A Known Evil: A gripping debut serial killer thriller full of twists you won’t see coming. Aidan Conway

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       Three

      Yana Shulyayev slipped her long, lean body into the steaming bath. She wasn’t going to move a muscle for anyone now. It had been a busy one. The pensioners in the morning then the children. Then off to the accountant to sort out more interminable paperwork, not to mention trying to get across the city during a transport strike. And the cold was like something she had never experienced in Italy. So, she’d ended up walking, in the wrong shoes, most of the way and after a day spent on her feet, dancing and stretching and standing in queues, she was exhausted.

      The phone rang. Shit! She’d left it in her coat! No. She wasn’t answering. She was out! They could call back. And if it was important? The accountant needing yet more papers before the office closed? She couldn’t afford to risk it, not with the threat of repatriation always being dangled in front of her. She hauled herself out and skipped wetly into the hall. It had stopped. Shit again. She checked the missed calls. Might have known. She thrust the mobile back into the coat pocket and swore again, and again for good measure, in Russian. It was Michael.

      But she wasn’t in the mood to listen to his story. Not yet. Not today. Sometimes she liked to hear his accounts: his frustrations, his occasional victories, his funny anecdotes about the absurdities of the Italian police and legal system. The screw-ups with evidence, the Public Prosecutors in search of glory sending them, the cops, on wild-goose chases because they wanted to nail such-and-such for whatever reason, real or imagined. If only it was like in Britain, he’d say, instead of all these judges and magistrates and officials getting in the way. Over there, a crime’s reported, cops go to establish the facts, they evaluate the likelihood of an offence having been committed, they investigate, they make an arrest, interrogate, then they charge a suspect, and he goes to court. She’d heard it so many times that it had become a mantra.

      He also liked to remind her how it wasn’t like in the films, but for her it seemed pretty close, at least in terms of its frequent effects on their relationship. “You should get a cat,” she’d tell him. “It won’t give a shit what time you get home, you won’t wake it up, and you won’t need to take it out anywhere.”

      As she lay in the bath, the phone gave a last vain trill but this time she didn’t stir. She was somewhere else now. Somewhere where no one could reach her. She negotiated a little more hot water with her toe and heard a message coming in. That would be him. So he’d be on the case and when he was on a case she didn’t exist. So, cancelling tonight, no doubt. She tried to re-establish the pleasant world she had slipped into before the call. But try as she might, against her will, she was drawn away from where she’d been, where nothing else mattered except the warm water and dreams.

      She’d heard about the murder at work. Terrible business but the police had no idea what or who was behind it. The girls in the gym were sure it was the work of an immigrant. A rapist probably. Never an Italian. Italy was going through another deeply unpleasant period and especially Rome. Politicians were playing the race card and the feeling was spreading, or being spread, that crime was on the rise and the only culprits were the foreigners. Every day on the TV news there would be a hit-and-run, a robbery, a mugging and the usual nationality tag stuck onto the suspect. She’d felt so awkward about the whole thing that she’d practically agreed with them. After all, they didn’t even think of her as an outsider anymore, and not just because СКАЧАТЬ