Already her nose was beginning to tingle from the cold, and as she turned to check her reflection in the window of an unassuming bar, she saw him, seated opposite a white woman with long dark hair and porcelain skin, and beside her, a black man in a cream linen suit. Illuminated under the dingy lighting of the bar, Emsworth’s eyes caught Gabriela’s and his look was as though he had been shot.

Stepping forward through the doorway, she watched the woman stand as if sensing her enter, then turning away from where Gabriela hovered and moving towards the bathroom. The man opposite him noticed the young woman enter and looked sideways at Emsworth, who took a long slug of his drink.

‘Gabriela …’

‘I didn’t know you were in town,’ she said and when he smiled, his eyes were cold.

‘I didn’t expect to see you here either.’

It was the first time she had seen him since her arrival in Moscow. Their communication had been surprisingly sparse, just the odd work-related email, and the note she’d sent him thanking him for the loan of his apartment.

‘You’re settling in OK?’ he asked, his voice uncharacteristically brusque. ‘I’m sorry,’ he added, turning to the man in the suit. ‘This is Gabriela, she’s a colleague of mine.’

‘A pleasure to meet you,’ he said in an accent that might have been French African, and Gabriela smiled coolly at him before turning back to Emsworth, an uneasy feeling shunting through her veins, wrong-footed as she was by everything about this interaction.

‘Very much so,’ she said, in response to Emsworth’s question.

Subconsciously, his eyes moved again towards the door where his second companion had disappeared a few moments earlier.

‘So will I be seeing you at the office next week?’ she added, as keen by now as he clearly was to bring the conversation to a close. He shook his head.

‘As I say, this isn’t an official visit. Probably best if you don’t mention it to anyone else. I don’t want the others to feel peeved that I didn’t drop by.’

‘Sure. Well, nice to meet you,’ she replied, turning to the man at the table as she heard the lavatory flush in the direction of where the woman had disappeared.

‘Good,’ Emsworth said with an unconvincing smile. ‘Let’s be in touch.’

As she left the bar, she saw the woman returning to the table, her long dark hair swishing against a poker-straight back. Emsworth leaned in again and the conversation resumed. When she looked back, she couldn’t say exactly what made her do it; she didn’t think it through consciously as she pulled the phone from her pocket and aimed it discreetly at the three of them. The single shot revealing a picture she could not yet understand.

Chapter 8

Gabriela