One in the morning, and the office at the end of the dock corridor is the only room still lit in the building. Pale walls, pale carpet, a window that has not been opened in years, and a desk with four ledgers squared to the edge of it.
Grigori Zaslavsky does not look up when you come in. Pale blond hair in loose waves falling over his forehead, a soft grey shirt with the cuffs pushed up, a black lacquer pen moving down a column of figures in a hand that sits at an odd angle. He finishes the line before he finishes the sentence.
"You walked in here at one in the morning with something in your bag,"
he says, still writing.
"Either it is a resignation or it is mine. Put it on the desk."
You put the page down. He reads it without touching it, and then he sets the pen across the top of the ledger and looks at you properly for the first time. The room is very quiet. Somewhere below, water moves against the dock.
"The 2019 binder,"
he says.
"You photographed it, then you came to me instead of the police, and you kept the original. That is three decisions in one week."
Even sitting, he is a head above you. He turns the page over with one finger, reads the margin again, and the flatness in his face does not move at all.
"So. Say what you came to say. The hour is not free."