Chapter Eight #2
Laurie tried not to look too hard. If his caravan was the same
one Sasha had pointed out as being Mama Luna's, he didn't want to
know. It sat among swaying nettles and long-stalked ragwort whose
golden heads nodded hypnotically in the breeze. There
was a breeze out here,
unlike the barren stillness of the street. He could see why Gunari
preferred it. “It's nice,” he said honestly. “Plenty of
space.”
“And bathroom and khazi
indoors, so best of both worlds. Your world and
mine, eh, polone?” He clapped Laurie between the shoulders, hard enough to knock
the breath from him. “Now. You not here to book stag party, eh? Why
you come to see Gunari on his shitty street?”
“It's about Sasha. We... I, er...” Laurie shook his head. This
was ridiculous. Like every other gay man or woman in a world where
straight was the default assumption, he declared his sexuality
three or four times a week to total strangers, in shops, offices,
among his new colleagues backstage. Is
this for your girlfriend, sir? No. My boyfriend.
It didn't matter, except that of course it did,
and Laurie never missed his cue, never wavered in firmness or
lowered his eyes. Why did Gunari's mocking ice-blue stare faze him
so? “We live together now. He hasn't been well lately. He can't
sleep, and he talked about the stuff your... that Mama Luna gave me
when I came to the camp. The darozha.”
“Oh.” Gunari grunted. He seemed disappointed, as if he'd been
expecting a different request entirely. “Darozha? Okay. I
give.”
“Give? No, I'll pay for it.”
“Is nothing but leaves and herbs. And darozha we do not sell.
A gajo does not
understand.”
“No, I do. And thank you. But it must have something else in
it, to make it so...”
“A gajo does not understand. Intent of person who makes it, the
need of person who takes—that is ingredient. That is the
something else.”
“Okay. Well, Sasha really needs it, and I...” Christ, here he
was, about to fall all over himself again, like a teenager
confessing a first crush. “And I really love him, so that should do
the trick, shouldn't it? Or can't a gajo make it at all?”
Gunari
shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Anyway, he can try.”
“Arvah. Come on. I give.”
Back in
the spotless kitchen, Laurie sat on the stool his host indicated.
It was a tall one in the corner, and he wondered if Gunari took up
position here to direct his chefs during opening hours. “This is
good of you,” he said, and suddenly interrupted himself with a huge
yawn. “Oh, God. I'm sorry.”
Gunari
closed a cupboard door. He carefully added what looked like bay
leaves to the collection of powders and herbs he'd set out on a
chopping board, then looked up and grinned. “If Sandru don't sleep,
polone don't sleep either, right?”
Laurie
smiled ruefully in return. Getting here had been hard, but finding
what he needed had been so much easier than he’d thought. He’d been
prepared to fight for it. Now that Gunari was about to bag the
goods and hand them over, his defences were coming down. “That’s
right.” He yawned again, this time managing to cover his mouth.
“I’m wiped out. He has nightmares, poor bastard.”
“Prikasa,” Gunari said thoughtfully.
“No surprise. He was on streets for long time, yes?”
“Yes. Too bloody long.”
“Because of his father.”
“That’s right.” Laurie sat up, struggling against a wash of
exhaustion. Maybe the darozha had an effect
before it was even boiled, the fragrant dust of its dried herbs
filling the sunny air. “Do you know Sasha’s story, Gunari? About...
About Stefan?”
“Some. I know what he told Mama Luna.”
“And afterwards? Are you still in touch with anyone from
Birchwood, anyone who might know...”
A silence fell in the kitchen. Gunari stopped chopping leaves
and looked up. “Why don't you ask me, polone?” he said quietly. “Ask what is
really on your mind.”
Not so
much on it as in it. Limited and locked up in one small box, behind
the darozha and all Laurie's conscious intentions in coming
here—the reason why he had crossed London and sought out this man.
Laurie's brain was compartmentalised. He knew that. It was one of
his gifts, the thing that enabled him to switch so completely from
one role to the next. As long as it was voluntary, it was
fine.
He had
no recollection of creating this box at all. “I don't suppose,” he
began, then swallowed a dry patch in his throat and tried again. “I
keep thinking I see him. Stefan Petrica, that is. But he's locked
up, isn't he? He was deported, and he'd have been arrested the
moment he was back on Romanian soil.” The silence continued, and
Laurie added, more for his own sake than Gunari's—a prayer, a charm
against evil—“As you say, I haven't been sleeping. Probably I'm
seeing things.”
“You think Stefan Petrica in Bucharest? Who told?”
