Trial Run by Francis Dick

Author:Francis, Dick [Francis, Dick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction, Olympic Games, Horsemen and Horsewomen, Moscow (Russia), 1980
ISBN: 9780425199831
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1978-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Frank followed me to GUM the following morning.

When I had gone in through the main door without once looking back, I stood still in the shadows, and watched, and presently he appeared, hurrying a little.

At breakfast, upon Natasha’s insistent enquiry, I had said I was going to see some more horse people, but before that I was going to GUM to buy a new hat, as I had lost my last one.

The tiniest frown crossed Frank’s face, and he looked at me with a shade of speculation. I remembered that when he had followed me into the hotel the evening before, after I had ostensibly said goodnight to Stephen, I had been wearing the hat. How careful one had to be, I thought, over the most innocent remarks.

“Where did you lose your hat?” he said, showing only friendly interest.

“Must have dropped it in the foyer or the lift,” I said easily: “I don’t really know.”

Natasha suggested I ask at the desk. I would, I said; and did. One learned. If not fast enough, one learned in the end.

I turned away from GUM’s main door while Frank was still a little way off, and saw the red woollen hat with a white pompom immediately. Below the hat there were two blue-grey eyes in an elfin face, and straight hair in escaping wisps. She looked too young and slight to be married and a mother, and I could see why nine storeys up with no lifts was a crying disaster.

“Elena?” I said, tentatively.

She nodded a fraction, and turned to walk purposefully away, I followed a few paces behind. For talking to a foreigner she would have to pick her own moment, and it suited me well for it to be out of Frank’s sight.

She wore a grey coat with a red scarf falling jauntily over her shoulder, and carried a string bag with a paper-wrapped parcel inside it. I shortened the distance between us and said so that she could hear, “I want to buy a hat.” She gave no sign of understanding, but when she stopped it was, in fact, outside a shop selling hats.

The inside of GUM was not a department store along Western lines but like those in the Far East; a huge 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 the hat. Elena waited outside in the alley displaying no interest in me, and set off again when I came out. I looked carefully around for Frank, but couldn’t see him. Shoppers blocked every long perspective; and it worked both ways. If I couldn’t see him, very likely he couldn’t see me.

Elena squeezed through a long queue of stolid people and stopped outside a shop selling folk arts and crafts. She transferred the plastic carrier to my hand with the smallest of movements and no ceremony whatsoever.

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