I paid it a visit. According to property sites, the Triumph of Astana had 480 apartments, plus shops, restaurants and a cinema. The closer you got the more outlandish it seemed, a fusion of Stalinist and baroque, evidently modelled on the Seven Sisters apartment blocks in Moscow. Stalin had demanded those skyscrapers as a point of pride after the Second World War to compete with Western ones. They were heavier though, and to achieve a scale commensurate with twenty million dead had to expand outwards, mutating as they rose. Their silhouettes haunted the Moscow skyline, and even before I knew their origins I thought they had the cold gravity of war memorials. They made you realise that the scale of other buildings was not born of necessity but a cultural sense of the humane.

Last night the Triumph had been lost in the storm. Twenty-two floors high in the centre, rising to a pointed tower with wings either side, eighteen floors each. Four hundred and eighty apartments. Which one did I appear in?

It felt strange crossing the threshold, onto a polished chequered floor, smiled at by a guard. I felt an urge to ask if he’d seen me before. I headed towards the supermarket, bought a gift box of nuts and dried fruit, registered the various security cameras.

The residential apartments were accessed past a concierge controlling barriers to a set of lifts reserved for occupants. Akhmetov was the most common Kazakh surname. I told the concierge I was here for Mr Akhmetov. Could he call up for me? He said he’d need an apartment number. Behind him was a screen with time and date display. 6 December. The date on the clip was 13 December, a week away.

I found an internet café a few minutes back towards the centre. I wanted to check for photographs of the Triumph’s interiors. The café was small, no cameras. Good for anonymous searching. Or so I thought.

A young woman at the counter put down a medical textbook when I arrived. I asked to use a computer and she asked for ID.

‘What kind of ID?’

‘Do you have a Kazakh ID card?’

‘No. I’m from the UK. I’m here on business.’

‘Then your passport.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the law.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since last year. For security.’ She looked apologetic. Her face said: Obviously this should not apply to wealthy white Westerners, but the law is the law. ‘We are sorry.’

‘No need to be sorry. That’s fine. That’s good.’