The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [60]
Stevie considered the new information. ‘It doesn’t sound like Gregori contacting you was premeditated. He couldn’t have known that Anya Kozkov was having music lessons in the next room to where you would be working.’
‘Impossible.’
‘So if he is involved, it was an opportunistic involvement. Either he set something in motion on impulse, or he sold his information. Is there anything on those tapes that might help us?’
Masha stood, shaking her head. ‘I’ve been thinking, but I can’t remember anything specific . . .’
‘They might be worth listening to anyway.’
Masha bent and pulled open a drawer. It was full of cassette boxes, all neatly labelled and stacked. She picked one out and opened it. Her little hand fluttered to her mouth.
She reached for another, opened it, then another. They were all empty.
‘Oh Vadim.’ Masha looked up, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I’m so sorry. Gregori’s tapes are gone. He must have taken them the last time he was here, when I left the room. I never bothered to hide where I kept them. There seemed no reason to.’
‘It seems like a pretty good sign of guilt!’ Vadim had his fists clenched at his sides.
Masha fumbled about in another drawer then pulled out another cassette box.
‘It’s the best I can do. It was a test—to see if my machine was working.’ She popped the tape in the cassette player and there was a hissing, followed by Masha’s voice: Odin, dva, tri. Pozhaluista, skajite svaye imya. Please say your name.
Then a male voice, deep, tinny from the magnetic ribbon: Gregori Petrovitch Maraschenko; biznessman.
Masha rewound and played it again: Gregori Petrovitch Maraschenko; biznessman.
Stevie made her play it again, and again, until she felt she would know that voice anywhere.
‘Masha, how do we find Gregori Petrovitch?’
‘I think you should try The Boar. It’s a bar. He once told me he goes there on Thursday evenings, to drink away the memories. He’s hard to miss: he has a tattoo of a grinning cat on his left wrist.’
A thief’s tattoo, thought Stevie.
Suddenly, she remembered where she had seen Masha’s face: a television news broadcast from outside the House of Culture of the State Ball-Bearing Plant Number 1 in the Dubrovka area, a Moscow theatre. On 24 October 2002, the day after the Chechen gunmen took the audience hostage, the gunmen had asked for Masha to be their intermediary with the Russian government. They would only talk to her. She was a famous journalist and was known to have some sympathy for the Chechen people. Masha had walked into the captured theatre alone to negotiate with the gunmen.
Stevie remembered an interview, the resignation in Masha’s voice when she had summed up her efforts: ‘All I could get for the hostages was apple juice.’
It had been an incredibly brave thing to do.
As they got up to leave, they heard Galina begin to play—it had to be Galina, no young pupil could have mustered the same depth of feeling. She was incredible.
Galina stopped playing as they passed through her music room. She turned her large eyes to Stevie.
‘I’ve lost one child already. Please, I couldn’t bear to lose Anya as well.’
7
Stevie and Vadim crept their way back past the wild dogs in the snow outside.
‘I wouldn’t have thought to find two women like that in such a place, Vadim. I am quite in awe of them both.’
Vadim smiled and took Stevie’s arm to steady her. ‘Galina’s family is from St Petersburg. Her grandfather was a lawyer at the Leningrad State and Law Institute. Almost everyone there was killed and the institute was closed. They needed to destroy the law to create lawlessness. Every night black vans would stop in front of people’s apartments. People called them chyornye voroni, black ravens. One night a black raven came for Galina’s grandfather. He disappeared into the NKVD cellars at 4 Liteiny Prospekt.’
Vadim stopped to pick up a thick stick of wood. One of the dogs seemed intent on following them.
‘Yezhovshchina,’ Stevie whispered, ‘the Great Terror.’
Stevie