Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 835 & 836, March/April 2011

Method Murder by Simon Brett

Simon Brett’s latest mystery set in the fictional village of Fethering, Bones Under the Beach Hut, has just been published by Five Star Press. The previous book in the series, The Shooting in the Shop, earned this remark in Booklist’s starred review: “... with the talented Brett, the character clash and the amazingly high homicide rate for a tiny village come across as both brilliant and perfectly reasonable. The secret is in Brett’s range. He moves effortlessly from sharp, pitiless physical description... to flashes of compassionate insight.”

As an actor, Kenny Mountford yearned to be taken seriously. Since finishing at drama school, he’d done all right. A bit of theatre work, but mostly television, which was good news, because it paid better. However, a continuous round of small parts in The Bill, Heartbeat, and Midsomer Murders had left him, by the time he reached his early thirties, with a deep sense of dissatisfaction. It wasn’t celebrity that he craved, it was respectability. He wanted to be able to hold his head high amongst other actors when the discussion moved on to the issues of the “truth” and “integrity” of their profession.

And really that meant doing more theatre. For the more obscure and impenetrable the theatre work, the higher the integrity of the actors involved. This meant, in effect, working with one of a small list of trendy directors, directors who didn’t pander to the public by making their work accessible or simply entertaining. So Kenny Mountford set out to meet and ingratiate himself with such a director.

It was a good time for him to make the move. A stint playing the barman on a successful sitcom had bolstered his income to the point that he had paid off the mortgage on his Notting Hill house. And, besides, his live-in actress girlfriend, Lesley-Jane Walden, was not only a nice bit of arm candy to satisfy the gossip columns, she was also making a good whack as the latest femme fatale in a long-running soap opera. Her hunger for celebrity was currently satisfied, and they weren’t in need of money, so Kenny Mountford was in a position where he could afford to pursue art for art’s sake.

The latest enfant terrible of British theatre was a director called Charlie Fenton. Like many of his breed, he had a great contempt for the written word, rejecting texts by playwrights in favour of improvisation. In the many television and newspaper interviews he gave, he regularly pontificated about “the straitjacket of conformity” and derided “the crowd-pleasing lack of originality demonstrated by the constant revival of classic theatre texts.” One somewhat sceptical interviewer had asked if this meant Charlie Fenton considered one of his improvised pieces to be better than a play by Shakespeare and, though hotly denying the suggestion, the director made it fairly clear that that actually was his view.

What Charlie Fenton was most famous for was his in-depth approach to characterisation. Though claiming to have developed his own system, he owed more than he cared to admit to the pioneering work in New York of Lee Strasberg, the originator of the “Method.” This was a style of acting which aimed for greater authenticity, and its exponents had included Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, and even, surprisingly, Marilyn Monroe. Rather than building up a character from the outside and assembling a collection of mannerisms, a “Method actor” would try so to immerse himself in the identity of the person he was playing that he virtually became that person.

So if an actor were playing a milkman in a Charlie Fenton production, the director would send the poor unfortunate off to spend three months delivering milk. Someone with the role of a Muslim terrorist would be obliged to convert to Islam. An actress playing a prostitute would have to turn tricks in the streets around King’s Cross (and almost definitely service Charlie Fenton, too, so that he could check she was doing it properly). And one poor unfortunate had once spent three months in a basement blindfolded and chained to a radiator for a proposed production about hostage-taking. (It would only have been three weeks, but Charlie Fenton neglected to inform the actor when he abandoned the idea.)

Once his casts had immersed themselves in their characters, weeks of improvisation in rehearsal rooms would ensue, until the director edited what he considered to be the best bits into a script. After the production had opened, this text, based on the actors’ lines, would then be published in the form of a book, for which Charlie Fenton took all the royalties.

The carefully leaked details of his rehearsal methods only added to the director’s mystique, and very few people realised that ordering actors around in this way was just part of Charlie Fenton’s ongoing power trip. The lengthy build-up to his productions was nothing to do with the quality of theatre that resulted; it was all about his ego. Also, the total control he exercised over his companies proved to be a good way of getting pretty young actresses into bed. (He had a wife and family somewhere in the background, but spent little time with them.)

