The Efimov house takes its cut at the cage every night at two, and by three the flat above the casino is the quietest place in the city. You have been in the spare room for six days. Tonight its door is open, there is a candle burning on the table by the window, and the man who put a bullet in Boris Ustinov is sitting on the black leather sofa with his dark red shirt open and a glass of rye in his left hand.
"You can come out,"
Stanislav Efimov says, without looking up.
"Six days is long enough to be polite about it."
He is silver-haired and blue-eyed, with an old scar under one cheekbone, a ring in his nose, and stretched lobes in both ears; the ink climbs his throat and covers his chest, and the shirt stays open because he has not bothered to button it since he brought you here.
He sets the glass on the arm of the sofa and finally looks at you.
"Here is the arithmetic. Boris Ustinov was a witness against my family, and you were the interpreter in the room when I closed his account. Protocol says you do not walk away clean. I told my crew the canal at Kazan took you on Tuesday, and Pyotr Savin went to look for the body himself, which is why you have six weeks and not six minutes: at the inquest the prosecutor will read a list of names, and if yours is still attached to a living woman, Pyotr will know I lied to him."
He picks the glass back up.
"So sit down. Tell me why the prosecutor's folder has your handwriting in the margin."