The Execution
‘Unnervingly cool prose…an entertainingly urbane thriller suspense lies not in the whodunit, but in watching a perfect life unravel.’ Daily TelegraphMatthew Bourne suspects his partner, Marianne, of having an affair – though he has just embarked on one himself. Then one day a colleague's wife dies in tragic circumstances, and Matthew is called to identify the body. Only much later does he realise that this incident has seeped into his life like a slow poison…A riveting narrative of mystery and menace, ‘The Execution’ is a stunningly accomplished novel.
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Fourth Estate
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First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2001
Flamingo is a registered trade mark of HarperCollinsPublishers Limited
Copyright © Hugo Wilcken 2001
Hugo Wilcken asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007106479
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007396917
Version: 2016-02-15
For my parents
CONTENTS
Christian’s wife was killed in a car crash yesterday. Apparently her brakes failed and the car careered into a shop front. The shop was open at the time but there were no other victims, just her. She died from asphyxiation, the seat belt crushed her windpipe. If she hadn’t been wearing her seat belt, she might have survived.
I wouldn’t say I knew her. I’d met her twice, maybe three times, when she’d come into the office looking for Christian. We’d probably said no more than ‘hello’ to each other. She was around thirty-five I’d say and quite good-looking – I wondered how she’d ended up with someone like Christian. Once, about a year ago, Christian asked me whether I wanted to go for a drink with him and his wife, but I had something else on so I turned him down. The invitation surprised me, because although we’ve worked in the same office for the past eighteen months, I have no particular rapport with Christian and I’ve never socialised with him. I was with him yesterday though, when they called about his wife.
There’d been a department meeting in the morning. The news had just come in about Jarawa’s sentence and we’re launching a major campaign for him. Jamie’s appointed me team leader with Christian and Joanne working under me. It’s my first big campaign so it’s important to me. After the meeting I got cuttings and print-outs from the library and looked over them until lunchtime, making notes and thinking. Then I went with Christian to the Italian sandwich bar on the corner. It’s the first time I’ve had lunch with him alone. I’ve never directly worked with him either, until now. Straightaway he told me that he was pissed off I was leading the campaign and not him. I could understand his disappointment: he’s about forty and I’m only twenty-nine. Besides, West Africa is ‘his’ area. Anyway I didn’t want any trouble so I said I hoped we could work as equals on this one. I proposed we divide the responsibilities evenly, while Jo, being younger and fairly inexperienced, could look after paperwork and legwork and co-ordinate the volunteers. My idea was that Christian could liaise with contacts in Africa while I handled government officials and the other human rights agencies. I’d also put in a visa application for him, although it was of course unlikely to be granted. The proposal pleased him. He’d wanted to be frank about the fact that he was pissed off, he said, but he knew he could work with me.
After lunch we started to flesh out our campaign strategy, in his office. We’d hardly sat down though, when the phone rang and Christian answered. It was a very brief conversation. He put down the phone and didn’t say anything. He went very white and stared at me. I said, what’s up? He said, she’s dead, she’s been killed. I automatically assumed he meant his wife – perhaps because I knew they don’t have any children. But thinking about it now, it might just as well have been his mother, or someone completely different. I didn’t exactly know what to say. He just sat there, with his bloodless face. After a while he said, so what am I going to do now? and rocked a little in his chair. Then I spoke … We had some sort of conversation, which I can’t remember now. He must have told me it was his wife, that she’d had a car accident, that it had taken place in Oxford, where he and his wife lived. I hadn’t known they lived in Oxford. It seemed a pretty long way for Christian to commute every day.
