Matryona is at the window, craning down over the street. There are quick tears in her eyes, but she is too excited to be sad. 'Will he be safe, do you think?' she asks; and then, without waiting for an answer: 'Shall I go with him? He can pretend he is blind and I am leading him.' But it is just a passing idea.

He stands close behind her. It is almost dark; snow is beginning to fall; soon her mother will be home.

'Do you like him?' he asks.

'Mm.'

'He leads a busy life, doesn't he?'

'Mm.'

She barely hears him. What an unequal contest! How can he compete with these young men who come from nowhere and vanish into nowhere breathing adventure and mystery? Busy lives indeed: she is the one who should be wachsam.

'Why do you like him so much, Matryosha?'

'Because he is Pavel Alexandrovich's best friend.'

'Is that true?' he objects mildly. 'I think I am Pavel Alexandrovich's best friend. I will go on being his friend when everyone else has forgotten him. I am his friend for life.'

She turns away from the window and regards him oddly, on the point of saying something. But what? 'You are only Pavel Alexandrovich's stepfather'? Or something quite different: 'Do not use that voice when you speak to me'?

Pushing the hair away from her face in what he has come to recognize as a gesture of embarrassment, she tries to duck under his arm. He stops her bodily, barring her way. 'I have to…' she whispers – 'I have to hide the clothes.'

He gives her a moment longer to feel her powerless-ness. Then he stands aside. 'Throw them down the privy,' he says. 'No one will look there.'

She wrinkles her nose. 'Down?' she says. 'In…?'

'Yes, do as I say. Or give them to me and go back to bed. I'll do it for you.'

For Nechaev, no. But for you.

He wraps the clothes in a towel and steals downstairs to the privy. But then he has second thoughts. Clothes among the human filth: what if he is underestimating the nightsoil collectors?

He notices the concierge peering at him from his lodge and turns purposefully toward the street. Then he realizes he has come without his coat. Climbing the stairs again, he is all at once face to face with Amalia Karlovna, the old woman from the first floor. She holds out a plate of cinnamon cakes as if to welcome him. 'Good afternoon, sir,' she says ceremoniously. He mutters a greeting and brushes past.

What is he searching for? For a hole, a crevice, into which the bundle that is so suddenly and obstinately his can disappear and be forgotten. Without cause or reason, he has become like a girl with a stillborn baby, or a murderer with a bloody axe. Anger against Nechaev rises in him again. Why am I risking myself for you, he wants to cry, you who are nothing to me? But too late, it seems. At the instant he accepted the bundle from Matryona's hands, a shift took place; there is no way back to before.

At the end of the corridor, where one of the rooms stands empty, lies a heap of plaster and rubble. He scratches at it halfheartedly with the toe of his boot. A workman stops his trowelling and, through the open door, regards him mistrustfully.

At least there is no Ivanov to follow him around. But perhaps Ivanov has been replaced by now. Who would the new spy be? Is this very workman paid to keep an eye on him? Is the concierge?

He stuffs the bundle under his jacket and makes for the street again. The wind is like a wall of ice. At the first corner he turns, then turns again. He is in the same blind alley where he found the dog. There is no dog today. Did the dog die the night he abandoned it?

He sets the bundle down in a corner. The curls, pinned to the hat, flap in the wind, both comical and sinister. Where did Nechaev get the curls – from one of his sisters? How many little sisters does he have, all itching to snip off their maiden locks for him?

Removing the pins, he tries in vain to tear the hat in two, then crumples it and stuffs it up the drainpipe to which the dog had been tied. He tries to do the same with the dress, but the pipe is too narrow.

He can feel eyes boring into his back. He turns. From a second-floor window two children are staring down at him, and behind them a shadowy third person, taller.

He tries to pull the hat out of the pipe but cannot reach it. He curses his stupidity. With the pipe blocked, the gutter will overflow. Someone will investigate, and the hat will be found. Who would push a hat up a pipe – who but a guilty soul?

He remembers Ivanov again – Ivanov, called Ivanov so often that the name has settled on him like a hat. Ivanov was murdered. But Ivanov was not wearing a hat, or not a woman's hat. So the hat cannot be traced to Ivanov. On the other hand, might it not be Ivanov's murderer's hat? How easy for a woman to murder a man: lure him down an alley, accept his embrace against a wall, and then, at the climax of the act, search his ribs and sink a hatpin into his heart – a hatpin, that leaves no blood and only a pinprick of a wound.

He goes down on his knees in the comer where he tossed the hatpins, but it is too dark to find them. He needs a candle. But what candle would stay alive in this wind?

He is so tired that he finds it hard to get to his feet. Is he sick? Has he picked up something from Matryona? Or is another fit on its way? Is that what it portends, this utter exhaustion?

On all fours, raising his head, sniffing the air like a wild animal, he tries to concentrate his attention on the horizon inside himself. But if what is taking him over is a fit, it is taking over his senses too. His senses are as dull as his hands.

14. The police

He has left his key behind, so has to knock at the door. Anna Sergeyevna opens it and stares in surprise. 'Have you missed your train?' she asks. Then she takes in his wild appearance – the shaking hands, the moisture dripping from his beard. 'Is something wrong? Are you ill?'

'Not ill, no. I have put off my departure. I will explain everything later.'

There is someone else in the room, at Matryona's bedside: a doctor evidently, young, cleanshaven in the German fashion. In his hand he has the brown bottle from the pharmacy, which he sniffs, then corks disapprovingly. He snaps his bag shut, draws the curtain to across the alcove. 'I was saying that your daughter has an inflammation of the bronchi,' he says, addressing him. 'Her lungs are sound. There is also – '

He interrupts. 'Not my daughter. I am only a lodger here.'

With an impatient shrug the doctor turns back to Anna Sergeyevna. 'There is also – I cannot neglect to say this – a certain hysterical element present.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means that as long as she is in her present excited state we cannot expect her to recover properly. Her excitement is part of what is wrong with her. She must be calmed down. Once that has been achieved, she can be back in school within days. She is physically healthy, there is nothing wrong with her constitution. So as a treatment I recommend quiet above all, peace and quiet. She should stay in bed and take only light meals. Avoid giving her milk in any of its forms. I am leaving behind an embrocation for her chest and a sleeping-draught for use as required, as a calmative. Give her only a child's dose, mind you – half a teaspoon.'

As soon as the doctor has left he tries to explain himself. But Anna Sergeyevna is in no mood to listen. 'Matryosha says you have been shouting at her!' she interrupts him in a tense whisper. 'I won't have that!'

'It's not true! I have never shouted at her!' Despite the whispering he is sure that Matryona, behind the curtain, overhears them and is gloating. He takes Anna Sergeyevna by the arm, draws her into his room, closes the door. 'You heard what the doctor said – she is overexcited. Surely you cannot believe every word she says in that state. Has she told you the entire story of what happened here this morning?'