The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [39]
Too late, she spun around. She turned back but the man had disappeared. Ice crackled through her veins. Why had the man photographed her? Who was he? Was he just a Moscow society snapper, or were the kidnappers watching the Kozkovs’ building? Whoever the man was, it was too late to stop him.
You’re a fool to let your guard down like that.
She wondered if he would notice, when he printed the pictures, the two fat tears that were tumbling out of her eyes.
5
The phone rang far too shrilly for the morning after a visit to a club. It took Stevie a long time to swim to the surface from her sleep.
‘Hello?’ The phone rang again, startling her. The receiver was in her hand . . .
Oh. The button.
It was Vadim. ‘Prostite—sorry for waking you, but I know where Petra is.’
‘Oh, well done, Vadim.’ Her voice was croaking. Dreadfully embarrassing. In the mirror opposite, Stevie caught sight of her tangled hair, her eyes swollen to the shape of almonds.
‘I talked to Anya’s music teacher.’ Vadim’s voice was excited, urgent. ‘Petra and Anya have the same one. She told me Petra hadn’t come to her lesson because she is in hospital for a small operation.’
‘Well done,’ she repeated. ‘Get visiting hours and we’ll go as soon as we can.’ Stevie struggled to disentangle herself from the heavy bedclothes.
‘Also, Henning left a message for you, Stevie. But he asked me to tell you as well, in case you didn’t check.’
Stevie thanked Vadim and hung up with a groan. She pressed the flashing message button on the hotel phone.
I’m sorry, Stevie, but some manuscripts have been discovered between the walls of a sultan’s palace. They could possibly date from the Ottoman empire. Or they could be some naughty child’s homework. Anyway, it may be a huge find. The museum has gone berserk and they’ll have my head if I don’t get down there immediately, before the treasure hunters do.
A headache began to pound through Stevie’s temples like the cavalry. So much for Diego and Iacopo’s Russian Standard vodka theory . . . Or it could have been the nightcap glass of champagne she had drunk in bed before going to sleep.
She had been too emotional to go right to sleep. The dancing girls, Anya’s photo, the girls on the park bench in London, the primrose in Joss’ bed, Norah Wolfe and her hungry smile, all mixed in together, going round and round in her mind, keeping her wide awake. The champagne had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Henning’s voice continued on the phone.
I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can . . . And Stevie, take Vadim if you go anywhere. Please . . . It’s safer, and it’s doing him good to be involved. Alright . . .
There was a tiny pause, a minute awkwardness that came through even on the recorded message, as Henning tried to decide what to say next.
Bye now.
Stevie reached for the house phone to ring her grandmother then thought the better of it and picked up her mobile. You never knew who was listening in hotels and she would never compromise Didi’s safety in the slightest degree.
There was no answer at the house in Zurich. Stevie frowned. It was early, but her grandmother always rose at six. She must still be out on her vita parcours—a ritual she followed unfailingly every morning and in all weather.
The vita parcours was an obstacle course of sorts, a set of tree stumps
and gym bars and elevated planks set up at various intervals on the forest trail, with instructions on what exercises had to be performed before one could move on. The formidable lady no longer ran between stations— she walked—but it kept her fit as an eighty-two-year-old fiddle.
Didi had taken Stevie with her every morning when she was a child and she vividly remembered the burn of the freezing air puffing out of her little lungs as she ran along in her thick winter tracksuit, or jogged along under the cool of the heavy green leaves in summer. Their morning run would be followed by a breakfast of blueberry yoghurt with heavy, homemade muesli, then a spoonful of