Josh Ireland

He's this foolish Belgian.

I can imagine it's a sort of messy.

So they get in.

Ramon takes his coat off, balances it on the table.

Trotsky sits down.

He hands him the typewritten sheet.

And it's, you know, it's garbage.

It's an idiotic screed, really.

So Raman has four things, in fact, in his raincoat.

He has the ice axe, he has a long dagger, he has a pistol fully loaded, and he has this slightly fatuous document which purports to give his reasons for what he's about to do.

So this is all part of the sort of NKVD plot, which is, again, so consistent with the way that the FSB act now is that you try and introduce confusion and deniability.

So what he says is that I was a passionate Trotskyist, but now I've seen the true depth, the squalor of his thinking, and I need to take revenge on him.

So he puts this all down.

And Trotsky starts reading.

And then there's a moment when Ramon sort of stands above him and then he thinks to himself, everything's going really well.

Now is my moment.

He raises his hand, grabs the ice axe and slams it towards Trotsky.

And what happens is that Trotsky moves his head just a millimetre, maybe a fraction of a millimetre.

But that's enough to deflect the actual force of the blow.

So he should have killed him with one blow.