Ana had never intended to leave Moscow. But her mother had been made a very good offer by an agency for Ana to work in London as a secretary. And her mother needed the money to buy kidney dialysis treatment. Ana had nervously gone along with it. For the sake of her mother.
Not surprisingly, she seemed to Shalakov a good deal less calloused by her profession than many of the others.
‘How long have you been in London?’
He didn’t hear her murmured reply.
‘Speak up, girl!’
Ana had been given two options by the men who controlled her when she arrived in London. This or a beating. She was now feeling sick as she contemplated what was in store for her. And she was terrified it would show that she’d never done it before. Little did she know the Russian General would have been thrilled if he’d known the extent of her innocence.
Ana was still wet from the shower. Shalakov always insisted the girls take a shower as soon as they entered the apartment. So now she wore a robe of white towelling, and her dark hair was wet. She was sipping a Bacardi and coke. She’d already refused Shalakov’s offer of a line of marching powder.
‘I have been in London almost two weeks, Mr Shalakov.’
‘I am Comrade-General Shalakov.’
‘Yes, Comrade-General.’
She spoke in the low, submissive way that, as she’d been told, he particularly liked.
‘You’re a pretty girl. That’s good. You’re young. That’s good too. You have chosen a very simple and childish drink. That amuses me. So where do you come from back home?’
‘Kazakhstan, Comrade-General. I mean, originally. We moved to Moscow when I was fourteen. We are a Russian family, of course.’
Shalakov wasn’t really interested in all this. He was impatient to get on to spelling out the scenario he had in mind for this evening. But these preliminary civilities had to be observed for at least five more minutes, purely to satisfy his own personal superstition. He had formed the belief that, if he didn’t make some token effort to ‘get to know’ the girls whom Harrison fired at him, then their evenings together would go badly. He might even—banish the thought—be impotent with them. There was no excitement or pleasure in dominating someone you didn’t know—at least a bit.
‘Oh yes?’ he said idly. ‘So, did you like the move?’
‘No, Comrade-General.’
Ana bowed her head, studying the pattern on the Persian rug that lay under the coffee table between them.
‘Why not?’
‘I had to leave my horses. In Kazakhstan my uncle had a livery stable and I spent all my spare time there. Horses were my main interest in life, Comrade-General, my passion actually. But I was not able to ride in Moscow.’
Listening to this speech, Shalakov perked up.
‘A horse lover!’ he crowed. ‘Good, very good. I like horses too.’
He started boasting to Ana about his activities with horses: the Moscow racing and equestrian centre, his running horses with the trainer David Sinclair, and the stud farm near Newmarket.
‘It’s not doing as well as it can, or should. This is disappointing. It’s taking longer than necessary to come to fruition, because Stanislav Shalakov is a man with much else to think about. But one day I personally will rule the world of horses. Just wait and see.’
He lit a smoke from the gold cigarette case, which lay before him on the coffee table, and looked at his watch.
‘But enough of that, we must get on.’
He stood up and began pacing around.
‘I shall explain what I have in mind for this evening—’
Shalakov’s personal phone, which lay on the table beside the cigarette case, suddenly emitted an electronic melody. The number was known to just a handful of his closest associates, and the phone chirped only when something important had to be discussed. Impatiently he snatched it up and growled a greeting.
‘Daddy, it’s Nadia.’
Shalakov cursed inwardly, but the tetchiness drained from his voice. Nadia was his daughter. She was fifteen, and the only human being in the world he was truly afraid of.
‘My darling one, can’t we talk later? I’m busy at the moment.’
He found his voice acquiring an almost servile whine when speaking with Nadia. He hated anyone hearing that, but he couldn’t stop himself.
‘So?’ Nadia queried. ‘I need money and I’m on my way over. Be there in about fifteen minutes. And you can give me some dinner while I’m there.’
Unlike her well-trained mother, lodged at a safe distance in Shalakov’s Queen Anne country house in the Kentish Weald (‘my dacha’, he called it), Nadia would not be told what to do, and if she really wanted something could never be placated or put off. Shalakov sometimes wondered if this ruthlessness was part of the genetic inheritance he had passed on, or a result of an expensive English education that he’d paid for. Not that it mattered, since it was his own fault either way. But, if Nadia was coming over, Ana the pretty little horse-lover, for whom Shalakov had devised such complicated short-term plans, would have to be paid off and turfed out without delay. There would be nowhere to hide from Nadia once she got here. His evening of pleasure was over before it had begun.
Shalakov disconnected the call and sighed deeply.
‘Get your clothes on. Get out of here.’
‘Yes, Comrade-General,’ Ana said deferentially.
Harrison paid Ana’s minder who was waiting downstairs. She wouldn’t see a penny of it. She hadn’t done any work.
Tipper’s arrival at Sinclair’s yard had attracted some notice in the racing press. He had also attracted another kind of interest, from an unexpected direction. Early in December, coming back from the gallops, Alison Sinclair rode up beside him.
‘How are you enjoying the Newmarket nightlife, young Tipper?’ she asked breezily.
‘I don’t go out much, Mrs Sinclair,’ Tipper said guardedly. ‘Got to get up so early in the morning, you see.’
‘Surely your girlfriend won’t put up with that.’
‘No problem there, Mrs Sinclair. I haven’t got one.’
‘No girlfriend? I find it hard to believe in such a good-looking boy as yourself. It must be rather a—well, a deprivation.’
Tipper concentrated on his mount, not looking at Alison and just wishing she would go away.
‘I’m all right, really,’ he said. ‘Although I thought I might have ridden a few of the runners recently that Mr Sinclair used other jockeys for.’
‘We’ll have to see about that,’ she told him, in a voice loaded with insinuation. ‘He doesn’t make all of the decisions on the jockey front you know. I’m closely involved in that.’ Then she edged her mount a fraction closer and swung out her knee so that their legs touched.
Tipper was fly enough to see that he had to be careful about Mrs Sinclair. It hadn’t been her words exactly, but her tone