9
My room looked calm and sane to reassure me that tourists were safe to roam the city's main streets.
It could happen in London, I thought. It could happen in New York and Paris, and Rome. What was so different about Moscow?
I threw my coat and room key onto the bed, poured a large reviver from the duty-free whisky, and sank onto the sofa to drink it.
The attack had been, perhaps, an abduction attempt. Without glasses, I could have been a pushover. They could have got us in the car. And the drive? To what destination?
Did Amber expect me to stick to the task until I was dead? Probably not, I thought, but then I don't think Amber underestimated the whole situation.
More than anything, I could be lucky again. But, failing that, I had better be careful. My heart gradually steadied, breath quietened to normal.
I drank the whisky and felt better.
After a while, I put down my glass and picked up the box containing a pay-as-you-go mobile I had purchased at the airport and switched it on. I had charged it up on the flight over and spent a great deal of the journeys reading the instruction book as this was the first mobile phone I had ever bought.
Started methodically beside the window, I made slow comprehensive sweeps of the walls. Top to bottom. Every inch.
There was no static.
I switched the phone off and put it down. No whine was inconclusive. It meant no listening probe embedded in the plaster, and it meant no listening probe switched on.
I went slowly to the bed and lay awake in the dark, thinking about the driver and the passenger in the black car. Apart from general awareness of their age, twenty-thirty, and the height of five-nine, they left me with three clear impressions. The first was that they knew about my poor eyesight. The second was that the savage quality I had sensed in their attack was a measure of the ferocity in their minds. And third, that they were not FSB agents.
They had not spoken, so their voices had given me no clue. They had worn the sober garb of the Russian man-in-the-street. Their faces had been three-quarters covered, with the result that I had seen only their eyes, and even those, very briefly.
So, what did I think…? I pulled the quilt over my shoulders and turned comfortably on to one side. I thought drowsily, the Russians didn't behave like that unless they were FSB, and if the FSB had wanted to arrest us, they would not have done it in that way, and they would not have failed. Deterrents like labour camps, psychiatric hospitals, and the death sentence would dissuade anyone else.
The following day after a reasonably meagre breakfast, Amber and I went to GUM separately to not attract too much attention. At breakfast, the concierge handed us an envelope, each inviting us to a function at lunchtime, on the insistence of the Deputy Prosecutor General. I felt it was not something we could refuse.
The inside of GUM was not a department store along Western lines but like those in the Far East; a massive collection of small shops all under one roof. A covered market, two storeys high, with intersecting alleys and a glassed roof far above. Drips of melted snow fell through the cracks in the heavens and made small puddles underfoot.
I bought a shirt, and Amber purchased a new outfit for the function and waited outside to display no interest in me and set off again when I came out. I had been pretty sure that someone was watching us, but I wasn't yet sure who that might be. Shopper's blocked every perspective, and it worked both ways. If I couldn't see our tail, then our follower couldn't see us.
Amber squeezed through a long queue of stolid people and stopped outside a shop selling folk arts and crafts. Although she stopped so that I could join her, her gaze directed towards the goods in the window, not at me.
"I take it we have to go," the disapproval in her tone was not directed at me but at the thought of being in the same room as the odious Ozdoyev.
"I don't think we have a great deal of choice," I say. "You do know Ozdoyev will try and smooth talk you into handing over the hard drive?"
"Of course, I do," she said, "but they are not going to get it."
"Good," I said, just a few more hours after that and then we'll be heading back to London.
"Thank God for that."
We made our way back to the Majestic, and I kept few paces back as a precaution. Our tail picked us up somewhere between Gum and a pedestrian tunnel. I caught a glimpse of him behind us underground—a split second of unruly curls and a scarf bobbing along in the crowd. If I hadn't been looking, I would never have noticed.
