The Troika Dolls (20 page)

Perhaps she had been paranoid to think the 4WD was after her, but at least her instincts were still working: the car had been trouble. What would have happened if she had been shot as well? Gunned down on the street like the two men? Would
militzia
have rifled her pockets and left the body lying in a red lake? And how would David Rice have reacted when told Stevie Duveen had been shot dead on a Moscow street?

It was so easy to fall through the cracks of life. Or be pushed.

Would news of her death have made it to Switzerland, or would she just have disappeared into the Moscow city morgue, to lie in a steel tomb unclaimed?

What mattered in the end, Stevie supposed, was that someone remembered that you had existed. A memory was everyone’s legacy, the small consolation of the dying. The ancient Romans had understood how important remembrance was. It was they who passed
damnatio
memoriae
, the extreme form of dishonour, which ‘removed from remembrance’ the traitor who had shamed the Roman State. Every trace of the condemned man’s life was erased, cancelled, wiped out, as if he had never existed.

We all do it, erase our ex-lover’s phone number, tear up photos, forbid
the mention of his name.

Stevie was trying very hard to bury Joss Carey in the deepest
oubliette
she could find, hoping he would quietly starve . . .

The Soviets, like the Romans, had eliminated people from public memory. It was the ultimate death. Stalin had had all his opponents during the Great Purge removed from history books, and had them doctored out of photographs. Children were instructed to scratch out the faces of ‘traitors’ in their school textbooks as a gesture of patriotism and loyalty.

Now, as then, history was under strict Kremlin control. To record another version of events was an act of rebellion, even revolution. It was to refuse to forget; it was to dignify a life—lives—with acknowledgement. That was what Masha was trying to do.

Coming out of this reverie, Stevie suddenly noticed a tall man watching her from the shadows. He was smoking a Turkish cigarette— she could smell the tobacco. The man moved towards her, letting his herringbone overcoat slide from its hook on the left shoulder into his hand.

‘Been fighting?’ Henning’s tone was light but his eyes were anxious as he kissed her on each cheek.

Stevie smiled and gestured with her eyelashes at the spare chair.

‘Something like that.’

Henning sat, crossing his long legs. ‘Don’t tell me you’re drinking chocolate milk.’

‘Brandy Crustas.’

‘I thought only grannies drank those,’ he teased.

Stevie took a long sip of her brandy, her eyes avoiding his. ‘Have you forgotten what I’m like already?’

‘Quite the contrary, Stevie, quite the contrary.’ Henning leaned back in his chair, all trace of mirth disappearing. ‘What I had forgotten— almost forgotten, and unforgivably—is how fragile you look, how like a robin, all throat, fluttering fingers, huge eyes. Standing over there, watching you, I had a sudden urge to trap you in the hollow of my hands and blow gently on your feathers.’

Stevie flushed, turning the stem of her glass in her fingers. She didn’t quite know how to respond. She changed the subject. ‘I watched two men die in a drive-by shooting today. That’s why I’m having a brandy.’

‘Are you alright?’ Henning’s eyes were inspecting her mouth now.

‘What happened?’

Stevie touched her lip. ‘I walked into a glass door—I’m fine. But I thought the shooters were after me.’ Stevie grimaced, embarrassed.

‘Stupid of me. And I’m still shaking. I can’t even light—’ she raised her box of matches in one pale hand.

Henning leaned over and took the trembling hand firmly in his, box and all; with his free hand he produced a lighter and lit Stevie’s cigarette.

He did not let go and her hand remained trapped in his. ‘I want to protect you, Stevie. Does that sound terribly old-fashioned?’

Stevie drew deeply on her cigarette. ‘Protecting people is my job, Henning.’ She exhaled carefully. ‘You do see the irony?’ He smiled, but it quickly faded.

‘I’m so sorry about today, about not being here.’ He would not look away. Stevie grew awkward under the scrutiny and tried to disconnect her hand. Henning kissed it quickly and easily, then relinquished it.

The fingers were squashed white; Stevie rubbed them pointedly.

‘It appears I don’t know my own strength,’ Henning apologised, then added softly, ‘nor the strength of my feelings.’

