Chapter 31 Laszlo
Laszlo
The ride home is quiet, watchful. Nothing whatsoever happened at dinner, but I’m not getting complacent. I know Galina is. She was going to say it at dinner, but there is no point in tempting fate.
I pull into the drive and wait for the gates to shut fully behind us before I kill the engine.
Galina unclips her seatbelt and turns to me. “You realise nothing happened.”
“Mm.”
“That was the point.”
“The point was seeing if nothing happened. Different thing.” I get out first this time. Grisha and Yuri are already moving, sweeping the front, checking the dark line of the hedges, the windows, the roofline. Routine now. Necessary. I open Galina’s door and offer my hand.
She looks at it, then at me. “What happened to me not waiting for you to open car doors?”
“I’m allowed to ignore your preferences when I feel like it.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“It’s marriage.”
She snorts and takes my hand anyway.
Inside, the house is quiet in the controlled way I like. Not dead. Not lax. Held tight. Leonid appears from nowhere, as he does, takes one look at the cap still on Galina’s head, and goes utterly blank.
I nearly laugh.
Galina notices and narrows her eyes at me as she pulls it off. “Say one word, and I’ll smother you in your sleep.”
“I thought you looked very cosmopolitan,” I say.
Leonid closes his eyes for one beat, as if appealing to heaven for strength neither of us deserves. “Please don’t.”
Galina points the cap at me. “See? Even he hates you.”
“He hates everyone.”
“That is not true,” Leonid says with dignity. “I merely have standards.”
“Same thing,” I mutter.
Galina hands him the cap. “Dispose of this before it infects the rest of the house.”
Leonid takes it between two fingers like it might carry disease. “With pleasure. Leave it with me. I will find something more suitable for next time.”
I watch him go and catch myself almost smiling again. Then the feeling drops away as fast as it came, because houses like this only stay quiet for so long before something ugly crawls back in.
“Thank you,” she says. “I know how difficult that must’ve been for you.”
“It doesn’t prove anything. It just means he wasn’t watching us tonight.”
“That’s fair, but if we were looking for another shot, wouldn’t he be lurking?”
“Or he was watching and decided not to pull the trigger. Which, frankly, annoys me more.”
She studies my face for a second. “Because you can’t predict him.”
“Because I can’t kill him if I can’t find him.”
Her mouth tightens. She knows that answer is the honest one.
“Go upstairs.”
Her eyes narrow at once. “Why?”
“Because I want five minutes to speak to the men without you there, Galina. Don’t push back every single time I tell you to do something.”
“If I didn’t, you’d think something was wrong.”
“True. But I still need you to trust me.”
She takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “I do trust you.”
She lets go and heads upstairs. I watch her until she disappears at the top of the stairs, then turn to Grisha and Yuri.
“And?”
Grisha folds his arms. “Nothing on the street. Nothing on the route there or back. Two men loitering outside the wine bar, but they were exactly what they looked like. Drunk bankers.”
“Bankers are still dangerous,” I mutter, and look at Dmitri as he comes in from the rear hall with his phone in hand. “Tell me something useful.”
He glances at the staircase first, checking that Galina is gone, then says, “Bermondsey gave us nothing else. But Sasha pulled a traffic camera near Vauxhall on the hired car before it was returned. Same driver. He stopped once under the arches for four minutes.”
“Why?”
“No footage under the arch. Blind spot.”
“And after?”
“Straight to the depot.”
I hold my hand out. Dmitri gives me the phone. Grainy stills. Dark car. Number plate clear enough. Timestamp just after three. I flick to the second image. Driver side profile through the windscreen, cap low, face partly turned away.
Not enough.
“Could be a meet,” Yuri says.
“Could be a piss,” Grisha adds.
“A professional doesn’t stop to take a piss in a blind spot on the way back from a job unless something changed,” I say.
Dmitri nods once. “That’s what I thought.”
I hand the phone back. “Get me every camera feeding the roads in and out of that arch. Before, after, side streets, petrol stations, cash points, all of it. I want to know if another car went in, if anyone went on foot, if a bike came through, anything.”
