The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [92]
Rice ordered two Armagnacs and handed one to Stevie. ‘Trouble is, news of the Yudorov shindig has been splashed all over the place, which means we could get amateurs as well as pros tempted to have a crack at them. I haven’t mentioned the possible plot to the Hammer-Belles— they know Nadia Swarovski personally and she seems to have them scared stiff with her stories about the Romanian kidnapping gang making off with her boyfriend in Megève last year. I don’t want them alarmed unnecessarily.’
‘I understand,’ Stevie nodded slowly. ‘I’ll be discreet in what I say to them. I’ve got a friend up in St Moritz who always has his ear to the ground. It might be worth popping up a day or so early so I can see what’s going on.’
‘Best leave tomorrow morning then.’ Rice seemed pleased. He paid the bill with a thousand-franc note. The waitress didn’t blink.
‘In London the cabbies baulk at a twenty-pound note,’ he grunted, shrugging on his overcoat. ‘Here, even the newsagents have change for a thousand. Much more civilised really. And it means you only have to carry around one or two notes.’
Stevie saw he had at least twenty of the pale grey bills in his money clip today. She knew he would have a lot more stashed away somewhere.
David Rice believed in cash, and in Swiss banks. He helped Stevie with her coat. ‘Call London for anything else you need. Josie’s expecting you.’
He handed her two thousand-franc notes. ‘By the way, you’re going to need to look the part up there, to blend in a little more. Get those furry boots they all wear, the ones that look like you have a foot up a Pomeranian’s backside.’
He chuckled at Stevie’s horrified expression. ‘You’ll live. You might even have some fun.’
Then he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and was gone.
The small gesture of affection did more for Stevie’s spirits than the wine, the food or the francs. When David was safely out of sight, she put her hand to her cheek and smiled.
It had not been difficult to find Kirril. He turned out to be the rather famous conductor of the Zurich Opera House Orchestra, performing that night at the Opernhaus, a beautiful edifice on the shores of the Zürichsee.
Stevie bought her ticket over the telephone then set off wearing all her pearls and her astrakhan pillbox hat. She had also painted her lips scarlet, which she rarely did, but she knew artists liked colour. It was too early to go to the opera house, but she had decided to take a walk around the Old Town, to re-calibrate her compass and to try to slip back into her life.
The night was icy and still, the cobblestones on the narrow streets shone an oily midnight blue. People hurried about their business, the collars of their overcoats turned up, their breath puffing back in white streams. Looking down from the laneways above the Grossmünster cathedral, Stevie caught glimpses of the Limmat, flowing black and gold through the Old Town. She loved Zurich on a winter evening.
Right on time, she swept through the grand door of the opera house and took her seat, high up and to the left of the stage.
Kirril Marijinski was magnetic. He had wild grey hair that swept up and down like the surf with his more violent movements, and the music was splendid. It was, however, Kirril’s hands that mesmerised Ste-vie. They were pale and long-fingered, the most delicate hands she had ever seen on a man—perhaps on anyone. As he directed the orchestra, they fluttered like two white doves against the black of his tailcoat. They were a thing of heartbreaking beauty and yet there was something ever so slightly wrong about them. She couldn’t place it . . .
Stevie pulled out her mini-binoculars and watched Kirril’s face: handsome, intelligent, deeply furrowed. What had happened between him and Kozkov to get him banished from their lives?
She was waiting for him by the artists’ entrance at the end of the performance. He came striding out, accompanied by his first violinist and one of the clarinet players.
‘Izvinite pozhaluista—vi