Bogdan and Kazimir

Bogdan and Kazimir’s relationship is defined by the closeness of an early friendship and by the lasting consequences of Kazimir’s murder. Kazimir is Bogdan’s best friend from his arrival in England; when a criminal connection to Tony Curran leads to Kazimir’s death, Bogdan responds not with a distinction between the person who gave the order and the person who carried it out, but with revenge against both. His later actions keep Kazimir present in the story as a friend whose loss shapes Bogdan’s decisions and whose family remains part of the aftermath.

Friendship and shared history

Bogdan identifies Kazimir as his best friend from the period when he first arrived in England. Kazimir drove a taxi, and Bogdan remembers him not simply as a friend but as a hard worker and a good person whom Stephen, Bogdan believes, would have liked. That description is brief, but it makes Kazimir more than a name in the chain of violence that follows: Bogdan’s account insists on the ordinary qualities of the person lost.

The friendship is also connected to the circumstances of Kazimir’s work. Kazimir saw Tony Curran shoot a young boy from London in what Bogdan understood to be a drug-related matter. The evidence does not establish why the boy was shot. It does establish that Kazimir witnessed the act, making his knowledge dangerous within a criminal business in which Tony was the boss and Gianni Gunduz worked with him.

Kazimir’s murder and Bogdan’s discovery

Gianni Gunduz asked Kazimir to drive him into the woods, claiming that he needed help burying something. Kazimir accompanied him and dug alongside him. Bogdan’s account describes the grim reversal: the labor that made Kazimir helpful to Gianni also left him at the place where Gianni killed and buried him. Kazimir did not know that the task was a trap.

At first, Bogdan believed Kazimir might have run away or returned home to keep out of trouble. He learned the truth indirectly, when Gianni spoke to friends about shooting a man in the woods and having that man do the digging. Bogdan then understood both what had happened and who was responsible. The delayed discovery gives the friendship a second loss: Kazimir is killed first, and Bogdan must later replace uncertainty about his absence with knowledge of his murder.

Bogdan rejects the separation between Gianni’s act and Tony Curran’s responsibility. He explains that Gianni killed Kazimir because Tony told him to, and treats the order as sufficient to implicate Tony as well. This is not presented as a legal distinction or a debate about degrees of guilt; in Bogdan’s judgment, the person who gave the order shares responsibility for the death. His response follows that understanding: he says he killed Gianni soon afterward.

Revenge and the friend’s continuing ties

Bogdan’s revenge against Gianni was prepared rather than impulsive. He contacted Gianni privately, asked him not to tell Tony or the others, and invented the prospect of money connected to smuggling people through Newhaven. The deception drew on a real detail: Steve Georgiou had a cousin working in port security. Steve, who had known and liked Kazimir too, joined Bogdan. Their shared regard for Kazimir linked the two men in the plan.

At the port, Bogdan and Steve took Gianni out in a small boat. Bogdan told Gianni why he was there and killed him. They disposed of the body in the harbor, then returned to Newhaven and asked Steve’s cousin not to discuss what had happened. The account presents the revenge as a deliberate answer to Kazimir’s murder, carried out by Bogdan with help from another person who had also cared for him.

They then went to Gianni’s house, took his passport, clothes, valuables, and a large amount of cash, including money belonging to Tony. Bogdan estimates the total at about one hundred thousand pounds. He sent fifty thousand to Kazimir’s family. That transfer gives the friendship a consequence beyond vengeance: Bogdan directs a substantial share of the proceeds toward those left behind by his friend. He gave the remainder to Steve, who wanted to open a gym and whom Bogdan regarded as a good, practical person.

Narrative significance

Bogdan tells this history to Stephen during a chess game. The pauses for questions and moves on the board frame the disclosure as a gradual account rather than a single announcement: Stephen asks who killed Kazimir, and Bogdan fills in the chain from Tony’s order to Gianni’s act, then from the mistaken belief that Kazimir had fled to the discovery that he was dead. The conversation also clarifies why Bogdan’s later actions cannot be understood as a simple pursuit of money. He explicitly distinguishes money from his reason for acting; the account instead centers Kazimir’s death and the obligations Bogdan believes it creates.

Kazimir’s role in the relationship is therefore carried forward through Bogdan’s choices. His murder prompts the killing of Gianni, shapes Bogdan’s alliance with Steve, and informs the decision to send half the stolen money to Kazimir’s family. The narrative gives little detail about Kazimir beyond his work, his character as remembered by Bogdan, and the circumstances of his death. That restraint makes Bogdan’s acts the clearest measure of the friendship’s weight: Kazimir is absent from the later events, but the bond remains active in what Bogdan does.