He thought he might have to kill the dog, but, in the end, there was no need. From the moment he broke in, the dog seemed very happy to see him. Had even licked his hand while he loaded the gun. He had been fast asleep until the key turned in the lock for the first time. The Viking would love a dog, but they take a lot of looking after. Walking and so on. And sometimes things go wrong with them. What if something went wrong and he didn’t notice? The Viking would never forgive himself. He has heard that cats are easier. Maybe he will get a cat.
The first person through the door is Joyce; he recognizes her from the photograph. Joyce has a shopping bag in her hand. She is swaying slightly, and is whistling a happy tune. She stops whistling when she sees the gun, which makes the Viking feel guilty, but powerful. Mainly guilty, but he couldn’t deny the powerful bit. He supposes that is why weak people like guns so much. Not that he is weak.
The dog bounds to greet her, and Joyce ruffles his coat without taking her eyes off the man with the beard and the gun who has just appeared in her living room.
‘Bless you,’ says Joyce. ‘You must be the Viking?’
The Viking is confused. ‘The Viking?’
‘You kidnapped Elizabeth,’ says Joyce. ‘And Stephen, which was very cowardly. Put your gun down; I’m seventy-seven, what do you think I’m going to do?’
The Viking puts the gun down by his side, but keeps hold of it. It is around seven p.m., and dark outside. He has closed the curtains already. Joyce is less scared than he thought she might be. She even feeds the dog. ‘Alan’, he is called. She offers the Viking a cup of tea, but, wary of being poisoned, he declines. She sits opposite him while Alan eats, his metal bowl scraping noisily on the kitchen tiles.
‘So you’re here to kill Viktor?’ she asks. ‘He’s not in.’
‘I am here to kill Viktor, yes,’ says the Viking. ‘But also to kill you.’
‘Oh,’ says Joyce.
‘They didn’t tell you?’
‘They didn’t,’ confirms Joyce. ‘This seems like an awful lot of fuss. I hope it’s over something very important?’
‘It’s business,’ says the Viking. ‘I told Elizabeth to kill Viktor. She didn’t kill him. I told her I would kill you if she didn’t.’
‘Well, she kept that quiet,’ says Joyce. ‘Have you ever killed anyone before?’
‘Yes,’ says the Viking. His voice doesn’t even waver. He is very impressed with himself.
‘And yet you had to get Elizabeth to kill Viktor for you,’ says Joyce. ‘Have you really ever killed anyone?’
‘No,’ admits the Viking. How could she tell? ‘I have never needed to. But now I need to. And I will.’
‘So you’re going to start with me? That’s in at the deep end, I’d say. A pensioner.’
The Viking shrugs. ‘Maybe I’ll just kill Viktor, then.’
‘I’d sooner you didn’t kill either of us,’ says Joyce. ‘I’ve grown fond of him. Watches too many programmes about trains, but who doesn’t have faults? What’s your disagreement with him? Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea? We’ll be here some while if we’re waiting for Viktor, and I promise I’m not going to poison you. The last thing I need on my hands is an unconscious Swede.’
The Viking thinks he wouldn’t actually mind a cup of tea. His whole plan doesn’t seem at all right now he’s here, with a gun in his hand, and a tiny old woman asking him polite questions. ‘OK, yes, please, just with milk. I have a dispute with Viktor.’
Joyce walks through the open archway into the kitchen, and talks to him over her shoulder. ‘What sort of dispute?’
‘I launder money,’ says the Viking. ‘Through cryptocurrency. Viktor tells his clients to steer clear of me. Says it’s too risky. It is costing me a great deal of money. If I kill him, my problem is over.’
‘Oh, you poor love, that must be difficult,’ says Joyce. ‘Alan, I have literally just fed you.’
‘When are you expecting him?’
‘You tell me,’ says Joyce, teaspoon clinking in a mug. ‘He’s at an opera, if you can believe that. Might as well settle in. Can I ask you a question?’
‘You won’t persuade me not to kill him,’ says the Viking. ‘It is my destiny.’
