MOSCOW | 2  p . m .

The Perfect Crime

Jassy Mackenzie

The skies had just cleared after the first heavy snowfall of the season,
and the afternoon was bright, white and sunny. And, of course, at minus
ten degrees Celsius, freezing bloody cold.
It was a day for staying indoors, Chris Theron thought, a day for
watching the snow from behind the double-glazed window of a well-
insulated Moscow apartment while sharing body warmth with a willing
partner. A day for sleeping off the inevitable post-party hangover and
making half-hearted resolutions about never drinking again.
For lovers of the outdoors the conditions were perfect for sledding
or skiing, although such activities were hampered today by the fact that
the city’s snowploughs, usually as reliable as clockwork, were running
way behind schedule in their efforts to clear the knee-deep snow that
clogged the roads.
On any other day of the year the streets would already have been
salted and scraped, but not today. This was New Year’s Day, the biggest
holiday in the Russian calendar.
Fortunately, snow didn’t stop the trains from running. Nothing stops
the trains, Chris remembered Natalya telling him with pride. They run
for twenty hours a day, arriving at two-minute intervals during peak
times and six-minute intervals during the late nights and early mornings.
The nearest metro station was a short distance from Chris’s apart-
ment, although the walk down the snow-packed, empty road took three
times as long as it should have.

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