Stevie swallowed hard, her pulse rising in her ears. ‘My heart is not a rubber ball, Henning,’ she began, her voice shaking. ‘It doesn’t bounce when it’s dropped. It’s more fragile than that.’ She shook her head, staring in her lap. ‘Joss—’ Her words stopped, ‘I can’t . . .’ she tried again. Still the words refused to come. Exhausted, she raised her face, composed now. ‘This is not for now,’ she said firmly.

Henning considered her words. ‘You’re right,’ he announced, and signalled the waiter. ‘A whisky, if you would be so kind.’ He faced back to Stevie. ‘Still,’ he went on, ‘it remains that I’ve put you in horrible danger.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Stevie shook her head. ‘I’m fine. The shooters weren’t after me. It was bad timing that I was there.’

Stevie filled him in on everything that had happened since he’d left for Istanbul, including Gregori Maraschenko and ending with the shooting.

Henning’s eyes grew dark. For a second, he remained frozen, his blue eyes tight with worry, then he broke into a smile. ‘So, what are you scheming, sitting here all alone?’

‘How to hunt a suspected kidnapper in a disreputable bar without drawing attention to myself.’ Stevie glanced at Henning. ‘Ourselves. Today is Thursday. Masha said Maraschenko goes to The Boar on Thursday evenings. But we‘ll have to be circumspect. No bright colours.’

Henning looked at their reflection in the large, gold-framed mirror suspended on the wall: Stevie, tiny as a doll in her wildly printed silk; he, so tall beside her. It would be hard for the two of them to go anywhere unremarked.

He nodded gravely. ‘Of course.’

Stevie put out her cigarette. ‘How was Istanbul?’

‘Foggy.’

‘I want to hear more about this secret language of flowers,’ she said brightly. ‘All I can see in my mind is blood seeping through snow.’

‘Well,’ Henning considered where to begin, ‘flowers are the opposite of indifference. Lovers and mourners all over the world have figured this out. If you want to show something matters to you, you give flowers. In nature, flowers are expressions of fertility, of the order of the natural world. They lie like unread books in a library. It is once they’re picked and given to someone—or laid down in their memory—that they become messages, manifestations of desire and emotions and unspoken words. And yet,’ his eyes twinkled with mischief, ‘the flowery messages remain indecipherable to those who aren’t meant to read them.’ Henning’s whisky arrived in a crystal glass and he raised it silently to Stevie.

‘You can see how flowers lent themselves perfectly to the job of lovers’ codes in the Turkish harem.’

‘What about these flowers then, the ones on our table?’ Stevie gestured to the small vase with its spray of uninspiring hothouse flowers. ‘What are they saying?’

‘Ah, but you see, those flowers haven’t been given to us.’ Henning picked a piece of fern from the arrangement. ‘If the waiter had come over and handed you the vase with the flowers, it would be different.

There would have been a message, an intention. Flowers are offered instead of words. They say the unspoken. That is what is beautiful about them, the subtlety of the message.’

‘People send flowers with cards,’ Stevie reminded him.

‘They do.’ Henning nodded. ‘But the cards may not convey the intention of the flowers at all; words are clumsy, people are timid, they say less rather than more.’ Henning put his glass down on the table. ‘Think of the man who will send flowers to a woman he is pining for. It’s her birthday. He sends an enormous arrangement of roses. The card reads simply, “Happy Birthday. John.” Which message is the true one? “Happy Birthday. John” or the passion of three dozen red roses?’

‘But surely it can’t have been that obvious?’ Stevie remained sceptical. ‘The sultan and his eunuchs would get a bit suspicious if bunches of elaborate red roses were being delivered to some harem beauty on a regular basis.’

Henning’s lips twitched with amusement. ‘They had many, many different flowers and each one was given a meaning, or a narrow range of meanings. The lovers would arrange small posies, bouquets, that conveyed a particular message: “I burn for you”, or “meet me”, or “we are being watched”, or—’ here, Henning’s voice softened—‘ “I admire you from afar”.’

‘What if,’ Stevie’s green eyes narrowed, ‘you wanted to declare that you were suspicious of someone’s intentions?’

Henning’s face split into a grin. ‘Then you would send mushrooms.’

Stevie laughed. ‘How elegant.’

‘The beauty of the secret language of flowers lies in utter deniability.’ Henning picked a small white rose from the table vase and held it out to Stevie. ‘You see? It’s just a rose. It’s pretty. Lightly scented. I thought it might please you. Nothing more.’

