Here's my second attempt at a muscular spy-thriller. It will likely be terrible, but nevermind. The second chapter is underway and any criticism or advice for writing muscle-woman fiction is welcome.
Chapter 1
Despite the murder just a few days before Hotel Sacher was back to normal running. The police had been pushed out of sight and every staff member had been told to keep quiet about the ‘unpleasant incident.’ Frank Brenner may have lost his life in the building but that wasn’t going to affect business.
But closer to the scene of the crime the veneer started to be peeled back. There was a porter standing by the lift as I got out on the fourth floor and flanking the door of Room 426 were two Viennese police officers.
“Ich bin Richard Ward, Scotland Yard. Sprechen mit Inspektor Steiner” The guards winced at the atrocious German but looked at the warrant card I pulled out from my wallet. The name and date of birth on it was right but everything else was a lie. Still, the forgers in the basement of Century House must have done a good job, since the policemen handed the card back to me without giving it a second glance and waved me into the room.
Inside it looked like a normal, if extremely extravagant and luxurious, hotel room only with large sections of the room taped off, where the forensics team hadn’t dusted for fingerprints yet. Large works of art adorned the walls, Soviet Realist prints sitting in contrast with the opulent surroundings. Brenner’s body was gone, taken to a local morgue for a post-mortem, but a department store mannequin had replaced it, lying splayed on the bed, it’s arms and legs contorted to show the man’s last moments.
“Detective Sergeant Ward, I presume?” Asked a moustachioed man in a clean suit in impeccable English. “I’m Inspector Steiner, I thought you might like to see the scene of the crime before we give it back to the hotel.”
“Give it back to the hotel? This is a murder scene, surely you need to hold onto it until you have a suspect or something?” I asked. This was all new for me, generally I was on the other end of a murder investigation. Steiner pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“We’ve pulled almost all the evidence we can get out of it,” he told me in between puffs of his cigarette. “Anyway, we do have a suspect. God, we have the method as well.”
“Really?”
“The night receptionist saw him return to his hotel room with an American girl. He then saw her leave about half an hour later by herself. We have a description, it’s been sent to every airport and hotel in the country. She’ll be in an interrogation room by the end of the week.” Steiner said.
“You said you had the method of his death as well?” I asked. Steiner walked over to the mannequin lying on the bed and pulled off the head and neck.
“Yes, the autopsy came back this morning. It mainly confirmed what we knew. Brenner died because of cerebral hypoxia… Sorry, strangulation. This is further confirmed by the bruising that was found around his neck. However, more interestingly,” he said, pointing at the mannequin’s head, “Was that the bruising wasn’t limited to the neck. It stretched up to jaw, almost to the ear.”
“What would cause bruising like that? A scarf? That would explain the width but it wouldn’t be hard enough to cause the bruising.”
“No, it’s something simpler. You see during the autopsy, we found denim fibres stuck to Brenner’s neck. And the receptionist said the woman was wearing jeans.”
“She strangled him with her legs?”
“As far as we can tell. It could have been murder or it could have been an accident. Some people enjoy that kind of thing.” Steiner waggled his eyebrows. “But it wasn’t for money, that’s for certain. Nothing was taken, the insurance company checked.”
That was the confirmation I needed. Frank Brenner, the merchant, Khrushchev's shopkeeper, hadn’t died in some burglary gone wrong.
“Well, I think that’s all I need to know, would you mind sending the a copy of the autopsy file and you reports to the embassy?” I asked, already backing out of the hotel room. Steiner just nodded, going to reattach the mannequin’s head.
***
The British Embassy in Vienna was a beautiful building but you would never tell from where Richard was stood. The members of the service where kept away from the prying eyes of visiting diplomats in what had been the wine cellar. But while the cellar had no windows and a permanent problem with damp, what it did have was secure telephone line to Century House in London.
“Put me though to the Chief of Section D… Crawley? Sir, I’ve just spoken to the head of the Brenner investigation. It was an assassination-”
Crawley, the dour-faced man in charge of the service’s more violent acts, spoke down the phone.
“No, sir, the Austrians are looking into it as a crime of passion… Because Brenner died with a KGB assassin’s thighs wrapped around his neck. And, I think the she must have a sense of humour, she was dressed as an American.”
