Anna nodded doubtfully.
Yanking back a black curtain, Tom found himself staring towards Vodootvodny Canal, with Gorky Park to the right. A purple-haired gonk smirking at the recently revealed view was the first babyish thing he’d seen.
Alex’s books sat in a row against the skirting board.
Mostly Stephen King or Virginia Andrews, with a battered copy of Lace defiantly on top. It had been read so often page 292 fell out. Tom didn’t need to look to know it was the goldfish scene. ‘Lizzie’s,’ Lady Masterton said. ‘So, I can’t bin it.’
‘Whose?’
‘The girl who went to Westminster.’
A black vinyl box revealed a Russian-language Linguaphone course: a row of well-used cassettes and a tatty paperback full of instructions on how to order a coffee, ask the way to the library, or tell someone you needed a lavatory and could they point you in the right direction please …
‘She’s fluent in Russian?’
‘Better than me, but that’s not saying much.’
‘“To speak another language is to have a second soul.”’
‘I’m not sure I find that idea reassuring.’
The only large-format book was a stained copy of When the Wind Blows, with an elderly and ordinary-looking cartoon couple on the front. Flicking through, Tom discovered it took them forty-eight pages to die of radiation sickness.
‘Edward hates that book,’ Anna said.
‘That’s why Alex owns it?’
‘No. She really likes it. It makes her cry.’
An advertisement for The Company of Wolves torn from Cosmopolitan had Sellotape scars to say it had been up somewhere before. Beside it, a poster for Legend showed Tim Curry painted red and wearing horns.
‘What are we looking for?’ Anna asked.
‘A photograph of the East German girl would be good. A note of where the party was being held would be better. Do you know if your daughter kept a diary?’
‘Not that I’m aware.’
On the bedside cabinet was a tiny cardboard box; Tom opened it without asking, feeling Lady Masterton bridle slightly.
‘What should be in here?’ Tom asked.
‘A jade ring from Lizzie. It’s ghastly. And not jade, obviously. Luckily it’s too big and keeps falling off, even when we tied cotton round the back. Alex must have decided to wear it after all.’
Tom wondered if maybe her friendship with Lizzie wasn’t over. Or perhaps Alex had another reason for taking the ring. The only photograph on display was a Polaroid of a busty teenager in a tight pink top and purple ra-ra skirt, her hair teased to the point of bullying.
‘Lizzie?’ Tom asked, and Anna nodded.
‘And that?’ He pointed to a television and keypad.
‘Alex’s computer.’
‘Her computer?’
‘It works like a fancy typewriter. Alex expressed interest and Edward thought …’ Anna shrugged. ‘Who knows what he thought? Perhaps that anything was better than hiding up here sulking.’
‘Lady Masterton … would you mind if I did the rest alone?’
She did mind. She minded very much. Forcing a smile, she said, ‘It’s Anna. And that’s fine. There are things I should do. I’ll tell Edward you’re still up here.’
The silent precision with which Anna Masterton shut the door almost shamed Tom into calling her back.
Stripping back Alex’s duvet, Tom checked the bottom sheet, then stripped that back too and examined her mattress. Then he stood the mattress against the wall and examined the bed’s base. It had its original stitching; its springs moved as they should. The mattress ditto. Recently stained from an unexpected period but otherwise original. Nothing hidden inside. No evidence of anything ever having been hidden inside.
Remaking Alex’s bed, Tom sat on it and emptied her bedside cabinet.
The drawer at the top held two kohl pencils, sharpened down to stubs, three tampons, a metal comb, nail clippers, black nail varnish, purple nail varnish and pearl … A handful of British change had been pushed into one corner.
The only letter was from Lizzie.
She complained about Alex not writing.
At the back, behind the nail varnishes, Tom found an empty packet of Rothmans with a disposable lighter inside. The shelves below held old copies of Smash Hits, Jackie and NME. The NMEs were recent. The Smash Hits stretched back to 1983, which meant Alex had brought them with her. The Jackies were even earlier.
No hidden letters or photographs fell out when he riffled their pages.
Behind the stack of Smash Hits he found condoms, the Durex packet unopened and still in its cellophane. The lack of a price sticker suggested it had come from a slot machine. Tom put the packet back where he had found it, and replaced Alex’s magazines. So she liked pop music, smoked in secret and had, at the very least, considered sex. Nothing to suggest she wasn’t like most kids her age.
Except this was a girl who’d been feather-bedded and wrapped in cotton wool. Boarding school from God knows what age, holidays undoubtedly spent with her family. No street smarts at all. Tom knew what he’d been doing at fifteen. He knew what easy prey he’d have found a girl like Alex.