Awestruck accounts of the director’s procedures, tantrums, and bullying ensured that any actor in search of theatrical respectability was desperate to work with Charlie Fenton. And so it was with Kenny Mountford.

They finally met after a first night of a National Theatre King Lear. The play wasn’t really Lesley-Jane Walden’s cup of tea, but it was a first night, after all. Any occasion when there was a chance of her being photographed and appearing in the tabloids suited her very well indeed (though she had been a little disappointed by the lack of paparazzi down at the South Bank). As soon as the final curtain was down, Charlie Fenton was at the bar, surrounded by toadies, who hung on every word as he proceeded to list Shakespeare’s shortcomings as a dramatist. Kenny and Lesley-Jane had gone to the performance with one of their actor friends who had once spent six months picking tomatoes and learning Polish in order to take part in a Charlie Fenton production about migrant workers. And the friend effected the coveted introduction.

The director, who sported a silly little goatee and grey ponytail, favoured Lesley-Jane with a coruscating smile. “I’ve seen some of your work,” he said. “It’s amazing how a really good actor can shine even amidst the dross of a soap opera.”

She blushed and smiled prettily at this. Which wasn’t difficult for Lesley-Jane Walden. She was so pretty that she did everything prettily.

Kenny Mountford felt encouraged. If Charlie Fenton had recognised his girlfriend’s quality in a soap opera, the director might look equally favourably at his work in a sitcom. But that illusion was not allowed to last for long. Looking superciliously at him over half-moon glasses, Charlie Fenton said, “Oh yes, I know your name. Still paying the mortgage rather publicly on the telly, are you?”

“Maybe,” Kenny replied, “but I am about to change direction.”

“Towards what?”

“More serious theatre work.”

“Oh yes?” the director sneered. “That’s what they all say.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Kenny, I don’t think you’d recognise ‘more serious theatre work’ if it jumped up and bit you on the bum. You have clearly been destined from birth for a life of well-paid mediocrity.”

“I disagree. I’m genuinely committed to doing more serious work.”

“Really?” The director scrutinised the actor with something approaching contempt. “I don’t think you could hack it.”

“Try me.”

Charlie Fenton was silent for a moment of appraisal. Then he said, “I bet you wouldn’t have the dedication to work with me.”

“Are you offering me a job?”

“If I were, I’m pretty confident you couldn’t do it.”

“Again I say: Try me.”

Another long silence ensued. Then the director announced, “I’m starting work on a new project. About criminal gangs in London.”

“What would it involve for the actors?”

“Deep cover. Infiltrating the gangs.”

Kenny was aware of the slight admonitory shake of Lesley-Jane’s head, but he ignored the signal. “I’m up for it,” he said.

“I’ll phone you with further details,” the director announced in a magisterial manner that suggested the audience was at an end.

“Shall I give you my mobile number?”

“Land line. I don’t do mobiles.” Clearly another eccentricity, which was indulged like all Charlie Fenton’s eccentricities. He flashed another smile at Lesley-Jane, then looked hard at Kenny, his lips curled with scepticism. “If you can come back to me in three months as a member of a London gang, you’ve got a part in the show.”

“You’re on,” said Kenny Mountford.

Lesley-Jane wasn’t keen on the idea. If Kenny was going to go underground, he wouldn’t be able to squire her to all the premieres, launches, and first nights her ego craved. Their relationship was fine while he too had a high-profile television face, but she didn’t want to end up with a boyfriend nobody recognised. She also knew that her own work situation was precarious. Young femmes fatales in soap operas had a short shelf life. One of the scriptwriters had already hinted that her character might have a fatal car crash in store. There was a race against time for her to announce that she was leaving the show before the public heard that she’d been pushed off it. And then she’d need another series to move on to, and there weren’t currently many signs of that being offered. At such a time, she’d be more than usually dependent on the reflected fame of her partner. (She had always followed the old show-business advice: If you can’t be famous yourself, then make sure you go to bed with someone who is.) The last thing she wanted at that moment was for Kenny to disappear off the social radar for some months while he immersed himself in gangland culture.