“Already pulling what we can,” he says.
“What about the depot staff?”
“Sasha is speaking to them again. Quietly.”
“Quietly better mean nobody knows why he’s asking.”
“It does.”
“The car was clean when he dropped it off. I’m guessing the wipe down occurred under that bridge. Maybe even stashed his weapon to retrieve later. We’re going. Now.”
“What about Mrs Voronova?” Yuri asks.
“What about her?”
“You’re leaving her?”
“Well, I’m not fucking taking her.”
He grimaces. “Who stays?”
Ah. Okay. I see the issue here. Wife duty is dull compared to where the action is. I look between them and see it plain. None of the bastards wants babysitting duty.
“You,” I say to Yuri, since he was the one who complained out loud.
His face tightens. “Why me?”
“Because Grisha is better in tight spaces, and Dmitri is actually producing useful information for once.” I fix him with a stare. “And because if anything happens to my wife while I’m gone, I will cut your heart out and make you watch.”
He exhales through his nose. “Understood.”
“Good. You stay on this floor. You do not take your eyes off the corridor outside my room unless she is physically with you. If she wants food, you call Leonid. If she wants air, she gets a window cracked one inch in a room that has already been checked. If she wants to argue, you let her argue and keep doing your job.”
Grisha smirks.
I cut my gaze to him. “Don’t fucking smirk at him. The only reason you aren’t staying is that you unwisely decided to take her side this morning. Too fucking close, arsehole. You don’t even look at her.”
That wipes the smirk off his face and replaces it with focus. Better.
I start moving towards the back hall. “Yuri.”
“Yes?”
“If she so much as stubs her toe while I’m out, start digging your own grave.”
He gives one short nod.
“Deliver the news and then… run,” I say with a slow smile, watching his face pale as he gulps.
“Yes, sir,” he murmurs and trudges off.
“Move,” I say to the other two. “Range Rover.”
“Well, I didn’t think we could all squeeze into the Lambo,” Grisha mutters under his breath.
“Do you want me to kick your arse all the way to Siberia?”
“No, sir,” he says and speeds up to open the back door for me.
Dmitri climbs in the passenger seat as Grisha folds himself into the driver’s seat. He pulls out hard and clean, the gate opening ahead of us before closing behind. I check my gun. Habit. Compulsion. Survival.
“How long?” I ask Grisha.
“Ten.”
“Make it eight.”
He speeds up.
My phone buzzes in my hand.
Galina.
I stare at the screen for a second before I answer. If I don’t, this will drag out, split, and lose focus. I slide my finger across the screen, and before she can say anything, I say, “Don’t. Don’t argue, don’t grumble, don’t shout at me for making Yuri deliver the message.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she says after a beat. “I was calling to say stay safe.”
That puts me in my place harder than anything else could have. For a second, I don’t say anything.
Grisha glances at me from the mirror and then wisely looks back at the road.
“Say that again,” I tell her, quieter now.
A tiny pause. I can hear the house behind her in the silence.
“I said stay safe,” she replies. “You’re not the only one allowed to worry, Las.”
Something in my blood tightens in a way when she shortens my name that I don’t have time to examine.
“I always stay safe,” I say automatically.
She lets out a soft huff. “Liar.”
My mouth almost curves. Almost. “Go to bed.”
“You’re not here.”
“Then wait for me in it.”
Another beat. “Okay.” She hangs up, and I stare at the phone for a second longer. Every time I think I’ve got her figured out, she throws me a curveball, and I have to reassess.
“How long?” I ask Grisha again.
“Five,” he says, pushing the speed another notch.
London moves past in dark ribbons and wet reflections.
We cut through side streets and swing under the railway where the arches start, black mouths of brick and shadow, old soot on old stone.
Grisha brakes hard at the mouth of the service lane and kills the headlights for a second before rolling us in.
“Here,” Dmitri says, checking his phone against the stretch of road ahead. “This is the spot.”
I’m out before the engine fully stops.
