The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [23]
Sensibly he had chosen a dirty black Lada—a crappy Soviet-made car that was as indistinguishable as it was unreliable. No one would steal it, follow it, or even bother to notice it. When Stevie stepped out into the car park, the icy brown slush rose above her tiny booted ankle. The air had the faintly sour smell of Russia.
‘Welcome to Moscow.’
‘I didn’t think I would be back so soon.’
The car windows were filthy from the dirty snow mist sprayed up by the traffic. Night had settled and a fog was creeping in. Only the tail-lights of the other cars, glowing red, and the fuzzy neon of the casino at Pushkinskaya were bright in the gloom.
They crept down Tverskaya Yamskaya, one of the main boulevards of Moscow. Wide and straight, they seemed to go on forever.
‘I’ve booked you into the Metropole. It’s not far from the Kozkov’s flat—I’m staying with them.’
‘Oh. Thank you very much. That’s kind of you.’ Stevie was always formal when she was feeling shy. She noticed Henning hide a smile— something was amusing him.
Stevie considered his profile. It was quite handsome, if you liked the tall and slightly scary type: strong nose—well, big actually, but it suited him—a square jaw, narrow eyes of a piercing glacier-ice blue. They made Stevie think of a chink of mountain sky. He should stop smirking at her, though.
He was wearing his herringbone overcoat and a tomato-red scarf. ‘You look rather dashing in your Henningbone,’ she teased.
‘Just trying to keep up with you, Stevie, with all your fluff and pearls.’ He meant her coat and hat. Both were steel-grey astrakhan, her hat pillbox style, but generous enough to cover the tips of her ears; the coat was tulip-cut, with full sleeves that ended above the wrist, leaving room for a length of wrist encased in black suede gloves. Around her neck she wore four strands of pearls, her great-grandmother’s legacy. They never came off, not even in the bath.
‘Henning, I feel like a bit of a cheat coming all the way here and meeting the Kozkovs. I’m guessing there’s something you’re not telling me, and, well, whatever it is, you can forget it now. I will do an assessment for them, but that’s it. Hazard have strict protocols.’
‘Just talk to the family. See what you think after you meet them.’
‘It won’t change a thing, Henning.’
The Kozkov residence was on the top floor in a huge, Soviet-style residential block. Like all the other blocks in the street, the common entrance was off the main street, via a number code in the wall that opened double steel doors painted in tatty black.
Another code opened similar doors just inside—this time made of wood—that gave onto a warm and gloomy marble foyer, with a grid of metal mailboxes and a large lift cage. Everything was bathed in a yellow-greenish light that seemed to produce a thick, obfuscating glow rather than illuminate anything.
The front door of the flat was a double door padded in leather. Like the ones downstairs, it was backed in steel and gave onto a second steel door. This was the standard residential fortress of the average Muscovite.
Stevie noticed a water bowl. So the Kozkovs had a dog. That was certainly helpful in terms of personal security. So were the double doors.
These buildings were all designed with a back entrance that led to a lane or courtyard for communal rubbish bins, coal scuttles and the like. The back doors were also steel and armed with codes.
The high crime levels in Moscow meant that basic levels of home security were quite good. It also meant that other residents would be afraid for their own safety as well and unlikely to let any strangers into the foyer.
The disadvantage was that these flats almost certainly had only one way out. It was a legacy of the sub-divisions that had taken place after the fall of communism and people had decided that they might rather like their own bathrooms and kitchens and personal space. Connecting doors had been walled up.
By the time any attackers got to the front door, the inhabitants would be trapped.