Laurie
stared at him. “Interpol,” he said helplessly, as if that
organisation had one mouth, one truth. “The agent who dealt with
the case—John Kucharski.”
“And no word from Interpol since? No warning?”
“No.” Laurie got down from the stool. Behind it was a window,
large and frail. He looked around the kitchen, but there was no
shelter anywhere, not really. “Gunari. Why would I need to be
warned?”
“That agent—Kucharski?”
“Yes.”
“Dead. Killed in raid before Petrica case came to court.
Without him, not enough testimony to convict. Proceedings begin,
but soon fall apart—they let Stefan go.”
“They let him go?” Laurie ran a hand through his hair. He was
trying to connect the short word dead with John Kucharski, with a
weary, kindly man only a few years older than himself,
battle-scarred and competent. He gave the effort up. There was only
the window behind him—all the windows in the Guidance Council
office, all the howling empty spaces in the city desert Sasha had
to cross in order to get home. In order to get a sandwich from the
deli across the road... “Excuse me a second,” he said with distant
politeness, as if he and Gunari had been enjoying cocktails on a
balcony somewhere. He pulled out his phone. Sasha would take his
call anywhere, wouldn't he? In a meeting, in the midst of the most
delicate negotiations...
For once
the line went straight to voicemail. Laurie listened to the message
for a few seconds, then hung up. What the hell would he say? He
remembered that Sash was in Pentonville prison today, translating
for convicted illegals. He ought to be safe enough there, inside,
if Stefan bloody Petrica was out... Laurie's head spun, and he
grabbed the edge of the table for support. “I don't understand,” he
rasped. “If Stefan was released—if he is in London, if I have been
seeing the bastard—why hasn't he come after us?”
Again Gunari shrugged. It was an odd gesture, a trace of
amusement in it, as if the troubles of the gaje world washed off his Roma back like summer waves. He resumed
his work with the herbs. “Not Stefan's style. He waits, he stalks.
Your boy gave evidence against him, against his own father—bad, in
Roma culture. Very bad. Stefan might hunt him down like cat with
little bird.”
“For fuck's sake. This is crazy.” Laurie shuddered, fighting to
control the reactive tide of nausea that could plague him after
shocks. He remembered waking up with Stefan’s hitman in his room,
how that thug had played with him, tried to fuck him with a knife
to his throat before getting down to business. One last cold
comfort occurred to him. “Sasha would have noticed a stalker. He's
far more streetwise than I am, far more observant—”
“But would he have told you, polone?”
Laurie
snatched a breath. He remembered long blank weeks alone in his flat
at East Hill, waiting every night for a shy tap on the door that
never came. Never, because Sasha had taken himself and his world
and all its dangers away, far away from Laurie, running like a fox
rather than stop to talk to him for five bloody minutes about what
was going on his life—his real life, not the sweet, censored,
fiercely controlled part of it he chose to share.
All
right. Sasha wouldn't tell. Laurie could keep his secrets too.
There were alternatives to telling. John Kucharski's office had
clearly thought so when they'd failed to inform Laurie the Petrica
case had collapsed, failed to offer protection to the witness who'd
become—what had Gunari said?—a bird awaiting Stefan's claws.
“Gunari,” he said sharply. “How can I get a weapon?”
“A weapon? I thought you came here for darozha,
friend.”
“Where can I buy one?”
“In sports shop. In Harrods. Get licence and go shooting with
friends, eh?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, yes. I know.” Gunari scraped the herbs into a neat pile.
He bagged them and handed them to Laurie, who pocketed them
blindly. “Come with me.”
***
How long
should the darozha cook? Laurie had no idea. For all he knew, Mama
Luna had simmered it for days over her fire in the Birchwood camp.
Or maybe Gunari had given it five minutes in the microwave.
Deciding on traditional methods, Laurie put the leaves into a
saucepan, one of the nice ones Mrs Gibson had given him when he'd
moved in here. Perhaps her kindly influence would help. If so much
depended on the intent of the creator, he was at a bit of a loss.
He couldn't focus. He tried to concentrate on Sasha, sleep and
healing: toyed with the idea of reciting the Macbeth witches' scene
over the brew.
No good.
All he could think about was the lump of metal on the kitchen
table. A Makarov, Gunari had told him it was when he'd sold it to
him. A good close-range pistol. It could have been a Flintlock, for
all Laurie knew about its merits. It was a gun.
He'd
brought it out of the restaurant tucked down the back of his jeans.
He'd driven through central London with it hidden in the Mercedes'
glove compartment. He'd thought the car had survived her ordeal
until he'd got out at home and crossed the road. She'd been keyed
all down her passenger side, one long mark of envy and contempt.