many Soviet children, not really enjoyed it. The discipline wasn’t a problem: Mitya enjoyed discipline, and a uniform, however ill-fitting and badly made. The food had not been a problem for him: he liked things plain. The bullying and cold had not got to him, and the military dentist had probably done him a favour by removing all those teeth. But it was the apparent pointlessness of the service that had caused him a problem. He had failed to be sent to Afghanistan: both he and his mother had been disappointed. He wrote to his divisional commander and asked why his unit was not going: there had been no response. So they had been stationed in the middle of the flat Russian steppe for two years, their only adversaries the drunken local peasants and huge clouds of mosquitoes that ruled the land from May to September.
So the army was not for him. He needed something more direct, a service he could provide locally, with immediate results, and which kept the streets clean of foreign bodies and pestilence. He became a defender of freedom from animal tyranny, a fighter against the disease and nuisance caused by flea-bitten scrag-end dogs: Mitya was a warrior against unauthorized canine infestations. Mitya could not abide a dog. Any dog he saw made Mitya feel sick, the bitter bile rising in his throat, catching at his tonsils, making him cough. But a stray dog: a stray dog made him really mad. A stray dog was an enemy of the state, an enemy of civilization: a personal enemy of Mitya. He contained his loathing through his job, and put his hatred to good use. Any stray in Azov had better be on the lookout: Mitya showed no mercy.
And as the great Soviet Union had finally fallen to pieces and was replaced by a patchwork of republics and autonomous regions, each one jostling the other, he found his own job became semi-autonomous, and he had more freedom to work as he saw fit. While he would never condone the black market, pernicious as it was, it offered up opportunities for armament and persuasion that had previously been out of the question for dog wardens. So, armed with his dog pole, throw net and Taser (not strictly standard issue, but an addition he felt was fully justified), he spent six evenings out of seven patrolling his jurisdiction in the Canine Control Van, or CCV. Mitya was the best Exterminator this side of Kharkov. And the town of Azov relied on him to keep canine vermin at bay, even if they didn’t know it.
This evening, warm and sweet-smelling as only an industrial town on a river in August can be, Mitya was targeting the west side of town, the old quarter, which took in a lot of important staging posts and was always a good hunting ground. His van oiled slowly around the areas beloved of stray dogs: the collage of kiosks selling books, gum, porn, dried fish, vodka and music boxes; the back of the market, where huge bins of rotting mush drew crowds of dogs like flies, with flies as big as bears buzzing around their squirming sores; and the waste-ground outside the shabby church, strewn with begging crones and bones flung down by do-gooders for the dogs that prowled around the old women, and sometimes took a crafty bite out of them when God wasn’t looking.
Mitya started the evening at the kiosks and worked his way around in a clockwise direction. He was swift with his pole: a talented snatcher. He never took on a whole pack. He would observe a group of dogs from a distance and then pick off the weaker specimens one by one as they got distracted and separated. The only way to deal with a whole pack would be by using a stun-grenade or poisonous gas, neither of which was currently approved by the state for dog-warden use, to Mitya’s chagrin. The evening was warm, and Mitya’s skin became wet and sour beneath his close-fitting trousers and regulation shirt. He pulled the van over and took a wet-wipe from his black plastic-leather bum-bag. It was important to try to remain clean and fresh. Mitya had no idea how doggy he smelt. No-one except Andrei the Svoloch ever told him, probably because Andrei the Svoloch was the only person he regularly came in to contact with.
With four matted mongrels already caged and whining in the back, Mitya spotted a lone dog, thin and lank, sitting in a square just off Engels Street on the corner with Karl Marx Avenue. Lone dogs were bad news: even their own canine kind could not stand them. A group of children played nearby. Mitya’s stomach quivered: the dirty dog was salivating, panting like an animal, preparing to savage one of the innocents, there and then. It was Mitya’s duty to spare the child and bring the dog to justice.
‘Master and servant,’ whispered Mitya as he dropped the used wet-wipe into a plastic bag he kept in the van specifically for this purpose, and sprang quietly on to the pavement. He took a few steps into the square and concealed himself behind a set of bins, resting his mini-binoculars on the rim, the better to observe his quarry. He watched, while the dog licked its forepaw, and he blinked, confused: the animal appeared to be a tri-ped.
‘Excuse me?’ a female voice behind him made him jump and drop his mini-binoculars into the open bin with a soft clunk.
‘Christ! Look what you’ve done!’ Mitya thrust his arm into the bin after the binoculars. His fingers came into contact with slime, grit, and soft-boiled cabbage and he winced. He pulled out his hand and turned on the owner of the voice.
‘Oh! It’s you!’ He put his dirty hand behind his back and tried to wipe off his fingers on the edge of the metal bin. It was the angel from the smallest room, Katya. His gaze bounced off the golden hair crowning her head and rested for a moment on her toes, which peeped out from a pair of slightly dog-eared wedge sandals. He found himself imagining his tongue curling around them, and bit on his free knuckle.
‘Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize you were … what were you doing, actually?’
‘I’m working, female citizen.’ Mitya aimed for clipped tones, and tried not to look at the curve of her jeans.
‘Oh, you can call me Katya, you know. You asked so nicely, after all.’
Mitya felt the skin on his face and neck flush hot red, and almost stuttered his response, ‘Yes, but I’m working, and you made me drop my binoculars.’
‘Oh shucks, I am sorry.’ The girl looked genuinely contrite, her brown eyes large and serious.
‘It’s OK. They’re only the regulation ones. Not the special night-vision ones.’
‘Ooh, night-vision binoculars. Wow! Are you spying on those grannies over there?’
‘No, I am not.’
‘What have they done? Are you in the Spetznaz?’
‘No, of course I’m not in the Spetznaz—’
‘But I suppose you wouldn’t be able to tell me if you were!’ She smiled at him and winked in her lopsided way.
‘I’m not in the Spetznaz, Katya. Look, I’m busy right now. What do you want?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing really. To be honest, I just wanted to talk to you.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I’m new in town, and I don’t really know anyone, except my cousin, and I like to chat. You know, just chat. And I know you – sort of. And I was just curious about what you were doing sneaking around like that—’
‘I wasn’t sneaking around.’
‘And you remind me of someone.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m not sure. But it’ll come to me.’ Katya smiled self-consciously and scraped her sandal across the corner of the flower bed, watching intently as the dry earth broke like brown sugar over her toes. She looked up and caught Mitya’s stare.
‘Look, I just wanted to know if you could tell me how to get to the cinema?’
‘The cinema?’ Mitya asked flatly, his face blank.
‘Yes, the cinema. I’ve never been and I’m having a bit of trouble finding it. I’ve been round this block at least three times and no sign. But the tourist map says it should be here. Look – see?’ She leant towards Mitya and pointed to a blob on the badly reproduced map that was supposed to represent the location of the cinema. He observed her golden hair and the way the streetlight picked up slight reddish tones in it around her ears and the nape of her neck.
‘Ooh, what’s that smell?’ she squealed, looking up suddenly, her golden head nearly colliding with