‘No, no,’ says Joyce, walking back into the room with two mugs of tea, one with a picture of a motorbike on it, one with a floral scene. ‘Which mug do you fancy?’
‘Motorbike please,’ says the Viking. Joyce sits down with a satisfied sigh. ‘What’s your question?’
‘Cryptocurrency,’ says Joyce. ‘It’s not really all that risky, is it?’
‘Very risky,’ says the Viking. ‘Which is OK for money-laundering.’
‘Even Ethereum?’ asks Joyce. ‘Is that risky?’
The Viking takes a sip of his tea. ‘You know Ethereum?’
‘I have fifteen thousand pounds invested in it,’ says Joyce. ‘Everyone on Instagram seems very confident.’
‘Can you show me your account?’ says the Viking. Honestly, amateurs will be the death of him. Cryptocurrency is complicated. One day it will be very important, but today it is the wild west. Tiny old women should not be investing in Ethereum. Joyce opens up a page on her laptop and hands it to him.
‘I only use the laptop for trading and for writing my diary,’ she says. ‘You’ll be in it tonight if you don’t kill me.’
‘I’m not going to kill you,’ says the Viking, but he knows he still might have to. He checks Joyce’s Ethereum account, currently worth just under two thousand pounds. ‘Do you mind if I move things around a little? I will need your password.’
‘It’s Poppy82, capital p,’ says Joyce. ‘And be my guest. If you promise not to kill Viktor, then there are biscuits too.’
‘Sorry, mind made up,’ says the Viking, as he drinks more of his tea, and launches Joyce’s laptop into one of the more disreputable corners of the dark web. Playing on the computer relaxes him a little, as this is where he is at home. His heart rate slows, and he realizes how nervous he has been. The dog starts to lick his hand. He gently pushes Alan away, and rubs his eyes with his unlicked hand.
The Viking moves Joyce’s money into two separate accounts. There were still bargains to be had if you knew where to look. There was still gold glinting in the streams, but not where everyone else was panning. The Viking feels this is the least he can do after breaking into Joyce’s flat. If he doesn’t kill her, she will make a tidy profit. Joyce is saying something now, but it isn’t making sense. He is thirsty again. He looks up at Joyce, but his head is heavy. He starts a sentence.
‘Could I get a …’ Get a what? What’s the word? ‘Uh …’
Alan is licking his face now. Why is he on the floor?
60
Ron is aware that we live in a bright new world of sexual politics.
A rainbow of gender and sexuality, and freedoms unimagined by his generation. Ron is all for it. If you let people be themselves, you let them flourish. But even in these happier times if you offer a man a choice between a motorcycle mug and a flower mug, he’s going to choose the motorcycle mug. Lucky thing too: if Viktor’s tablets could floor the Viking, God knows what they would have done to Joyce.
‘You could have killed him, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth.
‘With sleeping pills and worming tablets? I doubt it,’ says Joyce.
The Viking is beginning to stir. Bogdan has tied him to one of Joyce’s dining-room chairs. After he had fallen asleep, Joyce had called the cavalry, and here they all were.
Bogdan for muscle, Viktor, back from the opera (‘Exquisite. Almost transcendent’) to face the man who wants to kill him, and Elizabeth, who has just had to explain why she hadn’t told Joyce that the Viking was planning to kill her too. Ron and Ibrahim are there, presumably, thinks Ron, because Joyce and Elizabeth would never hear the end of it if they hadn’t been invited.
Pauline is there because, well, because she is there an awful lot these days. Whether in Coopers Chase or Juniper Court, she and Ron like to be together. She’s come straight from work. Bogdan has disappeared somewhere for now.
Viktor is holding the Viking’s gun. Ron had asked to hold it briefly. He had pointed it at the wall, closed one eye, said, ‘Pow,’ and handed it back.
The Viking looks a bit of a mess. Huge beard. Semi-conscious. Ron had tried to grow a beard many years ago, but he was not successful. Some men just can’t grow beards, and you shouldn’t read anything into that. Doesn’t make them any less of a man.
Joyce has made them all a cup of tea, after thoroughly washing out the motorbike mug.