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Part of me wanted to find Alan and take care of him myself. One less piece of trash on the streets, one less source of stress for my Alissa. But he was under the eye of the police now, thanks to the IA investigation. If he vanished suddenly, people would notice. Some men in my line of work were that blatant, but I wasn’t. Especially if there was any chance that the fallout would land on Alissa.
He might be stupid enough to keep calling. But now, at least, Alissa knew I was ready to run interference whenever she needed it.
We were most of the way through our meal when it was my phone’s turn to buzz in my pocket. I checked it, it was Sergei. “I should take this,” I told Alissa, who nodded, looking concerned.
I connected the call as I walked out. “Give me a second.” I went to my car and shut myself inside. “All right, go on.”
“Vasily is dead,” Sergei said solemnly.
I froze for a moment as my mind processed this. “What happened?”
“They found him ten minutes ago when Ivan was bringing his lunch. He’d hung himself with his shoelaces. He was already stiff when Ivan checked him.”
“My God.” It felt like a punch in the gut. First, he had turned out to be a monster who had misled us all, and now he had offed himself to avoid whatever consequences we would have decided on. “That damned coward.”
“Yeah.” Sergei didn’t seem to know what more to say about it either. “Maybe you should come down. The men are asking for you.”
“Asking for me? That’s new.”
“So’s the situation. How long will it take you?”
“Half an hour. I’m finishing up lunch with my girls.”
That perked him up. “How are they doing after everything?”
“Less nightmares, more smiles. Both of them.”
He chuckled a little weakly. “That’s good news. Has she spoken yet?”
“Not yet,” I said, remembering the picture she’d drawn. “But she makes what she wants known just fine.”
“Good. I’ll see you in half an hour, then.”
I hung up and went back inside to finish my meal.
Alissa gave me a worried look. “Did something happen?”
“Just some things I have to take care of after I drop you at home. I’ll talk to you about it later.” I gave a pointed look at her and glanced at Michelle, and she nodded. Some things were not to be talked about in front of our child. She had lost enough innocence already.
***
The return to Vasily’s house was strange, almost dreamlike. Last time I had been dragged there with my loved ones. Now, I drove myself, alone, and walked in the front door to a silent crowd of men. They parted for me along the hall until I reached Vasily’s office, where Sergei stood beside the desk. Vasily’s curled body lay there, hidden under a sheet.
“Hanged himself.” I lifted the sheet. The laces were still around his neck, dug into bloated flesh. His face was slightly twisted, eyelids at half-mast. I sniffed in disgust and dropped the sheet again.
“That’s what the guys on shift said,” Sergei said, almost too casually.
“Good enough.” It wasn’t, but I didn’t care. There wasn’t a man among us who wouldn’t have been tempted to do the same, and there wasn’t one whom I would have blamed for it.
“What do we do with the body?” Ivan asked. A rustle went through the crowd.
Why were they asking me? I shrugged it off and decided to step up. “Have the cleaners burn him. Scatter the ashes.”
Heads nodded in agreement all around.
“We’ll have to go through his computer and his records. We need to find out what else he was up to.”
Sergei winced. “I’m almost afraid to think of what we might find.”
