“Got your phone?”
Obviously.
The woman was over the road, and bounding into the dark. Louisa pulled the torch onto her head and set off after her.
The unseasonable warmth of the day had fled. This didn’t deter the dogwalkers, or other runners, but the common boasted space enough to absorb them, and it was easy to feel alone once the road and the traffic, its noise and lights, were behind her. Louisa averaged 5K a day weekdays, and hit the occasional 20 on a weekend, but had never felt part of a community, and ran mainly to purge herself of work. In her secret self, she thought of runners the way everyone else did: as roving germ circuses, scattering spit and sweat.
But Sophie de Greer, if that’s who she was, looked like she didn’t care. Barely had she hit the common than she was off, running not much faster than Louisa’s habitual speed, but with an effortless grace that suggested she could keep it up forever. Still, she’d be visible from a distance. The orange piping on her trackie gathered what light there was and painted it in stripes across her running form: to Louisa, de Greer resembled a figure from an ancient video game.
If it was de Greer.
I’m going to stop adding that caveat, she thought. Because if it’s not her, this is going to be even more of a fucking parody than usual.
Her breathing settled into a rhythm, and the path felt light beneath her feet. She could have done with her sports bra, and a warmer top, but it felt good to be in motion after a day at her desk. And if the pointlessness of the exercise nagged at her—even if this were de Greer, what good would following her do?—she wouldn’t be the first slow horse to find comfort in the notion that she was at least doing something.
Breathe in, breathe out. Her muscles were finding their stroke. She’d not run more than a few hundred yards along the path before Lech lost her, Louisa fading into the insubstantial, darkening air.
He got back into her car, driver’s side. He was on Windmill Road, not far short of a set of temporary lights, where passage briefly became single-lane, to accommodate roadworks. The casual way she’d left him the keys felt good. So did the way she’d headed off after de Greer: no discussion, just got on with it. Lech hadn’t been Ops, though he’d watched a few from inside a van, and it always gave him a kick to see the way the guys had each others’ backs—afterwards they might argue the toss, come to blows even, about how things should have gone, but at the time they just got on with it. Which was how Louisa had reacted to de Greer’s appearance: it might not be de Greer, might be a random jogger, but the op was to keep her in sight, and that was what Louisa had done, no questions asked. Take the car. Try not to lose us. Okay, not a hundred per cent confidence, but still. When someone tossed you their car keys, it felt good. It showed trust.
Compare and contrast with Roderick Ho’s response when Shirley asked to borrow his.
“No fucking way.”
“It’s important.”
“You said that last time—”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“—and it ended up in a snowdrift.”
“Wasn’t my fault.”
“In Wales.”
“It’s not snowing, we’re not in Wales, and if you don’t lend me your car, everyone’ll hear about your weird sex party.”
“It wasn’t a sex party.”
Shirley paused. “You are so fucking straight, you know that?”
Which was more than half the problem. Get a line or two down the little prick, he’d not only lend her his car, he’d sledge on top while she took fast corners.
For a moment she toyed with the idea of doing just that, of getting some coke into him, even if it involved blowing it up his nose herself, but the thought fell apart in the face of how much it would pain her to gift Roddy Ho a line, or, indeed, see it scattered like dust across the shelves and carpet of this unlovely room.
How could anyone stand to turn their office into a graveyard for out-of-date tech?
He was glaring at her still, and seemed to be under the impression that just because he’d refused her request, that brought the matter to a close.
She plucked a keyboard from the nearest shelf. It had its cable wrapped round it, and looked no older than the one attached to her computer. In better nick if anything: its E was still legible.
“How come you keep all these?”
Ho said, “You never know.”
“Never know what?”
“When you’ll need one.”
“Do you think you’ll need this?” She waved the keyboard at him.
He shrugged. “Might do.”
“It looks pretty standard.”
“They said that about the first gen Amstrad.”
“Good point,” said Shirley, and slammed the keyboard against the side of Lech’s desk, where it exploded in a loud scatter of plastic. When she replayed the moment in her head later, the air was filled with a confetti alphabet. In real life she was left holding a computer keyboard folded in two, its halves held together by wiring.
“Fuck!”
“I know, right?” she said.
“Don’t do that!”
“I just did. And I have to say, I was not expecting it to make so much noise.” She let what was left in her hands fall to the floor, and took another keyboard from the shelf. “Do you think they’ll all be that loud?” She smashed it against the desk. “Certainly looking that way.”
“You’re a fucking maniac!”
“It’s been said before.” She dropped the junk and reached for a monitor: flat-screened, 18-inch. Already she was picturing the contact it would make with the wall; all those pixels whooshing everywhere, like glitter. All the crunching underfoot that would ensue.
Ho didn’t dare come closer, preferring to keep his desk between them.
“You wanna make me stop?” she invited. “You’re the one with the light sabre.”
“Lamb’ll go ape shit.”
“That’ll be fun. How far do you think I can throw this?”
“Put it down!”
“I’ll break every piece of kit in this office,” she said. “Including the stuff that’s still plugged in. And while you’re crying about it, I’ll tell Lamb what you were using it for while it still worked. And when he’s finished laughing, he’ll do to you what I’m doing to your toybox.”
“Put it down!”
Instead she raised it above her head with both hands and made a chimp-like noise. There’d be glass and plastic everywhere, and the ghost of every image the screen had ever displayed would flow into the wall it broke upon, and spend an eternity trapped in the bones of Slough House.
That was such a pleasing thought it almost came as a disappointment when Roddy screamed, “Okay! Okay!”
She hovered, unwilling for the moment to end. One more small explosion? Couldn’t do any harm . . .
“I said okay!”
Reluctantly, she placed the screen on Lech’s desk.
“You’re a fucking maniac.”
“You already said that.”
“There’s . . . crap everywhere now.”
“There was crap everywhere before.”
He came out from behind his desk and snatched up the monitor, cradling it in his arms. You’d think she’d threatened to drop his baby out of a window. Then she thought, Ho, with a baby? Jesus. Some stuff, you don’t want in your head.
She held her hand out. “Keys.”
“No way.”
“. . . You want me to start again?”
“You’re not taking my car. I’m coming with you.”
She hadn’t been expecting that.
“You’ll just get in the way,” she said.
“Don’t care. You’re not taking my car. You’ll just smash it up.”