The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [150]
Whenever the girls heard voices, they stopped talking and Anya put her ear to the door. She had the acute hearing of a trained musician and it was her job to listen to see what she could learn. It was never much, but when the voices were raised, it was easier.
Like the other night, when the man had got so angry and the atmosphere had become as brittle as glass. The guard who had brought them food had been vicious, stepping on Dasha’s hand on purpose. When she had cried out, he’d sneered and said, ‘Soon there’ll be a lot more than that to cry about, my little doll.’
After that, Ludmilla had started talking about death again, but then the voices had grown louder and Anya had shushed her.
‘—will not have that bastard . . . see what I can do. He mistakes me for someone he can . . . it’s a very bad mistake! . . . Alexei!’
Anya crept even closer to the door, her ear to the crack between it and the floor, a mouse.
‘. . . tonight . . . take the Kozkov girl . . . but the other two will . . .’
Damn! Anya could hear just enough to torture herself; not enough to know anything. Only that her captors’ leader was very angry, and that something was about to happen to them tonight—to her, and to Dasha and Ludmilla, separately.
Anya decided then that there could be things worse than death.
Stevie awoke early the next morning and, for a short moment, forgot completely where she was and what had happened the night before. Everything came flooding back in a rush, along with the throbbing in her hand, and she groaned.
Sometimes she wished her life was simpler, more honest, more morally certain; that she was growing vegetables and flowers in a sheltered garden by the sea, and raising chickens and children—did she really say children?
What would it be like to have children with Henning?
The thought hadn’t even been completed when she returned it quick-time to the ether and sat up, throwing back the duvet.
Ridiculous.
She found her slippers and shuffled to the bathroom. Every muscle in her body ached. She felt a hundred years old.
She was soaking her muscles in the bath, her mind racing over possible connections between Dragoman and Nikita ‘the killer’ Orlikov, when the musical notes of the PA sounded.
‘Guten Morgen, meine Damen und Herren. Some of you will no doubt have heard a little commotion yesterday evening. I can assure you all, liebe Gäste, that there is no cause for alarm.’ Gunnar Gobb’s dulcet tones went on to describe a flock of rare owls that had flown into the glass roof, causing some damage. He then thanked Mr Felix Dragoman for sparing his manpower in hunting for any owls that may be lying injured and in need of help.
The bathroom phone rang. Stevie hoped you couldn’t get electrocuted using the phone in the bath.
‘A flock of owls?!’ Henning was not impressed by the deception.
‘Owls are singularly individual creatures, they do not “flock”. And when they do chose to convene, their grouping is called a “parliament of owls”.’
He seemed to take it as a personal affront. Stevie thought of the owl on his forearm. Perhaps there was more behind his outrage than irritation at ornithological inaccuracy.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘you should look out of as many windows as you can.’
Stevie groaned again and pulled herself out of her bath, feeling only ninety-eight years old.
On the wooded hillsides above the gorge, and amongst the rocks surrounding the sanatorium, she could see men in boots bashing about.
Dragoman’s muscle were back out there, in three times the numbers, presumably looking for the shape at the window.
Crossing the breakfast room a short time later, wearing large black sunglasses, jodhpurs, with an oversized V-neck jumper in tartan cashmere, and her bathrobe thrown over her shoulders like a cape, Stevie nodded to each table of guests. The looks of more than polite interest and the furtive glances to her bandaged hand