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few chairs, and an icon of the Virgin Mary at her most melancholic hanging from a wall. Frost made the windows opaque. They could do whatever they wanted with him and no one would know. Inside the Directorate, Reikhman had a reputation for being an invisible operator, for leaving no traces. But today that would not be necessary.
    Konstantin handcuffed Pyotr’s hands behind him.
    ‘The musora ?’ Reikhman said, using the slang for cops – ‘trash’.
    ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ said Konstantin.
    ‘What is this? Who the fuck are you?’ barked Pyotr.
    ‘You can call me the tax man,’ said Reikhman, and the authority with which he said it silenced Pyotr.
    ‘Boil some fat,’ Reikhman said to Iryna.
    Pyotr had fallen for her, utterly. Iryna and Konstantin had stopped by late one night, saying they had a problem with their motor. Konstantin had left for the next village, but Iryna stayed. ‘Have a vodka,’ Pyotr had said. ‘Have another.’ But his tongue had been far too loose.
    Now Iryna moved behind Pyotr over to the hob, lit the gas, put on a frying pan, poured some cooking oil. Pyotr had to crane his neck to see what she was doing.
    ‘Get my case,’ Reikhman said.
    Konstantin left and returned with an aluminium suitcase. Reikhman unlocked it and took out a Canon 5D and a small, folding tripod. He set up the tripod, fixed the camera to it and switched it to high-definition video, then focused in on Pyotr sitting on the wooden chair, side-on to camera, hands behind his back, and pressed play. On the hob, the fat started to spit.
    ‘What is this?’ repeated Pyotr, but this time with a catch in his voice, a knowledge that whatever was going to happen would not be good.
    ‘Get some sugar.’
    Iryna found a bag of sugar and poured it into a cup.
    ‘The fuck’s going on?’ This time there was a definite whine in Pyotr’s voice, something close to – on the edge of – fear.
    Reikhman took out a mini tape recorder from his coat pocket and turned it on. The kitchen was filled with Pyotr, boasting in a loud voice to Iryna just two nights before: ‘The little chap? Little Zoba? Some other fellow had got his ma up the duff. Then, he disappears. But her new man brought her here, and he hated the little guy. Only one word for it. Bastard . Thing is, he had two funny bumps on his head, covered by hair, but you could feel them. Horns of the devil, see? In the playground, we’d say, “Where’s the devil’s bastard? Let’s hunt the devil’s bastard! Let’s hunt little Zoba!”’
    Pyotr’s sing-song voice recaptured the rhythm of the playground after all these years.
    ‘He’d run, but he was small and I’d catch him and give him a good thumping. No one liked him. He was creepy even then. Once a bastard, always a bastard, eh? Have some more of my hooch . . . hic .’
    Reikhman turned off the micro-recorder.
    Silence. Only the fat jumping in the pan and the faint wheeze of the bully’s breathing.
    Reikhman reached down to his case and took out a gas mask. In the army they called it a slon or ‘the Elephant’, because the grey corrugated cylinder extending from the filter suggested an elephant’s trunk. Unscrewing the filter, he stuffed a cloth up the trunk, then stepped over to Pyotr and placed the gas mask over his head. Reikhman returned to sit behind the camera, checked the focus, the composure of the shot.
    ‘Take off his trousers.’
    ‘What are you doing to me?’ Muffled as his words were through the gas mask, there was nothing indistinct about the tremble in Pyotr’s voice. Now the fear was unmistakable. The red light on the camera watched him, unblinking.
    Konstantin moved forwards, but Reikhman shook his head.
    ‘Not you. You ,’ he said motioning to Iryna.
    She knelt down in front of Pyotr and tugged, in vain.
    ‘It’s an all-in-one,’ she said, half laughing.
    ‘Get a knife, scissors. Cut off his trousers.’
    She found some scissors in a drawer and crudely cut away the dirty white