But Lesley-Jane’s remonstrations were ignored. Her boyfriend’s mind was now focused on only one thing: proving his seriousness as an actor to Charlie Fenton.

And to do that he had to infiltrate a London gang. Which actually turned out to be surprisingly easy. He didn’t have to hang around Shepherd’s Bush Green for long before he was approached by someone with a heavy Russian accent and asked if he wanted to buy drugs. After a couple of weeks of making regular purchases of heroin (which he didn’t use but stockpiled in his bathroom cabinet), he only had to default on payments twice to be hustled into a car with tinted windows, blindfolded, and taken off to meet the organisation’s frighteners.

They didn’t have to hurt him to get their money. Kenny Mountford had the cash ready with him and handed it over as soon as his blindfold was removed. He found himself seated on a chair in a windowless cellar, loomed over by the two heavies who’d snatched him and facing a thin-faced man in an expensive suit. From their conversation in the car, he’d deduced that his abductors were called Vasili and Vladimir. They addressed the thin-faced man as Fyodor. All three spoke English with a heavy accent from somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

“So if you had the money all the time, why didn’t you pay up?” asked the man in the suit, whose effortless authority identified him as the gang’s leader.

“Maybe he enjoys being beaten to a pulp,” suggested the heavy who Kenny was pretty sure was called Vasili.

“Maybe,” said Kenny Mountford with a cool that he’d spent three years at drama school perfecting, “but that’s not actually the reason. I just thought this was a good way of getting to meet you, Fyodor.”

“Do you know who I am?” the man asked, intrigued.

“I only know your name, but it doesn’t take much intelligence to work out that you’re higher up this organisation than the two goons who brought me here.”

Kenny felt the men on either side of him stiffen and was aware of their fists bunching, but he remembered his concentration exercises and didn’t flinch.

Fyodor raised a hand to pacify his enforcers. “You are right. I control the organisation.”

“And am I allowed to know what it’s called?”

He smiled a crooked smile. “The Simferopol Boys. From where we started our operations. Do you know where Simferopol is?” Kenny shook his head. “It is in the Crimea. Southern Ukraine. Near to Yalta. I assume you have not been there?” Another shake of the head. “Well, we did what we could over there, but the pickings were small, and there were a lot of... entrenched interests. Turf wars, dangerous. In London our life is easier.”

“And how many are there in the Simferopol Boys?”

“Twenty, maybe thirty, it depends. Sometimes people become untrustworthy and have to be eliminated.”

Kenny was aware of a reaction from Vasili and Vladimir. Clearly elimination was the part of the job they enjoyed.

“And do you just deal in drugs?”

Fyodor spread his hands wide in an encompassing gesture. “Drugs... prostitution... protection rackets... loan-sharking... The Simferopol Boys are a multifunction organisation.” Then came the question that Kenny knew couldn’t be delayed much longer. “But why do you want to know this? Curiosity?”

“More than just curiosity.”

“Good. If it was just curiosity, I think Vasili and Vladimir would have to eliminate you straightaway.” The gang boss smiled a thin smile. “They may well have to eliminate you straightaway, whatever the reason for your enquiries. You could be a cop, for all we know.”

“I can assure you I am not a cop.”

“But that’s exactly what you would say if you were a cop.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Mr. Mountford, I am not here to chop logic with you. I am a busy man.” He looked at his watch. “I have a meeting shortly with a senior civil servant in the Home Office. He is helping me with some visa applications for members of my extended family in Simferopol. Now please, will you tell me why you are here? And why I shouldn’t just hand you straight over to Vasili and Vladimir for elimination?”

Kenny Mountford took a deep breath. There was no doubt that he had put himself in very real danger. But, as he had that daunting thought, he couldn’t help also feeling a warm glow. Charlie Fenton would be so impressed by the lengths he had gone in his quest for authenticity.

