The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [1]
Everything was as it should be.
In the distance, the four children had stopped skating. They were about a hundred metres away from the crowds but their parents could still see them clearly. They had begun a game of sorts, skating together in a circle, holding hands, singing a song. Gegia couldn’t quite catch the words . . .
She suddenly grew uneasy, seeing them cut such small figures against the vast white expanse. She wanted them nearer to her. She took Ernesto by the arm and the two of them headed for the children. As they grew closer they could make out the words of the song the children had invented.
Blüemli under’m Iis, blossoms under the ice
Ganz schön g’froore, very nicely frozen,
Rosa oder Gääl, pink or yellow
Ich weis nöd, I can’t tell
Weles schöner isch, which the nicest is.
Gegia smiled at the happy little voices.
As the parents drew nearer, they saw the children had found two brightly coloured patches of ice, one bright pink, the other canary yellow. They were circling them, singing their ice blossom song.
The patches did indeed look like fruit flowers, trapped in ice. The effect was quite beautiful. Perhaps some coloured streamers had been washed down from the mountains in the spring thaw . . .
Gegia skated closer, still smiling. She looked down, laughing now, as the blade on her skate cut across the ice. There was a paler shape in the ice, just there, on one edge of the pink blossom. Gegia bent down then gasped in horror.
She was looking at a human hand, trapped under the ice. It was the hand of a young girl.
1
The wheels slapped the tarmac and skidded. There was ice on the runway and the nose of the plane danced as the pilot fought for control.
Stevie fixed her eyes on the terminal building: Welcome to Heathrow.
Her fingers on the armrest were relaxed—she wasn’t afraid of flying— but a bitter knot of tension was swelling in her stomach. It had been there since yesterday.
Outside, the orange overalls of the ground staff glowed in the dead grey light. The wings of the plane had been de-iced for take-off in Zurich, and the weather was no warmer in London. A blanket of cold had settled over all of Europe. Even the old people could not remember a colder winter.
Icy sea mists swathed England and Scotland, Ireland and Wales; sheets of sleet drummed incessantly on the Low Countries; the Alps were smothered in snow. In Russia, ice fell from the sky, and in Central Asia, the sky itself had frozen. It had been this way for months and it seemed like it would go on forever.
A driver was waiting inside the terminal.
‘Miss Stevie Duveen?’ At her nod, he led her to the waiting limousine.
Stevie collapsed into the warm leather interior and watched as
London passed in damp brushstrokes of grey and charcoal outside the window.
The limousine pulled up in front of a grey stone building just off The Mall, indistinguishable from the other grey stone buildings that lined the central London street. Stevie hurried up the steps towards the heavy, black-lacquered door. There was no sign or bell or flag to give any indication that this was Hazard HQ, only two potted cumquat trees standing clipped and to attention on either side of the entrance.
The door buzzed open of its own accord. Stevie crossed the black-and-white chequered marble floor of the lobby. It was empty save a heavy wooden desk and one uncomfortable-looking antique chair.
The receptionist greeted her. ‘He’s waiting for you, Miss Duveen.’
‘Carmel, please, call me Stevie,’ she begged.
‘I’m required to be formal, Miss Duveen,’ Carmel indicated with a discreet hand.
Stevie smiled at her and headed up the staircase that hugged the left-hand wall. On the first floor, a clear perspex globe was mounted on the wall. Stevie allowed it to scan her iris, then a heavy wooden door opened with a soft click.
Inside, the hive was busy: desks with computers, stacks of paper, periodicals in every language sat under huge wall maps of the world, stuck all over with different-coloured pins.
This was