The Master of Rain by Tom Bradby

conflicting views. “Not the anger that stems from a disagreement or jealousy: that would be done in a flash, then instantly recoiled from. One incision, or a couple at most, instantly regretted as the perpetrator senses this will result in death and that he has gone too far. No, this stems from a deep-seated rage. It is perhaps sexual in nature. It has been building for a long time. The relationship . . . arrangement . . . has been leading up to this point, though poor Lena has not known it. It has exploded here.”

    “He’s done this before?” Caprisi asked.

    “Perhaps.”

    “Perhaps, or he has?”

    “He has, I would say.”

    “But we haven’t seen anything like it?”

    “I’m checking the records. And we’re talking to the French gendarmerie. We’ve even contacted the Chinese police, not that that will do any good.”

    Once again, they all stared silently at Lena Orlov’s body, until Field cleared his throat and took a step back.
     

    They left Maretsky and Krauss together in the basement—both, Field thought, in their own way, creatures of the darkness—and got back into the lift. Caprisi pulled across the metal cage door with unnecessary aggression and leaned back heavily on the wall behind him.

    “I’m sorry to be ignorant,” Field said, “but are all tea dancers prostitutes?”

    “Try one for size and you’ll see.”

    Caprisi hit the buttons for the third and fourth floors, then leaned back again with a sigh, his face softening. He seemed suddenly less hostile. “You know,” he went on, “they say these Russian women commit suicide at the rate of one a week. They come here with nothing . . .” Caprisi turned to him. “You imagine, you grow up in a beautiful house, with a large staff and the belief that the world is there to serve you and then”—he flicked his fingers—“all gone. Months if not years of terror as you escape across the vast wilderness of your country, and then you wind up here, penniless, your father and mother probably dead. How do you support your siblings? What do you do to stay alive? If you do nothing, then you live on the streets and slowly starve to death.”

    The lift seemed to be moving more slowly than ever. Field thought of the big house his own mother had been brought up in and the shame of his father’s bankruptcy.

    “Some teach English, or music, or French or Russian. Many of them go to the cabarets and offer themselves for a dance at a dollar a time. You want more? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on their mood, on you, on the money.”

    They’d reached the third floor. Caprisi jammed his foot in the door.

    “That’s the demimonde.
Les entraîneuses,
they call them. The entertainers. Beautiful, sad women, reduced to a life nothing could have prepared them for, and which many cannot manage.”

    Caprisi was staring at Field with intense, dark eyes. “Try one, Field, and see how much you hate yourself.” Then he stepped out and walked away.

    Field now put his foot against the door. “I didn’t know you were married.”

    Caprisi turned. “Who says I’m married?”

    “The photograph . . . I thought . . .”

    “Don’t pry, Field. I told you that.”

    “Why did Chen have to restrain you today?”

    “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

    They stared at each other.

    “What do you want me to do?” Field asked.

    “Whatever you were sent here to do. Write up your file. Tell Granger.”

    “I was sent to help.”

    Caprisi smiled thinly. “Tell Granger you’ve helped.”

    “What about Lena Orlov?”

    “What about her?”

    “Shouldn’t we find out where she worked, what her life was like, who she mixed with, whether anyone saw the man in her apartment?”

    “I
should.”

    Field frowned. “Shouldn’t this go a little beyond internal politics?”

    “Tell Granger that.”

    Field felt the sweat breaking out on his forehead again. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

    Caprisi shook his head. “No.”

    “Why not?”

    “I