The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [3]
Perhaps the distraction has hurried him, for the Russian listens only briefly now before sliding the key, with extraordinary slowness, into the lock. Aperfect fit. He pushes open the door, just enough to fit through, and winces as it scrapes on linoleum. Immediately there is the smell of good, fresh coffee; the flat is thick with it. His eyes adjust to the total absence of light in the tiny hall. He knows from a plan of the apartment that the bedroom is beyond the closed door on the other side of the living room. The kitchen is directly ahead of him and it is empty. A Post-it note has been stuck on the frame of the door, and he can just make out the scrawl:
Call Taploe re: M.
The yellow paper moves very slightly as, in these first few seconds, he stands quite still, listening for any indication that the Englishman may be awake.
It is only now that he hears the music. Was it playing as he came in? He has been holding the gun in his right hand all this time and his grip now tightens around the butt. Classical music, a piano, very slow and melancholy. The kind of music a man might listen to if he were having trouble getting to sleep.
With his heel the Russian pushes the front door until it is resting against the frame. Then, without needing to look back, he feels for the latch with his hand and closes it very slowly. He waits for the lock to engage and moves one step forward towards the door of the living room, the gun now up and level. If he is awake, so be it. Let him see me coming.
But there is no other noise or movement as he walks into the sitting room, just the music fractionally louder now and the bathroom door ahead of him, leaking light into a narrow passage. Everything in the sitting room is visible because of it and, out of habit, he takes it all in: the two paperback books lying on the carpet; the empty tumbler on a small three-legged antique table; a framed photograph of a young man and woman on their wedding day hanging unevenly near by. The room of an untidy, chaotic mind, devoid of a woman’s touch.
Another two steps and he is across the room, moving as lightly as he can, cheap deck shoes noiseless against the worn carpet. Still he feels no sense of exhilaration, no impending release for his grief: only a specialist’s expertise, an absolute focus on the job in hand. Moving silently between the books on the floor, his eyes fix on the space ahead of him: the narrow, well-lit corridor, the bedroom door to his left. On this he trains the gun, stopping now, his mind a spin of instinct and calculation. For years he has imagined killing the Englishman in his bed, watching him cower and writhe in a corner. It has been planned that way. But he is suddenly uncertain of making that last move into the room, of opening the door into a place where his opponent may hold the upper hand.
The decision is made for him. He hears a single heavy footstep, then the sound of a light switch being pressed and the rattle of the bedroom door handle as it drops through forty-five degrees. Instinctively the Russian takes two steps backwards, hurried now, stripped of control. Light flares briefly into the passage and he blinks rapidly as he looks up, the pale face etched with shock.
The intruder had words to say, a speech prepared, but the first shot punctures the left side of his victim’s chest, spinning him to the ground. Blood and tissue and bone shower against the walls