Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(38)

Act I


   Monkey Business





It had started earlier that week: Lech Wicinski and John Bachelor meeting for a drink in the upstairs bar at The Chandos on St. Martin’s Lane; Lech late, because he didn’t want to come; Bachelor early, having nowhere else to be. These circumstances combined to allow Bachelor to be two drinks up, or down, by the time Lech arrived to pay for his third. The older man was drinking G&T, and had some patter prepared about how more thought went into the T than the G, but Lech wasn’t listening. He was worried Bachelor was going to ask if he could move in—“just for a day or two, until I get a new place sorted.” He’d been guilt-tripped before into letting Bachelor sleep on the sofa, which was how come Bachelor had ended up looking after Lech while he sweated out the virus, a circumstance pretty certain to be mentioned when the favour was asked. So Lech would have to say yes, and a few days would turn into a fortnight, and he’d end up growing old in the company of John Bachelor, spending his evenings in dismal pubs, his weekends counting loose change, his Christmases watching The Great Escape. Simplest thing would be to let Bachelor finish framing his request, then just leave his door keys on the table and take a header through the window. Probably why Bachelor had chosen the upstairs bar. This sort of thing must happen to him a lot.

“Fever Tree, anyway.” Bachelor was winding down. “Wouldn’t have thought that a selling point these days.”

Lech dragged himself into the conversation, almost. “I think it’s . . . Never mind.”

“How are you?”

“Fine, John. Just fine.”

“No, uh, relapses, nothing like that?”

“Like I said. Fine.”

Though the truth was, being with Bachelor tended to bring the worst of it back; not so much the painful breathing—that sensation of being slowly vacuum-packed—as the fear that this was how it would all end: in a rented flat, furnished to nobody’s liking; his companion a broken-down spook whose career made Lech’s own look like a Martini advert. Would his life unfold before his eyes? The choice between death and reliving Slough House was a little close to call. And then he was past the point of deliberation, and in his fevered dreams Slough House figured largely, its rooms, its manky staircase, all swollen out of proportion, as if he were wandering through the internal organs of some giant, diseased beast. Lech had never known whether to trust the feeling of having a recurring dream, whether you actually slipped in and out of the same narrative, or whether it was one of the brain’s little tricks; that hoary old contrivance déjà vu endowing never-before encountered scenes with the artificial familiarity of a shopping centre or a Vin Diesel movie. But this time, he was sure, his dream-state had been the same each time, as if every trip to a waking surface had left the gates open behind him. He’d find himself in bed, his head on a pillow, a glass tipped to his lips—Drink this—and for a moment he’d be here in the world. And then he’d sink back to those engorged offices with their frightening colour scheme. From overhead came thumping, as if a trapped lizard were beating its huge tail against a boulder. A summons, Lech knew, but not one he wanted to answer.

Long story short, after a while he got better.

The things that didn’t kill you made you stronger, apparently, though that was a lie; truth was, too many things left you still alive but broken and disturbed, and it was better not to experience them. But he’d experienced this. And what he’d wondered since was how bad he’d have had to become before Bachelor sought medical help, or would the older man have just kept tipping water into him until he stopped swallowing, then hunkered down in the flat until bailiffs turned up? He knew, from drunken conversations, that something similar had happened before. But Lech wasn’t proud of such thoughts; even less so when he recalled the look on Bachelor’s face when he’d said I think I’ve got it. Instead of fear or alarm, he’d read there only concern.

So anyway. All of that, and now here they were, much later, and he was worried Bachelor was going to put the arm on him again: wanting not money but space, time, his company. Wanting to intrude on Lech’s solitude, which was all Lech had left that he considered valuable. Even this small amount of it, an hour or so after the working day, he’d sooner close his fist around and keep to himself.

But Bachelor was talking. “I’m fine too. In case you were wondering.”

“Oh, yeah. Glad to hear it. Sorry, John.”

“You’re worried I’m going to ask if I can move back in, aren’t you?”

“I’m what?”

“Worried I’ll ask to move in. Into your flat.”

Lech said, “Look, the thing is—”

“Yeah yeah, it’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Forget about it.” He put a hand on the younger man’s arm. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

Later, leaving the pub, Lech had walked home, all four miles or whatever it was: the streets weren’t fully dark, and it hardly counted as one of his insomniac rambles, but it wore him out enough that he had no trouble falling instantly asleep when he hit the pillow. But he was awake again two hours later, Bachelor’s story climbing round his head. It was absurd, of course, and would lead nowhere—obviously—but at least the older man hadn’t asked him the favour he’d been dreading. There was that memory, too, of Bachelor’s concern when he, Lech, had been locked in Covid’s monstrous offices.