Chapter Text
It had started, just as his demotion to Slough House had, in fact, with the walking, talking imposition that was John Bachelor. Had Lech any idea, when he’d first met him at the funeral for a close friend of his grandfather’s, of all the ways in which his association with John Bachelor would completely nuke his life, he never would have given the man the time of day. Nor the benefit of the doubt when Bachelor had suggested that they were distant relatives. Lech certainly wouldn’t have done him any favors, small or otherwise, and crucially, he would have immediately hung up the phone when the old milkman called begging to crash on his couch, swearing he was in a bind (Bachelor was always in a bind) and it’d only be temporary.
“Just a night or two,” he’d promised.
Now, three months later, Lech found himself with an unwanted flatmate he couldn’t seem to evict.
“I’m trying,” he swore when Louisa pressed him about it, and he could literally see her estimation of his character fall.
“Lech, it’s your flat,” she'd insisted. “Just tell him he has to leave.”
It wasn’t as though Lech had never attempted to broach the topic. But Bachelor had this way about him. There was such a pathetic, aching sincerity in his hangdog face that made you feel like The Little Match Girl had shown up at your door, begging shelter from the cold. No one--not no one--could be a bigger fuck-up than John Bachelor. The man was the personification of a black cloud. When someone is so uniquely shit at life, and they come to you, metaphorical hat in hand, seeking help, it’s hard not to give into the guilty sense of obligation they inspire. I mean, you wouldn't tell The Little Match Girl to fuck off and try using those matches to set herself ablaze, but that's exactly what it felt like you were doing when you said no to Bachelor.
Louisa had rejected this explanation. “The man is a sadsack old drunk. His sort basically invented sob stories. He is using you, Lech,” she’d said, adding that she couldn’t believe someone could be a spook and still be so naive. Then she’d grabbed his shoulders and offered him this pointed advice: Boundaries. Work on them.
As the car hit him, Lech recalled that conversation, and deeply regretted that he hadn’t listened.
It had started because Lech had been bored. Like, unbelievably bored. Kill yourself bored. The Shining bored. And for once, when Bachelor had trapped him in conversation the night before, he'd actually said something interesting.
With a queer, dreamy expression on his face, Bachelor had told him that he’d seen a woman that day. That wasn’t the interesting bit--in Lech’s experience, that was actually rather common. No, the interesting bit was that Bachelor claimed he’d seen this woman before, decades earlier, in Bonn, Germany. Or rather, he’d seen a nearly identical woman. The one he’d seen in Bonn had been a high-powered KGB colonel. The one he’d seen earlier that day was Sophie de Greer, the Swiss head of a right-wing think tank, at present an aide to the PM’s Special Advisor. Bachelor was convinced that she was this colonel’s daughter.
“Fascinating,” Louisa had said dryly. “Woman has baby. More at 11.”
She was skeptical when Lech suggested de Greer could be a Russian operative, one who’d managed to infiltrate the highest levels of British government, which would, of course, present a massive national security risk. It had taken some serious convincing on Lech’s part to get her to go along with his hunch and help him carry out some light surveillance on de Greer’s home in Wimbledon.
It had started with Roddy Ho, whom Lech and Louisa had roped into helping confirm de Greer’s parentage, and Shirley, whose help they’d strenuously attempted to avoid. These twin pillars of Slough Housian dysfunction had then inexplicably ended up in a car together, following the two of them to Wimbledon, uninvited.
It was this car, which belonged to Roddy Ho, that would appear without warning behind Lech as he tried to catch up with Louisa on foot after they’d become separated.
It was Roddy Ho, at the wheel, who would ultimately be the one to run his colleague down.