The next thing I knew, the phone was ringing. The light and the TV were still on. I looked at my watch: 1.30.

I picked up the receiver.

‘Meester Sharp?’ It was a woman’s voice. ‘I think you are lonely.’

‘Am I hell!’ I spluttered. ‘Get lost. Valite otsuda!’

I slammed the phone down, switched everything off and lay down again.

Fifteen storeys below, traffic was still surging along Tverskaya. Opposite my window, huge, bright neon advertisements for Panasonic and Technics blazed on the top of another high-rise building. What a place, I thought. What a shit-heap: overrun by commercialism, yet scruffy as hell. Nowhere else in the world had I ever known such unpleasant vibrations: nowhere had I sensed so clearly that if I got into trouble, nobody would help or protect me. When the rest of the team came out, we were going to have to take care.

Back in Hereford Valentina had told us all about babushkas – literally grannies – the old ladies who do menial jobs like sweeping the streets, shovelling snow and sitting at desks on the landings of big hotels. Sasha had mentioned how they also run little kiosk shops and sell illicit vodka to soldiers.

Whinger and I clocked our first specimen when we went down for breakfast: eighteen stone if she was a pound, with eyes set too close together in a huge pudding of a face, and a stack of violet-tinted grey hair piled six or eight inches above her head. On the wall behind her was a notice half in English, half Russian: CONTINENTAL ZAVTRAK: 50 ROUBLES, and the babushka’s function was to intercept people on their way to the dining room and take the number of their room, so that she could make sure no one sneaked in twice or let somebody else in on their ticket.

Breakfast was self-service: rolls, bread, butter, jam, cheese and so on. There were sachets of instant coffee, tea-bags and a big samovar of boiling water with a tap that spat on your fingers when you turned it. We helped ourselves and went to sit at a table in the outer room. The little packets of butter were Finnish, the redcurrant jam German; the local bread was dry and papery, and the cheese, presumably home-made too, tasted of nothing. But I wasn’t in critical mood. I’d slept pretty well, it was a fine morning, and I was looking forward to seeing the camp. Whinger was also in good nick. He too had had a midnight call, but he’d sensibly seen it off.

Then in came Rick, face pale, T-shirt on back-to-front.

‘Rough night? What time did you hit the pit?’

‘Dunno,’ he mumbled. ‘Had a couple more drinks.’

‘Don’t try bullshitting us,’ I warned. ‘I know what you were hanging around for.’

He leered.

‘Don’t tell me you . . . Bloody hell! Which one was it?’

‘That little blonde in the corner.’ He blushed scarlet, then said, ‘Wait a minute.’