‘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 Kirril Marijinski?
’ He turned abruptly at the Russian words, but stopped walking when he caught sight of the delicate face, the red lips—a young woman.
‘
Da.
Who are you?’
‘My name is Stevie Duveen. I am a friend of the Kozkovs.’
Kirril’s face froze. He waved the two musicians brusquely away and took a step towards Stevie.
‘So then, why are you speaking to me?’
‘Can we go somewhere warm, have a drink? I need to tell you something very important.’
Kirril stared hard into Stevie’s face for a moment then shrugged.
She led him quickly to the bar at the Kronenhalle—not far, just across the Bellevue Platz—before he could change his mind. The bar was full, warm, smoky, comfortable. Stevie realised she didn’t really know how to begin.
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘
Kir Royale
.’
‘I think I’ll join you.’ Stevie found
crème de cassis
a little sweet— she preferred her champagne plain—but choosing the same drink, like mimicking body language, helped people relax.
‘It’s about your goddaughter, Anya.’
Kirril’s eyes grew wary. He untied his bowtie and opened the top button on his shirt. Stevie wondered why he had left his gloves on. Perhaps the hands were too precious to be unsheathed in social situations. You never knew with artists . . .
‘Vadim told me you two keep in touch. Mr Marijinsky, there is no easy way to tell you: Anya’s been kidnapped.’
Kirril’s face lost all colour. Stevie thought he might be sick. But he recovered himself and took a sip of his drink. Stevie continued, her eyes on his face. ‘She was taken while shopping with her friend at GUM. I work for a risk management company that specialises in this area. I was supposed to help get Anya back.’
Stevie took a gulp of her
kir
and swallowed. ‘The men holding her have demanded that Valery reverse his stance on the banks. I don’t know if you are aware that he has been—’ ‘I know what he has been doing!’ Kirril was suddenly furious.
‘I follow everything from here! And now the mad fool won’t give in!
I cannot believe he would sacrifice his daughter’s life to his damn principles!’
Stevie remembered Vadim saying the same thing at the dacha.
‘Valery is willing to do anything to get her back. The kidnappers said they are going to hold Anya until they are satisfied. Valery is desperate— I’m afraid he is about to do something very dangerous.’
‘You are advising him?’ Kirril’s magnificent head turned to her.
Stevie blushed. ‘He sent me home because I couldn’t help. Before I left, I promised Vadim I would talk to you. Please. Anything might help.’
‘You want to know what happened between us.’ Kirril drained his glass. Stevie quickly ordered him another, wanting to keep him talking.
‘Please,’ she whispered.
After a moment’s hesitation, Kirril began. ‘I used to live in Moscow. I conducted an orchestra there. One day two men came to see me in my dressing-room after a concert. They told me the man they worked for had enjoyed the concert very much and wanted to become my patron. In exchange for a large cash patronage, I would resign and leave with my best musicians. We would become his private minstrels. I at first laughed. The idea was quite mad. But the men were not joking. I then told them that I was happy where I was and that it was my belief that music was there to be shared with the public, and that none of my musicians would consent to having their talent locked away and kept for a handful of over-moneyed, overfed vulgarians. I was angry. The men left. I thought little more of it.’
Two fresh
kir
arrived. Kirril sipped again, his face still ashen. ‘One night after a concert, I was late leaving and I was alone in my dressing-room. The same two men reappeared, this time with their boss. He repeated his offer to me and again I completely refused. One of the men grabbed me and pinned my arm to the table. The other man—’ Kirril took off his gloves and laid his left hand on the table. His ring finger and pinkie had been severed at the knuckle.
‘Bolt cutters.’
Stevie choked back her gasp. The sight of those extraordinarily beautiful and expressive hands so mutilated made her feel sick.
‘The man was a
mafiya
boss,’ Kirril’s voice was low and rough. ‘I didn’t know it at the time. After that, I forgot my principles and I left Russia forever, taking my music and my musicians with me.’
They sat in silence for a long time, Stevie forcing herself to look at Kirril’s fingers, Kirril leaving them lying bare on the table for her to see. Finally she asked, ‘Was Valery angry that you left?’
Kirril shook his head. ‘Another man approached me, here in Zurich, a Siberian; his name doesn’t matter. He heard the story and he offered me protection. I didn’t even ask what he might want in return or what kind of man he was. I didn’t care. I accepted. I accepted because I was afraid.’
Kirril took his fingers off the table and pulled on his gloves. ‘Valery was so angry. He called my patron a criminal of the worst kind, said I was a coward. He thought I should have stayed, made my story public, fought for my freedom. But the price was too high for me. For Valery, no price is too high. This is what we fought about.’
‘Vadim . . .’ The name escaped Stevie’s lips, her mind turning to the memory of his scarred young torso.