Nothing was taped to the cabinet’s rear. Nothing but eye shadow, mascara, blusher and moisturizer occupied the dressing table. A bottle of Babe by Fabergé stood on its glass surface, unopened.
A Walkman balanced against it.
First and Last and Always, Love, Power, Corruption & Lies, Hyæna.
The cassettes inside the boxes matched their titles.
Nothing was taped to the underside of any of the drawers, nothing hidden in the dead space below the lowest. Bare hangers showed where clothes had been taken. The last thing Tom did was drag a chair to Alex’s wardrobe and step up so that he could check the top. It was dusty, but nothing like as dusty as it should have been.
In the space below the detachable top were Alex’s secrets.
Some of them anyway.
A new edition of Yevtushenko and a Complete Andrei Voznesensky, both collections of poetry in the original Russian. Kisses for Mayakovsky was English, by Alison Fell. Loved obsessively from the look of it. The book had been published only the year before and was already falling to pieces. Inside, Tom found a postcard of the wedding-cake monstrosity that was Moscow University:
You will hear thunder & remember me & think: She wanted storms …
Dxxxxx
‘Dxxxxx’? Five kisses?
Immediately, Tom wondered if D was the East German girl and all of this was more complicated than Sir Edward and Anna were prepared to admit. Perhaps Alex’s old school friend’s sulk was about more than her lack of letters. How careful need he be in how he asked about that?
By the way, do you know if your daughter is a lesbian?
Oh, you’re right. Of course. It’s probably just a phase she’s going through.
Beside the books sat three Soviet pin badges and a gothic cross on a chain. Tom wasn’t sure if the last was cheap or expensive. His wife would know. Caro was good at things like that. Two computer disks sat underneath.
Amsoft WordProcessor, LocoScript.
Tom had decided this was his lot when he saw a cassette box at the back. It was empty, the insert homemade. A photocopied Soviet Star coloured in with fluorescent highlighter. For Alex said the spine.
He wondered if she’d taken the tape, then had a better idea.
Putting the chair back where it belonged, he flipped open her Walkman and found a C60 ferrous-oxide tape, American made, no writing either side. Hitting play, he heard drumming so precise it had to be a machine, followed by a few bars of intro from an electric guitar and then a voice dark enough to come from deep inside a cave.
A second track followed, then a third.
It was the third Tom recognized. The words of ‘Comfortably Numb’, familiar and frighteningly true. But this version was darker and stranger and altogether more anguished than any he’d heard. The hissing of the tape told him that
Alex had played it half to death. Looking round her room, Tom read what he saw.
The purple-haired gonk on the window ledge, the photograph of her friend, the copy of When the Wind Blows said fragments of an earlier Alex remained. But they were fragments. The sense of a newer, more complex, more adult Alex was overpowering. Tom ran through the options.
She’d run away. She’d been enticed away. She didn’t want to come back. She wanted to come back and couldn’t …
There was no her to come back.
7
Meeting Anna on the Street
Tom was heading down the steps from the embassy on to Maurice Thorez Embankment when he spotted Anna Masterton standing by a low wall, staring at the frozen river. She was huddled in a sheepskin coat, and carried leather gloves in one hand. Her surprise at seeing him was so overdone he wondered how long she’d been waiting.
‘Find anything useful?’ she asked.
‘Not yet.’
Her smile faded at his answer. ‘Edward says you served in Ulster.’
Tom nodded, face carefully neutral. ‘Both sides of the border.’
‘Do I ask what you were doing?’
‘Best not. I have to ask. Might Alex have gone home?’
‘Home?’
‘To the UK. To her father?’
Anna looked as if she’d just been slapped. ‘He’s dead,’ she said flatly. ‘And this is her home, for now. For better or worse.’
‘I’m sorry. An accident?’
‘Cancer, prostate. Alex took it badly. Well, you would.’ Anna tried to smile. ‘Do you have time for a coffee?’
Tom pretended to glance at his watch. No one senior would read the report he’d been sent to Moscow to write. At least, no more than the necessary skim through to confirm he’d written the bloody thing. ‘The Resilience of Religion in Soviet Russia’.
Maybe he was misjudging his bosses. Maybe he was meant to find a magic lever to bring the whole Soviet state to its knees.
Personally, he doubted it.
You are required to present yourself at the Palace of Westminster on 14 February at 3.45 p.m. Please use the Cromwell Green entrance … You may, if you wish, make a written submission in advance of the hearing.