10A limousine collected us about seven o'clock that evening, and we sped down the Komsomolsky Prospect, and I looked two or more three-times out of the window. A black car followed us faithfully, but we were on the main road where that would happen anyway.We arrived outside a restaurant ten minutes late because more snow falling clogged the public transport and taxis almost to a standstill. There was a short queue outside shivering, but the chauffeur led us past the row and opened the firmly shut door.The place was packed, and somewhere there was some music. Led to the one empty table, a bottle of vodka materialised within five seconds."Of the two decent restaurants in Moscow," a voice said behind us, "I like this the better."We turned to find Ozdoyev, standing there accompanied by a tall, slim, and beautiful young woman, wearing a deep-blue velvet jumpsuit and high-heels which made her taller than me, and I am over six-foot."This is m
11The flight home was met at Gatwick at three in the afternoon by Blanche, who, after dropping Amber off to re-join her children, whisked me off to another crime scene."What's happened?" I asked as we headed towards Ascot."Igor Akinfeev died this morning," she replies, her eyes fixed on the road ahead."Don't tell me, suicide," I say, without feeling."Police have been quick to announce that there is nothing suspicious about the death," she says."Who found him?""Avron Cohen, his bodyguard, returned from running errands early this morning. When he knocked on the bathroom door, there was no reply. The missed calls on the oligarch's mobile, which he rarely left unattended, was another reason for concern. So finally, Cohen, an ex-Mossad agent who had guarded Akinfeev for six years, kicked down the door. Inside, Akinfeev was lying on the bathroom floor on his back. A length of a scarf tied tightly around his throat. Overhead, another
12Elena Koshka did not believe that her ex-husband Igor Akinfeev committed suicide. However, when Akinfeev and his wife Elena divorced five years ago, he was ordered to pay her up to £200 million, making it the costliest marriage split in British legal history.She lives in Kensington, west London, in a penthouse overlooking Hyde Park on the first floor of a Georgian row that has probably featured in every BBC period drama since television began. I half expect to see horse-drawn carriages outside, and women are parading in hats.Elena isn't wearing a hat. Instead, her short blonde hair is off in her face with a headband and clad in black spandex shorts, a white sports bra, and a light blue T-shirt with a looping neckline.A gym membership card dangles from a bulky set of keys that must help burn calories simply by being lugged around."Excuse me, Miss Koshka. Do you have a moment?""Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying.""It
13My answering machine is flashing. There are two messages.The first is from Blanche Bradbury:Hi Quintus, it's Blanche. I'm at the mortuary. Can you meet me there? Clunk!Detective Inspector Brooks.Mr Noone, I need to speak to you. Would you mind giving me a call?Just after eight, I dress in casual clothes and make my way to the mortuary. Someone followed me.I didn't know by who, but I just sensed it. Unrecognisable faces in everyday places.Blanche Bradbury wore a dark-blue jumpsuit beneath a surgical gown and a bright yellow face mask covering her mouth and nose. Without any apparent awareness of how lovely she looked, she moved nimbly around the table, taking measurements, her white tennis shoes protected by green plastic covers.She crosses to the whiteboard to scribble up the initial statistics, talking all the time above the squeak of her felt pen. "Alexi Zelenyy weighs one-hundred-f
14Blanche is driving her Mercedes.The suspension is soft; it's like a waterbed on wheels."What do we know about Kayla Zelenyy?" Blanche asks."Kayla Zelenyy is a Georgian businesswoman and philanthropist and now the widow of Alexi Zelenyy. Last year the Sunday Times estimated her wealth at £650m, making her the 196th wealthiest person in the UK. She is the founder and President of the Zelenyy Foundation that supports education initiatives in Georgia. She has two daughters, Marina and Sasha. The death of her husband will spark one of the biggest estate battles ever. Kayla has extensive business and property interests in Georgia and across the rest of the world."She raises her forefinger from the steering wheel. "This is the place."We pull up outside a twelve-foot-high gate attached to a couple of pillars. A perimeter wall stretched around the estate on either side, topped with broken bottles that sprout from the concrete.Th
15We emerge out of the drive and swing right, taking the back road. The Mercedes floats over the dips."Did you see Daler Kuzyaev's face? I thought he was going to have a heart attack.""He's frightened.""No shit, Sherlock? World War III?"Blanche begins listing the security measures, the cameras, motion sensors and alarms. Barklay could have come straight out of the SAS."Blanche, let me explain," I said after she had been talking non-stop for about ten minutes."I wish you would," she said sharply."Daler Kuzyaev is a financier who made his fortune in Moscow. He has been receiving death threats since lifting the lid on a $230 million tax fraud by corrupt Russian government officials last year."Heading back towards North London, I can't get a single question in my head:Who is next?"I need to go back and see Amber Chase," I say, "and I need to have another look around Robbie Chase's apartment again. I'
16Blanche drives me home and offers to cook me something."That's probably not a great idea," I reply, but she's already opened the fridge. I'm embarrassed by the contents. Six bottles of Peroni, grated mature cheddar, parmesan, orange juice, sundried tomatoes and half a dozen eggs."She opens another cupboard and finds a lone onion and some sad-looking potatoes that are starting to sprout."This is going to be a challenge," she laughs."I could get a takeaway," I suggest.Blanche gathers up the meagre supplies and pauses to pull back her hair and loop a band around a ponytail.I open two beers and watch her cooking, and we make small talk about our likes and dislikes, involving politics, food, theatre, cinema, sport, and past relationships. The conversation becomes a little strained."I'm not very good at this," I say. "I've been on my own for a long while.""Me too," she replies, raising her bottle of beer and clinkin
17Katrin Cajthamlova's Paris studio is on swish Avenue Victor Hugo, a short walk from the Arc de Triomphe, in a building that houses the Icelandic embassy; a thickly-built man in a tightly-fitted suit opened the door with a false smile. He assumed Blanche and I looked at the haute-couture clothing and the impossibly high-heeled stilettos Cajthamlova designs and sold under her KC brand."They are press," Cajthamlova said when she spotted Blanche's notebook. She looked at the thickly-built man pleadingly and spoke with a note of panic in her voice. "They are here to talk about Daler Kuzyaev."The man walked briskly to the door and opened it. "She will say no more to you," he said curtly in French. "She's had problems with the press. It's bad for her business."I held up a hand in protest. "We are not the press, and we are investigating the death of Daler Kuzyaev, Robbie Chase, Igor Akinfeev and Alexis Zelenyy."Cajthamlova is well over 6 feet tall,