The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [69]
Stevie nudged Henning. ‘Can you read those letters? What do they say?’
Henning shot a surreptitious glance over Stevie’s shoulder. ‘Homo homini lupus est. Gnothi seauton.
’ ‘ “Man is wolf to man”,’ Stevie muttered. ‘I got the Latin, what’s the other?’
‘Greek. “Know thyself”.’
Stevie edged imperceptibly further from the wolf man. ‘At least he’s not operating under any delusions,’ she whispered.
Then an extraordinary woman appeared. She was dressed in the tightest blue denim—matching jeans and jacket—stamped all over with Dior. She carried a gold evening bag on a chain.
The woman’s hair was an impossible red and arranged in ringlets that bounced with every painful step of her stiletto boots, the heels of which were so high she pitched forward, her knees pigeon-toed. The barman hurried to kiss her powdered cheeks, light her cigarette and pour her a drink. She received his attentions as she had received those of the bouncer, with long-suffering acceptance that she would have to be so openly adored wherever she went.
Two men came in after her. One bent to kiss her, his eyes closed in tenderness. The face under the ringlets never softened. For a man with such visibly rough hands, he caressed the woman’s back with great gentleness. Under his fur-trimmed hat was the face of someone who had seen little of that gentleness himself.
Stevie strained to catch his companion’s face. As he called an order to the barman Stevie started in shock. The tattooed neck, the mouth full of gold teeth . . .
Stevie didn’t move quickly. She turned languidly towards Henning, then pulled out a cigarette.
‘Henning—’ She realised her fingers were shaking and put the cigarette back. ‘You won’t believe this. It’s the shooter from the car park.’
Henning kept his eyes on the canary girl. ‘Where?’ he hissed.
‘Behind me. Bald. Your three o’clock.’
Stevie’s face prickled with fear, even though the shooter wasn’t interested in her. If he wanted to kill random women he would have shot her that afternoon. But his reappearance at the bar reminded her how connected the world really was. It was easy to forget, she thought. Worlds seem to separate us from the Russian hit man, the war lord, the rapist, the suffering prostitute . . . but really—she swung her feet nervously— we are all closer to each other than we think.
The shooter’s companion shouted at the barman for a beer. Stevie froze. She knew that voice. It had played over in her head since that meeting with Masha in the music rooms: Gregori Petrovitch Maraschenko; biznessman.
Goldie’s companion placed his hands on the bar. There, plain for all to see, was a tattoo of a grinning cat smoking a pipe.
Stevie casually took out her mobile, turned her face away from Maraschenko and spoke into the phone, carefully photographing his face over her shoulder with the tiny camera lens on the back. It was dark but he wasn’t far away and it was worth a try.
She sent the photo straight to Josie Wang in Confidential Investigations at Hazard, with the message: Can you identify asap?
Josie always worked late and if there was anything on record for Maraschenko, she would find it.
The bar began filling with people. A man with a blond handlebar moustache joined Maraschenko. Stevie’s seeking ears caught part of their conversation.
‘—so many damn Nigerians in this city!’
‘Nigeria and Russia—the two biggest money-laundering countries in the world.’
‘Ha!’
The moustachioed man spat on the floor. Stevie suspected he resented being twinned in any way with Africa.
It was odd—you didn’t see the Nigerians during the day. You wouldn’t know they were in Moscow at all. But in the safety of the black night, in the dark club, out they crept, to drink and dance in their brightly coloured tennis shoes and white smiles.
Stevie turned to Henning. ‘He could be holding the girl in his flat.’
‘Do you really think so?’
She shrugged. ‘It could be that simple. Often it is.’
‘What do we do, follow