“It’s for safety, sir,” said Dudnyk standing a step below, with his cuff-mate, Santa Ezeriņa, sitting on the handrail looking impatient. If she decided to slide down the bannister like some boisterous child, it would send him tumbling down the staircase in front of his boss.
He suspected she knew that.
“Catch the killer, Ilya, and we’re all safe,” continued the oligarch. “There’s nowhere to run, not with this plague. If he reached a car, we’d have heard an engine, seen the headlights. Search the estate, Ilya, every dark corner. Have this case wrapped up before midnight.”
“And I thought newspaper deadlines were tight,” Ezeriņa quipped. “You’d make a good editor, King Lear.”
“Can’t you stick her somewhere, Ilya?”
“You people talk like I’m an ugly piece of furniture.”
“Ilya, whatever yo
