People Die (18 page)
Authors: Kevin Wignall
“I didn’t know any of this, and Bostridge meant nothing to me, but of course I did it quickly and cleanly anyway.”
“He was a wonderful man,” said Naumenko as if to himself, saddened by the thought of it, even though he was probably more steeped in death than JJ or any of them. “You know, I take nothing on trust, no one. Trust no one. But David ... he was one of those rare individuals, a man ...” He thought about it a moment before continuing, “I would have entrusted my life to him. And who else could I say that about? My mother, my wife? Not many more, not even my own brother. So you see, David Bostridge was a special person.” His voice was building slowly, becoming more forceful. “And yes, special people are killed in Russia every day, but this was wrong, this was ...” He ground to a halt, his face tightening, like he could feel the anger surfacing and wanted to hold it back.
The situation was looking more dangerous by the second—Holden’s analysis was probably right after all—but JJ couldn’t focus on it, drawn instead to the empty expanses that existed in his picture of Bostridge, a man seemingly lightly missed by his own family yet mourned bitterly by someone like Naumenko. There had to have been more to him; the only clue perhaps lay in the photo Jem had shown him, the young confident guy laughing at the camera and everything else ahead of him.
“I didn’t know him,” JJ said.
Naumenko fixed him with a stare in response, as if trying to interpret what he’d said. “You didn’t know him. Yet you think you can come here, throw his death in my face, and walk away again.”
JJ nodded, acknowledging the point, and inexplicably it made him think of Jem again, the way she’d looked standing at her father’s grave, and then a flood of other memories from that week, a week which had somehow managed to reanimate him, a moment of acute consciousness perhaps, before the inevitable. And if Naumenko was decided on having him killed, then perhaps it was as good a week as any to go out on.
“I don’t know, Alex,” said JJ, thinking aloud. “Maybe it’s my time to die.”
The comment seemed to throw Naumenko who looked puzzled and said, “What do you mean?”
What did he mean? He meant it was easier to switch off and step aside, it was easier not to think futures or care about the ones that presented themselves. It was just easier.
“I mean it’s your call,” said JJ. “But I’ll tell you now, leave Holden alone. He did his best, and he’s been good to David’s family.”
“Holden’s death is nothing to do with this,” Naumenko said dismissively.
“Oh it is. And I’m sure you’ve been given another reason for having him killed, but I can assure you, Ed Holden’s death is everything to do with this, just like mine is, just like Larry Viner’s.”
Naumenko’s brow furrowed as he added up what JJ was saying, his mind working quickly. And within seconds it was there, a look of determination as he said, “Who ordered David’s hit?”
“Philip Berg,” said JJ simply, and that was sufficient for the moment, an interesting enough name for the countdown to be suspended, a temporary reprieve just as faintly visible as the original warrant. JJ paused, instinctively using his capital, making sure he’d given it time to sink in, then continued, “Probably for Sarkisan but who can say? That’s why this crisis came about; in light of his connections with you, he wanted to remove anyone who might have been able to point the finger at him over David Bostridge.”
“Interesting,” said Naumenko, leaning forward, tapping his index finger lightly against his lips, a metronome’s tap as he thought it through. After a minute like that, total silence in the room around them, he said, “Of course, it would be in your interests to make this claim, and in Holden’s to tell you the same story.”
“Of course,” JJ agreed. “Ask yourself one question though. I don’t do politics, I don’t deal information, I belong to no one. I’m a freelance, a hired gun. So why does Philip Berg want me dead?”
Naumenko answered quickly, suddenly animated, “You know, in all this”—he searched for the right word, savoring it then as he found it—“in all this hullabaloo, that’s one question that hadn’t occurred to me. But you’re right.”
He got up and strolled across the room as though suddenly remembering a piece of business he’d meant to attend to. For a few moments then he talked quietly to one of the flunkies, the guy listening intently, nodding, leaving the room as soon as Naumenko dismissed him. Naumenko came back and sat down then, smiling and saying, “Very interesting.”
