Smoke and Mirrors by Marie Treanor Read Free Book Online

convinced. The alibi looked too elaborately planned, as if he’d tried to stand out and be remembered. Anyone could have driven him to the warehouse. He kicked the empty bottom drawer of the chest shut. “But he did it all the same. The bastard told us he did.”
    “Did I miss something?”
    “Aye. An education. Razz Kolnikov? The main character in the Russian novel Crime and Punishment is called Raskolnikov.”
    “And was he guilty?”
    “As sin,” Lamont said with relish.

Chapter Four
    Rodion opened his eyes. For a moment, disoriented, he lay perfectly still, letting location and memory find him. His face was wet. No condition in which to plan.
    He wiped his face on the pillow, then threw off the quilt and rose, naked, from the bed, heading straight for the shower. Under the hot, powerful jet, he gasped and wished grief and guilt and betrayal could be washed away as easily as sweat and tears.
    Irina was dead.
    He hadn’t meant her to be. She shouldn’t have been there. That she was proved Anna had been right and he wrong: Irina had betrayed him, placed yet another sin upon his head, and ruined his last foolish, idealistic belief that everyone involved in bad things didn’t have to be bad. Irina had inspired his protective instincts, eased his troubles for a while, made it easier to keep going. And now she was dead because of him, and he, a little wiser, a little emptier, had to clear up that mess with all the rest.
    He wished she wasn’t dead. He wished he could turn back the clock. How far would he go? Two years? Five? Ten? More?
    It didn’t matter. He had to deal in reality.
    He turned off the shower and grabbed the towel, rubbing his skin vigorously as if that would somehow wake up his numb brain cells.
    Timing was everything. He had to have Gadarin and the cops in exactly the right places if he was to get away with this and keep anyone who mattered alive.
    He threw the towel on the floor. Anyone who mattered. He was tired, so bloody tired of playing God.
    Padding through to the bedroom, he opened the wardrobe and took out a clean pair of cotton trousers and a loose white shirt. Good planning attire.
    He was just zipping his trousers when Anna knocked on the door and stuck her head around. “I thought I heard you up. Can I come in?”
    “Be my guest.” He threw his arms into the sleeves of the shirt and began to fasten the buttons. “Everything quiet?”
    She nodded, sitting down on the bed. “The cop’s still asleep.”
    “She isn’t a cop,” he protested mildly.
    “Not the point. Whoever she is, you do know you can’t trust her?”
    “I don’t trust anyone, Anna. Apart from you. And those two idiots downstairs, despite all the evidence against them.”
    “Those two idiots,” Anna said, fixing him with her big-sister stare, “told me there was someone in the warehouse when it went up.”
    “I didn’t know until I’d done it. And then I couldn’t get them out.”
    “It was Irina, wasn’t it?”
    He turned away, because among all the other things he couldn’t bear right now was the fact that she wouldn’t say I told you so . He picked the comb off the chest of drawers. “Yes, it was Irina, and one of Gadarin’s Scots boys.”
    For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then, “I’m sorry, Rodya. Not that she’s dead. But for all the rest. It wasn’t your fault. You’re still not the bad guy.”
    He dragged the comb through his hair and threw it back down. “Stop it, Anna. We both know exactly what I am. The question is, now, what I can do with it.”
    “And what will you do with it? Now that you’ve stirred everything up. Gadarin will want blood, and you’ll be perfectly justified in asking for Marenko’s help. He might even kill Gadarin.”
    “A nice side benefit,” Rodion agreed.
    “Only he’s just as likely to start a bloodbath… Anyway,” she added restlessly, picking up the book on his bedside table, “once he’s here, how do we get him to reveal where the