Moskva by Jack Grimwood Read Free Book Online

their expressions.
    The student cafeteria on the third floor stank of disinfectant and was spartan even by Soviet standards. Formica tables and moulded orange chairs filled an expanse of plastic tiles. The view over the Moskva was striking, though.
    So striking that Tom stopped to admire the ice before heading for the counter, where he ordered a tea, dropping a few kopeks into the gloved hand of a babushka, and then chose a chair that let him watch students enter and leave. Someone had left an issue of
Krokodil
,
which Tom discovered was a month out of date. He read it anyway.
    Private Eye
with worse cartoons and better jokes.
    Factory management were mocked for their inability to deliver fridges that worked, enough cars to fill showrooms, clothes anybody might actually want to wear. What was most shocking about the shiny new amnesty for political prisoners was that everyone was so shocked. The old guard were dinosaurs, Gorbachev a breath of fresh air.
    When it went for political targets, it went for those at a safe distance from Moscow. The head of police in Yakut was too drunk to capture a murderer who’d flayed a teenage boy upriver from Yakutsk, and another approaching Olyokminsk. It had to be obvious even to an idiot the perpetrator was making his way along the River Lena, probably looking for casual work. Tom suspected it wasn’t as simple as that.
    He could tell the Western students. They moved in little shoals.
    Half a dozen was their preferred number.
    And while they might be as damp as the Russian students, their clothes were more expensive, they were better fed and their hair better cut. They mostly stuck to speaking Russian, but Spanish, French or German would creep in, the conversation flipping languages for a sentence or two. When a group of three boys and two girls broke into English, Tom wandered over.
    ‘Are you from the UK?’
    ‘Who’s asking?’
    ‘I am,’ Tom said.
    A boy in a leather Lenin hat glanced away, then looked back and made himself hold Tom’s stare. He sucked his teeth theatrically. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what are we meant to have done this time?’
    ‘What did you do last time?’
    One of the girls laughed. Late teens, maybe early twenties.The boy with the leather cap didn’t like that; his scowl said so.
    ‘Whatever it was,’ Tom told him, ‘I don’t care.’
    The girl said, ‘You aren’t from the embassy?’
    ‘In a way …’ Tom slid his ID on to the table and took it back before they’d done much more than glance at it. When he had their attention, he sat.
    ‘Are we in trouble?’ the girl asked. She sounded Welsh.
    ‘Not yet,’ said Tom, passing Alex’s photograph across.
    ‘Pretty. Who is she?’
    ‘Someone who’s missing. You haven’t seen her?’
    ‘No,’ the Welsh girl said.
    ‘You sure? Her boyfriend studies here.’
    ‘Quite sure. I’m Siân,’ she added, as if this was something that needed to be said. ‘I thought I knew most of the girls from the UK. What’s she studying?’
    ‘She’s home for the holidays.’
    ‘From boarding school?’
    Tom nodded.
    ‘Tacky.’
    Tom glared at Lenin Cap.
    ‘Not her,’ he said hastily. ‘Whoever’s boffing her.’
    Siân peered at the photograph carefully. ‘Upper sixth?’
    ‘Lower,’ Tom said.
    ‘Even tackier,’ the boy muttered.
    ‘What’s her boyfriend’s name?’ That was Siân again.
    ‘David Wright. I’m told he’s American.’
    The friends glanced at each other. The other girl shook her head very slightly. A warning, Tom imagined. Unless she was simply suggesting they stay out of it.
    ‘Spit it out,’ Tom said.
    Only the first girl met his eyes. She looked embarrassed.
    ‘Mr Right. Davie Wong. It’s a pun.’
    ‘And a play on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?’ Tom asked.
    She nodded gratefully. ‘He’s Canadian, not American, and I very much doubt he’s going out with … What was her name?’
    ‘Doesn’t matter. Where do I find him?’
    ‘I’ll take you.’
    ‘Siân …’ Lenin Cap