Chapter Eleven
The
weather broke that night. A dank chill came down with the rain, and
Laurie woke shivering. The flat's central heating wasn't working,
which hadn't mattered over the past few sultry weeks. Laurie had
promised Sash to contact their landlord about it, but he'd
forgotten in the excitement of his new role.
He
looked at his mobile. It was three in the morning—early evening,
California time. He lay in the rain-patterned dark for a while,
holding the screen at arm's length. There was an email. He read it.
Then he sat up, utterly heartsick.
Sasha
was sleeping peacefully. Maybe the thunder soothed him, set an
appropriate backdrop to his dreams. Careful not to make a sound or
a movement that would disturb him, Laurie got out of
bed.
Something rattled in the kitchen. Laurie ran the sound past
the familiar creaks of the building, the occasional startling
noises produced by the fridge, and couldn't find a match. He opened
the wardrobe, silently took out the gun and padded
downstairs.
The
kitchen was empty. Not giving himself time to think about finding
it otherwise—what he might have done, what the cold lump of metal
in his hand might have become—he quickly checked the landing, the
stairs that led to the front door. Then he leaned his backside on
the cooker and stood trembling, breathing hard.
“Laurie? Laurie, what the fuck...”
He leapt
upright. His hand had clenched like stone around the pistol or he
would have dropped it, with God alone knew what consequences—on the
night after his trip to Streatham, he'd locked himself into the
bathroom with his mobile and Gunari's bullets, and followed the
instructions on the tiny web-browser screen for loading the
chamber. Sasha was a tense shape in the doorway. “It's nothing,”
Laurie said, trying hopelessly to set the gun casually on the
counter-top beside him. “I heard a noise. But it was
nothing.”
“Where the fuck did you get that?” Sasha took two steps down
towards him and missed the third, for once in his life clumsy,
grabbing the rail for support. He was shaking. “Listen. Whatever's
going on with you at the moment, I don't mind, okay? Buy a car,
fire your manager. But I will not have a gun in this house. Do you
hear me?”
“It isn't one.” Laurie struggled not to cringe. Sasha's tone
was new and terrible to him. “It's not what you think.”
“Last time I saw one of those—that same fucking make—I had to
kill a man with it. In cold blood.”
“Cold blood?” Laurie's voice broke. “I know what you did—I was
there. You were protecting me.”
“Yes, and that's the only reason I'd ever... Where did you get
it? Why?”
“That's what I'm trying to tell you. It's just a prop. I had to
learn to look convincing with it for that production of
Abraham Lincoln, so I
took it home. Then that show folded and I never took it back. I
kept it, just in case I needed—”
“To assassinate a president? Why would the Lincoln people have a bloody
Makarov?”
“Sash—it's a prop, all right?” Laurie grabbed the weapon, held
it out to him. He knew how to make a heavy object look light, just
as he knew how to make a genuine prop look heavy. He knew Sasha
wouldn't touch it. Knew he would trust him. “Here. I don't know why
they had it. They were just a cheap outfit. They probably used it
because it was there.”
Sasha
sat down on the bottom step. He pressed his fingers to his lips and
looked at Laurie in silence for almost a minute. The faint sounds
of their ragged breathing scraped in the air. “Do you know,” he
said at length, “how many people end up getting shot with their own
guns?”
“No, and I don't see how you do either.”
“I researched it as part of my study on Romanian gang warfare.
People think it's a good deterrent, but they hardly ever learn how
to use it. They don't learn the huge fucking range of self-defence
skills they'll need to hang on to it in a fight.”
“Surely if they've got a gun, they don't need...”
“Yeah. You'd think. But unless they're prepared to shoot an
intruder dead—in cold blood, love, no matter what they're
protecting—he's gonna take it away from them. He's a hardened
criminal. They're just ordinary guys.”
“Okay,” Laurie said faintly. “I get the point. But all this is
academic, isn't it? It's a fucking
prop.”
“What were you about to do with it? Scare the crap out of our
poor neighbour if he'd crawled home drunk again and tried to come
in the wrong door?”
Laurie
swallowed audibly in relief. Yes. That was probably what he'd
heard. “I don't know.” He shivered, chilly in his T-shirt and
pyjama bottoms. Sasha looked cold too. “I'm sorry, okay? Let's go
back to bed. It's freezing in here.”
