Russian Roulette (23 page)

Elizabeth lifted her two smaller ones up alongside his, smiled sweetly at him and touched his arm with an elegantly gloved hand.

‘Nearly home,' she murmured in his ear.

A Customs Officer approached,
dressed in the uniform of at least a Vice-Admiral
, thought Simon. He had never paid a penny in duty, yet automatically tensed himself for a battle of wits, in true British anti-Revenue tradition.

‘Any gifts, sir?' after the cardboard list had been offered and read.

In spite of the cloud under which he had left the Metropol, Simon had managed a few minutes in the hotel shop.

‘A fur hat, some caviar … a bottle of vodka … and, oh, a
matryoshka
for my little niece.'

The ‘admiral' insisted on seeing the fur hat, but charged nothing on it.

Elizabeth had nothing at all to declare and the suspicious Excise man went through all her cases. Finding nothing – not even a false bottom on the return trip – he sulkily made a magic chalk mark on the sides of their bags and they moved through to the boat-train platform.

During the trip to Liverpool Street, Simon basked in Liz's company. Again he wondered at her special elegance and decided perhaps it was not all for him, but just a token of a safe return to her dear old London.

His mind wandered through various ways of setting some permanent seal on their holiday affair. A good dinner and a night on the town to celebrate his deliverance from Lubyanka seemed the first way of cutting in to Kramer's money.

When they reached Liverpool Street, he was all for hailing a taxi and rushing off for the most expensive lunch they could find, but she steered him into the cocktail lounge of the station hotel and demanded a gin and tonic.

‘I cabled my friend to meet me here – the one who put up that money. You understand, dear, don't you … you don't mind waiting a little?'

Simon minded like hell, but he saw that the loss of two hundred quid had to be explained away and the sooner the blow was delivered, the better.

Dumping the bags just inside the door, he settled Liz at a table and went for some drinks. When he came back, he found her rummaging around in the huge handbag she carried. She brought out a gaudily painted wooden doll, another
matryoshka
similar to Simon's present for his sister's child, only a little smaller. The dolls consisted of a nest of five or six, all one inside the other down to the tiny central figure.

He stared at it. ‘I didn't know you had bought a set as well?'

She smiled sweetly at him.

‘I didn't, darling – these are the inside bits of yours. I've been a bit naughty – I pinched it from your case when we were on the train in Russia.'

He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

‘My God, Liz … what the hell have you been up to now!'

He grabbed the doll from her and feverishly took it to bits, splitting the hollow shells right down to the one in the middle.

Thankfully, he found nothing – he half expected to find it stuffed with antique jewels bought with black market roubles.

‘What about the outer one – where's that?'

She smiled again and held out scarlet-tipped fingers.

‘You've got it, darling – can I see, please?'

Mystified and apprehensive, Simon reached down and snapped open his case and took out the big
matryoshka
. The motherly-looking doll, with its painted red cheeks, smiled smugly at him as he placed it hesitantly on the low table between them.

Elizabeth calmly cracked it open and deftly took out the tightly rolled wad of five-pound notes that was crammed into the cavity.

‘Got them all in, darling … you don't think I could have watched this lot go down the loo, surely – thanks for getting them in for me. You would have explained things far better than I, if they'd been found … ah, there's my friend!'

She slipped the fivers into her bag and quickly stood up.

‘Bye-bye, darling – it was lovely fun while it lasted.'

She bent down and kissed him lightly on the forehead, then switched and trotted daintily across the lounge.

A dark-haired girl in a striking yellow dress stood alone in the centre of the room, but Simon watched aghast as Liz walked straight past her and went up to a tall man in an officer-pattern overcoat and a City bowler. She stood on tip-toe to kiss him warmly below his stylish moustache. Hugging his arm, she walked out of the lounge without a backward glance.

A porter came in and carted off her bags, but Simon didn't notice.

He sat numbed for a moment, looking at the
matryoshka
, then up at the empty doorway.

His gaze drifted back to the gutted doll on the table. It looked as empty as his soul felt at that moment.

‘You're hollow,' he muttered at the little wooden figure. ‘You're all bloody hollow! … damn all women!'

Alexei Pudovkin was in his stockinged feet again, slumped in his battered armchair, the one that Darya was always threatening to throw out.

His promised reconciliation had lasted thirty-six hours. Now, he was back to the high-pitched nagging, the crash of pots and pans and a holiday in the Crimea.

With the end of his great new case and the return of routine petty thefts and family assaults, his newly won dominance had wilted and with it went his mastery over his wife.

He gulped down his beer and poured another … Vasily had been up here sharing it with him, but Darya had driven him away to drink in peace at the athletic club.

Alexei groaned as she flounced into the living room and whipped away the tablecloth with a flourish like a bullfighter.

‘Going to sit there all evening, soaking yourself in drink? Can't you even watch television, like other men, instead of reading all those old police books!'

She stalked away and Alexei hurled his copy of the
Criminal Code of the USSR
into the corner of the room, in a slow build-up of rage.

Reaching out to his bookshelf, he took down the Civil
Code
instead and turned angrily to the section on ‘Divorce'.

‘Damn all women!' he snarled under his breath.

The Sixties Mysteries

by

Bernard Knight

The Lately Deceased

The Thread of Evidence

Mistress Murder

Russian Roulette

Policeman's Progress

Tiger at Bay

The Expert

For more information about
Bernard Knight

and other
Accent Press
titles

please visit

www.accentpress.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Robert Hale Ltd 1968

This edition published by Accent Press 2016

ISBN 9781910939949

Copyright © Bernard Knight 1968, 2016

The right of Bernard Knight to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN