Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(19)

“Black car,” he murmured, as another visitor arrived.

The footage was black and white, but with cabs you could just tell.

The new arrival didn’t pause to admire the place before going in, which maybe meant he knew it already. He had no luggage; just a small carrier bag from Harrods. And something about the way he got out of the cab suggested he was also familiar with the cameras trained on the entrance: the Service coverage—which Roddy was piggybacking; technically not a feature he had access to, but the word “technically” applied only to those for whom tech itself was a barrier—had its blind spots, and this guy was occupying them like a dancer working the limelight. The best screengrab Roddy could manage was a straight-on back-of-the-head. He popped it down to Louisa anyway, so nobody could say he wasn’t covering all the angles.

A thing about all this work, though; he still hadn’t made that call yet. Any woman desperate enough to dress up as a cartoon character . . . Anyone else, it would look like avoidance, but here was the Rodster’s code: Chicks can wait. This stuff—he was basically spying on the Russians, dude—this stuff took priority.

Another taxi went past. “Black car,” he said again. Man, this game was beyond average.

A draught snaked through a gap in the cardboard mosaic over the window, and he sat back in his chair. Sheesh—that thing with the window. Catherine Standish had not been pleased. But that was improv for you: you relied on the tools at hand. A broom wasn’t combat-quality—you needed your actual staff to pull off the trickier moves. So when you were caught up in the moment and just grabbed what was nearest, well, windows were going to get broken. What was he supposed to do about it? Until they installed a dojo on the premises he was basically making do, and didn’t see why he should take a bollocking simply for keeping himself battle-fit.

Speaking of which, a man needs to eat. He lunched off half a tube of barbecue-flavoured Pringles and a chunky KitKat, and was licking the wrapper when Louisa came in clutching a stack of printouts.

“Thanks for the extra work. Really, I’ve not enough to do without having a couple of dozen faces to run through a clapped-out recognition program. Can’t you do it yourself?”

“I’m doing the actual surveillance.”

“Oh, yeah, forgot. Men don’t multitask.” She glanced at her notes. “Okay, so. Eleven no matches of any kind. Seven around eighty per cent sure, all the possibles being middle-ranking business types with no security flags. Three tripped warning bells, they’re probably FSB. That foursome who turned up in a van? They’re a string quartet from Bath. The woman with the squint is a quite well-regarded poet, and you should let Lamb know that, because I suspect Lamb’s really interested in poetry. As for the mystery man, and he’s my favourite, the one you only got the back of the head of? I’ve got slightly more than twenty-three hundred possible matches.” She slapped the notes down on his desk. “See, the thing is, you need a recognisable characteristic or two before the program does its stuff. Just having a head does not count.”

“He was avoiding the cameras.”

“You think?”

“It’s pretty obv—”

“Don’t send any more. It’s boring, and the program keeps freezing.”

Lech wandered in. “This the Russian Embassy gig?”

“Yeah, wonderboy here had me putting names to faces.”

“I’d have told wonderboy to get stuffed.” He noted the Pringles tube and the crumpled chocolate wrapper. “Which he seems to have done anyway.”

“Sod off, hashtag features.”

“That was my plan,” said Louisa. “But Lamb wanted a list.”

“He always wants lists. I think he’s smoking them.” Lech glanced at the cardboard shroud around the window by his desk, and said to Roddy, “I see you’ve installed air-con.”

“Yeah, well, I see you’ve installed . . .”

They waited.

“. . . Stupid marks on your face.”

“I can’t work out,” said Louisa, “whether he’s better at repartee or driving.”

Recalling Roddy’s driving talents, Lech rubbed a bruise or two before picking up the topmost of Louisa’s printouts. “They have these three or four times a year,” he said. “They bring in some lecturer from the homeland, who bores the locals rigid for a couple of hours, then everyone gets pissed. Taverner has half the hub watching the footage in case any celebrities show.”

“Does that ever happen?”

“Molly Doran got excited once. Some living waxwork turned up, she said he’d debriefed Philby back in the day.”

“She’s collecting the set. One hundred spooks you must see before you die.”

“Before they die, more like.”

Roddy said, “You think that’s Lamb’s plan?”

They looked at him.

He said, “All these old spooks.” He raised one eyebrow, or thought he did. He was actually raising both. “You think Lamb’s bumping them off?”

Louisa approached Roddy’s desk, leaned across it and stage-whispered into his ear. “You’re not supposed to know about that.”

“. . . Okay.”

“Best to pretend you never said it. You with me, Rodster?”