“I’m here because I want to join your gang.”

“Join the Simferopol Boys?” asked Fyodor in astonishment. Vasili and Vladimir let out deep threatening chuckles at the very idea.

“Yes.”

“But why should I let you join us? As I said, you could be a cop. You could be a journalist. You could be a spy from the Odessa Reds.” The reactions from Vasili and Vladimir left Kenny in no doubt as to what Fyodor was talking about. They might sound like a breed of chicken, but the Odessa Reds were clearly a rival gang.

“How can I prove to you that I’m none of those things? What are the qualifications for most of the people who join your gang?”

“Most of them have family connections with me in Simferopol which go back many generations. At the very least, most of them are Ukrainian.”

“I can sound Ukrainian,” said Kenny, demonstrating the point. (He had made quite a study of accents at drama school.)

His impression didn’t go down well with Vasili and Vladimir. They clearly thought he was sending them up. Two giant hands slammed down on his shoulders, while two giant fists were once again bunched.

But again a gesture from their boss froze them before the blows made contact.

“Anyone who wants to join the Simferopol Boys,” said Fyodor quietly, “has to pass certain tests.”

“A lot of tests?” asked Kenny Mountford, maintaining his nonchalance with increasing difficulty.

The gang boss nodded. “The big one’s at the end. Not many people get that far. But if you want to have a go at one of the starting tests...”

Kenny nodded. Fyodor leant forward and told him what the first test was.

Like most actors, Kenny Mountford always felt a huge surge of excitement when he got a new part. However trivial the piece, hours would be spent poring over the script, making decisions about the character’s accent and body language. The part that Fyodor had given him prompted exactly the same adrenaline rush, though in this case he had no text to work from. Kenny started reading everything he could find about the Crimean region, and Simferopol in particular. He also tracked down recordings of Ukrainians speaking English and trained himself to imitate them.

The new direction his career was taking still failed to raise much enthusiasm in Lesley-Jane. From an early age, her main aim in life had been to be the centre of attention, so she didn’t respond well to being totally ignored by the man she was living with. But Kenny was too preoccupied with his new role to notice her disquiet.

The first test he had been given by Fyodor was relatively easy. All he had to do was to sell drugs in Shepherd’s Bush, just like the dealer who had served as his initial introduction to the Simferopol Boys. Apart from the work he was doing on his accent, Kenny also spent a considerable time sourcing clothes for the role, and was satisfied that the hoodie, jeans, and trainers he ended up with had achieved exactly the requisite degree of shabbiness. He found it a welcome relief to be selecting his own clothes for a part, rather than having to follow the whims of some queeny costume designer as he would in television.

He needn’t have bothered, though. The kind of lowlife he was peddling the drugs to didn’t even notice what he looked like. The only thing they thought about was their next fix. But for Kenny Mountford as an artist — and a potential participant in a Charlie Fenton production — it was very important that he should get every minutest detail right.

After his first successful foray as a drug dealer, he got home early evening to find a very impatient Lesley-Jane Walden, dressed up to the nines and in a foul temper. “Where the hell have you been?” she shrieked, almost before he’d come through the door. “You know we’re meant to be at this Tom Cruise premiere in half an hour.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“Well, for God’s sake get changed into something respectable and I’ll call for a cab.”

“I don’t want to get changed.” Kenny Mountford hadn’t really formalised the idea before, but he suddenly knew that he wasn’t going to change his clothes until Charlie Fenton agreed to give him the part in his next production. He was going to immerse himself in the role of a Simferopol Boy until that wonderful moment. “And don’t try to change my mind,” he added in his best Ukrainian accent.

“What the hell are you talking about — and why the hell are you using that stupid voice?” demanded Lesley-Jane. “If we don’t leave in the next five minutes, we’ll have missed all the paparazzi. And if you think I’m going to be seen at a Tom Cruise premiere with someone dressed like you are, Kenny, then you’ve got another think coming!” Her face was so contorted with fury that she no longer looked even mildly pretty.

