Though it had always been true, of course, that some of them were more aware of this than others.
Three little words.
Hot. Girl. Summer.
Roddy Ho was having one of those.
And don’t talk to him about best-laid plans, dude, because all he’d hear was “laid.” So mark your calendars: The next few months would play like self-replicating code—you knew what was coming but watched it happen anyway, because, shit, well, because. What more reason did you need?
Of course, you also helped the process along, because that was the difference between being a doer and being did.
So yesterday, Roddy had got himself inked.
Truth was, he’d been meaning to get a tat for ages. It was today’s art form, and with a gallery like Roddy, it’d be criminal to leave the walls bare. Besides, it was a means of communication, and Roddy was all about the comms. Give a dude a tat, it saved you having to get to know him. One look gave you the lowdown, which in the Rodster’s case came to three little words again: simple, classical, beautiful.
Put it another way, a hummingbird.
Which was the stuff of poetry, you didn’t have to read poetry to know that. Hummingbirds were the Roddy Hos of the avian world: compact, powerful, super-intelligent, and capable of lifting many times their own weight. Some of these facts he’d already known, but the guy with the needle had told him the rest. Put all that together and you basically had Roddy’s spiritual equal. Chicks were going to crap themselves, in a good way. Like he said, hot girl summer.
(True, he hadn’t actually seen it yet—it was still under a bandage—but the needle guy had told him, “That’s the best damn art I’ve made in years,” before binding it up and saying not to let air hit it for twenty-four hours.)
So Roddy was just awaiting the moment of reveal, which it was tempting to put on TikTok—grab himself some viral attention—but the squares at Regent’s Park kept circulating memos about social media, and Roddy didn’t need The Man on his back. Dude: He followed Kanye on X.
But tomorrow, or day after at the latest, he’d be open for viewing: roll up, take a seat, marvel.
He patted his arm, yelped, then looked round to make sure no one had heard, but he was alone in the office because Lech Wicinski had taken to squatting elsewhere, on account of Ho’s room smells of pizza, and I can hear Ho’s music through his earphones, and Ho ran me over in his car, which had been totes accidental. Anyway, it hadn’t been a yelp, more an . . . involuntary spasm. Outdone by his own reflexes. Some days, being Roddy was a struggle.
More gently he stroked his bandaged arm again. Hot girl summer or not, there were moments you had to be your own wingman, but that was okay.
If there was one thing Roddy was used to, it was being his own best friend.
Sentence me to life, thought Lech Wicinski. Or sentence me to death. But not to this halfway state, neither one thing nor the other . . .
Sunshine was falling on Aldersgate Street, and London was boasting its version of summer, with traffic noises for birdsong and brickwork for grassy meadow, though at least the digging up of nearby pavements to no discernible purpose was over. Inside, however, Slough House remained the dark side of Narnia: always winter, never Christmas. There was nothing to celebrate in Lech’s workload, either. The task to which he was currently assigned—and currently had a swirling momentum to it, an actual tidal force; currently meant he’d been doing it for as long as he could remember—was one he’d inherited from River Cartwright, when River had been Novichoked just this side of death. The safe house folder. What Lech was doing was cross-checking electoral rolls and census results against council tax bills and utility usage, in an attempt to determine whether supposedly occupied properties were in fact standing empty, potential hideaways for bad actors. A task to which River had applied himself with all the vigour he’d displayed while lying in a coma.
Which—lying in a coma—was about the only thing that hadn’t happened to Lech lately. Two years’ bad luck had snatched away the life he’d planned and left his face looking like someone had played noughts and crosses on the same grid, repeatedly. Instead of living with his fiancée and looking forward to tomorrow, he was alone in a rented flat that swallowed most of his salary, and setting off each morning to Slough House. So maybe he should quit before he was any more behind, and find a new life to pursue. But his face might as well have gone ten rounds with a sewing machine, and the only reference he could expect from the Service would be one hinting at dodgy online activities—lies, but they struck deep, and no employer would look at him twice. There was a way out of all of this. He simply hadn’t found it yet. Meanwhile, he’d been staring at the same screen for thirteen minutes, and when he tried to scroll down discovered it had frozen, and wouldn’t let him leave. This might have been some kind of metaphor, but was more likely just fucked-up IT. Welcome to Slough House, he thought, and left Louisa’s office, which he’d colonised to avoid Roddy Ho, and went to boil the kettle instead.
Second paragraph in, the story turned nasty.
Derek Flint, who but for the grace of God and the good sense of the electorate might have been sitting in the London Mayor’s office today, is rumoured to be under investigation by the Met. The Diary understands that irregularities in Flint’s election funding are the cause of this inconvenience.
Flint’s mentor, guru and éminence noir is, of course, Peter Judd, for whom accounting irregularities are hardly a novelty. Since the failure of his pet pol at the polls, Judd has been keeping a low profile. Long may it continue.
Okay, not as nasty as Judd deserved, but still.
Diana Taverner binned the newspaper. Whoever was doing her lackeying—turnover was high—would retrieve it for recycling in due course; meanwhile, she’d enjoy Judd’s failure for a moment, even if the bigger picture, the one in which he had her in a stranglehold, remained undimmed. Judd might no longer occupy a great office of state, and even he had presumably come to accept that he never would again, but his unwavering belief in his innate superiority would doubtless be unstymied by this latest setback. Despite—or perhaps because of—his lack of moral compass, he always found another direction to head in. As for Flint, Judd would already have consigned him to the swing bin of politics. Loyalty was a marketing ploy: If it didn’t get you your tenth cup of coffee free, it was wasted effort.
And she had to admit a certain attraction to Judd’s attitude, particularly when it came to glazing over reversals. She could do with a little of that herself. A career spent running Regent’s Park was inevitably more stained by failure than garlanded by success, because when a threat to the nation was stubbed out few got to hear about it, but when a bomb went off on a weekday bus, the whole world held its breath. Besides, success could shade into its opposite. The victory that had meant most to her—an under-the-bridge act of vengeance, funded with Judd’s help—had long since curdled, her triumph ruined by the discovery that Judd’s PR firm was bankrolled by Chinese money, meaning that Taverner herself was left holding one end of a chain of firecrackers which, if lit, would not only burn down her career but leave the Park a charred smoky ruin. In some circumstances, the knowledge that applying a match would destroy both parties might be a source of comfort, but the concept of mutually assured destruction didn’t apply when one of the two considered himself fireproof. The time would come when Judd would act. He didn’t even have to see advantage for himself in the prospect. He simply had to be bored.