Arkady Morozov is a Belarusian pathologist who is currently working as Zumba teacher while he learns sufficient English to work in the NHS. One of the pupils in his class is Lucy Loveridge, the girlfriend of Tom Winscombe.
After the incident in which Tom trashes Lucy's car, Arkady moves in with her instead. He subsequently assists Tom with the exchange of
George Burgess's briefcase containing the
Vavasor Papers for
Dorothy Chan following her kidnap by the
Gretzky gang, by lending him his lovingly-preserved cold-war era Škoda. Less helpfully, he also involves his friend
Sergei Kravchenko, ostensibly to attach a tracking device to the briefcase, although Sergei instead inserts a bomb. Following the resulting explosion and the death of several members of the Gretzky family, Arkady decides it might be a good time to lie low for a while.
