Light dawned, if not through the curtained window. “The Ultras,” Diana said.
“My my, Nash has been earning his pastry allowance. Yes, the Ultras. Seems Sparrow gets his kicks playing soldiers in the woods with the big boys. Which makes them prime candidates for the secret army he drafted to trash the San.”
“De Greer told you this?”
“She kept a black book on her erstwhile employer. Whose dubious contacts include a Soho charmer name of Benito. Have you got a light, by the way?”
“What is this, a suicide pact? I’m not striking a match in here.”
“Chicken.” He paddled about beneath his own bulk, and when his hands reappeared, one was holding a plastic lighter. “And Benito’s the sort of ally it’s best to avoid upsetting.”
He punctuated this with a click of his lighter. The effect would have been more impressive if he’d produced a flame.
“You think he’ll want payback for tonight’s farce.”
“Like I said, Sparrow’s used to those he tramples on muttering darkly and exiting stage left. I don’t think these boys’ll go quietly.” He clicked the lighter again, this time with success. Applying the flame to his cigarette, he said, “Neither does de Greer. And she’s the fortune-teller.”
She said, “So that’s why you let her go? On condition she throws Sparrow under a hooligan bus?”
“Any objection?”
“You’re assuming this Benito won’t decide that sticking with Sparrow’s a better bet than payback. He’s virtually running the country, after all.”
He said, “We’re talking football fans, Diana. Not the type to change sides.”
“What did you promise her?”
“That you’d let her walk away. Rasnokov’s not the only one who’d like a little distance between himself and the king of the Kremlin.”
“Christ. You’ve become an idealist in your old age, is that it? Help the joes get away, no matter whose joes they are.”
“Well, exit pursued by a bear,” said Lamb. “I seem to recall what that’s like.”
She thought for a while. “Does Bachelor know about this?”
“Too much information would only confuse him.”
“But he went with her?”
“Well I wasn’t keeping him here.” Lamb drained his glass. “I strongly suspect the man has a drinking problem.”
She thought for a while. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said, “that the only reason de Greer knows about Rasnokov’s scheme is that you let her stay in the room while you told me about it.”
His hand made a wavering motion, causing smoke to spiral and squirt towards the ceiling.
“And anyway, what happens if you’re both wrong?” asked Diana. “And Sparrow’s more persuasive than you give him credit for? It’s both our careers you’re gambling with.”
“Yeah,” said Lamb. “But only one of them’s worth anything.”
The car wash was in darkness, a low-slung chain blocking its entrance, and its three big blue brushes—two vertical; one horizontal—breathing out damp cold air. Shirley hurdled the chain and ran past a keypad at car-window height while something swiped at her back—fuck—and then a brush was offering protection; the pair crouched either side of it, making darting movements left and right, the biker’s blade whittling the air. When Shirley hurled her futile spork at him, it bounced off his helmet into the shadows.
Which were plentiful. While the structure had no walls—just a series of struts supporting a roof that was once clear plastic—it was thick with obstacles: the rails the brushes moved on, lengths of cable and hosepipe, a metal bucket padlocked to a standpipe. What Shirley needed was a weapon, ideally an assault rifle, though she’d have settled for the bucket, or that metal bar against the nearest upright, a yard away . . . She reached it only to find it welded in place, a discovery accompanied by another scorching sensation down her back, this one lighting up her whole body, and she screamed in outrage—chickenshit bastard!—and span and kicked, but he was out of range. Liquid ran down her spine. Keep moving, she warned herself, because the biker’s height and helmet were handicapping him, and the more he had to dodge and weave the more frustrated he’d get. Eyes fixed on him, she slipped round a metal box on a stand, its face a slanted panel with two spherical knobs: one red, the other green.
A Hollywood solution whispered in her ear.
Shirley dropped to a crouch and the biker moved forward, knife extended, between the two huge blue brushes. Behind his visor, she knew, he was grinning.
He’d stop grinning now.
“You’re all washed up, dickhead,” she said, slamming the green button with her palm.
Nothing happened.
She did it again.
Nothing happened.
Fuck.
He pushed his visor up. “Seriously?”
“. . . What?”
“You think hitting that button’ll make the car wash start?”
Well, yeah. That’s what she’d been hoping.
“It’s not even switched on.”
“I thought that’s what I was doing.”
He was shaking his head. “There’s a code.” Even with his accent, she could tell he thought this ridiculous. “You buy a ticket at the counter, it’s got a code stamped on it, you key it into the pad at the entrance. Then the washer starts.”
“So what are these buttons for?”
“Might be a manual override,” he conceded. “But it won’t work when the whole thing’s powered down.”
“You know a lot about car washes.”
“I work at a car wash, man.” He dropped his visor. “Idiot.”
“What do you mean, you work at a car wash?” Shirley said, but he was already rushing her again, with his small but wicked knife.
Just wait.
He’d spent most of his life just waiting, and here he was, doing it still.
A car had arrived and its occupant had joined Sophie and Sparrow in the café: a hulking sort, looking like he’d be comfortable whacking a cleaver into sides of meat all day long. Bachelor could picture himself, almost, deciding this was a sinister development; deciding to intervene . . . All it would take was true grit, a smidgin of star quality, and the ability to step out from the wings and act like a hero.
He shivered, and wished he had a hip flask. Wished, while he was at it, he had ten years’ less bad luck behind him, or ten years’ more self-belief. Or even just ten minutes’ grace in which to summon up the qualities he needed, now, while the café door opened and the two men came out, Sophie sandwiched between them. She didn’t so much as glance in his direction, and afterwards he convinced himself that this was the reason he remained in the shadows; nothing to do with that new arrival, whose watchfulness as the trio crossed the road suggested professionalism, or at least experience. No: Bachelor made no move because all was evidently going according to Sophie’s plan. Which meant his role now was to just wait.
Every extra knows the show’s about him.
Every stand-in knows she’s the star.
But John Bachelor . . . Bachelor, watching the car ferry Sophie de Greer down Glasshouse Street, understood that his marquee moment was never going to happen. The car turned at the junction, and London’s backdrop came into focus once more: its shop windows tired and garish, like a peep-show worker going off shift; its soundtrack a distant medley of overlapping noise. He was part of it, but just a small part, mostly unnoticed. His star didn’t shine as brightly as it might. Though when you thought about it, that was true of everyone.