Short story: Oscar fears a Russian card trick

Oscar was listening to the news on the radio when he heard the following report: “A Russian businessman, Arseny Aslanov, has been murdered outside his Surrey home. Mr Aslanov, 45, was a director of a company specialising in optical equipment”.

The name Aslanov was familiar. Oscar had a Russian couple among his patients – the Solokovs, a pleasant pair. Valery Solokov ran a travel business and his wife Marina taught Russian. They were hyperopic with astigmatism: Mr Solokov wore varifocals, his wife contact lenses.

Valery had only come in the day before, and then Oscar remembered where he’d seen the name Aslanov. Mr Solokov had badly scratched the lenses of one of his pairs of varifocals when, as he said, he’d just tripped over a kerb that morning. Oscar worked out how much it would be to replace the lenses, and said they’d take about two weeks. Valery was happy with this because he had another pair to the same prescription at home that he could use. He paid for them, and said his wife would collect them when they were ready.