Christopher Jones - The Silent Oligarch

“Please, sit down.”

Webster sat in an armchair with his back to the window, Marina on a sofa to his left, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes calmly on his. He put the flowers down on a coffee table in front of him.

“Thank you for seeing me,” said Webster. “I… I wanted to let you know how very sorry I am.” He looked down, rubbed his hands together. “Really. I wanted…” He could find no more words.

“Mr. Webster, thank you. Please understand, I know little about you. I know that you helped my husband. He talked about you when he called. He said he had some help, and I assume that was you. I am grateful to you for that. But before that you hounded him. I do not know you, and I do not need to. I have no interest in judging you. I told him he should call you, so perhaps I played my part.”

Her voice was even and precise, with a steady rhythm. Webster felt faintly shamed by her composure.

“I wanted to see you, Mr. Webster, because… I want you to tell me how he died. I want to know what happened since I last saw him here. He called, but he said nothing. I would like to know.”

“I can do that. I can tell you.”

Webster told her what he knew. He left out nothing: not his mistakes, not his culpability. And he told her what he thought: that Lock had been killed to safeguard a secret; that the secret was indeed safe; that they would never know who was responsible.

“What about Konstantin?” said Marina.

“He’s back in Moscow. The Germans didn’t press charges. They arrested his bodyguard for attempted kidnapping.” He paused. “My guess is that he’ll be quietly retired. If he’s not too dangerous.”

“When… When Richard was shot, what did he do? Konstantin.”

“He walked away. When I looked up he was gone. I saw him again after they’d picked him up at the airfield. They brought him in as I was sitting in the police station. He told me he was sorry about Richard. In Russian, as if he knew I’d understand.”

Marina nodded, her eyes clouding.

“For what it’s worth,” said Webster, “I think he meant it.”

“But he walked away.” Her voice was quiet and for a moment afterward they were silent. “And how was he that morning? Richard. How did he seem?”

“Like his mind was made up. The man I met in London was scared. He wasn’t scared that day.”

Neither said anything for a moment. Marina rubbed her eyes and looked down.

“He said something to me as he was dying,” he said.

Marina didn’t respond. She sat with her hand across her eyes.

“He said, ‘I want Vika to know. It was me.’”

Marina took her hand away from her face and looked at him. Her eyes were wet with tears and she wiped them away.

“What does that mean?”

“That Malin was finished. That Richard had done what he wanted to do.”

Marina said nothing.

“I don’t know what else it can mean.”

She nodded. “Mr. Webster, I…”

Webster shifted forward in his seat.

“I think I should go. I should go.” He met her eye. “I’m sorry for my part in this.”

“You thought you could rescue him. There are worse things. I never stopped thinking it.” She looked down. “I think you may have done more than me.”

Webster watched her for a moment and then stood up. “If you ever want to talk again…” He reached into his pocket for a card.

Marina shook her head. “It’s all right, Mr. Webster.” She stood. “I’ll see you out.”

OUTSIDE, IN THE COLD AGAIN, Webster stopped on the porch and took off his tie. He had bought it at the airport that morning: dark blue, soberly patterned. He rolled it loosely and put it in one of the building’s dustbins.

At the end of the short path to the street he looked back at the house and for a moment could see Lock on the other side of the wall, with mud on his city shoes and soft rain in his hair, alone in the vast darkness of the park. The image stayed with him as he walked to the main road. His hand was sweating around the handle of his case; he felt an urge to throw the thing away, and with it the work shirts and the exhausted razor blades and the chargers for his phones.

He found a taxi in moments. “Hampstead please. Well Walk.”

HAMMER ANSWERED the door just a moment after Webster’s double knock, as if he had been passing, or waiting.

“Ben. It’s good to have you back.”

“Thank you.”

“Come in. Let me take that.”

Webster gave Hammer his case and walked past him into the hall, dark despite the sun.

“No Mary?”

“I have no idea what she does with her days. I’m never usually here.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t face the office.”

Hammer guided him toward the study. “Let’s go in here.” He moved over to his chair, sat and smiled. “You’d have met with ranks of concerned faces. They’re all worried about you.”

The room was cold and the fire, as before, was laid but unlit. A spotlight on the desk by the window picked out a mess of files and papers. Outside the sun shone starkly on the brown-gray bricks of the houses across the street.

“That’s sweet of them.”

“Yes and no. They know it could have been them. But for the grace of God.”

“I doubt that.”

Hammer said nothing but raised his eyebrows just enough to indicate that there was more to say. For a moment the two men sat, Hammer drumming silently on the arm of the chair with the pads of his fingers, Webster looking around the room—at the fire, the books on the walls, the piles of newspapers on the floor—and occasionally catching the steady eye opposite him.

Hammer broke the silence. “I was expecting a call from the Germans.”

“I managed to persuade them to leave you alone.”

He nodded. “They want you back?”

“If there’s a trial.”

“Which there won’t be.”

Webster said nothing. No trial; barely any investigation.

“Malin?” said Hammer.

“He went home yesterday. I’ll be amazed if they see him again.”

“Maybe no one will.”

“Quite.”

More drumming. “And how are you?”

“I’m OK.”

“Really?”

Webster sighed. “Yes and no.” He took a phone out of his pocket. “These are his last words. Well, nearly his last. I can’t stop listening to them. Can’t get them out of my head. If I’d heard this I would have understood. I could have saved him.”

“It worked?”

“It worked. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

“The police don’t know?”

Webster shook his head. “I gave them the suicide note and they ignored it. And the syringe. The whole thing was hopeless.”

“So what was said?”

“Do you want to hear it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s in Russian.”

“Talk me through it.”

Webster pressed a sequence of buttons and put the phone on an upholstered stool between them.

“That’s Lock’s voice. That’s Malin.”

“What are they saying?”

Webster described the scene—the bodyguard, Malin at the table, Lock calm, Black’s men positioned around—and went through the conversation, as he had in his head a hundred times. The whole thing lasted less than three minutes. The exchange of papers; Malin’s disappointment; his insistence that all along he had been protecting Lock. As they listened and he talked Webster took off his watch, cleaned its face on his shirt and stared absently at the slow, strict progress of the second hand.

“Do you believe him?”

“I think Lock did.”

“And you?”

“I do. There’s no way he’d have had Lock die next to him. Look at the mess he’s in. Look at the papers.”

Hammer nodded. He had stopped tapping but now he started again.