The Senility of Vladimir P

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The Senility of Vladimir P Page 30

by Michael Honig


  But he had been scared, genuinely scared, thinking that any second Vladimir might come smashing through the door. Maybe that was the explanation. Or maybe he wanted Vladimir to die. Or maybe he didn’t care, which was almost as bad.

  But if he had wanted to kill him – why? What difference would it make? Vladimir had had his time and had done what he had done – his death neither ameliorated nor undid it. And if it was revenge on behalf of Karinka and Pasha and . . . on behalf of Vasya, yes, even Vasya, and Barkovskaya, who was dead, and Stepanin, who had murdered his dream along with her, and the whole of Russia that seemed somehow to have become a reflection of the small, corrupt and brutal mind of the man who had been Vladimir Vladimirovich . . . then what kind of revenge was it when the victim had no knowledge that it was being exacted? A wasted revenge. A pointless one.

  Who was the Chechen? All these years that he had looked after Vladimir, he had never managed to find out. He remembered the bloodcurdling scream Vladimir had emitted in the last seconds as the tranquilliser took effect and his head fell forward. Thinking of it sent a shiver down his spine. Whatever hallucination the ex-president was seeing at that moment, whoever he deludedly thought he was fighting, Sheremetev hoped that as part of that delusion he believed he was being punished for one of his many crimes, that he felt the terror and doom and desolation of being beyond all rescue, even if only for a split second in his life.

  Sheremetev shook his head, disgusted at the way he was thinking, that he had become so corrupted, so degraded, that he wanted some kind of revenge to have been enacted on a senile old man. And yet at the same time he knew that it was only because of the things that had been done by Vladimir himself that his thoughts had been debased.

  He sighed, gazing at the outline of the corpse under the sheet. Yes, there was a sense of relief in him that the old man was dead, that his dilemma about leaving the dacha was gone. Maybe he had killed him because that was the only way he could free himself from him. Maybe it was as simple as that.

  Or maybe it was that, and everything else. As simple, and as complicated.

  Sheremetev looked at the watch the doctor had left behind on the bedside table. The old Soviet Poljot, like so many Sheremetev had seen before. When he was a boy, that was all anyone had, and you could wait for months to get one. Now, it was worth nothing.

  He should call Vera and tell her that she wouldn’t need to come back today, or any other day. Soon he and everyone else would leave the dacha. With Vladimir dead, the reason for this miserable little band of fraudsters and cheats to be gathered here was gone. For a moment, Sheremetev toyed with the idea of keeping the Poljot as a memento, but that seemed incongruous. It was of purely sentimental value. Wasn’t that the opposite of what Vladimir had yearned for? The Russia of his desire was a place where the only worth of anything was its worth in money, and those who spoke the truth of it were silenced.

  It was Vladimir who had won. He had built the Russia he wanted and crushed out everything else. Sentiment had no place here.

  Sheremetev raised the Poljot. ‘To you, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ he said solemnly, holding it out towards the corpse. ‘Look what you did to us.’

  He dropped the watch on the floor and crunched it underfoot.

  Note on the Author

  Michael Honig is a former doctor and the author of one previous novel, Goldblatt’s Descent (Atlantic Books, 2013). He lives in London with his wife and son.

  Also by Michael Honig

  Goldblatt’s Descent

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Michael Honig, 2016

  The moral right of Michael Honig to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78239 806 6

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 807 3

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 808 0

  Printed in Great Britain

  Atlantic Books

  An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.atlantic-books.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Note on the Author

  Also by Michael Honig

  Copyright

 

 

 


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