‘Vadim, too. That boy has suffered.’
Stevie looked around. No one seemed out of place—two men arrived in deep-green Lodens, others milling at the bar dressed in the brown tweeds and corduroys of winter; the women in cashmere jumpers, jewels, painted lips—but you could never be sure if someone was listening.
‘If you’re warm enough,’ Stevie suggested, ‘shall we walk a little?’
Outside, a low fog had settled along the shores of the lake. The avenues of trees were crisscrossed with tiny lights hung in the shapes of stars and hearts; it felt like fairyland off-kilter. Stevie thought of the mangled hand nestling in Kirril Marijinsky’s overcoat pocket and breathed a lungful of the freezing black air.
She glanced over her shoulder before she spoke, but the shore was deserted. ‘Valery thinks he can get Anya back with blackmail.’
Their steps were now clanging in unison on the frozen concrete.
Stevie was trying to be careful not to say too much. What did she know of Kirril? Had she revealed too much already?
‘Ah,’ Kirril nodded and exhaled a puff of smoke. ‘The insurance policy. You’re talking about Valery’s list.’
‘List?’ Stevie asked cautiously.
‘He began compiling it years ago, when we were still as close as brothers, cataloguing the “gifts” bestowed on politicians assessing bank-sector reform, following the money that flowed in and out of the special slush fund they had set up especially. That list could do untold damage to many powerful people.’
Kirril stopped walking. Any trace of vulnerability from the bar had vanished. His eyes were hard now. ‘But you knew that already, Miss Duveen. What do you want from me? Why did you come here?’
‘I thought maybe . . .’ Stevie was no longer sure of anything, hovering in the dark grey mist, alone with Kirril on the edge of the frozen lake. She suddenly wished there were people about. ‘I’m just trying to help Anya,’ she said finally.
‘You are involving yourself in something that does not concern you and you are putting everyone in great danger.’
Stevie put a hand on Kirril’s arm. ‘Anya is already in great danger.
You are her godfather—don’t you want to help her?’
‘Perhaps I would have—before everything happened.’ Kirril pulled his arm away. ‘But Anya belongs to another world now. There is nothing I can do.’
Stevie flushed with anger, her body hot and trembling at Kirril Marijinsky’s indifference. Any shred of fear fled. She wanted to slap him, but she kept her voice steady, her hands safely in her pockets.
‘You could go to your patron. He must have connections, beg him to help you.’
Kirril snorted. ‘And risk everything? My life is comfortable. I want to keep it that way.’
Stevie’s mind raced for a way to hold this man, this musical magician with doves for hands and a vanished heart.
‘Do the
siloviki
mean anything to you?’ Stevie saw the fear creep into Kirril’s eyes. ‘Do you know that half the names on Valery’s list belong to the
siloviki
? I’m going to guess the name of your patron is on it. When Valery makes that list public, my guess is the
siloviki
will turn on him, too. No one will be able to protect you. You should make your choice now and leave your world of fear and coercion. Don’t you want to be free again? Or was Valery right about you?’
Kirril turned his back on Stevie and began to walk away. He called out without turning around, already half-invisible in the fog, ‘Go home, Stevie Duveen.’
‘I am home, Mr Marijinsky,’ she called back.
‘Then go to hell.’
Decidedly unsuccessful, possibly downright stupid
was Stevie’s assessment of her meeting with Kirril. There had been little to gain from the conversation. She could see now why he and Valery had fought.
There had been traces of what the old Kirril must have been like, but the men who had taken his fingers had taken much more than sinews and bone. They had shattered him. He had become an indifferent colluder with the forces of evil.
Was that too harsh?
Stevie thought of Anya and decided it was not. She still had a niggling worry that she had said too much—but it was Kirril who had brought up the list.
The train for Chur pulled into the Hauptbahnhof. Stevie dismissed her worries, swung her soft duffle bag over her shoulder and leapt aboard.
By eleven, she was settled in a window seat on the
Glacier Express
, en route to St Moritz. The little red train chugged its ways through the valleys and peaks. When the sun shone, it was one of the most scenic journeys in the world, but today everything was half obscured by low cloud and dulled by a grey light.
The pretty alpine villages lay hidden, only their church steeples poking through the fog. The bare rock of the mountains loomed black and forbidding where it was too steep for snow to cling. Great icicles menaced the track like Damoclean swords.
Before the Alps had become a holidaymaker’s paradise, they had been the terror of travellers. Spurred by stories of wild mountain men and plague-ridden villages, travellers hurried through as fast as they could, hands on their purses and hearts in their mouths. On a day like today, it was easy to imagine what it had been like then. There were still many villages cut so deeply into steep valleys that the sun only ever reached them for a few days in mid-summer. These villages wouldn’t have noticed that it had been months since the sun had shone anywhere in Europe.