The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [137]
An elderly lady, pin-thin, sat alone by the window. She was dressed in black, with a fat rope of pearls around her neck, and several wrapped around her wrists. She seemed to be drinking only juices and wore a purple band.
Three women, all with incredible hair and high-heeled knee-high boots strode in and sat down. Their cushiony lips and ageless faces suggested various improvements had been made to the original model. They spoke fluent French to the waiter and another language among themselves. Stevie guessed they were Lebanese.
Stevie was looking for Eastern Europeans. They were not difficult to spot. At a large table just to her left sat three men, all in jogging suits. Two were dark and built like doorstops. They both wore heavy rings, and thick gold necklaces and bracelets.
The third was tall and ginger-haired, with red stubble and a huge chest that ran seamlessly into his stomach like Hadrian’s Wall. Stevie silently nicknamed him ‘the Barbarian’. The three were demolishing a huge breakfast of plates of meat, cheese and smoked fish.
Dragoman was not among them—at least not as far as she could tell from the photos Josie had sent, and the description she had given.
Then a fourth man appeared, his back to Stevie. She started.
He was wearing a mauve jogging suit, shiny and rather tight. Not a tall man by any stretch, but he was as stocky as a barrel. He seemed to be fighting a battle against hair loss, the bleached hair plugs visible from the back. The man was covered in gold and diamond jewellery and wore large white running shoes in the American style. Three fawn pugs ran snuffling at his heels.
This was definitely not the dagger-sharp silhouette of Felix Dragoman. This was something else entirely.
The men at the table stopped eating and stood immediately to greet him. They spoke Russian, but Stevie could make out several accents—Romanian? Hungarian? possibly Turkish . . . ? They called him Bozz.
This wasn’t Dragoman—but who was he?
One of the men hurriedly pulled out a chair and the Boss sat. He turned in profile to light his cigar and, with a jolt, Stevie recognised him—the lips were unmistakable: they looked almost as if his mouth had been turned inside out, leaving his lips like small, uncooked sausages. Those were not the lips the man had been born with. He wore huge wraparound sunglasses with gold rims, rather like an ageing star of B-grade action movies, or a Southeast Asian dictator. Stevie might have been tempted to giggle had she not known just how dangerous Heinrich— or Heini—Hahanyan was.
Stevie watched him fawning over his dogs.
Sometimes she wished her mind wasn’t populated with faces like his. Surely it changed you, to even hold the impression of his features in your mind, knowing who he was and what he did? Perhaps it was the catalogue of all the faces that brought her her nightmares . . .
‘Givenchy, kak ya tibya liubliu! Bacon, ah?’ Givenchy, the pug, responded with frenzied licking of the human’s lips. Heini’s voice was surprisingly soft, even feminine. He fed the dog small morsels with his neighbour’s fork.
At his feet, one of the other pugs was indiscreetly licking his balls. Stevie watched as he too, his work done, jumped up and began licking his master’s lips. It was enough to put one off one’s beetroot breakfast, thought Stevie.
‘Tseluyu, Calvin Klein!’ Heini fondled the ball-licking dog and looked down for the third.
‘Shto ti dyelayesh, Adam?’
In reply, Adam lifted his little pug leg and peed on the chair. Heini scooped him up onto his lap to join his two friends.
At that moment, Henning arrived, freshly shaven and smelling rather inexplicably and intoxicatingly of leather and roses.
‘Thank goodness, Henning. You took your time,’ Stevie grumbled crossly.
Henning was brandishing a copy of the Murmeli Post. ‘Sleep is the bedrock of good sense. It says so right here.’
Stevie only frowned. Henning glanced at her breakfast tray and his eyes twinkled. ‘They’ve got you off the coffee have they?’
‘Order a pot of coffee will you, for heaven’s sake. Stop fooling around.’
A coffee pot