Chapter Twenty Six
Laurie
was Sasha’s comrade. He placed his feet carefully, but he held his
head high. He was so proud. This was the role of his lifetime, the
one that could send all his masks and pretences crumbling to
glittering dust. They all blew away on the night wind, met a few
fragments of mirror-glass birds and were gone. This role was what
he was. He was whole. He made sure of the gap in front of him,
moved into it silently. Ahead of him on the track, Sasha held back
a long stem of thorns for him. Their eyes met, the glimmer in
Sasha’s restoring Laurie’s soul. No-one else looked at him that
way. He’d thought those lights long lost.
They
moved on, wordless, almost soundless, through the trees. Only the
faintest light penetrated here, the ghost of the grand summer
sunset blazing out across the heath. Growing used to the pace, the
trick of moving like a Roma boy through the woods, Laurie took a
keen pleasure in it. This was a way to become part of the night.
Their progress wasn’t scaring the night’s creatures—a thrush in the
high branches carried on its evensong, and Sasha drew him to a
momentary halt to watch a badger with two well-grown cubs go
trundling across the path ahead of them. Onward and onward... Even
the owls were still calling, incredibly close by. City-bred as he
was, Laurie didn’t know what kind they were. He wished he could ask
Sasha. He wanted to know all about this new world, this place of
comradeship...
Sasha
turned as if he’d read the thought. His eyes were wide and lost.
“Stay still.”
“It’s owls, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Tawnies. They sing to one another in their breeding
season, not... not now.”
“Maybe they’re romantic. Maybe now the kids have left home,
they’re out on a date, or...”
“Hush, you idiot. Let me listen.”
Sasha jerked backwards. Laurie flinched. The motion had been
unnatural, the shock-snatch by a monster in a horror film, quick
and absolute: the track ahead was empty. Laurie sucked in one
breath. That was all he got—a hand landed hard on his mouth,
cutting off air and the cry boiling up in his throat.
Sasha!
“That’s it. Be silent, gajo. Now walk.”
The
voice filled Laurie’s head. For long moments, beginning his
stumbling progress off the track and into the undergrowth, he
couldn’t think of anything else. Fright made him slow: he picked up
and discarded half a dozen names and sounds before he knew. The
hand was gone from his mouth, replaced by a hard, jabbing pressure
between his ribs. “Gunari!”
“Silent. I speak to you—now, while we are far enough behind,
and not again. No-one escapes Stefan Petrica. One time he helped
me—one time. He gets me my restaurant. That makes me his. Sandru is
his. You, polone, with your money and your big mouth, you crossed
his path twice now. You belong to him too.”
Laurie
fell over a tree root. His captor hoisted him upright and shoved
him on. “Gunari,” he whispered. “For God’s sake. Is that Petrica up
ahead? Did he just grab Sasha?”
“No.” Gunari gave a grunt of bitter laughter. “He doesn’t dirty
his hands. One more thing, polone—don’t fight him. Is over,
whatever you and Sandru come here to do. No fight, no struggle, and
Petrica may kill you fast, not slow. And both of us are silent
now.”
The
brambles opened out into a clearing. Peripherally Laurie took in
the cluster of tumbledown buildings emerging from the dusk. His
focus was so hot and tight it burned. He couldn’t see Sasha, only
his captor’s broad back. The darkness swallowed both of them.
Laurie had time to take in a short damp corridor, stinking of
decay. Brick dust and concrete crunched beneath his feet. Then
Gunari shoved him hard from behind. Reflex kicked in and he turned
his fall into a dive, rolled neatly and came up on his hands and
knees at Stefan Petrica’s feet.
Black hair shot through with silver grey, glinting in
candlelight. A burned-out mask of a face, elegant as Sasha’s, dried
up in God alone knew what fires. Laurie didn’t know him, except
from time-blurred memories of Interpol photos. Whoever had stalked
him on the London streets, it hadn’t been this man.
He doesn’t dirty his hands... Arid brown eyes raked Laurie over with weary amusement. “This,
Gunari?” Petrica asked, his English barely accented. “For this, my
son betrayed me?”
Laurie
knelt very still. He kept his gaze on Petrica’s and steady as he
could. It wasn’t pride or fear—only the knowledge of Sasha at his
side, within arm’s reach, his breathing shallow and fast. Laurie
wouldn’t risk him by a move or a word. Petrica was lounging in a
battered 1950s office chair, his demeanour of dispossessed royalty
making it look like a throne. Its vinyl was rat-eaten. Still, it
was the only chair in the room. One chair, half a dozen candles
stuck in broken cups and mugs scattered on a work surface, the
tilting remains of a desk. Everyone could share the light, but
Laurie guessed that only Petrica ever sat there. Bricks had been
piled up into makeshift seats against the far wall. Another man was
slumped on one of these, hood pulled up to shield a cadaverous face
as if even the candlelight hurt him. That put four Roma thugs in
the balance against Laurie’s flesh and bone, against Sasha’s...
