Chapter 27
BOGDAN
The shot tears a strip of metal from the shutter beside Kirill's head.
I catch his coat and haul him behind the concrete loading-bay pillar. Another shot hits the wall. Across the yard, Klim has a man pinned against the inside of the gate, one arm twisted up between his shoulders. Beyond them, the side door of a gray van stands open.
“Inside,” I tell Kirill. “Get the workers back.”
He ducks through the warehouse doorway. I draw my gun as one of the guards takes cover behind the gatepost. His return fire sends the man at the van scrambling into it. The door slides shut, tires scrape the curb and the vehicle lurches away, leaving Klim with the man they came to retrieve.
The yard is suddenly quiet enough for me to hear a loose piece of shutter striking the frame.
I leave the pillar and head for Klim. He's shifting his captive away from the gate when the man wrenches his arm free, leaving Klim holding a fistful of coat.
As I close the last few steps, a pistol comes out from beneath the wool.
My shoulder hits him before he can raise it, driving him into the fence.
His breath leaves against my neck. I catch his wrist while Klim takes the weapon from his grip.
For a second he keeps fighting, boots sliding over wet leaves. Then I force him back against the fence and hold him there until his feet stop moving.
“Enough,” I say.
He looks at the gun in my other hand and believes me.
The smell of his damp wool fills my nose, soured by sweat. I release him to Klim, stepping back while the guard secures the gate. A delivery driver has crouched behind his cab at the far end of the yard. I point toward the warehouse door and wait until he gets inside.
Nobody follows the van into the street.
I'd come to Depot Two to review the remaining freight bookings with Kirill.
Thursday afternoon, October twenty-second, and we hadn't reached the second page before Klim's warning came over the radio.
Three men had been watching the gate from the van.
One tried to slip through as a truck left.
Klim stopped him, and his friends answered with gunfire.
Now the schedule lies beneath Kirill's boot just inside the doorway, with a pale fleck of torn metal on top of it.
“Police are on their way,” he says. “Everyone's accounted for. No one hit.”
I put my gun away. My shoulder aches where it met the captive's chest. The force is still in my arm, asking for somewhere else to go.
Klim turns the man toward me.
I recognize the long face and the coat before I place the afternoon. On Klim's phone, outside Afterglint, this man stood with folded bills between his hand and Ethan's.
“The collector,” I say.
“Innokenty.” Klim keeps hold of him. “He works for Luka.”
Innokenty looks toward the empty space beyond the gate. The van has left a smear of rubber against the curb. His own men fired toward him, then drove away when they couldn't get him back. Whatever loyalty brought him here is looking expensive now.
We take him into the small dispatch office beside the loading bay.
A guard remains at the doorway. Klim sets the seized pistol on a filing cabinet, well away from Innokenty, before checking him for another weapon.
Kirill stays on the warehouse floor with the workers.
Through the office glass, I see him retrieve the damaged schedule and fold it into his coat pocket.
The business will still need to move freight tomorrow.
Klim puts a wallet, keys, phone and pocket cashbook on the desk. The captive sits on a metal chair with his hands secured behind him. A string of paper bats hangs above the noticeboard, made from dispatch forms with writing still visible on their backs. One has lost a wing.
I remember the pale basting thread in the waistcoat Tessa fitted on me, the way she smooths a garment before she folds it. For an instant I want to go back to the hotel, to the sofa where I sat last night knowing she was close enough to come down if she needed me.
I'd waited downstairs. She'd stayed with Peggy.
“What were you looking for?” I ask.
Innokenty watches Klim open the cashbook. The corners are worn soft, and a red elastic strap hangs from its cover.
“Luka wanted to know how many men you'd left here. He thought you'd moved them to the women.”
My hand settles on the back of the empty chair opposite him. The metal is cold beneath my palm. I think of Tessa lying awake beside Peggy and this man counting how many people he might find between a gun and my workers.
I move the chair aside and remain standing.
