Part 4 — They stopped me on the road for no reason and put handcuffs on me, but when they took one thing from my pocket, both policemen froze

…the recording broke off where Levan’s breathing quickened.

Silence fell over the road.

Beridze took his hand out of his pocket, but it was already too late. Several cars could be heard in the distance. The investigative-service team was coming.

“Turn off the phone,” he told me.

“I can’t.”

“Victoria, you do not understand whom you are fighting.”

“Now, for the first time, I understand exactly.”

His calm face collapsed. He looked at the policemen.

“Get into the car. Now.”

Zurab did not move.

“Chief, this is already over.”

“Shut up!”

The first policeman looked toward me. A few minutes earlier, the woman he had humiliated by the roadside, I was now the only person who could protect him from Beridze.

“I am not going to protect you,” I told him. “But I will tell the truth.”

The patrol cars soon surrounded us. Elene was the first to get out, holding a folder in her hand. Two investigators and a prosecutor came behind her.

“Irakli Beridze,” Elene said, “you are under arrest on charges of abuse of authority, destruction of evidence, extortion, and organizing an attempt on a person’s life.”

Beridze smiled bitterly.

“You have one recording against me.”

Elene opened the folder.

“No. We have twenty-nine recordings, testimony from nine victims, restored roadside-camera footage, bank transfers, and your signature on the document closing Levan Meladze’s case.”

Beridze’s smile disappeared for the first time.

“This is impossible.”

“You thought it was impossible only because you considered everyone frightened.”

They put handcuffs on him.

Zurab immediately called his own lawyer’s number, but a few minutes later he hung up angrily.

“He is not coming,” he said.

“Who?”

“My lawyer. He told me he was withdrawing from the case.”

The first policeman stood by the car door and looked at his hands. Elene addressed him too.

“You are also under arrest.”

“I was only following orders.”

“An order did not force you to slam a woman against a car.”

Zurab lowered his head.

“Nor to put handcuffs on her.”

I was not happy about their situation. I simply felt that for the first time I no longer needed to prove their lies. The truth had begun to speak for itself.

Three days later, we listened to the recording of their first meeting in the investigators’ room. An old heater hummed in the room, and cold coffee stood on the table.

My voice could be heard in the recording:

“Are you sure you want to continue this?”

Then came the first policeman’s laughter.

“Are you threatening us?”

They heard their own words. This time they could not hide their voices, change their tone, or say that I was exaggerating.

Beridze sat on a chair and looked at the wall.

“This conversation has been taken out of context,” he said.

Elene stopped the audio.

“Then listen to the end.”

Beridze’s voice sounded in the recording:

“She will soon find out what happened to Levan too. Sometimes family is the best weapon.”

Everyone in the room fell silent.

Beridze closed his eyes.

“I did not say that.”

“You did,” I answered. “And now, for the first time, hear what it sounds like in someone else’s ear.”

That was the moment when he finally understood that he could no longer escape his own words.

A week later we opened Levan’s apartment. A thin layer of dust lay in the rooms. His camera lay on the windowsill, and beside it was a half-burned candle. In the study everything was as it had been before his death: books on the floor, a map attached to the wall, and an empty memory card placed in the desk drawer.

But one thing weighed on me most.

A photograph from our childhood had remained on his desk. I was twelve, and Levan was fifteen. We were both holding a paper kite that the river carried away that day.

On the back of the photograph, only one sentence was written: “If you ever remain alone, continue anyway.”

I put the photograph in my bag.

Several weeks later the case went to court. The testimonies continued for a long time. The victims stood up one after another and spoke about the same road, the same method, and the same fear.

Some of them said aloud for the first time what had happened to them.

I did not attend every hearing. I no longer needed to hear every detail again. The truth already existed, even if I was not in the room.

Two months later I changed cities. I moved to a small seaside town and began working at a training center for investigative journalism. In the mornings I opened the window, drank coffee from a small clay cup, and taught young people how to preserve evidence when everyone was forcing them to be silent.

Levan’s photograph stood in the corner of my desk.

One morning an eleven-year-old girl entered the room. She was holding a drawing—two people stood on a road, and above them a large yellow sun was drawn.

“Is this you?” she asked me.

“My brother and me.”

“Where is he now?”

Snow was beginning outside the window. The first snow that winter.

“There, where people no longer allow anyone to hide the truth,” I answered.

The girl thought for a little while and added a third figure to the drawing.

“This is you now,” she told me. “You are no longer standing alone.”

That evening I received a message from Beridze. It had been sent from prison.

“Victoria, everything was different. Come, listen to me at least once. We can finish this together.”

A second message came a few minutes later.

“Levan did not want to destroy you either.”

I looked at the screen for a long time. In the past, I probably would have abandoned everything at such words and looked for an answer. But now I knew that sometimes the answer is not what you say, but what you no longer agree to.

I put the phone aside.

I did not reply.

That same night I moved Levan’s photograph on the desk. Behind it I placed my old silver badge—the one the policeman had taken from my pocket that day, and at the sight of which he had first lost color.

For a long time I thought about how strange the power of one small object is. They thought that I was hiding something dangerous in my pocket. In fact, there was only my name, my authority, and the first door leading to the truth.

The next morning I went outside. Snow already covered the entire street. The tracks of cars could be seen on the road, side by side, moving forward.

I closed my hand around the badge and for the first time no longer felt its weight.

The road was still continuing.

But this time I was no longer standing before it alone.

The truth always finds its way.