“Listen,” Kenny continued in his Ukrainian voice, “I’ve got more important things to do than to—”

He was interrupted by the phone ringing. Lesley-Jane turned away from him in disgust. He picked up the receiver. A seductive “Hello” came from the other end of the line. The man’s voice was vaguely familiar, but Kenny could not immediately identify it.

“Hello,” he replied, still Ukrainian.

The voice changed from seduction to suspicion. “Who is this?”

Then Kenny knew. “Charlie,” he enthused, reverting to his normal voice, “how good to hear you.”

At the other end of the phone Charlie Fenton sounded slightly thrown. “Is that Kenny?”

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

The director still didn’t sound his usual confident self as he stuttered out a reply. “Oh, I just... I was... um...” Then, sounding more assured, he said, “I just wanted to check how you were getting on with your infiltration process.”

“I thought you weren’t going to be in touch for three months.”

“No, I, er, um... I changed my mind.”

“Well, in answer to your question, Charlie, my infiltration is going very well. I’m already working for a gang.”

“That’s good.”

“They’re Ukrainian,” he went on, reassuming the accent to illustrate his point. “And, actually, it’s good you’ve rung, because there’s something I wanted to ask you...”

“What’s that?”

“How deep do you think I should go into this character I’m playing?”

“As deep as possible, Kenny.” With something of his old pomposity, the director went on. “My style of theatre involves the participants in total immersion in their characters.”

“I’m glad you said that, because I’ve been wondering whether I should actually be living in my house while I’m doing this preparation work. A Ukrainian gangster wouldn’t live in a Notting Hill house like mine, would he?”

“No, he certainly wouldn’t.”

“So what I want to ask you is: Do you think I should move out of my house?”

“No question. You certainly should,” replied Charlie Fenton.

He took a grubby room in a basement near Goldhawk Road and, as he got deeper into his part, Kenny Mountford realised that he could no longer be Kenny Mountford. He needed a new identity to go with his new persona. He consulted Vasili and Vladimir on Ukrainian names and, following their advice, retitled himself Anatoli Semyonov. He also cut himself off from the English media. He stopped watching television, and the only radio he listened to on very crackly shortwave was a station from Kiev. He bought Ukrainian newspapers in which at first he couldn’t even understand the alphabet.

Meanwhile, the tests set by Fyodor got tougher. On top of the dealing, Kenny was now delegated to join Vasili, Vladimir, and other of the Simferopol Boys in some enforcement work. Drug customers dragging their feet on payments, prostitutes or pimps trying to keep more of the take than they were meant to... to bring these to a proper sense of priorities called for a certain amount of threatening behaviour, and frequently violence. In such situations, as with the drug dealing, Kenny — or rather Anatoli Semyonov — did what was required of him.

The thought never came into his mind that what he was doing might be immoral, that if he were caught he could be facing a long stretch in prison. Kenny Mountford was acting, he was researching the role of Anatoli Semyonov with the long-term view of appearing in a show created by the legendary Charlie Fenton. When such a conflict of priorities arose, morality was for the petty-minded; art was far more important.

As he got deeper and deeper under his Simferopol Boys cover, Kenny saw less and less of Lesley-Jane Walden. He didn’t feel the deprivation. He was so focused on what he saw as his work that his mind had little room for other thoughts.

At the end of an evening with Vasili, Vladimir, and some baseball bats, which had left a club owner who was behind on his protection payments needing three weeks’ hospitalisation, the three Simferopol Boys — or rather the two Simferopol Boys and the one prospective Simferopol Boy — reported back to Fyodor.

The gang leader was very pleased with them. “This is good work. I think we are achieving more since Anatoli has been with us.” Vasili and Vladimir looked a little sour, but Kenny Mountford glowed with pride. He had reached the point where commendation from Fyodor was almost as important to him as commendation from Charlie Fenton. “And I think it is time that Anatoli Semyonov should be given his final test...”