JJ said nothing, knowing there was nothing to respond to; and even though he’d thought he was ready for it a slight nausea was inching into his stomach, his chest, because it didn’t look good, the uneasy realization that perhaps Naumenko wasn’t saying what he was thinking, that he wasn’t buying into JJ’s story. There had been no grand pronouncements, no threatening language, but that was how people like Naumenko worked once they’d decided to kill someone, always the same chilling act of disengagement.
They sat there without saying anything, and a few seconds later the door opened again behind where JJ was sitting. Naumenko smiled broadly and said, “Philip, come and join us.”
Berg. JJ didn’t turn but sensed the surprise off Berg as he reached the sofas.
“Hello, Philip,” he said, looking up finally. “I heard you were dead.” If Berg had been shocked to see JJ there he’d recovered his composure quickly enough and smiled now as he sat on the arm of the sofa JJ was sitting on. He was wearing a suit, shirt open like Naumenko’s, looking like one of those new-breed socialist politicians, glossily corrupt. There was no tan, no sign that he’d been out of the hotel, his hair a richer brown than JJ remembered, like it had been dyed.
“Well as you can see, J, I’m still here, thanks in no small part to Alex.”
JJ objected somehow to Berg shortening his name but let it go and then Naumenko said, “JJ’s raised some interesting points, Philip.”
“Oh really?” Berg was curious, not concerned, the master of the stitch-up, in no doubt as to his own position. JJ thought of Aurianne and did a furtive sweep of the room, wondering if when it came down to the wire he could at least take Berg out with him. He felt his body tense slightly at the thought of it, ready for the first solid signal, certain in his own mind that if he was going he’d take Berg too. The hint of nausea had already gone again and he was just taut now, primed for the strike.
“Yes,” Naumenko said, on a roll. “For example, he wants to know why Holden and Viner have been targeted.” Berg looked at JJ, outwardly no different from the way he’d been in professional conversations they’d had before.
“It’s London business, JJ. Viner and Holden have been working with a faction in Russia—not someone I can disclose here, but Alex has seen the photographic evidence.”
“Photographs mean nothing nowadays. Why was Viner killed the way he was? Why were Alex’s men sent after Holden? Why wasn’t it done in-house?” It was pointless; he knew Berg would have answers, and he knew too that Naumenko would have more reason to want to believe Berg. It was a power play and JJ was just a killer, expendable.
“You know how complicated these things are, J. It’s like you. You’re the one person in all of this that I regret, but it’s precautionary, because of you and Viner. I’m sure you’re clean, the fact that you’ve come here only adds to that, but we can’t take the risk. It’s nothing personal.”
“I think you misunderstand, Philip,” Naumenko said. “JJ came here to tell me he killed David Bostridge.”
Berg looked at him and then at JJ again, trying to work out what was going on, unnerved possibly by what he saw as JJ’s recklessness.
“I don’t understand” was all he could find to say, and JJ momentarily wondered if Berg was telling the truth, if it was Holden who’d been lying to him. It just didn’t fit though.
“Philip, you disappoint me. Surely you knew?” Naumenko seemed to be enjoying himself but he was definitely involved in more than his own amusement.
“Oh I knew,” said Berg, and JJ sensed a chink of light, beginning to think he might have misread the situation, that Naumenko wasn’t decided yet on whom he intended to kill. Seeing the opportunity, and suddenly wanting it now more than he’d ever thought he would, he cut in ahead of Naumenko.
“On whose orders? I killed him, Viner gave me the information, but who wanted Bostridge dead?”
“The same Russian faction,” replied Berg, like it was an answer he’d hardly needed to give. “Once again, we have evidence to that effect. We don’t know if Holden was in the loop or not but it’s possible. You know, J, I realize you might have been duped in all of this, and I sympathize, but they were rotten. They were all rotten.”
JJ shook his head, showing that he didn’t believe it but knowing that his opinion counted for nothing, frustrated again that it all came down to the provenance of the information.
