Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(100)

“No one was killed.”

“But there were injuries.”

There were always injuries. Everyone knew that.

“Alessandro—”

“Benito.”

“Benito, anyone who got hurt will have another set of scars to show off. Or are you telling me your crew wet their pants?”

“They’ve been arrested. Most of them. Some got away.”

“They’ll be charged with affray.” He had no idea what they’d be charged with. “A night in the cells, a fine. Small price for a battleground memory.”

“And deportation orders all round. That’s a bigger price.”

“It won’t come to that.”

“You sound very sure.”

“I’m in a position to deliver on promises.”

There was another pause before Benito said, “And that’s why you rang, Mr. Sparrow? To assure me that you are able to clean up tonight’s mess?”

“That and . . . something else.”

Replaying the conversation in his head, Sparrow congratulated himself on how he’d explained to Benito what he needed without ever coming within shouting distance of describing how that might be achieved.

“What you’re asking, it’s quite . . . serious.”

“Yes and no. About as serious as what happened to your predecessor, Benito. Who was also called Benito, am I right? When he wasn’t being called Rico Lombardi.”

And Benito was silent again.

“‘Returned to Lazio,’ wasn’t that the story? Rico returned to Lazio. Which is marginally more convincing than ‘went to live on a farm,’ but amounts to the same thing. Stop me if your English isn’t up to this.”

Benito said, “Rico is happy and well. I spoke to him just last week.”

“You must put me in touch with your network provider. Mine have trouble reaching Norwich, let alone the afterlife.”

“You are a funny man, Mr. Sparrow.”

“And a talkative one. Maybe, when I’m securing visa extensions for your associates, I’ll ask them what they think happened to Rico. We can exchange opinions on the topic. I’m sure they’ll get back to you if there’s any confusion.”

Benito said, “Politics, politicians. And people think we football supporters are the extremists.”

“Football’s your excuse for doing the things you do, Benito. And politics is mine.”

Maybe, one day, there’d be occasion for a blog on that topic Sparrow thought now, as the car came within sight of the Thames, which flowed just as strongly—just as surely—in the dark as in the light. He looked at de Greer, who was also staring through the window at the water, but probably seeing something different. No one looks at the same river twice, he remembered reading somewhere. Or maybe it was drowns—no one drowns in the same river twice? Yeah. That sounded right. Any way you looked at it, you only drown once.

The paramedic shook his head.

Whelan couldn’t blame him.

Even with the gore on her sweatshirt, Shirley looked at peace, and might have been sleeping. Whelan couldn’t grasp the suddenness of the switch: from sixty to zero in the time it took to blow out a match. The ambulance’s blue light was still strobing, its relentless throb draining colour from them all: the paramedic himself, Whelan, the boy from the garage. The biker was long gone. Only in Shirley’s resting features did the looping splashes add life, probably because Shirley’s face alone lacked it right then, the others being in various states of visible emotion: shock, bewilderment, and a kind of resigned irritation.

This was the paramedic. He said, “You let her eat?”

Whelan could have taken issue. Even on their relatively brief acquaintance, he was pretty certain that letting Shirley Dander do anything wasn’t how those things got done. You just watched her do whatever she’d set her mind on. That or listen to her talk about it.

Besides: Eat? She’d spilled more than she’d swallowed. It was as well her sweatshirt was ruined anyway, because that barbecue sauce wasn’t coming out.

Without opening her eyes, Shirley said, “I was hungry.”

“You’re not supposed to eat,” the paramedic grumbled. “In case you need an operation.”

“Stitches.”

“You’re still not—”

“That was good, what you did,” Shirley said, this time to Whelan. “He was all washed up,” she added, a wistful note to her voice for some reason.

Whelan nodded. He could have done with a lie down himself, the previous minutes having been eventful, if not entirely as planned—when he’d trained the hose on the biker, he’d had visions of a water-cannon pinning him to a wall. The actual result was a pissed off biker, sopping wet but upright, and things might have got ugly if flashing blue lights hadn’t appeared down the road. As it was, the ambulance, still far enough away to be taken for police, encouraged departure: the biker, shinier now wet, had resembled a monstrous insect as he’d climbed onto his machine and gunned the motor, Whelan still hosing him, having raised his trajectory to ensure contact, which decreased the stream’s effectiveness but maximised its indignity. The boy was performing a rah-rah dance beside him, shouting “Aim for the wheels!,” though Whelan remained happy to mimic pissing. In its own way this was even more out of character than jumping onto a moving vehicle, but it had been a long night.