Gábor recognized him. His name was Máté something, a car mechanic and small-time loan shark. He was a short, stocky man wearing a shirt several sizes too small for his belly. It made him look like a pig dressed in a T-shirt. A train rushed along the tracks, casting light on the crime scene. In the fleeting light the blood looked black. He had been stabbed in the neck and stomach. His trousers were darkened by a stripe of urine. He stumbled through the ditch, looked at Gábor, or beyond him, as if already looking beyond this reality, towards the place he would soon enter. Then he collapsed on the roadside, twitched a couple of times, and moved no more.

Gábor looked at the killer, and it occurred to him that he would have to give a description of him when this was all over. He tried to organize his thoughts, quickly record the physical traits so he could reconstruct the scene later and use the most appropriate, most precise expressions to describe the killer. A man in his late twenties, denim jacket, short spiky hair, bloodshot eyes, a twisted nose, as if it had been put on his face wrong. The nose made it click. It was Feri, from the Outskirts Pub. He always drank small spritzers in the corner, two at a time, finishing them off in quick succession. He has a knife, Gábor thought, he has a knife in his hand, dripping with a dead man’s blood.

Then he was struck by a chilling thought. There would be no police interrogation. He wouldn’t have to describe Feri ever in his life. Gábor kept thinking that he should run. If he outran Feri and beat him to the pub, which was still a good thousand meters away, he would be safe. Or he could stay where he was and try to act like he hadn’t seen anything at all.

Feri licked the corner of his mouth.

‘I had to do it. He was asking for too much. He broke a promise. A gentleman’s handshake,’ he said. ‘You know how it is. Enough is enough.’

Gábor nodded. His mouth was too dry to speak.

‘I know you from the pub,’ Feri continued. ‘So why don’t we just go there, hm? A couple of rounds on me. We’ll watch a bit of TV. Forget what you saw.’