an intention. I have a purpose.’
‘I’d like to hear about it.’
‘You will. When it’s done.’
‘Why not tell me now? Perhaps I can help you. Let me buy you a drink somewhere out of the rain.’
‘Help doesn’t come into it. Help isn’t necessary. And neither is talk. One can either talk or do, but not both, never both. You should tell that to Briakh. Tell all of them back there. They can’t tell talk from do, any of them. That’s their problem.’
Petrov walked on. Lom followed.
‘We should talk though. We have a friend in common, I think.’
Petrov didn’t stop walking. ‘Who?’ he said.
‘Josef Kantor.’
‘Kantor?’
‘You know him then?’
‘You said I did.’
‘I guessed.’
‘Kantor the Crab. Josef Krebs. Josef Cancer. The smell of the camps is in his skin. He can’t wash it off. I think he made himself a shell when he was there and climbed inside it, and he has sat inside it for so long that now he’s all shell. Nothing but shell, shell, and lidless eyes on little stalks staring out of it, like a crab. But people like him. Do you know that, Vishnik’s friend? They think he has charm. They say those crab eyes of his twinkle like Uncle Novozhd. But they’re idiots. There’s no man left in there at all. He’s all crab. Turtle. Cockroach. And shall I tell you something else about him?’ Petrov stopped and turned to Lom, swaying slightly, oblivious of the rain in his face. He began to speak very slowly and clearly. ‘He has some other purpose which is not apparent.’ He began to tap Lom on the chest with a straight forefinger. ‘And. So. Do. You.’
‘Me?’
‘I don’t like you, Vishnik’s friend. I don’t like you at all. Your hair is too short. You look around too much. You keep too many secrets and you play too many games. Vishnik should choose his friends better. You wear him. Like a coat. No, like a beard.’
‘I—’
‘He knows it, and he lets you. That’s a friend. And you’ll kill him because of it. You think I don’t know a policeman when I see one?’
33
It was long after midnight, but not yet morning. Lom lay on the couch in Vishnik’s apartment under a thin blanket, trying to force sleep to come, but it would not. The couch was too small and the stove had gone out long ago. All heat had seeped from the room, along with the illusion of warmth from the Crimson Marmot’s champagne and brandy, leaving him cold and wakeful. Moonlight flooded in through a gap in the curtains: the glare of the two broken moons, wide-eyed and binocular, searchlighting out of a glassy, starless, vapourless sky. The room was drenched in it. The effect was remorseless: every detail was whited, brittle, monochrome. Petrov’s drunken accusation cut at him again and again.
You think I don’t know a policeman when I see one?
One day when he was about fourteen he’d been sent out on some errand, and there was a girl in a green dress in the alleyway by Alter’s. Town boys were gathered around her. Shoving. Tripping. Touching. What’s in your bag? Show us your bag.
Lom could have walked away, but he didn’t.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Leave her alone!’
They’d beaten him. Badly. The big one kept punching him in the face: a boy with a pelt of cropped hair across his skull. Every time the boy punched him in the face Lom fell over. And every time that happened, he shook his head and stumbled back to his feet. And the big one punched him again. And he fell. And got up. At first Lom had shouted at them. Yelled.
‘Fuck off! Leave me alone! I haven’t done anything to you!’
But that soon passed. He’d fallen silent. Fallen into the rhythm of it. Punch. Fall. Stand up. Punch. Fall. Stand up. There was no room for yelling. No breath for it either.
‘I love this,’ one of the boys was saying. ‘Do it again, Savva. Hit him more. Go on. Yes. I love it.’
There was blood on Lom’s face and he hardly knew what was happening. Everything was weightless and distant. The punches hardly hurt now. Every time he fell,