Chapter Eight #3
Laurie had noticed it. The day's one item of post was a penalty
charge from the council for illegal use of a resident's permit.
Laurie had left this unread on the hall table. He'd bought a gun.
Stefan Petrica was loose on the streets, so Laurie had bought a gun
and was ready for him. Stefan could strike at any minute. Until he
did, Laurie had to hide the fucking thing.
It was
so damn heavy. Laurie had thought guns were made of lightweight
materials these days. Maybe he was just used to props, or perhaps
this was a relic from some Eastern European conflict of decades
before. It was awkward in his hands. Already he'd dropped it,
thanking God that Gunari had removed the clip and sold him the
bullets separately. He put the lid onto Mrs G's saucepan, picked up
the Makarov in both hands and carried it into the
bedroom.
It
wasn't the type of flat where you could easily conceal things.
Elaborate in its structure, it had been refitted with modern,
simple equipment. Clean lines, no dusty hidey-holes... Swallowing
hard, Laurie reflected how much he'd have liked a good deep closet
himself today, somewhere to curl up and vanish. He put the gun on
the bed. Then he couldn't bear the sight of it there, not on the
quilt where Sash had laid him down and loved him. He snatched it
away, set it on the window sill and looked up and down the street
to see if he needed it yet.
No. The
shadows of the plane trees lay quietly on the warm pavements.
Laurie got hold of the dry-mouthed panic trying to overwhelm him.
He had time. Sasha wouldn't be back for hours. Laurie could call
him later, arrange to meet him outside Pentonville and drive him
home. Yes, plenty of time... The darozha could cook, and Laurie
could work out a sensible, sane place to hide the gun.
He was
meant to be at rehearsal. The realisation hit him like a brick,
then promptly sank into the swamp of all the things he suddenly
didn't care about. Twenty four hours ago he'd have had a fit over
it: missing second rehearsal on a play of this importance had
career-ending potential. The wardrobe looked promising. With one
hand Laurie opened the door and began moving clothes around. With
the other he picked Sir Ralf's admin number out of his phone's
memory, dialled, and tersely told the woman who answered that he
was ill and wouldn't be back until Monday.
The
wardrobe had a small set of drawers set into it. Laurie wasn't sure
he'd ever noticed them. They weren't much use for shirts or
jumpers—too cramped—but maybe socks and shoes were meant to go in
there. Opening the first couple, Laurie smiled in spite of his
crawling anxiety. There, laundered and neatly folded, were two
years' worth of his discarded socks, pairs he was sure he'd got
tired of and dumped. A few of his T-shirts, too. Sash must have
rescued them. God only knew why, but it was a sweet gesture, and he
patted the garments before closing up the drawers, touching the
places those competent, loving hands must have touched.
The
bottom drawer was larger. Sasha's housekeeping skills hadn't
stretched this far and it was full of the things you'd expect in an
averagely untidy home. Empty shoe boxes, unnecessary cans of
leather spray that shop assistants invariably convinced Laurie he
should buy. At the very back, some other clothes folded tightly
into a plastic bag. This might do. Careful not to disturb anything,
he lifted out the bag. The gun might fit behind or beneath it.
Laurie slept on the side of the bed nearest the wardrobe, and it
wouldn't be such a long reach. What he would do if Stefan made his
move on the streets, he had no idea. Was he planning to carry
it?
Oh,
Christ. The gun had been a stupid impulse, fuelled by terrors he
could barely understand. Just like the car, though the penalties
for owning an unlicensed weapon would be harder to bear than Mrs
Matusek's parking fine. The best he could do was conceal the thing,
talk to Sasha tonight about what he'd learned from Gunari. They'd
tackle the problem together. And even with Kucharski gone, the two
younger officers under his command had been decent. If they were
still at Interpol, they'd help.
The bag
had been carefully taped up, but a bit of fake fur was escaping.
Idly Laurie touched it. He recognised this, didn't he? The furthest
extreme of fake, a kind of scratchy nylon. It was used to line the
hoods of cheap coats.
Laurie
sat down on the bedroom floor. He leaned his back against the
radiator, cold at this time of day, pressing steely bars into his
spine. Very gently, making sure nothing tore, he pulled the tape
off the bag.
Inside
was Sasha's parka. He'd been wearing it when Laurie had first seen
him, that bitter night on the Strand. It had been among the pile of
clothes Sash had stripped off for him in a desperate bid to pay for
the food and shelter Laurie would have given him freely a thousand
times over, and even when Laurie had persuaded him to take newer
things to wear underneath, he'd put the ragged coat on top of them
all—his disguise, his shield. In the bag beneath it were a pair of
camo-print trousers Laurie also recognised, and a cashmere sweater
of his own, his first gift to the half-starved, hypothermic boy.
He'd sent him back into the world with a piece of himself next to
his skin, and no more tangible hope than that of ever seeing him
again.
The
clothes in the bag hadn't been shoved there and hidden. They
smelled fresh. Sasha had laundered them, folded them, put them
deliberately aside in a place where he'd thought Laurie would never
look, just as Laurie was about to hide his illegal gun. They'd both
had contingency plans.
It was
pretty funny that they'd both come up with the same place. Laurie
started to laugh about that, and then a hot-bladed grief twisted
deep in his guts and he curled up, pressing his brow to one knee.
Sash wouldn't chat to him sensibly if he found out about Stefan.
The pair of them wouldn't go off hand in hand to Kucharski's old
office at Scotland Yard to seek protection. No. Sasha would
run.
Laurie
sat up and wiped his eyes. This was stupid—he had no time to cry,
and his past two years had been so happy that he'd almost forgotten
how. Sasha loved him. That meant he would do anything, including
disappearing forever into the night, to draw danger away from him.
And that meant in its turn that Laurie had to find a way to prevent
him.
He pulled out his phone from his back pocket, glad he'd
remembered to lock its screen. It often called Sasha when he sat on
it, and Sash never minded even those calls: would diligently return
them, and they would laugh at Laurie's carelessness and talk for a
minute about the weather, their plans for the night, anything at
all, just short sweet contact, a reminder that the other was there.
A harsh sob shook Laurie to the bone. He tapped up the email from
Ivory Gate Studios, examined the garish Blood Moon banner adorning its header
line. He hit reply. The blank screen fazed him for a moment—all its
possibilities—and then he began to type.
A door
rattled downstairs. Laurie's message was finished, but his touch to
the send key was barely voluntary, a muscle twitch. Who the hell
was that? He scrambled to his feet, half blinded by the tears he
hadn't known were still falling, his breath still fractured with
sobs. He picked up the unloaded gun.