Klim stops at a page near the middle. He turns the book toward me without letting go of it. The date at the top is October thirteenth. Halfway down, beside Jennings, a line records fifteen hundred dollars and the words Masque coordination.
The amount matches the invoice Devon refused to pay. The photograph shows money passing between these two men. I haven't heard either one admit what it bought.
I bring up Klim's photograph on my own phone and place it beside the book.
“What did Ethan give you?”
Innokenty looks at his face on the screen. He starts to shake his head, then stops when Klim turns back a page to check the date.
“The running order. Who'd be where. Which people could get through the service entrance.”
“You paid fifteen hundred for that?”
“And changes. He sent the new sheet after eight on the night of the ball. Luka wanted to know where you'd take her.”
My fingers close around the phone. In that office upstairs, Tessa sat beside me while I made Luka leave. Later she walked through the club on my arm, pleased by the way I looked at her. Ethan had stood at the stairs with his camera and arranged us for a picture.
I remember how she laughed for that picture. Ethan had taken our money for the photographs and Luka's for the times and places.
“You paid him yourself on the thirteenth?” Klim asks.
Innokenty nods toward the photograph. “Yes. Devon wouldn't cover it.”
The words settle the question I kept from Tessa for two days. I don't feel the relief I'd once imagined confirmation would bring. She and Peggy had already lived through the part that mattered, letting him near them while I had enough information to warn them and chose not to.
Klim photographs the page without removing it. When he turns farther through the book, Innokenty leans forward until the chair legs scrape.
“That isn't about the photographer.”
I look down. Two entries name Gilt & Gallows beneath the words site work. The first is dated October fifteenth, the second the seventeenth. An advance and a balance, with the same two sets of initials beside them.
Before the fire and after it.
I remember Garrett's bandaged arm, his good hand clamped around the chair while he tried to tell me about the stock room. The ambulance had taken him away before the roof fell. These two small entries cover the fire that put him in hospital and left every worker without a club to return to.
“Tell me what work they did,” I say.
Innokenty looks through the glass at Kirill, then toward the guard in the doorway. Neither moves to help him. I can hear the office clock ticking above the ruined paper bat.
“I handed over the money. I wasn't at the club.”
“Who sent you?”
He presses his lips together. I want to put him against the fence again, make him feel something of what Garrett felt when he found the doorway burning. The desire is so immediate that I step away from the desk before I answer it.
“Your van's gone,” I tell him. “Luka isn't coming through that door for you.”
Innokenty looks at the gate once more. His breath catches before he speaks.
“He told them to burn it. I was there when he said it. I paid the advance before the fire and the rest the night after it. Those are the men.” He tips his head toward the book. “The initials. I'll give the police their names.”
Klim keeps the page open. The entries alone could be ordinary payments. Beside Luka's message claiming the fire, and the collector saying he heard the order, they give Alison something she can follow beyond a threat on my phone.
“Do you know where Ethan is?” I ask.
“No. I haven't seen him since I paid him.”
I study him long enough for him to lower his eyes. He might be holding back the only useful thing he has left to sell. We have his answer, and the police will have his book and phone. I won't turn a guess into a location because I want a door I can kick open.
Klim calls Alison from beside the doorway. I hear him give the depot address, the gunfire and the collector's name before I step onto the warehouse floor. Through the raised loading shutter, a patrol car is turning into the yard.
Kirill comes toward me, taking the creased freight schedule from his pocket. His coat has a small tear at the shoulder where the metal caught it. I touch the edge, checking the cloth beneath.
“Only the coat,” he says.
I release it. The relief leaves me abruptly tired.
“Devon cancelled his remaining work with Luka this morning,” Kirill says. “The other two brokers from the meeting have withdrawn their bookings too. They sent confirmation.”
He shows me the messages. Names, dates, lost work. Luka already had to return the stolen truck and pay for the load. Now the fire has cost him men who were willing to take his calls while the damage happened to somebody else.
The pressure is working. It has also brought a gun to my yard.
