A summary of Kir Bulychev’s "House in London"

This book is a detective novel written in 2003. The story follows an ordinary employee of a Moscow office who, while on a business trip abroad, finds herself unwillingly drawn into a series of extortions and murders. The novel is part of the extensive "River Chronos" series. It is the ninth book in the series and continues the detective sub-series about the adventures of reluctant detective Lydia Berestova. This sub-series also includes the novels "Sleep, Beauty" and "They Don’t Kill People Like You."

Arrival in the UK

The story begins at Sheremetyevo Airport. Lidiya Kirillovna Berestova says goodbye to her husband, Andrei, and accepts parcels from Marxina Ilyinichna. She flies to the British capital on behalf of the Chronos company. She has been tasked with finding suitable office space. To save money, the company’s director, Theodore, settles Lidiya in the quiet London suburb of Sydney, in the home of Vyacheslav Andreevich Koshko (Slava). This former Soviet biologist and ichthyologist has unexpectedly become rich. He received a large inheritance from his Scottish great-grandfather, Augustus Carmichael.

On the plane, Lidiya meets a young man named Gennady. Her seatmate is cavalier and refers to himself as a "murder mastermind," claiming he’s traveling on business for the Afghanistan Veterans’ Union.

In Berestova’s London home, she meets the stooped owner and his daughter, Irina, who recently turned 15. The girl is going through a difficult adolescence and openly rebels against her father. Also visiting are Slava’s distant relatives from Krasnodar, the elderly couple Vasily and Valentina Koshko. They are obsessed with bargain shopping, buying up second-hand clothes, and displaying phenomenal greed.

That evening, Slava takes Lydia into the garden and tells her the astonishing story of how he acquired his wealth. Slava’s grandmother had saved old letters from the Far East during the war. The documents stated that in 1905, her great-grandmother gave birth to a daughter by a British reporter in Port Arthur, after which she abandoned the infant to strangers. These papers allowed Slava to locate his Scottish relatives and sue for a substantial share of the family fortune.

Soon, Lydia notices suspicious activity around their home. Her acquaintance, Gennady, and his crippled friend, Eduard, are stalking the Koshko mansion. While walking across the lawn, Lydia discovers a directional microphone hidden in the bushes and hides it in a bag of fertilizer in the garden shed.

Hostages and blackmail

Alla, Slava’s ex-wife and Irina’s mother, unexpectedly arrives from Moscow. Her behavior immediately seems vulgar and aggressive. Irishka hates her mother, but soon secretly confides in Lydia a terrifying truth. The woman is a double, a skilled forgery, dressed in the real Alla’s favorite dress. Moscow racketeers have captured Alla and are holding her hostage. The blackmailers (revealed to be Gennady and Eduard Dmitrievich) demand a huge sum of money from Slava — 1.5 million pounds sterling. They want half the sum in cash, and the remaining million to be transferred to a Swiss account. The fake Alla moves into the house to oversee the transfer of funds on a daily basis.

Slava is mortally afraid for the life of the real Alla. He fears even more for his daughter Irina and his mother, Marxina Ilyinichna, who lives alone in Russia. He meekly agrees to the extortionists’ demands. Irina despises the impostor, but fear for her real mother keeps her silent. Lydia becomes the only independent witness to the drama.

Alla’s Moscow friend Galina Stewart, now living in the UK, calls the Koshkos and plans to visit. Galina could have immediately exposed the deception. But that evening, she dies at a subway station. An unknown man pushes her onto the tracks right in front of an oncoming train. A witness to the crime informs the police about a man in dark glasses who disappeared from the platform. Lydia buys the latest newspapers, learns about this, and realizes: Galina’s death is the cynical work of blackmailers.

English inspector Matthew Slocum, diligently studying Russian in his courses, begins investigative work, including interviewing witnesses. He arrives at Koshko’s house. However, frightened by mafia threats, the residents refuse to cooperate and conceal the facts. The inspector leaves, leaving behind his business card. In a panic, Slava burns the paper.

Disappearances

Tensions among the house’s residents mount inexorably. Slava visits his lawyer, Peter O’Kelly, and the overweight bank employee, Miss Parsons. He hastily draws up bank documents and transfers control of his accounts to the false Alla, suffering colossal financial losses in the process.

The next morning, the owner of the house disappears without a trace. In his office, Lydia and Irina discover wet blood stains on the sofa upholstery. The bed linen and pillow are missing.

Soon, the fake Alla also disappears. Pools of blood are left in her second-floor bedroom. Panicked, her Krasnodar relatives try to escape. They pack endless bundles of cheap clothes and head to Heathrow Airport. Valentina and Vasily hope to fly on an Aeroflot flight with cheap return tickets. But Gennady and Eduard intercept them at the terminal. The bandits return the fugitives back to Woodforge Road. The extortionists themselves, having lost control of the situation and their confidant (the fake Alla), are terrified by what is happening. They lock Lydia and Koshek in a room on the second floor and hastily leave the house.

Lydia smashes the window with a heavy lamp to call for help, but to no avail. Finally, Irishka, returning from outside, unlocks the door with a spare key. Robert, a local youth and Irina’s friend, bravely tries to protect the girl and persuades her to call the police. Inspector Slocum arrives and inspects the blood-stained rooms.

Denouement

English detectives suspect the bodies were taken away by car and hidden somewhere outside the city. But Lydia has a different idea. A killer without a car would have had to hide the victims nearby. She decides to explore the property, peers into a dark attic, and eventually opens a rickety garden shed. There she finds two corpses, tightly wrapped in bloody sheets. They are Slava and the fake Alla.

Lidiya analyzes recent events and the residents’ motives. It turns out that the brutal murders were committed by Vasily and Valentina Koshko. Greedy for other people’s property, these relatives knew about the blackmail and the transfer of huge sums of money to the false Alla. They were driven by a blind fear of losing access to their nephew’s wealth. By murdering Slava while he slept in the office, they made the underage Irina the sole legal heir to the fortune. The Krasnodar residents hoped to become the girl’s guardians and have unchecked control over her millions. They ruthlessly eliminated the false Alla to escape the gangsters’ surveillance and pin the double crime on the Russian mafia.

The cunning Valentina tries to shift the blame onto Irina. She deliberately plants the girl’s bloody handkerchief in Slava’s car. Valentina carefully washes the heavy kitchen knife that was used in the crime and hangs it back on the magnetic board. Lydia figures out this cunning plan. She refuses to allow Valentina to deceive the investigators and directly exposes the relatives to Inspector Slocum.

British police conduct a search of the Cats’ cluttered room. An expert discovers brand-new banknotes from Slava’s stash hidden among old belongings, a blood-stained wallet, and other irrefutable evidence. Valentina and Vasily are taken into custody.

Slocum organizes a large-scale police raid. British law enforcement detains Gennady and Eduard at Manchester Airport. The criminals were attempting to illegally cross the border, meaning they were leaving the country using false Slovak passports.

Soon, Marxina Ilyinichna, her grandmother, calls from Moscow. Tragically, the news arrives: the real Alla is dead. According to the official police version, she was hit by a truck. It becomes clear that the extortionists’ Moscow accomplices murdered the hostage in cold blood. Irina, who has lost both her parents, remains under Lydia’s care in the London house, awaiting the imminent arrival of her biological grandmother.