“Did you ask the landlord about the heating?”
“No. Slipped my mind.”
“Look, if you don't have time to do things like that, or you
can't be bothered, fine. But tell me, okay? Then I'll know to sort
it out myself.”
Laurie
blinked in surprise. Sasha never snapped or snarled about household
stuff. They'd lived together for two years now and had shaken down
well, or so he'd thought. He knew he wasn't the most observant or
domestic of souls, and it often fell to Sash to remember to pay
bills or wash up their cups from a late-night hot chocolate or
round of teas. He'd never seemed to mind. Maybe Laurie had been
driving him mad all along. He drew a breath to ask, and instead
said, “I've got a new job.”
“A job? Don't be ridiculous. You'll be working all hours at the
Barbican soon, and I've told you, my salary's good enough now
to—”
“I don't mean that. I mean I've got a film part, a massive one.
Do you remember my last night at the Queen's, when the producer
of Blood Moon turned up in the audience?”
Sasha
remembered for other reasons. Arousal and shame tingled in his
spine. That night had been his first revelation of how Laurie could
command him, and how something inside himself could yield to that
command. He nodded.
“He contacted me. Invited me to an audition. I didn't think
he'd been too impressed, but...” Laurie tapped his phone, lying
incongruously alongside the gun on the table. “He's offered me the
part of Devlin Steele—the baddie in this film, but I'm pretty sure
he'll turn into a hero in the next. Their main vamp's meant to be
immortal, but the guy who plays him is starting to look a
bit—”
“I swear, if you say long in the
tooth...” Sasha got up. “But that's it,
isn't it? You're joking. All this is some crazy Fitzroy prank,
something Mercutio wanted you to do.” He put his hands on Laurie's
shoulders. Questions boiled up in him, all the things he'd held off
on asking because Laurie was so perfect to him, a creature who
existed on another plane, and you didn't question your angels. “Why
are you talking like this, love? What's with the gun and the car?
Is something wrong?”
“Sash, how many times... The gun's a prop.”
“Okay, but since when did you chase noises in the night with a
pistol, even a fake one? What's frightening you?”
Laurie
pushed him away. He had never in his life evaded or rejected
Sasha's embrace, and he caught a blood-chilling flash in those dark
eyes as he did. “Nothing. I'm not frightened. This role's the break
of a lifetime.”
“Romeo's the break of a lifetime. What about your contract with
Sir Ralf?”
“I haven't signed yet. I can do what I like.”
“Christ... Laurie, when did you hear about this?”
“Just now, I swear. I thought they weren't going to get back to
me but I found an email from their LA office when I woke up.”
Despite everything, Laurie had held a tiny hope of rejection,
a thanks but no thanks that would shock him back into reality, into finding another
solution. “They want me to start right away.”
“When was the audition? Tell me...” Sasha pulled out a kitchen
chair and straddled it. He ran his palms across his skull. “Was it
around the time when you went to see Gunari? When you fired your
manager, bought the Merc—started making other unilateral decisions
about things that affect us both?” Sasha shut up. This was how
other couples talked to one another, wasn't it? The ones who took
mad risks with one another, freely and loudly pissed one another
off. “I'm sorry. You can do as you wish, of course. Just... how
long will you be away?”
Cold
rushed down Laurie's spine. This hitch had never occurred to him.
It should have: hearing his acts of arrogance listed had brought
them home to him for what they were, and this was the worst of
them, wasn't it—assuming that Sasha would just up sticks and come.
But he had to. That was the whole point. “Not just me. Us. You have
to come with me.”
Wrong choice of words, to a man who had been so often and
brutally coerced. Sasha looked at Laurie with a new darkness. “Just
as you're free, so am I in my own way. I don't have to do anything.”
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put it like that. I mean—for God's
sake come with me, please. They want me on condition of an
immediate start, but I can make conditions too. You should see
their email, Sash—I can have pretty much anything I want. They'll
get us a house right in West Hollywood, huge swimming pool and
everything.” He shivered, glanced out of the window. Ivory Gate had
no idea what else was coming to them by way of high-strung actor's
demands. The house would be in a gated development. The pool would
be surrounded by high walls, and Mr Fitzroy, that brilliant but
paranoid young newcomer to the Hollywood scene, would require
full-on security. “No more London rain,” he said softly, scanning
the wet shadows of the plane trees for anything in the shape of a
man or a grey ghost. “And the payout's so big that once I'm done, I
won't have to worry about anything else than theatre work for
years. I can do my charity gigs, set up a drama-therapy group,
anything.”