“Keep the coverage here,” I tell Kirill. “Pay for another shift. Klim gets additional men for the clubs and the hotel. We don't strip one door to protect another.”
Kirill folds the schedule. “I'll arrange it.”
I look across the loading floor at the workers waiting by their pallets. One has a hand over the back of his neck. Another keeps rubbing a patch of metal dust from his sleeve. They came here to unload kitchen equipment and collect their pay.
“They can go home once the police are finished with them. Full day's wages. Get the yard cleared before another truck comes in.”
Kirill moves to carry out the order. I take a bottle of water from the dispatch counter and drink. It's been standing near the open shutter, cold enough to hurt my teeth. The stale taste of the coffee I drank before the shooting finally leaves my mouth.
Then I call Tessa.
She answers on the third ring. Behind her, I hear the snip of scissors stop.
“There was shooting at Depot Two,” I say. “It's over. None of our people were hit. Klim caught one of Luka's men.”
“Were you there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. I'm standing in the warehouse. The police have arrived.”
She breathes out, and I close my eyes for a moment. I wish I could feel that breath against my throat.
“We've found more about Ethan,” I say. “Peggy needs to hear it too.”
“She's here. We're in the fitting room at the club.” There's a brief rustle, then Tessa's voice moves farther from the phone. “You're on speaker.”
“The man Klim caught paid Ethan fifteen hundred on the thirteenth. He's admitted it. He bought the event movements and service-access information, including the revised sheet Ethan sent after eight on the night of the ball.”
I pause, listening to the room at the other end. Nobody interrupts me. Tessa waited while I told her there was nothing confirmed, and she'd believed that I was still trying to find a name. Now I have to give her something worse than the photograph I hid.
“Luka wanted to know where I'd take you.”
“He was posing us while he did it?” she asks.
“I don't know when he sent it. He had the changes, and he sold them.”
Peggy makes a small sound. I hear Tessa move, then the quiet creak of a chair.
“The same man handled payments for the fire crew,” I say. “He says he heard Luka order it.”
“Do you know where Ethan is?” Tessa asks.
“No.”
My answer leaves her with the fear and no promise that the man behind it will be gone by supper. I look toward the open office door, wanting one more question to produce an address. Innokenty has already told us he doesn't have one. I won't make her wait for something he may never give us.
“Alison is getting the book and his account,” I say. “Klim will send you the relevant pages and his notes too. You can read what we've found.”
For a moment neither woman speaks. Through the office glass, I watch the police take custody of Innokenty. He rises with a uniformed officer beside him and turns toward the door. He's still wearing the coat from the photograph, one sleeve pushed high enough to expose his wrist.
“When did this happen?” Tessa asks.
“A few minutes ago. I came out of the room and called.”
I hear her breathing. There is no way to give her this news without making her afraid. For once, I haven't used that as a reason to keep her waiting.
“Thank you for telling us,” she says.
I grip the bottle until its thin sides dent. Her thanks should never have been something I needed to earn this way.
“Matvei's with you?”
“Just outside. We'll go back to the hotel when we finish this hem.” Her voice comes closer again. “Bogdan, come and let me see you afterward.”
I look down at the scrape of gray dust across my cuff, the places her fingers would've brushed clean without thinking a week ago.
“I will.”
When the call ends, I send her a message asking her to tell me when they reach the hotel. My shoulder has begun to stiffen. I roll it once, remembering how sharply she asked whether I was hurt, and want her hands on me for an entirely different reason than I wanted them this morning.
Klim comes out to me. The police are taking the cashbook, phone and seized pistol, along with his account of where each came from. He's sent Alison the photographed entries and the existing invoice reference. Klim sends the relevant copies to Tessa and Peggy while he stands beside me.
Across the yard, Innokenty lowers himself into the patrol car. Luka has lost another man, but the van that carried the other two is still out there. I watch the gate until the car passes through it.
Then I turn back to give the police my account. Tessa is waiting to see me, and this time she'll know what happened before I walk through her door.