The Clown Service

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The man splayed by the side of the pool was dead.

Seated on the lawn, Olag Krishnin smoked a cigarette and watched as a pair of flies circled the wet head of the corpse. The insects danced in the light of the winter sun, a pale yellow fire that added glints to the thin, tousled strands of the dead man’s hair.

The grass of the lawn had been cut ruthlessly short. A fraction further and it would have revealed earth. It reminded Krishnin of the crew cut he had worn in the army. That fine stubble that tingled against the palm like furry static. It didn’t surprise Krishnin that a man like Andrei Bortnik would have taken such fastidious care over his grass (or rather ensured his staff did so). Bortnik had been a man who obsessed on detail. Not the sort of man to tolerate weeds within his garden, literally or metaphorically. That was, after all, why Olag had been forced to kill him.

‘You’ve gone too far,’ Bortnik had said in that wheezy, fat-choked voice of his. ‘I can’t cover for you any longer – even I have my orders.’

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