Reikhman knew he was there somewhere, watching. In the distance, coming closer, a police siren, then another, and another. He had a corpse in the passenger footwell, another in the back seat, and there was a third in the block of flats. The situation was not impossible, but it would be better if he could deal with the police authorities at the appropriate level, not some grunt who could easily leap to the wrong conclusions.
In frustration he bit his finger, then slammed the SUV into reverse, backed out and swept out of the side streets at reckless speed, making a quick mental calculation: one dead old lady in a block of flats, two stiffs in a car-accident-to-come, to be hushed up, with the Kremlin left out of it. Here, in the sticks, thirty thousand dollars would do it, easy. He would claim for three hundred thousand.
LONDON
B uckingham Palace lay far below, pomp left out in the rain. Raindrops pattered against the vast floor-to-ceiling window, out of which Joe surveyed the palace beyond and, closer to him, Green Park and Piccadilly. Behind lay small islands of soft seating dotted a great expanse of pale-blue carpet. The law firm where his disciplinary hearing was to take place was a shrine to uncluttered space, that most expensive commodity in London.
Cold and wet out there – trees dripping, puddles forming on pavements – but in here it was coolly warm. The kids he worked with would love this space, but sticky-fingered, messy, shouting obscenities, they would not be allowed near it. Money owns quiet; the poor go deaf thanks to their own and other people’s noise.
In the days that had passed since Reilly had been stolen, Joe had wasted his time putting up missing posters in the store warehouse and Richmond Park, all to no avail. At the memory of the missing dog, a melancholy descended on him. He still missed Reilly more than he cared to admit, almost as much as he missed Vanessa. Beautiful woman, foolish dog, stupid man.
He glanced around and found a newspaper on a table, the headline HEADLESS VET FOUND IN BIN BAG . Not for the first time, he found himself wondering about the depth of human depravity.
As he got into the body of the story, he realised that the dead vet was his vet.
‘Christ!’ he said out loud. But someone was calling his name.
He got up and entered a large box of frosted glass. Inside, a middle-aged woman with a permafrown introduced herself as Alison Something-Something from Human Resources and, in turn, introduced him to two men in suits: Mr Stephens, whose easy, pleasant smile Joe instinctively didn’t trust, and Mr Brooks, who looked bored.
The three of them sat on the far side of a glass table; there was an empty chair on the near side. Alison smiled a toilet-bleach kind of smile at him and then they were into it.
‘There are two issues in this disciplinary hearing. Firstly, that you provided a young person in your care with obscene material and, secondly, that you used “inappropriate force” against a young person in your care,’ said Alison – lank dark hair, piercing eyes.
The first one was easy-peasy.
‘The obscenity issue concerns a boy called Alf,’ said Joe softly. ‘He’s on the autistic spectrum and he has Tourette’s syndrome. When he first came to the home, he’d say feck, piss, wank, and so on – very loudly, all the time, in public. It was so bad that none of the carers liked to take him out in the fresh air. I gave him a joke book. He memorised every joke and would tell them, in perfect sequence, over and over again.’
‘The material was obscene,’ said Alison.
Joe countered: ‘It was The Penguin Dictionary of Jokes .’
‘Can you prove that?’
Joe smiled, mostly to himself. ‘I still have the receipt.’
Alison’s lips crinkled into a thin smile. She turned to her two fellow examiners; they shook their heads and she picked up a fountain pen and crossed out something. ‘The first charge against you is dropped. The second issue is far more
In frustration he bit his finger, then slammed the SUV into reverse, backed out and swept out of the side streets at reckless speed, making a quick mental calculation: one dead old lady in a block of flats, two stiffs in a car-accident-to-come, to be hushed up, with the Kremlin left out of it. Here, in the sticks, thirty thousand dollars would do it, easy. He would claim for three hundred thousand.
LONDON
B uckingham Palace lay far below, pomp left out in the rain. Raindrops pattered against the vast floor-to-ceiling window, out of which Joe surveyed the palace beyond and, closer to him, Green Park and Piccadilly. Behind lay small islands of soft seating dotted a great expanse of pale-blue carpet. The law firm where his disciplinary hearing was to take place was a shrine to uncluttered space, that most expensive commodity in London.
Cold and wet out there – trees dripping, puddles forming on pavements – but in here it was coolly warm. The kids he worked with would love this space, but sticky-fingered, messy, shouting obscenities, they would not be allowed near it. Money owns quiet; the poor go deaf thanks to their own and other people’s noise.
In the days that had passed since Reilly had been stolen, Joe had wasted his time putting up missing posters in the store warehouse and Richmond Park, all to no avail. At the memory of the missing dog, a melancholy descended on him. He still missed Reilly more than he cared to admit, almost as much as he missed Vanessa. Beautiful woman, foolish dog, stupid man.
He glanced around and found a newspaper on a table, the headline HEADLESS VET FOUND IN BIN BAG . Not for the first time, he found himself wondering about the depth of human depravity.
As he got into the body of the story, he realised that the dead vet was his vet.
‘Christ!’ he said out loud. But someone was calling his name.
He got up and entered a large box of frosted glass. Inside, a middle-aged woman with a permafrown introduced herself as Alison Something-Something from Human Resources and, in turn, introduced him to two men in suits: Mr Stephens, whose easy, pleasant smile Joe instinctively didn’t trust, and Mr Brooks, who looked bored.
The three of them sat on the far side of a glass table; there was an empty chair on the near side. Alison smiled a toilet-bleach kind of smile at him and then they were into it.
‘There are two issues in this disciplinary hearing. Firstly, that you provided a young person in your care with obscene material and, secondly, that you used “inappropriate force” against a young person in your care,’ said Alison – lank dark hair, piercing eyes.
The first one was easy-peasy.
‘The obscenity issue concerns a boy called Alf,’ said Joe softly. ‘He’s on the autistic spectrum and he has Tourette’s syndrome. When he first came to the home, he’d say feck, piss, wank, and so on – very loudly, all the time, in public. It was so bad that none of the carers liked to take him out in the fresh air. I gave him a joke book. He memorised every joke and would tell them, in perfect sequence, over and over again.’
‘The material was obscene,’ said Alison.
Joe countered: ‘It was The Penguin Dictionary of Jokes .’
‘Can you prove that?’
Joe smiled, mostly to himself. ‘I still have the receipt.’
Alison’s lips crinkled into a thin smile. She turned to her two fellow examiners; they shook their heads and she picked up a fountain pen and crossed out something. ‘The first charge against you is dropped. The second issue is far more
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