The low hum of traffic above and beyond. The arch itself is lit badly, one flickering security lamp over a shuttered storage unit and another farther down where the lane opens onto a back service road.
I draw my gun and sweep left, then right.
“Clear,” Grisha mutters from behind me.
“For now,” I say.
We move in a fast triangle. Dmitri to the right. Grisha checking the left. Me going straight to the stretch of wall where a man in a hired car might stop if he didn’t want to be seen but did want cover.
Tyre marks. Plenty. Litter. A smashed crate. Nothing obvious.
Dmitri crouches near the kerb. “If he stashed his weapon under here… where?”
“He would’ve come back for it by now, surely?” Grisha says, also crouching down.
“We search for anything. Go.” I move to the base of the wall and crouch, scanning the line where brick meets concrete.
A professional does not just stop in a blind spot for four minutes because he fancies the atmosphere.
I check the drain first. Empty crisp packet, black sludge, a bent spoon, no weapon. Grisha is already hauling aside two broken pallets stacked against the shutter. Dmitri sweeps his torch low, keeping the beam tight and off the road.
“Anything?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Dmitri says.
I holster my gun for a second and use both hands to shove a wheelie bin away from the wall. It scrapes loudly across the concrete. Behind it, just damp brick and a rusted pipe.
“Could’ve been a handoff,” Grisha mutters.
“Could’ve been,” I say. “Or he changed clothes. Or dumped a phone. Keep looking.”
I move farther down the arch where the light gets worse. My eyes adjust. Oil stains. Old gum. A patched section of wall with a narrow recess beside it where someone could stand out of sight of the lane entrance.
I shine my phone torch into it.
Something glints.
“Here.”
Dmitri is beside me at once. I reach in and pull out a cheap burner phone wrapped in a freezer bag and wedged behind the pipe.
Grisha lets out a low breath.
I turn it over. No visible damage. Deliberately hidden, not dropped.
“He didn’t wipe this route because he panicked,” Dmitri says quietly. “He stopped to ditch this.”
“Or collect it and leave something else,” I say. “But this stayed put.”
I hand my gun to Grisha and pull the bag off carefully, using the inside of it to keep my prints off the phone. “Torch.”
Dmitri angles the light for me.
And then it rings.
“The fuck?” Dmitri asks.
I raise an eyebrow and answer it on speaker. “You are dead, and you just don’t know it yet.”
“Mr Voronov,” he says. Not nervous. Not rushed. Controlled.
“I said you’re dead.”
“Aren’t we all?”
My hand tightens around the phone. “Don’t fuck with me, arsehole. Having my wife in danger doesn’t improve my mood.”
“In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m the man who chose not to put a bullet through your wife’s skull.”
I keep my voice flat. “Figured. Want to tell me why?”
“I did my job properly.”
“You missed twice.”
“No. I declined twice.”
“You knew I’d track you here. You’re watching closely enough to know to ring when the phone is in my hand. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t hang up and track you down like a fox hunting a rabbit.”
“Because your man was an idiot, and idiots create ripples. He wanted revenge. Nothing more. That dies with him.”
“You expect me to just accept that.”
“I don’t care what you accept. I care that you understand I am not coming back for your wife. If I had wanted her dead, she would be.”
“What guarantee do I have? I’m not a man who takes someone’s word for it.”
“You don’t,” he says. “You have pattern recognition, timing, and whether I’ve lied to you yet.
But I will tell you this. I’ve been in this business a long time, Mr Voronov.
I know when the mark is not worth the merry hell that will come down on my head.
I like my head. I like my life. I’m not risking it to finish a job for a dead man, that I had no intention of completing in the first place. ”
“So why take the job?”
“Not all men are like me, Mr Voronov. Most are arrogant enough to take the shot and mean it. That gets them dead against people like you.” He hangs up, and I clench my jaw so tightly, I nearly crack a tooth.
“So that’s that?” Grisha asks when the silence becomes slightly uncomfortable.
I don’t answer. I just put the phone back in the bag and walk back to the car.