Laurie scarcely even breathed.
***
How much
time had passed in the candlelit cell? Petrica’s black gaze doled
time out at his leisure. Time for cramp to begin in knotted leg
muscles and fade to aching numbness. Petrica jerked his head,
allotting some time to the man holding Sasha by his hood. “See,”
Petrica said, in the manner of giving a lesson. “The pockets are
deep, but the hang of the garment betrays it. Learn from this,
Nico.”
The coat
jerked tight round Sasha’s neck as Nico twisted the hood. There was
no need to immobilise him, not with Laurie at gunpoint two feet
away. Laurie’s face was serene. Maybe he didn’t know that the snout
of Gunari’s pistol was one inch away from the base of his beautiful
skull. Nico thrust a brutal hand into Sasha’s pockets until he
found the Makarov. Not letting go his choke hold, he held it out to
Petrica, who turned it in the candlelight and laughed. “Ah, Gunari.
How the wheel turns. This I gave to you on trust, remember? To
guard your little restaurant, your little caravan. And yet it ends
up in the hands of my serpent’s-tooth son. What a tale this would
make for the campfire, if you and the boy lived to tell.” He held
up a thin, forbidding finger. “Ah, no! Keep the little actor under
guard. I had a good man once—not a kindly one, but useful and quick
at his job, and deadly as a scorpion. Luca, his name was. Nico
remembers him, don’t you?”
“I remember, Stefan.”
“One day I sent Luca to the little actor’s flat. It was a
simple hit. This boy has no weapons, no defences—yet Luca never
comes home. So, steady hand, Gunari. Use this second gift I’ve
given you more wisely than the first.”
Sasha
waited until Nico had calmed enough to ease his grip. He needed his
voice to be clear. “Father,” he said, then continued in Romanian so
that Laurie wouldn’t know how soon Sasha had lived to regret
bringing his new comrade into the war. “Let the little actor go.
That’s all he is—a stupid gajo boy I can’t shake off. He didn’t
kill Luca. I did. Your business is with me.”
Petrica sat back. He was lordly in the tarnished light, a
tired soldier who wore his corruption like an elegant cloak.
“Fitzroy,” he said, savouring the sound of it. “Fils of the roi, that comes from—the son of a
king. God knows how your pig of a father deserved such a name,
polone. Did he buy it along with his baronetcy? Fuck a Tory peer
and blackmail him?”
And now Laurie took a deeper breath. He breathed because the
hooded man hunched up against the wall had shifted slightly—just
enough to show Laurie his face. Laurie used up five years’ worth of
acting skills to deaden his reactions. Oh God, that face—a dead man
walking, revelation bursting inside Laurie’s skull like
fireworks... That man, and a gesture so small but plain as
day—index finger circling, circling. Laurie. Keep Petrica talking. “Sasha
still cares about his father,” Laurie said quietly. “You can’t hurt me about
mine.”
Petrica’s face twisted oddly, as if he’d tasted cyanide. As
if Laurie had said the one thing he couldn’t have expected.
“Sasha?” he echoed, catching Laurie’s accent with cruel accuracy.
“Oh, little Sasha—is that his baby-talk name? Your little Sasha—my
Alexandru—just called you a stupid gajo parasite. That’s how much
he cares about you. How much he cares about anyone.”
“He’d say anything to make you let me go.” Laurie stole a
sidelong glance at his lover. Sasha was perfectly still. His
profile was a shadow-cut portrait of self-control. Only Laurie
could see the tight press of his lips that meant a waiting storm.
“You know he was a loyal son until you made that impossible for
him. He lied to me about you until he couldn’t do anything else. He
said you were a poet, a teacher. A freedom fighter.”
“Then he said those things were lies?”
“No. Only part of the truth. He didn’t add that you were an
arms-dealing cut-throat gangster until much later.” Beside him,
Sasha twitched. Shut up,
Laurie, that movement said.
For God’s sake. But Sasha
couldn’t see the man against the wall. What was Laurie meant to
make Stefan talk about? It didn’t matter, as long as it gained
time. “What was your poetry, you thug? I don’t believe you ever
wrote a word.”
Petrica
reached out casually. He had turned the Makarov around in his fist.
He swung the butt of it at Laurie’s head. Laurie ducked and turned
the blow into a glancing one, but still it connected, a dull crack
that stained the candlelight crimson and knocked him
flat.
“Laurie!” Sasha tore out of Nico’s grip. He grabbed Laurie,
hauled him up out of the dust and over his lap. “Leave him be,
Stefan! Touch him again and you’ll have to kill me. And I’ll come
back from my grave to slit your throat.”