Stevie examined Henning. There was no denying his amusement. Was she falling into a trap? She took the rose without saying a word. Laid it on the table.

She paused. ‘Henning, what would a primrose mean, in this code?’

Henning gave it some thought. ‘If I’m not mistaken, it declares inconstancy.’

So. It was simple. Stevie had failed to read the signs. Joss Carey’s intentions had been telegraphed well ahead of time, even unbeknownst to him. Well, she knew better now than to give anyone the chance to make a fool of her heart again. No matter how charming, nor how tall.

Stevie and Henning stepped outside
into the icy night.

‘I still think we should have taken a hotel car, Stevie.’

‘It would hardly be discreet, turning up at a seedy bar in a chauffeured Mercedes. We want to blend in.’

Henning stopped and looked somewhat sceptically at his companion. Stevie was wearing a huge fox fur aviator’s hat and an ankle-length double-breasted navy coat with brass buttons. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘we’ll take a Moscow taxi.’

Moscow had so few proper taxis that the easiest way to get around was to hail any car on the street, hop in, name your destination and agree on a fee. This system worked pretty well. The fees were generally well established; the driver would take you as close as was convenient to your destination.

Henning stepped into the icy slush and stuck his arm out. A small black car swayed over from the other side of the road and stopped at the curb. Stevie jumped into the back, Henning in the front.

‘
Dobri vyecher
!’

Off they went, into the Moscow night. The driver was young, his face doughy, and the car was fogged with cigarette smoke. Stevie could smell beer and worse. Yes, he knew the bar—no problem—and turned up the volume on the stereo. Wild Russian techno pounded through the speakers. Satisfied, the driver accelerated and they scudded off through the streets.

At a set of lights, a Hummer idled beside them, its rear bumper crusted with filthy snow. Stevie tried to see the passengers but it was impossible through the black glass.

Suddenly, there were three sharp metallic taps at the driver’s window, and the tip of a submachine gun. A face leaned in.
Militzia
. The driver rolled the window down and inch an a half.

‘Papers!’

‘A minute.’ The driver pulled out his papers and a wad of roubles.

Small denominations. He slid these carefully through the crack in the window. The roubles vanished into the policeman’s padded jacket. He slid the documents back through the opening.

‘
Spasiba
,’ said the driver and rolled the window back up, quick as a fish.

‘If they smell the beer, they want three times as much,’ the driver complained to Henning as the lights changed. ‘It can get very expensive.’

The cheap tyres spun on the ice then carried them forward with a lurch.

_________

The Boar was dark and
fetid: a cavernous room with long trestle tables, a bar down the length of the right side, and a small dance floor at the back. It felt like an ugly beer hall. Stevie and Henning headed for the bar and ordered two beers. The barman served them in tankards bigger than Stevie’s head.

Henning gallantly helped Stevie up onto the high stool and handed her a tankard. He smiled at her. ‘I think that just about completes the picture.’

The place wasn’t very busy yet. Small clusters of three and four, couples, a few women dancing joylessly on their own near the speakers at the back of the room. Many of the customers and all of the dancing women were black, unusual for Russia.

Stevie took a sip of her beer. ‘I asked around; some friends know this place quite well.’

‘The Italians?’ Henning raised an eyebrow.

‘Brazilians. You know foreigners, they often see more than people who are from the city. Anyway, the Brazilians said that The Boar is a favourite with slimy middle-aged ex-patriots, lots of Armenians and Cypriots and Nigerians. The bar started as a “prostitute-free zone”, they were banned from operating here. But then the owner’s “roof”—the guy he pays protection to—insisted he allow them in. The roof gets a cut from the pimps too, so it’s very profitable for him. But the compromise was that the girls were not to approach the clients.’

‘Hence the dancing.’ Henning nodded towards the girls by the speakers.

‘I’m guessing, yes.’

The room darkened a little more. A huge picture of wolves running, slavering, through snow was projected above the trestle tables, covering the whole wall. The fangs of the first wolf were the size of Stevie’s forearm.

‘Most of the girls here are Senegalese,’ Stevie murmured over her tankard of beer. ‘Trafficked into prostitution.’

When Marcus the Brazilian had told Stevie this over the phone, it had been just another grim statistic of Moscow life. But now, saying those words aloud to Henning, here in the bar surrounded by the girls, seeing their faces, the statistic took on a whole new horror.