Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(42)

“ Lech—”

“—and not just vague remarks about possibilities. What?”

“I know what a superforecaster is.”

“Oh. Sorry. Anyway, yeah. That’s the odd thing. Interested?”

Louisa said, “It’s a hell of a stretch.”

“I know.”

“This de Greer woman looks like someone else. No, sorry, wait. Some old drunk says she looks like someone else.”

“Will you not do that?”

“Do what?”

“Call him an old drunk.”

Louisa thought about it, then said, “Sorry. Why doesn’t he go to the Park?”

“Because, well, let’s just say the last time he got involved in anything this size, it didn’t end prettily.”

“I’m surprised he’s not here with us.”

“He’s an irregular, on a two-day week. They’d have to bump him up to full time if they assigned him here, wouldn’t they?”

“How should I know? What’s he expect you to do about this anyway?”

Lech said, “He wants me to have a look at her.”

“Because you’re a spook. He is aware of Slough House, isn’t he? I mean, he knows we’re not in the loop?”

“Yeah, sure. But I’m someone he knows. And I owe him.”

“Because he looked after you when you had the virus.”

“I don’t know about looked after me.” Lech paused for a moment. Then said, “Well, yeah, okay. He looked after me.”

“Don’t be so male about it. You caught a bug, it’s not like you let the side down.”

Lech shrugged.

“God, you’re worse than River.”

Outside, traffic grew heavier as the working day declined. Neither felt like they’d got through much work themselves, but that was normal in these offices, with these chores: you could spend all day shovelling sand, but if you were standing on a beach, the results weren’t noticeable. The prospect of other, more fulfilling tasks was an overheard possibility, just discernible over the nudge and mutter of the traffic.

Louisa said, “She looks like she might be somebody’s daughter. That’s all you’ve got to go on.”

“I know.”

“And even if you’re right, or Bachelor is, you think that’s not going to punch you in the face? Establish a connection between Number Ten’s uber-apparatchik and a former KGB colonel, even one a generation old, and it won’t end happily.”

“I know.”

“And where would you start?”

He said, “With the Bonn meeting.”

“Because you want a picture of the colonel.”

“I’m guessing there’ll be one in the archive. Trouble is . . .”

“The archive’s at the Park.”

“You know Molly Doran, don’t you?”

“I know she breathes fire.” Louisa stood. “On the other hand, you don’t always go to the dragon. Sometimes you consult the newt.”

She led the way downstairs. There was a hot damp smell on the staircase, a hint of steam in the air, as Louisa explained that Molly’s archive went way back, covering all the spying the Service did before the Flood, but that, until the budget ran dry, there’d been plans to digitise everything, an all-but-neverending chore which had been dumped in the lap of— “You’re kidding.”

Louisa said, “Yeah, no. Our very own Roderick Ho.”

Who looked up suspiciously when they entered his office without knocking. It was Lech’s office too, of course, so knocking wasn’t required: still, it was always fun to see if you could catch Ho doing something quintessentially Ho-like, such as watching movie trailers, or building a spaceship out of pizza boxes. As it was, before they were both through the door he’d passed a hand over his keyboard, presumably restoring his monitors to something approaching respectable work-product. Whatever they were displaying, they were banked in front of him like a drawbridge, sealing him off from the real world.

“What do you want?”

“Do I have to want something?” Louisa said. “I was just coming to hang.”

Ah, right, thought Roddy. Of course she was.

Of course she was.

Because one of the things about women—and Roddy ought to write a book—one of the things about women was, throw a little competition into the mix, and they drop the stand-off act pretty damn fast. Fact was, Louisa had had it too good for too long. If you ranked the talent in Slough House, sure, she came out top, partly because she was reasonably hot, but also because, well: Shirley and Catherine. Fifty was in Catherine’s rearview mirror, so she was special-interest-only, and as for Shirley, any kind of mirror was going to offer pretty brutal feedback. Don’t get him wrong, the Rodster was as feminist as the next guy, but there were ladies you shag and ladies you bag, and Shirley was definitely in the bagging area. So yeah, Louisa had had it easy, but into this three-horse race, just lately, had come Ashley Khan, and now the field was looking different. It wasn’t a complete turnaround—grade inflation did no one any favours—but Ashley was a solid seven, shading to seven and a half when she didn’t look like she was planning an office shooting, so Louisa was clearly starting to feel wobbly; suddenly there was competition, and what do you know? Here she was, come to hang out with the RodMeister, despite having struggled against their mutual attraction for, like, ever. It took all his self-control to withhold his trademark wry grin. You could play it too cool for too long, babe, he thought. Sure, I’m interested. But there’s such a thing as market forces.