“Lovely. You're just overlooking one thing.”
“What is it? I can sort it out, I promise.”
“No, you can't. I have a job too.”
Laurie
barely stopped himself short of an impatient laugh. John Kucharski
had helped Sash find work, but it had been voluntary, more a type
of therapy for the traumatised new immigrant than serious
employment. Things had changed since then, Laurie knew,
but...
“Do you want to hear about it? Because you sure as hell never
ask me these days.”
“What?”
“I'm a C-grade officer in Romanian Immigration Services. I got
my advocacy diploma last month. And last week I found a tiny legal
loophole in a deportation case. Do you want to hear about
that?”
“Uh... Yes. Christ, why didn't you tell me about the
diploma?”
“You were being Bertram. The guy's name is Yosiri Cuza, a
political refugee from Bucharest. He runs a grocer's shop in South
Norwood. Nice wife, three kids, works all the hours God sends. I
found out that one of the witnesses against him has a history of
persecuting immigrants. In fact he was one of the mob that raided
Birchwood camp two years ago, with—”
“With my father.”
“Yes, although I didn't mean to say that. Laurie, what's gone
wrong with us tonight?”
Laurie
didn't answer. He was looking at his own hollow ghost. There was a
reflective cabinet against the far wall. They'd done pretty well in
two years, he and Sash, to get from paper cups to Jasper Weston
glassware. Laurie's image drifted uneasily among the bright colours
and long elegant stems, but this mirror told him, just like the
shop windows in High Holborn, that he was flesh of Marielle's
flesh, nothing more. Still, he really wanted a drink, and not the
sparkling froth he and Sasha poured into their Weston flutes. No, a
meaty scotch, anaesthetising, big enough to satisfy even the
bestial drunk who had cast this shadow across his life. “I don't
know what's wrong. Go on about Yosiri Cuza.”
“Are you even listening?”
“Yes.”
“The point is that I can help him. He's willing to talk, but
only to me. I have to stay here and see the case through. And even
if I didn't—it's my job, Laurie. I like it. I value it as much as
you do yours.”
You can take mine and shove it off Beachy Head. The one good
thing about it was that I could use it to save you.
Laurie pushed off the kitchen counter in a spasm
of despair. “For fuck's sake. Can't you take some leave—a
sabbatical? Come on, Sash. There's a whole new world waiting for us out there.
They're rushing my visa through. They'll do the same with yours if
I ask them. We can fly out straight away.”
“You can.” Sasha got up. He shoved the
chair neatly back under the table and turned to face Laurie full
on, eyes flashing. “On second thoughts, no you can't. It's Charlie
and Mrs G's wedding next week. Don't you dare miss
that.”
“Okay. I won't, if you'll just agree to—”
“No. You haven't listened to a bloody word I've
said.”
He
walked away. His spine was straight—a beautiful, alien sight to
Laurie, who had never seen it turned on him in anger before. The
shadows of the hallway closed around him, and he very softly shut
the bedroom door.
Laurie
pulled the chair out again. He sat down, and the lingering heat
from that stubborn arse felt like the only warmth left to him in
the world. “Fuck,” he whispered, covering his face with his hands.
They had done everything together in the course of the past couple
of years, he and Sash. Rented this flat, looked after Clara on her
visits, paid bills and talked for hours about nothing, made love
for hours more, sat staring mindlessly at the TV when they were
weary, just like anyone else. The one thing they hadn't done in all
that time was have a serious fight.
Laurie's
heart felt like a stone in his chest. His flesh and his ribs ached
around it. He got up at length, struggling against the dragging
weight, and carefully took the bullets out of the gun. What the
hell had he been doing, keeping an unlicensed Russian pistol in a
wardrobe drawer with his old socks and Sasha's secret running-away
kit?
One of
the kitchen cupboards had a lock. Stiffly Laurie knelt in front of
it. Another good reason for not keeping a weapon in the house—the
impulse factor. How many out of Sasha's statistical sample had done
the job for themselves, in an access of misery or guilt, just
because the means were there to hand?
Shot by
your own gun indeed. His movements slow and clumsy, Laurie locked
the Makarov away.