Chapter 444 - 444: The Butcher Watches.

Viktor watched Kyle walk down the hill until he was nothing but a dark coat moving between the trees.

He lowered the small pair of binoculars and tucked them back into his pocket. Birdwatcher binoculars. Cheap. A tourist had dropped them by the bench he had been sitting on near the bottom of the slope, three hours ago, and Viktor had decided they were his now.

"Good glass," he muttered. "Bad for birds. Good for watching."

He had arrived before either of them. Before the girl with her sketchbook. Before Kyle with his careful little steps and his eyes that checked every jogger and every dog and every woman with a pram.

Kyle had looked straight at him twice.

He had not seen him.

Viktor found that very funny. A man of his size, sitting under a tree in a long black coat with a newspaper he was not reading, and Kyle, clever as he was, had looked right past him. People always did. They looked for danger in the places they expected it to be. Never in the obvious places.

The obvious places were where Viktor liked to sit.

He had sent Kyle a message from that bench and watched him jump like a cat that had seen a cucumber. It was the best part of Viktor's morning.

-

The girl had left long before Kyle did, down the north side, toward the road.

Viktor had not followed her himself. He did not need to. Viktor was a family head. Family heads had other men for the boring parts. The sitting. The waiting. The following.

He had watched her face through the cheap glass the whole time, and he had watched Kyle's face too. He did not know what Kyle had told her. He had not heard a single word. But he did not need to hear.

The girl had asked questions. Kyle had answered some. Not all. Viktor could tell from the way Kyle's jaw tightened before certain answers. The way his eyes went somewhere far away before he spoke.

And then, at the end, she had cried into that sketchbook like a little girl.

"Princess cries," Viktor thought. "Kyle did that."

He did not know who she was. A student, maybe. She sat like a princess locked in a tower, so that was what he called her.

She was not Kyle's lover. Viktor was sure of that. Kyle did not look at her the way men looked at women they wanted. He looked at her the way a man looks at something fragile he has been asked to carry across thin ice.

Whoever she was, she mattered.

Viktor stood up slowly. His knees cracked. The bench groaned with relief.

His phone buzzed as he walked out through the park gates.

[[Dmitri: Girl on bus. Going home. Nobody else follows her.]]

Viktor read it twice.

[[Viktor: You are sure?]]

[[Dmitri: Every car. Every man. Nobody, boss.]]

"Good," he grunted, and typed with one thick thumb.

[[Viktor: Stay far. Do not touch.]]

Kyle's rules. Viktor knew rules.

He walked slowly until he found a bakery that made the air smell like butter.

Then he went into the bakery and bought six sausage rolls.

-

He ate the first two standing outside the shop, in four bites. The woman behind the counter watched him through the glass with her mouth slightly open. He grinned at her. Metal teeth flashed in the cold sunlight.

She looked away very quickly.

Viktor was halfway through the third sausage roll when his phone vibrated.

He knew who it was before he looked. Very few people had this number.

The screen glowed.

[Marcello]

Viktor stopped chewing.

He stared at the name while the phone buzzed in his huge hand like a trapped insect.

It stopped.

Then it started again.

[Marcello]

Marcello had called before. Viktor had let it ring every time.

Now this.

The Butcher did not lie to Marcello. That was a rule older than any other rule Viktor had. Marcello had pulled him out of that prison. Marcello had sent a message to a boy everyone had already decided was dead.

"You want blood? Be my weapon and I will give you all the violence you seek."

Marcello had given him a choice when nobody else ever had. He had given him purpose.

So the Butcher did not lie to Marcello.

Which meant the Butcher could not answer.

Because if he answered, Marcello would ask where he was. And Viktor would say London. And Marcello would ask why. And Viktor would say Kyle. And then Marcello would ask what Kyle was doing in London.

And Viktor would tell him. A girl. A sketchbook. A bench on a hill. Tears.

Viktor did not know what any of it meant. But Marcello would. Marcello always understood things faster than anyone liked.

Worse, Marcello might not even ask. He might simply say one word. "Switch." And the other Viktor would wake up, the clever one with his neat folders and his charts, and he would put the pieces together and hand Marcello everything without being asked twice.

The phone stopped buzzing.

A moment later, a message appeared.

[[Marcello: Call me, Viktor.]]

Just three words. No anger in them. Marcello never put anger in his words. He kept it somewhere deeper, somewhere colder, where it could wait for years if it had to.

Viktor read the message once. Then he slipped the phone back into his coat and took another bite of the sausage roll.

It did not taste as good as the first two.

-

He walked.

London was a strange city. Too polite. Too grey. Nobody here knew what the Butcher was. To them, he was just a very large, very ugly man eating pastries on the pavement.

It was almost peaceful.

But his mind kept going back to the bench at the top of the hill.

To the girl.

Who was she?

The Butcher did not like puzzles. Puzzles were for the clever one. But even the Butcher knew a few simple things. Kyle did not fly across an ocean for nothing. Kyle did not hide things that did not matter. And anything Kyle worked this hard to hide was something Marcello would want to know about.

One phone call.

That was all it would take. Tell Marcello about the girl, and let Marcello do the thinking. Marcello would be pleased. Marcello would know her name by tomorrow.

And Kyle would be finished.

Viktor stopped walking.

He thought about Kyle sitting on that bench after the girl left. Staring at the skyline. Shoulders hunched. Eyes far away. Like the world was too big and too dangerous, but he was going to find a way through it anyway.

"Vitya, ve get out of this place. Ve go to America. Ve be free."

Viktor's hands curled into fists at his sides.

Alexei had looked like that too. Right up until the end.

"Kyle says don't touch," Viktor muttered under his breath. "Viktor does not touch."

He did not know yet whether that was loyalty to Kyle or betrayal of Marcello. Maybe it was both. Maybe that was what happened when a man had two masters.

Or maybe Kyle was not his master at all.

Maybe Viktor was simply curious. He wanted to see what the strange, rich, insane little man would do next. Whether his offer at breakfast had been real, or just empty words.

Viktor decided he could wait a little longer to find out.

Marcello could wait too.

-

By three o'clock, he was in Belgravia again.

The street was quiet. White houses with black railings and polished doors, the kind of street where even the pigeons looked expensive. Viktor stood across from the short girl's house, beside a lamppost, finishing the sixth sausage roll and pretending to read a map he was holding upside down.

He had stood here last night too, after Kyle's dinner. The short girl had not come out.

The curtains on the second floor were open today.

Viktor watched them for a long while.

Then the front door opened.

The short girl stepped out onto the top step. She was wearing a pale coat and a scarf wrapped up to her chin, and she was even smaller than he remembered. She paused to pull on a pair of gloves.

Then she looked up.

Straight across the street. Straight past the lamppost, past the upside-down map, past every person who had ever looked past Viktor.

Straight at him.

Viktor froze.

The short girl smiled. A small, polite, very English smile. She lifted one gloved hand and gave him a little wave, as if he were a neighbor she saw every morning.

Then she walked down the steps and turned the corner without looking back.

Viktor stood there, the map hanging limp in his hand.

Slowly, his metal teeth showed.

"Short girl is not so forgetful," he whispered.

He pulled out his phone. He ignored the missed calls from Marcello. Instead, he opened the chat with Kyle and began to type with his huge, clumsy thumbs.

Then he stopped.

And put the phone away.

Some things, Viktor decided, he would like to see for himself first.