To be fair, evidence of her propensity for smashing stuff up wasn’t hard to find. He looked pretty determined, and while she didn’t think it would take her long to break that determination—about as long as it would take to break another keyboard—time wasn’t necessarily on her side, not if she wanted to catch up with Louisa and Lech before whatever was happening happened. Besides, Ho could keep her up to speed on their position. And another besides: if she was right about being jinxed, then teaming up with Roddy Ho was a win-win.
She said, “Okay. One minute,” and stalked out of the room and into her own office.
Ho thought: Christ, that was close. It was like dealing with a wild animal, one you had to talk out of its temper when you didn’t even share a language. Hardly a surprise his razor-sharp recall was letting him down, not after dealing with Dander’s tantrum . . . He’d come this close to bringing her down—quick jab to the throat—and was thankful he hadn’t: last thing he needed was an ex-colleague on his carpet. Sure, Lamb would have seen things his way—there are times you can’t keep your powers in check: ask any man—but that wouldn’t have kept da Feds at bay. Imagine, the Rodster behind bars. He’d seen enough movies: it would have been a full-time job defending his sweet virtue. He’d have been unlikely to come out of it without a scar or two. He raised a hand to his face, traced an invisible line down one cheek. An eye would be partly closed, its surface gone milky. One-eyed Rod. He’d be bitter, a loner, but still devoted to the cause of justice. He was still clutching the monitor, too. He put it back on its shelf, then looked darkly down at all the broken plastic. Someone was going to have to sweep that up.
When Shirley returned she was sniffing aggressively, and wiping the back of a hand across her nose. “So where you parked then?”
He was parked where he usually was, in a residents only space the other side of Fann Street. Not that he was risking a ticket: he had an actual permit in the name of an actual resident, and if ninety-six-year-old Alice Bundle’s neighbours ever wondered why she owned a D-reg electric blue Ford Kia—with cream flashing—when she’d been a lock-in since ’03, well, life was full of mysteries.
“So let’s go.”
Shirley led the way, jigging down the stairs like they were hot; Roddy paused to grab jacket and baseball cap—when you were working the streets you had to blend in, dig? Cap on sideways, though there were fools who still wore them backwards. Then again, he philosophised, style moved faster than a bucking bronco, and not everyone could be hip to its bang and boom. Welcome to the Rod-eo. Some were thrown in the first few seconds; the brilliant few were born to ride.
“Are you fucking coming?”
Like there was an emergency waiting.
Which possibly involved laundry, Roddy noted, because she was carrying her iron. Though it was possible she hadn’t noticed: never tightly wrapped, there was a more than usual bouncy agitation to Shirley’s movements now, like he’d observed in clubs sometimes. People who kept dancing even when they were standing still. Poor coordination. Worse than average bladder control too, given the number of times they disappeared into the toilets: he didn’t lack sympathy, but seriously, why did they even bother going out? They couldn’t be enjoying themselves.
“Let me drive.”
“No way.”
“It’ll be quicker.”
Yeah, but the whole point of him being here was to not let Shirley get behind the wheel of his car.
Ignoring her, he climbed into the driver’s seat, and for a moment imagined peeling away and leaving her, her stupid iron in her hand. But that pleasurable bubble burst, replaced by a vision of her returning to Slough House and continuing her destructive catalogue of the contents of his room . . . No. Safest thing was to take her to Wimbledon and deliver her into the keeping of the others. Alternatively, he could take her to Wimbledon and just abandon her there. She’d probably find her way back eventually, but it wasn’t something you’d lay big money on.
Now she was tapping on the passenger window with the tip of the iron.
He leaned across and unlocked her door.
“So what are we waiting for?” she asked, climbing in.
“Seatbelt.”
Shirley shook her head. “So fucking straight,” she said again, then noticed she was holding the iron. She barked a strange laugh, dropped it in the footwell and clicked her belt into place. “So what are we waiting for now?”
Pulling away, Roddy glanced at his phone, still displaying Find My Friends. Louisa had moved, and appeared to be adrift from the obvious bones of the skeletal map. Well, she wouldn’t be hard to find. Middle of London: it wasn’t like you could disappear.
Which Louisa would have been glad to hear, even from that dubious source, because night on the common was inky deep. The lamps along the pathways were widely spaced, and somewhere round the mid-points patches of darkness puddled; every time she reached one she felt like she was stepping offstage. Try not to lose us, she’d told Lech, but it wasn’t like he could drive along behind her. And off the lamplit paths, the puddles of darkness became seas. Anyone could be swimming there, or suddenly appear from their depths . . . Up ahead, de Greer left the path and disappeared behind a cathedral. This turned out, on nearer inspection, to be a stand of trees: a brief screen, there then gone. The new route followed no path, but there was a track underfoot, the grass worn away by runners, dogwalkers, hedgehogs. Louisa turned her headtorch on, and the effect was to make her feel visible rather than to illuminate much. But she could still make out the orange piping of de Greer’s tracksuit, and now, in her wake, two other shapes: a pair in dark kit, one with green fluorescent trainers; the other with the number eleven in silver on his back.
Runners ebbed and flowed—they murmurated—and you couldn’t keep an eye on all of them at once. But Louisa didn’t like it that these men hadn’t been there, and now were; didn’t like the way they’d come out of nowhere. As if they’d been waiting.
De Greer’s lack of hesitation at any moment since leaving her apartment suggested that this was her regular route. If you knew about that, Louisa thought, you wouldn’t have to hang around by her apartment block to pick her up. You could just wait and collect her at the darkest point available.
It was possible, of course, that she was being paranoid.
And let’s not forget, it was possible that this wasn’t even de Greer.
Whoever it was, if she kept on in a straight line she’d reach a road sooner or later. Possibly even the road Lech was on. Without slowing, she squeezed her phone from her jeans pocket. He answered on the first ring.
“I’m not the only one following her,” she told him.
“. . . Seriously?”
She didn’t have words for that.
He said, “Shit. No. Sorry. Who are they?”
“Pardon me while I stop them and ask. But there are two, male, and it looks like they’re watching her.”
“Security detail?”
Louisa didn’t think so. Who was de Greer, a political adviser? She might have high-level clearance, but not full-time bodywatchers. She wasn’t royalty.
And if Lech was right, and she was some kind of plant, her handler wouldn’t have a team watching her back. That would be tantamount to hoisting the Jolly Roger.
Lech said, “Maybe you’d better abort.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“Louisa, if they are tailing her, and they’re not a security detail, they’ll be from the Park. And if we fuck up a Park surveillance—”
“Yeah, or it’s two guys following a woman on a dark common.”
“Shit . . . Hang on.”
A padded thump, as if he’d dropped his phone on the passenger seat.
She couldn’t see de Greer, and the silvery eleven was no more than a ghostly squiggle in the dark.