When we arrived in London, we went to the flats where Viktor lives. There is a swimming pool, but I will tell you about that another time, because I think I should get on with telling you what happened.
Wait another moment.
I’m back again. Viktor has just been to the loo, and couldn’t get the flush to work. There is a knack, and I told him. Gentle, gentle, gentle, then all at once. I told him you can pause the TV when you go to the loo, but he already knew. I pause the TV during
Viktor lives on the top floor of the flats, the penthouse, and he’s a funny-looking little thing. Like a very happy tortoise. He was delighted to see Elizabeth, and he even gave me two kisses, so I thought there was no way Elizabeth was going to kill him, and I was just waiting to hear what was up. Viktor offered me a gin and tonic, but then Elizabeth pulled out her gun. I had words with her about it, but she wasn’t for backing down, and Viktor seemed to take the whole thing in his stride.
Honestly, I was scared, and I was angry with Elizabeth. I even told her I would never forgive her, which she reminded me of on the journey home. ‘You should always trust me,’ was her take on the thing, but, as it happens, I think my anger was useful.
Off they both went, to the bathroom, Viktor yelled out something or other, and there was a gunshot, and I heard Viktor fall to the floor.
I was shaking, I admit it. In fact, if I’m admitting everything, I was crying. Which, again, as it turns out, was also useful.
Elizabeth rushed back into the room and issued instructions. It was something like, ‘No time for tears, Joyce, I had to do it, and Viktor knew it, but now I need your help.’ She said she was on cleaning duties in the bathroom, which I was glad of at least, but she needed me to make a couple of calls. I was to call Bogdan on her phone and say, ‘Elizabeth needs a taxi,’ and then I was to take the SIM card out of her phone and cut it into pieces, and then wipe the phone clean and put it into the waste-disposal unit in the kitchen. There must be no physical or electronic evidence that we had ever been in the flat. I thought to ask about the concierge, but I didn’t, because I feared the answer.
Off she disappears again and I call Bogdan, and he says hello, and I say Elizabeth needs a taxi, and he asks if I’m crying, and I say I’m not, and he says good, there is nothing to cry about, and he will be with us in an hour. Then I ask how he is, but he has already rung off.
So I took out the SIM card, which was difficult, because I was shaking, and cut it into pieces, and then took the phone into the kitchen and threw it into the chute. I heard Elizabeth call out, ‘Have you done it, Joyce?’ and I called back, very quietly, that I had, and that’s when Elizabeth and Viktor walked back into the living room, casual as you like.
I looked like I’d seen a ghost, and who can blame me? Then Elizabeth talked me through it all.
The text messages from the Viking had been the key. He knew our every move. He said he had people watching us at every step. But Elizabeth saw through it. She says she can’t be followed without noticing, she’s too canny. There was no one on the train, for example. So she knew the Viking had pulled a much simpler trick. He had simply cloned her mobile phone while she was at his house (I say ‘simply’, you know what I mean) and was able to hear, and occasionally see, everything that happened right up to the moment I destroyed the phone.
That’s why she had to keep me in the dark, so my reactions were natural, and believable, to the Viking. In fact, that’s why I was there in the first place, to make the whole thing sound completely real. I told Elizabeth I could have acted, but she laughed. I asked if Viktor was in on it, and he said that, as soon as she held the phone up and told him about the messages, he understood her plan. I asked Viktor if he was worried before then that she was really going to kill him, and he said that he was assuming she wouldn’t, but with Elizabeth you could never tell for sure. Elizabeth scoffed and said ‘as if’ she would kill him, and Viktor said ‘you would’, and, while Elizabeth kept protesting, Viktor finally poured me the gin and tonic I’d been promised.
An hour or so later, the concierge came up with Bogdan, who was carrying a very large holdall. Viktor told the concierge that he was dead, and she nodded and asked how long he would be dead for, so he looked at Elizabeth, and she said that a couple of weeks or so should do it.