He looked then at Naumenko who smiled and said to him, “You have no more cards to play.” And as if he’d read his mind continued, “Not your fault; you’re a killer, not an information broker.” Turning to Berg, he said casually, “Why didn’t you tell me who killed David?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You knew how I felt about David Bostridge. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because telling you wouldn’t have solved anything,” Berg said, suddenly earnest, “and frankly, it was a complication I could do without.”
Naumenko nodded wistfully and said, “But life is complicated.” He made a barely visible gesture and the guy who’d gone to fetch Berg came back over, putting his hand on Berg’s shoulder. Berg stayed calm but his eyes began to play games.
“Alex,” he said, his tone attempting to regain the momentum, but Naumenko looked apologetic, as if there was nothing he could do about it, and answered the point before it was made, “Please, Philip, let’s not make this difficult.” Another guy had appeared at Berg’s other side, easing him off the edge of the sofa and pushing him toward a door at the side of the room, Berg looking like he couldn’t catch up mentally with what was going on.
JJ glanced over, struggling just as much to see how they’d gotten to that point, getting a glimpse of the bathroom they were leading Berg into, the door closing behind them. He turned back to Naumenko who paused for a second and then said like nothing had happened, “You’ve met David’s family?” JJ nodded. “And?” It took him a moment or two to bring himself back, trying to catch up with how Naumenko had come down on his side of the fence, focusing finally on what he’d been asked about: David Bostridge’s family.
“They’re great people,” he said, smiling at the thought. “A beautiful wife, attractive kids, smart. His son looks very much like him.”
“Really?”
He thought about it for a while, the silence broken by the sound of muffled cries and soft blows from beyond the bathroom door. It brought back the memory of Aurianne again, JJ comforted slightly that Naumenko too had decided Berg should suffer on his way to the grave. As if he couldn’t hear the disturbance himself Naumenko continued, “I think he’d grown apart from them somewhat. A source of regret for him, even of self-recrimination now and then, but he was lost, you know, in his own way, quite lost.”
“Aren’t we all?” asked JJ. “We’re all lost somewhere between freedom and security, trying to find a balance; some people deal with it better than others, that’s all.”
Naumenko nodded in response, thinking carefully before snapping out of it and saying, “You know, if you’d been anyone else, even after what you’ve told me, I’d still have killed you for killing David, whether you were just the messenger or not.”
JJ nodded and said, “So what marks me out?”
Naumenko paused again, the same muffled sounds from the bathroom, sounding strangely like some quietly forced sex act. He smiled, eyes flicking toward the bathroom door like he’d just heard it for the first time, relishing the irony as he said, “An allowance for dignity, in a very undignified business. That’s what it is, why Ed picked you, why I forgive you. And now,” he added, moving smoothly on, “what intrigues me just a little bit is that you were the last person to see David alive.”
“And why is that intriguing?” He already had an idea why, guessing Naumenko probably knew more about the death than the Moscow police.
“It’s a delicate matter. David, as you said, has a beautiful family.” He was staring intently at JJ now, reading his expression to catch anything that shifted across it. Carefully then he said, “I received information to suggest he wasn’t alone when he was killed.”
JJ smiled, because it was clear now that Naumenko had been the one who’d suppressed the existence of the condom, a final act of friendship, just as Holden had performed his in requesting JJ or Lo Bello for the job. If a man’s friends were the mark of him, perhaps Bostridge had been more than JJ ever could have guessed from that night.
“He was with a girl, a beautiful girl. I assumed she was a prostitute but Holden thinks it unlikely.”
“In this Ed is undoubtedly correct,” said Naumenko, who was perhaps best placed to know.
A muted high-pitched cry broke from the bathroom, JJ registering the claustrophobic feel of it as he said, “And she took the icon too.”
As with Holden, nothing else he’d said had caused a visible response like the mention of that package. Naumenko looked dumbstruck, spellbound by whatever implications he saw in the information he’d been given. “So it’s true,” he said, nodding to himself. “Do you know about the icon?”
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