People Die by Kevin Wignall
For my parents and brothers
“Born Lucky”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my agent, Jonny Geller. I’d also like to thank Jon Wood for making the editorial process such a smooth one. And finally, I tip my hat to the one who got away—you know who you are.
1
Moscow, November
JJ hesitated at the door. He could hear a voice in the room and stopped to listen but realized after just a few seconds that Bostridge was talking to a prostitute. He was talking his way through putting on a condom, the strange reassuring tones middle-aged men seemed to fall into when they were in bed with young women, all guilt, and denial and embarrassment.
So much for the information. Viner had stressed one thing above all about Bostridge, that he was a real family man, never played away from home, that he’d definitely be on his own at that time of the evening. And Viner of all people should have known better, the messy unpredictable ways people went about getting sex.
He eased the lock and walked in—a large room running to darkness at the edges, pockets of light, one of them around the bed. Bostridge was kissing her on the neck and shoulder like it was something he’d seen in some “better lovemaking” video. He clearly hadn’t heard JJ come in. She saw him straight away though, and moved awkwardly, at first earning more misplaced reassurance before Bostridge too realized there was someone else with them.
He glanced across the room and saw JJ and then sprang away from her, almost comically, as if trying to suggest the two of them were just sharing the bed. It was typical of men like him, to move instinctively away from the one thing he might have used as a shield against the bullets. Not that it would have made any difference in this case.
JJ put one through his heart, another in his head, the silencer producing two concentrated little sneezes that seemed to stop the clocks. For a while the three of them were suspended there in the cozy fabric-light of the table lamps, like a tableau in a wax museum, the moment captured for people to speculate on what might have happened before or after, and on the characters: heartless killer, hapless victim, the girl between.
It was the girl who moved first, sliding calmly from the bed without looking at either of them. He was taken aback by how young she looked, easily still in her teens, corn blond hair cut boyish, loose limbs, pale skin, almost painfully beautiful. No wonder Bostridge had been embarrassed.
He was waiting for her to grab her clothes and leave while she could, like any other prostitute would have done, knowing the ropes, knowing that to stay around or get hysterical or look like anything other than a prostitute was to ask for a bullet. For whatever reason though, maybe just her youth, this one didn’t know the ropes, and instead got down on the floor and ran her hand under the edge of the bed, as if looking for an earring or some other piece of lost jewelry. He stared at her, transfixed, not sure at first whether she was in shock, oblivious to any danger, even to the fact that he was still there, watching, unable to take his eyes off her easy nakedness. He was hooked now anyway, wanting to know what she was looking for.
Finding nothing with her hand, she put the side of her face to the floor and looked underneath the bed, then got up and walked around to the other side. She seemed unhurried, completely unruffled by the death she’d just witnessed, a death that filled the room now with a visceral charge that was hard to ignore.
But Bostridge could have been sleeping it off for the complete disregard she was showing him as she moved around his corpse, as though she’d been in on the kill, as though she’d merely been biding her time in his grasp, waiting for the hitman so that she could get on with her part of the job. She hadn’t been in on it though, and continued to ignore JJ too, like he didn’t matter, like the two of them were in different dimensions, ghosts to each other.
This time she found what she was looking for, visible relief on her face as she pulled it from under the bed, something large and flat, a book or picture tied up in heavy cloth. She held it tight against her chest, lifted her clothes from one chair, her furs from another, shoes from the floor, never once easing her hold on it, clutching it against her breasts like she was suddenly trying to cover her nudity.