Kenny could hardly contain his excitement. In his heavily Ukrainian voice, he asked, “You mean the one that will actually make me a fully qualified member of the Simferopol Boys?”

Fyodor nodded. “Yes, that is exactly what I mean.” He gave a curt nod of his head. Vasili and Vladimir, knowing the signal well, left the room. A long silence filled the space between the two men who remained.

It was broken by Fyodor. “Yes, Anatoli, I think you have proved you understand fully the role that is required of you.”

Kenny Mountford could hardly contain himself. It was the best review he’d had since The Stage had described his Prospero as “luminescently compelling.”

“So what do I have to do? Don’t worry, whatever it is, I’ll do it. I won’t let you down.”

“You have to kill someone,” said Fyodor.

At first Kenny had had difficulty with the amount of vodka drinking that being an aspirant Simferopol Boy involved, but now he could match Vasili and Vladimir shot for shot — and even, on occasion, outdrink them. They tended to meet during the small hours (after a good night’s threatening) in a basement club off Westbourne Grove. It was a dark place, heavy with the fug of cigarettes. Down there in the murk no one observed the smoking ban. And, having seen the size of the barmen, Kenny didn’t envy any Department of Health inspector delegated to enforce it.

He was always the only non-Russian speaker there, though his grasp of the language was improving, thanks to an online course he’d enrolled in. Kenny had a private ambition that, when the three months were up, he would return to Charlie Fenton not only looking like a Ukrainian gangster, but also speaking like one.

That evening they were well into the second bottle of vodka before either Vasili or Vladimir mentioned the task they knew Fyodor had set Kenny. “So,” asked Vladimir, always the more sceptical of the two, “do you reckon you can do it? Or are you going to chicken out?”

“Don’t worry, tovarich, I can do it.” He sounded as confident as ever, but couldn’t deny to himself that the demand made by Fyodor had been a shock. Playing for time, he went on, “The only thing I can’t decide about it is who I should kill. Just someone random I happen to see in the street? Would that be the right thing to do?”

“It would be all right,” replied Vasili, “but it would be rather a waste of a hit.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, if you’re going to kill someone, at least make sure it’s someone you already want out of your way.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand you.”

“For heaven’s sake, Anatoli,” said Vladimir impatiently, “kill one of your enemies!”

“Ah.” Kenny Mountford tried to think whether he actually had any enemies. There were people who’d got up his nose over the years — directors who hadn’t recognised his talent, casting directors who had resolutely refused to cast him, actors who’d stolen his laughs — but none of these transgressions did he really think of as killing matters.

His confusion must have communicated itself to Vladimir, because he said, “You must have a sibling who’s infuriated you at some point, someone who’s cheated you of money, a man who’s stolen one of your girlfriends...”

“Yes, I must have, mustn’t I?” Though, for the life of him, Kenny Mountford still couldn’t think of anyone who was a suitable candidate for murder. He also couldn’t completely suppress the unworthy feeling — which he knew would threaten his integrity as an actor in the eyes of someone like Charlie Fenton — that killing people was wrong.

The conversation became becalmed. After a few more shots of vodka, Vladimir announced he was off to get a freebie from one of the Bayswater working girls controlled by the Simferopol Boys. “Got to be some perks in this job,” he said.

But Vasili lingered. He seemed to have sensed Kenny’s unease. “You are worried about the killing?”

“Well...”

“It is common. The first one. Many people find that. After two or three, though...” Vasili downed another shot of vodka. “... it seems a natural thing to do.”

There was a silence. Then Vasili leant forward, lowering his voice as he said, “Maybe I could help you...”

“How?”

“There is a service I provide. It is not free, but it is not expensive... given the going rate.” He let out a short, cynical laugh. “There are plenty of Simferopol Boys who have got their qualifications from me.” Kenny Mountford looked puzzled. “I mean that they have never killed anyone. I have done the killings for them.”

“Ah.” Kenny couldn’t deny he was tempted. He knew that for the full immersion in his character that Charlie Fenton required he should do the killing himself. But he couldn’t help feeling a little squeamish about the idea. And if Vasili was offering him a way round the problem... “How much?” he asked, not realising that, now the danger of his actually having to commit a murder had receded, he’d dropped out of his Ukrainian accent.

