Exit Music

'Sometimes I work at night, sometimes not.'

'Andropov was at his hotel. He had a meeting in the bar…'

'There's nothing I can tell you.'

'Why did you go to those poetry readings, Mr Aksanov?' Clarke asked quietly. 'Did Andropov ask you to go? Did he ask you to take him?'

'If I have done anything wrong, go ahead and charge me!'

'Is that what you want?'

'I want to get away from here.' The fingers which gripped the fresh cigarette were starting to shake a little.

'Do you remember the recital at the Poetry Library?' Clarke asked, keeping her voice low and level. 'The man who was recording it? He's been murdered, too.'

'I was at the hotel all night.'

She hadn't quite understood. 'The Caledonian?' she guessed.

'Gleneagles,' he corrected her. 'The night of that fire.'

'It was early morning actually.'

'Night… morning… I was at Gleneagles.'

'All right,' she said, wondering at his sudden increase in agitation.

'Who was it you were driving – Andropov or Stahov?'

'Both. They travelled together. I was there all the time.'

'So you keep saying.'

'Because it is the truth.'

'But the night Mr Todorov died, you don't recall if you were working or not?'

'No.'

'It's quite important, Mr Aksanov. We think whoever killed Todorov was driving a car…'

'I had nothing to do with it! I find these questions totally unacceptable!'

'Do you?'

'Unacceptable and unreasonable.'

'Finished already?' she asked, after fifteen seconds of silence. His brow furrowed. Tour cigarette,' she pointed out. You'd only just started it.'

The Russian stared at the ashtray, where most of an entire cigarette smouldered, having just been stubbed out…

Having arranged for a patrol car to drop Aksanov at Queensferry Road, Clarke wandered back down the corridor towards where Goodyear was sharing gossip with two other constables. Before she could reach him, however, her mobile rang. She didn't recognise the caller's number.

'Hello?' she asked, turning so her back was to Goodyear and his colleagues.

'Detective Sergeant Clarke?'

'Hello, Dr Colwell. I had half a mind to call you myself.'

'Oh?'

'Thought I might need a translator; false alarm as it turned out.

What can I do for you?'

'I've just been listening to that CD.'

'Still wrestling with the new poem?'

To start with, yes… but I ended up listening to the whole thing.'

'Had the same effect on me,' Clarke admitted, remembering back to when Rebus and she had spent the hour in her car…

'Right at the end,' Colwell was saying. 'In fact, after the recital and the Q and A have finished…'

Yes?'

'The mic picks up some bits of conversation.'

'I remember – doesn't the poet start muttering to himself?'

'That's just what thought, and it was difficult to make out. But it's not Alexander's voice.'

'Then whose is it?'

'No idea.'

'But it's in Russian, right?'

'Oh, it's definitely Russian. And after a few plays, I think I've worked out what he's saying.'

Clarke was thinking of Charles Riordan, pointing his all-hearing microphone towards various audience members, picking up their comments. 'So what is he saying?' she asked.

'Something along the lines of- “I wish he was dead.”'

Clarke froze. 'Would you mind repeating that, please?'

41

Rebus rendezvoused with her at Colwell's office and they listened to the CD together.

'Doesn't sound like Aksanov,' Clarke stated. Her phone started to ring and she gave a little growl as she answered. The voice in her ear identified the caller as DI Calum Stone.

Tou wanted to speak to me?' he said.

'I'll have to phone you back later.' She cut the co

He'd asked for the relevant section of the recording to be played again.

'I'd lay money on it being Andropov,' he muttered afterwards. He was leaning forward in his chair, elbows on knees, hands clasped, completely focused on the recording and seemingly immune to Scarlett Colwell, who was crouched not three feet away next to the CD player, face hidden by the curtain of hair.

'And you're sure you've got the words right?' Clarke asked the academic.

'Positive,' Colwell said. She repeated the Russian. It was written on a pad which Clarke was now holding – the same pad which had once held the translated poem.

'“I wish he was dead”?' Rebus checked. 'Not “I want him killed”

or “I'm going to kill him”?'

'Slightly less inflammatory,' Colwell said.

'Pity.' Rebus turned towards Clarke. 'Plenty to be going on with, though.'

'Plenty,' she agreed. 'Say it is Andropov… who's he talking to?

Has to be Aksanov, hasn't it?'

'And you've just let him go.'

She nodded slowly. 'We can always pick him up again… he's pretty well settled here.'

'Doesn't mean the consulate won't kick him on to a plane bound for Moscow.' Rebus stared at her. 'Know what I reckon? Andropov would love to have someone on the inside at the consulate. That way, he'd know how the land lies back home. If they pla

'Aksanov as his eyes and ears?' Clarke nodded her agreement.

'Fair enough, but is he anything else?'

'Executioner, you mean?' Rebus pondered this for a moment, then realised that a tear was ru

'Sorry,' he apologised to her. 'I know this can't be easy.'

'Just catch whoever did this to Alexander.' She dabbed at her face with the back of her hand. 'Just do that, please.'

'Thanks to you,' he assured her, 'we've come a step closer.' He picked up her translation of the poem. 'Andropov would have been furious about this. Calling him greedy and a “blight” and part of the whole “parcel of rogues”.'

'Furious enough to want the poet dead,' Clarke agreed. 'But does that mean he did it?'

Rebus stared up at her again. 'Maybe we should ask him,' he said.

It had taken well over an hour for Siobhan Clarke to lead DI Derek Starr through the story. Even then, he'd complained for a further fifteen minutes about being kept 'out of the loop' before agreeing that Sergei Andropov should be brought in for questioning. They had to shoo three detectives out of the interview room. The men had set up base there, and complained at having to move their stuff.

'Smells like a prop-forward's jockstrap in here,' Starr commented.

'I wouldn't know,' Clarke replied with a thin smile. She'd bumped into Goodyear in the CID suite and he, too, had voiced a complaint – about being abandoned at the West End cop-shop. True enough, Colwell's phone call had led Clarke straight out to her car, Goodyear still chatting to his pals in the corridor. Even so, she'd studied the young man's scowl and offered him four evenly spaced words: get used to it. To which he'd replied that he really was ready to go back to Torphichen and his constable's uniform both.

They had dispatched a patrol car to the Caledonian Hotel. Forty minutes later it was back and discharging its unhappy human

cargo. It was almost eight o'clock, the sky black and the temperature falling.

'Do I have the right to a lawyer?' was Sergei Andropov's first question.

'Think you need one?' Starr shot back. He'd borrowed a CD player and was tapping it with one finger.

Andropov considered Starr's question, then took off his coat, placed it over the back of the chair, and sat down. Clarke was seated next to Starr, notebook and mobile phone in front of her.

She was hoping Rebus – stationed outside in his car – would manage to keep quiet.