The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [112]
‘Who’s there?’ he asked, his voice sharper now.
Stevie stepped forward and a shaft of light caught her face. She stared at him, saw the surprise on his face. Then he smiled at her, just as he had that day he’d walked in with Norah, and gave a small shrug.
It came to Stevie as she struggled to recover from the sucker-punch to the stomach: this was not the man for her. For all his pretences to truth and passion, this was a shallow man, an empty man. She had misjudged him, for the second time. Tonight, though, she realised that the magic she had seen in Joss had been a conjurer’s cheap trick, that gentleness in manner did not always mean kindness. It was time to move the hell on.
Stevie would have liked to take some spectacular, fiery revenge but she hadn’t the energy. In any case, it wasn’t worth the effort. Likely, Joss would turn it into a funny after-dinner story about the passions he unwittingly provoked in silly women. No, she would just drop him like an old sock from her life.
Passing by the two of them to go back inside was not an option. Stevie swung a leg over the balcony rail and let herself drop one storey down into the snowdrift below.
In hindsight, jumping had been a rather foolish—if silent—exit. She now found herself buried in snow to the waist. Still, she thought, she didn’t have far to flounder to the road. She lay back into the snow, now hidden from view, and rested for a moment. It was a pity there were no stars.
Stevie’s phone rang. It was Urs Willibitti from the Kantonspolizei with news: Sergei Lazarev had died in custody, despite having been only very slightly wounded in the right calf. This was, Willibitti explained, most unusual. They had never had a death in custody before.
After the arrest at the polo field, the police had taken the precaution of retrieving the offending weapon—the walking stick. An examination revealed it had been modified by the insertion of a super-charged spring-loaded device designed to fire a projectile of some kind.
Sergei Lazarev’s leg wound had been treated by the station medic upon arrival. There was no trace of a projectile in the man’s leg. The wound appeared to be merely a puncture and was patched with disinfectant and a bandaid. It had been assumed, by Willibitti and others, that the device had failed in some way, simply misfiring into Lazarev’s calf and so sparing Sandy Belle and her child from harm.
The prisoner, however, had apparently grown quite agitated, shouting at the medic in Russian. No one could understand him so an interpreter was eventually sent for. By the time he arrived, the man was dead.
Urs Willibitti assured Stevie, in response to her questions, that the cause of death had been unnatural—could not be attributed, say, to the strain of her chase, nor to liver failure. Twenty minutes after the arrest was made, the man’s skin had turned blue. He had begun to have trouble breathing and seemed to have severe pain in his calf. Cause of death was respiratory arrest.
Urs Willibitti wished her a pleasant evening and promised to call back if new developments arose.
Stevie sat stunned in her snow cave, trying to fit the pieces together. Lazarev had turned blue and died in agony. It made no sense.
If Lazarev’s plan had been to kidnap Sandy, why would the walking stick have been intended to cause a horrible death? Wouldn’t a sedative have been more likely? If the target had been the child, surely the same applied? Neither the delayed demise of Sandy Belle, nor that of her son Kennedy-Jack, would achieve any objective that Stevie thought plausible: Lazarev was unknown to Sandy; their paths had, as far as anyone knew, never even crossed. A sophisticated, slow-release poison wasn’t the usual modus operandi of a deranged fan.
Something wasn’t right . . .
A text message arrived. Josie.
Sergei Lazarev: nothing known. Searched all, hence delay. Files most
likely sanitised. Prob. ex-KGB if not active