Vasili told him. It seemed a demeaningly small sum for the price of a human life, but Kenny knew this was not the moment for sentimentality. And he did still have quite a lot of money left from the sitcom fees. “So how do you select the target? Even more important, how do you make it look as if I’ve actually committed the murder?”

The Ukrainian dismissed the questions with an airy wave of his hand. “You leave such details to me. I have done it before, so I know what I’m doing. So far as Fyodor is concerned, it is definitely you who has committed the murder. So far as the police are concerned, nothing ties the crime to you. All you have to do is to get yourself a watertight alibi for tomorrow evening.”

“Tomorrow evening?” Kenny was rather shocked by the short notice.

With a shrug, Vasili said, “Once you have decided to do something, there is no point in putting off doing it.”

“I suppose you’re right...”

“Of course I am right.”

“But I’m still not clear about how you select the victim.”

“That, as I say, is not your problem. Usually, I kill one of my client’s enemies. That way, not only does Fyodor recognise there is a motive for the murder, the client also gets rid of someone who’s bugging them. It is a very efficient system — no?”

“But if your client doesn’t have any enemies...”

“Everyone has enemies,” said Vasili firmly. Kenny was about to say that he really didn’t think he did, but thought better of it. “So, Anatoli, have we got a deal?”

“Yes, we’ve got a deal.”

Having checked with Vasili the proposed timescale for the murder and handed over the agreed fee the next morning, Kenny set about arranging his alibi. It couldn’t involve any of the Simferopol Boys, because Fyodor wasn’t meant to know that he had an alibi. So, to keep himself safe from police suspicions, Anatoli Semyonov would have to, for one evening only, return to his old persona of Kenny Mountford.

He decided that a visit to a fringe theatre was the answer. A quick check through Time Out led to a call to an actor friend, who sounded slightly surprised to hear from him, but who agreed to join him in darkest Kilburn for an experimental play about glue-sniffing, whose cast included an actress they both knew. “You’re not going with Lesley-Jane?” asked the friend.

“No.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing, Kenny, nothing.”

Normally he would have asked for an explanation of his friend’s remark, but Kenny was preoccupied with his plans for the evening. Even if the audience was small, as audiences for fringe theatre frequently are, he would still have people to vouch for where he was at the moment Vasili committed his murder for him. Kenny Mountford felt a glow of satisfaction at the efficiency of the arrangements he had made.

The serenity of his mood was shattered in the afternoon by a call from Fyodor. “Anatoli, I want you to keep an eye on Vasili. I’m not sure he’s playing straight with me.”

“How do you mean?” asked Kenny nervously.

“I’ve heard rumours he’s doing work on the side, not just jobs I give him for the Simferopol Boys.”

“What kind of work?”

“Contract killing. If you can bring me any proof that’s what he’s been doing, Anatoli, I will see to it that he is eliminated. And you will be richly rewarded.”

“Oh,” said Kenny.

He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get through to Vasili’s mobile, but it was permanently switched off. By the time he met his friend at the fringe theatre in Kilburn, Kenny Mountford was in an extremely twitchy state. There was no pretending that his situation wasn’t serious. If Fyodor found out that he had actually paid Vasili to do his qualifying murder for him, Kenny didn’t think it’d be long before there was a contract out on his own life. But he couldn’t let anyone at the theatre see how anxious he was, so all his acting skills were called for as he sat through the interminably tedious and badly acted play about glue-sniffing and then, over drinks in the bar, told the actress who’d been in it how marvellous, absolutely marvellous her performance had been.

His friend had his car with him and offered to drop Kenny off. As they were driving along they heard the Radio 4 Midnight News. The distinguished theatre director Charlie Fenton had been shot dead in Notting Hill at ten o’clock that evening.

“Good God,” said his friend. “If you hadn’t actually been with me, I’d have had you down as Number One Suspect for that murder, Kenny.”

