The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [158]
She heard Anya say something to Heini in Russian, her voice low and dry with fear. Stevie leaned in as much as she dared and caught the word tualet.
‘What am I supposed to do about it? You can’t bloody go on your own.’ Heini turned to Dragoman in exasperation. ‘She’s not toilet trained? Like a naughty puppy, heh! You’ve given me a naughty puppy.’
‘She’s in your care now, my friend,’ Dragoman replied with a hint of a smile.
‘Send Sogol with her.’ Heini summoned the ginger-bearded muscle from the far wall with a wave of his fat hand. As the bodyguard lumbered over, Stevie vanished, heading on quick and nimble feet for the ladies room.
It was a proper powder room, with pale velvet chairs and a huge mirror cut in the shape of a butterfly. Hundreds of tin butterflies, painted in art deco colours, were fixed on the walls and ceiling.
Stevie went through to the tiled area and into the end cubicle. She was counting on Anya heading for the same one, instinctively choosing the one furthest from her tormentors. The ceiling was tall and the old-fashioned cubicles did not reach all the way up. Stevie climbed onto the toilet seat and pulled herself up onto the top of the partitions. There she waited, flattened against the back wall, hoping that Sogol would not look up.
She knew enough about kidnap victims to guess what kind of state Anya would be in. The difficult part would be to get Anya to trust her. Everyone would be an enemy in her eyes and her fear would stop her listening properly. Her nerves would be shot and her mind blank; in that state, she might even scream and run back to the bodyguard.
Stevie needed to find the thing that would unfreeze her, something that would go straight through all her self-protecting zombie shells and reach Anya’s heart.
She heard Sogol the Barbarian enter. He wheezed like one of Heini’s pugs. He was checking the stalls. When they all appeared to be empty, he went to wait by the butterfly mirror, out of sight but not of earshot.
Stevie realised she couldn’t even afford to whisper to Anya. Sogol might hear. She pulled out her eyeliner. The old-fashioned water cistern above the seat would make a perfect canvas.
She hopped softly back down. She heard Anya’s heels clack towards the end stall and hoped she wouldn’t scream.
The girl’s fright was evident in her eyes when she found Stevie crouching like a water hen on the toilet seat, but fortunately her yelp of surprise died before it could get out. Stevie put her finger to her lips and pointed at the cistern.
Anya read the word Stevie had written there: Vadim.
Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, then her hands flew to her face and she began to weep. The sight of her brother’s name at the centre of this strange and terrible night brought a tiny comfort, but with that came all the pain in the world.
Stevie was relieved; Anya had understood.
Sogol’s voice came over the stalls. ‘No crying, eh, only pissing. I want to hear pissing.’ He snorted phlegm.
Stevie took the young girl’s face in her hands and held her close, trying to give Anya all her own strength in that small moment. Then, smearing the indigo letters with her sleeve, she swung herself up onto the top of the cistern and disappeared along the row of stalls.
Nothing would stop Stevie now.
Back in the ballroom, Stevie found that Henning had attached himself to Heini’s party, the birthday boy slapping him on the shoulder and insisting they drink a toast to ‘birthday girls’. The thought of them had Heini in very high spirits.
Clever Henning, she thought and watched him clink shot glasses with horrid Heini and down the contents. He really did have a knack for making the most unlikely friends.
She heard Heini chuckle. He went to clap Dragoman on the shoulder again but the shadow stepped in.
‘Don’t you worry, Felix. One drink won’t slow things down, heh. The cars are waiting and we will be ready.’
Were they moving out?