He didn’t wish. He didn’t wish at all.
Tom was in Moscow to keep him out of the clutches of a parliamentary select committee on Northern Ireland, who’d whine at his absence and note their displeasure and move on to safer matters. Much safer. Safer for everyone.
‘I should probably get back to work,’ he said.
‘You have a deadline?’
‘Oh yes.’ He did too. Although he couldn’t remember what it was.
‘I’d better let you go then.’
‘Anna …’
She turned back.
‘What did you really want to ask?’
‘Oh God, look, between us … All right? Alex was keen on an American boy at the university here. Nineteen, so a bit old for her. They met at the swimming pool. I’ve been trying to leave David messages but they’re not getting through.’
‘That’s where Alex is?’
‘That’s what I’d decided.’ Anna bit her lip. ‘Hope against hope, really. Anyway, after I left you up there, I cracked.’
‘You’re driving out there?’
‘Dear God, no. Edward would want to come. I called the American ambassador’s wife. We get on well enough. The thing is, our embassy keeps a list of British exchange students at Moscow University. We’re their post office. They come in now and then to check on mail from home. The Americans run the same system.’
‘So you got a message to him that way?’
‘He doesn’t exist. At least, there’s no David Wright.’
‘Your daughter told you about this boy?’
‘I lied about Alex not having a diary.’ Anna Masterton coloured slightly. ‘He must have given her a false name.’
‘Or she suspected you were reading it and used a false one.’
That thought obviously hadn’t occurred to her.
‘Where’s her diary now?’ Tom asked.
‘Gone … Along with half her clothes.’
‘Boy trouble is good,’ said Tom. ‘Certainly better than your other options.’ Anna looked so sick he regretted his words immediately.
‘Ask your husband what Alex said in her note.’
‘There wasn’t …’ Anna stopped. Her face hardened, and Tom was glad not to have her as an enemy. She’d make a bad enemy. ‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘That’s why he’s so bloody calm, isn’t it? She didn’t simply vanish. She left a note.’
Tom imagined so. There usually was.
Her glance was sharp. ‘How long have you known?’
Since your husband looked shifty when I asked, would be tactless even for him. So Tom shrugged and said it was just a hunch. He doubted she believed him.
‘Do you have a photograph I could borrow?’
‘Of Alex? Probably. Why?’
‘I’ll go out to the university first thing tomorrow.’
8
Hunting for David
The storm was already in him when Tom opened his eyes. It didn’t need some passing slight or cruel memory to birth it. The damn thing was there and waiting as he rolled out of bed, took a second to balance and knew he was going to do what he’d told Anna Masterton he’d do.
Hunt down David Wright or whatever the little shit was really called.
‘Foreigners will come to Moscow, walk around, and find no skyscrapers …’ As the Great Patriotic War came to a close, Stalin fretted that Moscow was not sufficiently grand for the capital of a victorious world power. His response was to order the construction of the Seven Sisters, huge tower blocks known locally as Stalinskie Vysotki.
The Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building, built as elite flats but re-designated as kommunalka, communal apartments, was the third highest. The Hotel Ukraina, until recently the world’s tallest hotel, was the second highest. Top of the list was Moscow State University at Lenin Hills.
The tallest building in Europe, it was unmissable and owed its position on Moscow’s south-west edge in equal parts to Stalin’s paranoia and historical common sense. He didn’t trust the intelligentsia, and Russian history recorded numerous student riots against tsarist policy when the university was in the centre.
What Tom’s Guide to Moscow didn’t mention was that Europe’s tallest building had been built by slaves from the gulags, several thousand of them, housed in the later stages on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth floors to reduce the chance of escape and avoid transportation costs.
Putting the guide away, and hoping he looked suitably academic in a scruffy tweed jacket with elbow patches, Tom tucked a fat hardback under his arm, swung a tatty briefcase he’d scrounged from a man in the embassy comms room and headed not for the main tower, which housed the lecture theatres, but for the furthest of the four wings flanking the tower.
Like the others, it housed students.
A deshurnaya at a desk looked up and Tom nodded sharply.
She might have stared after him but she didn’t call him back as he strode towards the stairs. He’d already decided not to use the lifts. If they were anything like the lift at Sadovaya Samotechnaya, he stood a good chance of getting stuck between floors.
A group of Russian boys heading down parted to let him through without noticing. They smelled of damp coats and bad aftershave. Their scarves were home-knitted, their boots stained to the ankle by yesterday’s snow. The strip lighting did nothing for their complexions, their clothes or 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 h
im 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.
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