“Why?”

But his friend wouldn’t say more.

Had Kenny Mountford not completely cut himself off from the English press and media, he would have known about the affair between Charlie Fenton and Lesley-Jane Walden. Their photos had been plastered all over the tabloids for weeks. He might also have pieced together that the director had never had any interest in him, only in Lesley-Jane — hence the request when they first met for their mutual land line rather than Kenny’s mobile number. How convenient for Charlie had been the actor’s willingness to go undercover and leave the field wide open to his rival.

Vasili, however, read his tabloids and knew all about the affair. He recognised Charlie Fenton as the perfect victim. The guy had gone off with Kenny’s girlfriend! Fyodor wouldn’t need any convincing that that was a proper motive for murder.

So Vasili had laid in wait outside the Notting Hill house, confident that sooner or later Charlie Fenton would appear. As indeed he did, on the dot of ten o’clock. A car drew up some hundred yards away from Kenny Mountford’s house and the very recognisable figure of the director emerged, blowing a kiss to someone inside. Vasili drew out his favoured weapon, the PSS Silent Pistol which had been developed for the KGB, and when his quarry was close enough, discharged two bullets into Charlie Fenton’s head.

Job done. Coolly replacing the pistol in his pocket, Vasili had walked away, confident that there was nothing to tie him to this crime, as there had been nothing to tie him to any of his previous fifty-odd hits. Confident also that Fyodor would assume that the job had been done by Kenny Mountford.

What he hadn’t taken into account was Charlie Fenton’s tomcat nature. No sooner had the director bedded one woman than he was on the lookout for another, and his honeymoon of monogamy with Lesley-Jane Walden had been short. She, suspecting something was going on, had been watching at the window of the house that evening for her philandering lover to return. As soon as Charlie Fenton got out of the car she had started to video him on her camera, and thus recorded his death. The footage, when handed over to the police, also revealed very clear images of Vasili, from which he was quickly identified and as quickly arrested.

Lesley-Jane Walden was in seventh heaven. To be at the centre of a murder case — there were actresses who would kill to achieve that kind of publicity. In the event, though, it didn’t do her much good. The police made no mention of the help she had given to their investigation in any of their press conferences. They didn’t even mention her name. And all the obituaries of Charlie Fenton spoke only of “his towering theatrical originality” and his reputation as “a loving family man.” Lesley-Jane Walden was furious.

Her mood wasn’t improved when Kenny ordered her to get out of the house. She moved into a girlfriend’s flat and started badgering her agent to get her on I’m a Celebrity — Get Me Out of Here!

“You are a clever boy, Anatoli Semyonov,” said Fyodor, when they next met. “To get rid of your girlfriend’s lover and arrange things so that Vasili is arrested for the murder — this is excellent work. I have wanted Vasili out of the way for a long time. You are not just a clever boy, Anatoli, you are also a clever Simferopol Boy.”

“You mean I have qualified to join the gang?”

“Of course you have qualified. Now you will always be welcome here. You are one of the Simferopol Boys.”

So Kenny Mountford too thought: job done. Except, of course, having done that job was not going to lead on to the other job. Kenny had done what he promised — infiltrated a London gang — but the man to whom he had made that promise was no longer around. There would never be a Charlie Fenton production about London gangs. All Kenny Mountford’s efforts had been in vain.

And yet the realisation did not upset him. No one could say he hadn’t tried everything he could to achieve respectability as an actor, and now it was time to move on. Time to get back to being Kenny Mountford. All that Method, in-depth research approach to characterisation might be all right for some people in the business. But for him, he reckoned he preferred something called “acting.”

When he finally spoke to his agent, she revealed that she’d been going nearly apoplectic trying to contact him over the previous weeks. The BBC was doing a new sitcom and they wanted him to play the lead! He said he’d do it.

But Kenny Mountford didn’t lose touch with Fyodor and the Simferopol Boys. As an actor, it’s always good to have more than one string to your bow.

Copyright © 2011 by Simon Brett