Kate Atkinson - One Good Turn

“What other two?”

“Mrs. Hatter and Tatiana.”

“Tatiana?”

“Crazy Russian girl. They were here a minute ago. Look, I’d really like to stay and chat, but I have to go.”

Now he was really having a laugh. “This is a murder scene. My career will be over if I let you go. At worst you’re a suspect, at best you’re a witness.” She seemed to have been here before. One more time, Louise, a witness, a suspect, and a convicted felon .

“I know but I’ve got something important to do, really impor-tant.”They both listened to the sound of a siren coming closer. He looked like a dog hearing a whistle. “I don’t exist,” he said. “You never saw me. Please. Do me just this one favor, Louise.”

He was a justified sinner. Like Louise. Louise . Just the way he said her name… she gave her head a shake, tried to dislodge him from her brain.

He went out the back door at the same time as Jim Tucker strode up the front drive. She was going over in her mind how she would present this to Jim. Was she really going to erase Jackson from the picture? Neither of the other two “witnesses” looked as if they had the foggiest idea what was going on. Through the now nonexistent French windows, she motioned Jim Tucker to go to the front door.

“Louise,” he said, “I didn’t know you were already at the locus.”

She could see a DC and two uniformed policewomen at the gate, advancing up the path. And then her phone rang and her world tilted. Archie . “I’ll be right there,” she said to him.

“Archie,” she said to Jim. “I have to go.” He winced, sensing the mess he was about to inherit from her. She tried to make it sound better, which was pretty difficult under the circumstances. “Look, Jim, I just walked in on this a second ago, I know no more than you do, to all intents and purposes you’re the first officer on the scene, but I have to go .”The DC and the two constables were approaching the French windows but changed direction toward the front door when they realized they might be about to contaminate a crime scene. One of the policewomen peeled away and approached Martin Canning. Louise heard her say, “Mr. Canning? Martin? Are you all right? It’s PC Clare Deponio, do you remember me?”

She could hear more sirens, one an ambulance. Louise could taste blood from where she had been biting her lip. She didn’t say “Remember the favor you owe me, Jim.” She didn’t say “How’s your lovely daughter doing at university? Bet she’s glad she didn’t get a drug rap.” She didn’t need to, he knew it was payback time, as you sow so shall you reap. He nodded his head toward the back of the house without saying anything. “Thanks,” she mouthed at him and disappeared. She wondered how many disciplinary, possibly criminal, acts she’d committed within the last five minutes. She didn’t bother to count.

Archie had sounded odd on the phone-strained and slightly desperate-and she thought he must have been arrested or killed someone. But it was worse than that.

Then he and Irina were walking into his cockroach hotel, past the rather frightening men who hung around at the entrance. A cross between doormen and security staff, they were always dressed in black leather jackets, always smoking cigarettes. They opened doors (sometimes) and called taxis, but they seemed more like gangsters. One of them said something to Irina, and she waved him away with a dismissive gesture.

And then somehow they were in his room, and without knowing how, he was standing in front of her in his underpants saying, “Well-upholstered. Built for comfort, not for speed.”

Then time jumped forward again, and she was astride him on the narrow bed, wearing only a bra and shoes, making short yipping noises that might have suggested sexual frenzy if her face hadn’t remained a blank. Martin contributed hardly anything to the encounter, it had taken him by surprise in its unexpectedness and its haste. He climaxed quickly and quietly in a way that ashamed him. “Sorry,” he said, and she shrugged and leaned over him, her beautiful hair sweeping his chest, a teasing gesture that seemed entirely perfunctory. He saw the dark roots where the bleach had grown out.

She climbed off him. The fog of alcohol in his brain cleared a little, and in its place a nauseous, dull depression fell on him as he watched her lighting a cigarette. A woman in a foreign country, a woman you hardly knew, did not strip down to her bra and shoes and ride you like a horse for free. She might not be a prostitute as such, but she expected money.

She picked up her clothes and put them on, the cigarette dan-gling from her mouth. She caught him looking at her and smiled. “Okay?”she said. “You have good time? You want to give me little gift for good time?”

He got up and hopped around, trying to get his trousers back on. The evening had taken him to depths of indignity he had previously steered clear of, even in his imagination. He searched through his pockets for money. He had cleared out most of his cash in the Grand Hotel and could find only a twenty-ruble note and small coins. Irina looked in disgust at the money as he tried to explain to her that he could go down to the reception desk and draw money on his Visa. She frowned and said, “ Nyet , no Wisa.”

“No, no,” he said, “I’m not offering you Visa. I will change . I will get dollars for you from downstairs.” She shook her head vig-orously. Then she pointed at his Rolex and asked, “Is good?” She was wrapping the scarf around her head again, buttoning up her coat.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s genuine, but-”

“You give to me.” She was beginning to sound shrill and un-compromising. It was four in the morning (he had no idea how that had happened, when he last noticed the time it was eleven o’clock). There was a retired couple from Gravesend in the room next door. What would they think if they were woken up by a Russian woman demanding payment for sex? What if she started to scream and throw things around? It was ridiculous, the watch was worth more than ten thousand pounds, hardly a fair exchange. “No, I’ll get money,” he insisted. “And then the hotel will call a taxi for you.” He imagined one of the menacing men in black leather putting her in a taxi, looking at Martin, knowing he’d just paid for sex with her.

She said something in Russian and made a move toward him, trying to grab his wrist. “No,” he said, dancing out of the way. She made another lunge and he stepped away again, but this time she tripped and lost her balance and although she put out her hands to save herself, she couldn’t stop her head hitting a glancing blow off the corner of the cheap veneer desk unit that occupied almost the whole of one wall in the small room. She gave a little cry, a wounded bird, and then was quiet.

She should have got up. She should have got up, clutching her forehead. There would be a cut or a bruise and it would be sore. He would probably take the Rolex off his wrist and give it to her to make up for the pain, to stop her from making a fuss. But she didn’t get up. He crouched down and touched her on the shoul-der and said, “Irina?” tentatively. “Did you hurt yourself, are you okay?” She was lying facedown on the nasty carpet and didn’t respond. Her scarf had slipped off and strands of blond hair had es-caped from the neat chignon that she had pinned her hair into. The back of her neck was pale and vulnerable.

He tried to roll her over, not sure if that was the right thing to do to someone who had knocked herself out. She was heavy, much heavier than he’d expected, and awkwardly resistant, as if she were determined to give him no help in his maneuvers. He managed to turn her, and she flopped onto her back. Her eyes were wide-open, staring at nothing. The shock made his heart stop for a second. He sprang away from her, falling over the end of the bed, banging his shin, hurting his foot. Something rose in his chest, a sob, a howl, he wasn’t sure how it was going to emerge and was surprised it was nothing more than a stupid little squawk.