‘I mean. Maybe I could be happier? You know, five per cent. I’m OK.’
‘I can help with that. Five per cent, ten, fifty, whatever it might be. That’s my job. I can’t fix you, but I can make you run a little better.’
‘You can’t fix me?’
‘Humans can’t be fixed,’ says Ibrahim. ‘We’re not lawnmowers. I wish we were.’
‘Might be fun, mightn’t it?’ says Connie. ‘Unburden all my secrets. What do you charge? To buy suits like that?’
‘Sixty pounds an hour. Or less if someone can’t afford it.’
‘I’ll pay you two hundred an hour,’ says Connie.
‘No, it’s just sixty.’
‘If you charge less for someone who can’t afford it, then charge more for someone who can. You’re a businessman. How often can we meet?’
‘Once a week is best at first. And my schedule is pretty flexible.’
‘OK, I’ll sort it here. They lap this sort of thing up, mental health. And I’ll look into Heather Garbutt in the meantime. Girly chat, what’s your star sign, did you push a car off a cliff.’
‘Thank you. I shall look forward to speaking with you,’ says Ibrahim. ‘And seeing if I can persuade you not to murder Ron.’
‘Great,’ says Connie. ‘Let’s do Thursdays.’
‘Actually,’ says Ibrahim, ‘can we do Wednesdays? Thursdays are the one day I have something on.’
12
The last time Elizabeth had a bag and blindfold pulled from her head was in 1978. She was in the harshly lit administration block of a Hungarian abattoir, and was about to be questioned and tortured by a Russian Army general with a chest of bloodstained medals. As events transpired, there was to be no torture, as the General had left his tool bag in the car, and the car had driven off for the evening. So, in the end, she had got away with light bruising and an anecdote for dinner parties.
What had he wanted, the General? Elizabeth forgets. Something which no doubt seemed terribly important at the time. She knew people who had died for the blueprints to agricultural machinery. Very few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.
As her blindfold is removed this time, there is no glare of strip lights, no grinning General and no blood-smeared filing cabinets. She is in a library, in a soft leather chair. The room is lit by candles, the kind Joyce buys. The man who removed her blindfold and uncuffed her has silently left the room and is out of her sight.
Elizabeth looks over to Stephen. He arches an eyebrow at her, and says, ‘Well, this is a to-do.’
‘Isn’t it?’ she agrees. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Right as rain, darling, you just keep your wits about you. I’m out of the old comfort zone here. Bash on the bonce, but no harm done. Probably knocked some sense into me.’
‘Your back all right?’
‘Nothing a Panadol won’t fix. Any idea what’s afoot here? Anything I can do to help?’
Elizabeth shakes her head. ‘This might be one for me.’
Stephen nods. ‘I’ll look after morale, and follow your lead. I don’t suppose we’d be in such comfortable chairs if they meant to kill us? You’d know better than me?’
‘I suspect they want to speak to me about something or other.’
‘And decide whether to kill us based on what you have to say?’
‘Possibly.’
They are both silent for a minute.
‘I love you, Elizabeth.’
‘Don’t be so sentimental, Stephen.’
‘Well, either way, there’s never a dull moment,’ says Stephen.
The door to the library opens, and a very tall, bearded man stoops through the doorway.
‘Viking, is it?’ Stephen whispers to Elizabeth.
The man takes his place in an armchair opposite Elizabeth and Stephen. His frame overflows the chair, like a teacher sitting on a classroom chair.
‘So you are Elizabeth Best?’ he asks.
‘That rather depends on who you are,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Have we met?’
The man takes something from his pocket. ‘Do you mind if I vape?’
Elizabeth holds out her palms in invitation.
‘Terribly bad for you,’ says Stephen. ‘I read a thing.’
The man nods, takes a drag on his vape and turns to Stephen.
‘And you must be Stephen? Sorry to drag you into this.’
‘Not a bit of it. Par for the course with this one. Afraid I didn’t catch your name?’
The man ignores Stephen’s question, and returns his attention to Elizabeth.
‘You have been very busy for an old woman.’
What is the accent? Swedish?
Elizabeth notices that Stephen is scanning the shelves of the library, eyes opening in wonder from time to time.
‘Now, Elizabeth,’ says the Viking. ‘To business. I believe you stole some diamonds?’
‘I see,’ says Elizabeth. At least she knows where she is now. No ancient history, simply their last little adventure. It felt like she had wrapped the whole thing up with a pretty little bow, but no good deed goes unpunished. ‘Am I to take it that I stole them from you, and not from Martin Lomax after all?’
‘No, no,’ says the Viking. ‘You stole them from a man named Viktor Illyich.’
‘Viktor Illyich?’ Elizabeth takes it all back. Ancient history at its very finest. ‘The most dangerous man in the Soviet Union’, they used to call him. She has to hand it to herself, however. Whatever jolt of electricity passed through her body at the mention of the name ‘Viktor Illyich’, no outside observer would have guessed she had ever heard it before.
‘And you work for this Viktor Illyich?’
The Viking laughs. ‘Me? No. I work for no one. I am a lone wolf.’
‘We all work for someone, old chap,’ says Stephen, eyes still scanning the books. He’s up to something, God bless him.
‘Not me,’ says the Viking. ‘I’m the boss.’ He howls like a wolf, for an uncomfortably long time. Elizabeth waits, patiently, for his howl to end.
‘So why am I here?’ asks Elizabeth. ‘Not your diamonds, not your boss’s diamonds, not your business.’
‘I don’t care about diamonds. You think I care about twenty million? It’s nothing.’
The Viking leans forward in his chair, tilts his head and looks Elizabeth straight in the eyes.
‘You are here because, for some time now, I have been looking into the possibility of killing Viktor Illyich.’
‘I see,’ says Elizabeth.
‘And it isn’t easy,’ says the Viking.
‘I’m sure,’ says Elizabeth. ‘If murder were easy, none of us would survive Christmas.’
‘And, so,’ says the Viking, ‘I want you to kill Viktor Illyich for me.’
The Viking leans back, his cards on the table now. Elizabeth is thinking at speed. What has she found herself in the middle of here? Only this morning she had been thinking about traffic cameras and missing bodies. Now she is being threatened by a Viking. Or propositioned. Often the same thing in her line of work.
Whatever it is, at least it seems that she and Stephen will live to see another day. Let this new game begin, then. She sits back in her chair and clasps her hands together.
‘I don’t kill people, I’m afraid.’
The Viking settles back into his chair, and smiles. ‘We both know that’s not true, Elizabeth Best.’
Elizabeth concedes the point. ‘Here’s your problem though. I’ve only ever killed people who wanted to kill me.’
The Viking reaches for a laptop from a side table, and gives a broad smile. ‘Then we are in luck. Because I am shortly to send an email to Viktor Illyich, with two photographs attached. One photograph of you at Fairhaven train station, opening a locker, and one of you at Fairhaven Pier on the day of the shootout. A situation that has caused Viktor Illyich a great deal of inconvenience.’
‘Banged to rights there, darling,’ says Stephen.
Elizabeth hadn’t known that Viktor was involved with Martin Lomax and the business with the diamonds. But it made sense. Viktor was freelance these days.
‘So you see,’ says the Viking, ‘as soon as he receives these photographs, Viktor Illyich will want to kill you. He will be consumed with revenge. It is very neat. All you need to do now is kill him first.’