Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(43)

There was also such a thing as Lech Wicinski, who’d chosen this moment to return to his desk. No flair, no finesse, that was his problem. Well, that and having a face like a rained-on barbecue. You had to pity the guy, but even so: cock-blocking broke the bro code, and that was a rule, not a tongue-twister. Even a sap like Wicinski should know there were lines you don’t cross.

Roddy said, “So, you wanna hang here, or go somewhere less crowded?”

With a glance at Wicinski which slid off him like a meatball from an underdone Sloppy Giuseppe.

“Nah, here’s good,” Louisa said.

Lech said, “Louisa says you’ve worked on archive material.”

Ho rolled his eyes. “I’ve worked on all sorts, dude. Fingered every pie in the Service.”

A moment’s silence followed this.

“I was telling him what a fast worker you are.”

“And I was telling her about this guy on the hub,” said Lech, “he had the workstation next to me. And I have never seen anyone retrieve data quicker than this . . . dude. Seriously, you could ask him how many yellow cars—”

“Yellow car,” murmured Louisa.

“—crossed Clifton Suspension Bridge last August, and he’d have a solid number inside ten minutes. He’s a freak of nature.”

“That is fast,” Louisa admitted.

“Fast? It’s like he’s personally wired into CCTV, Google and the dark web all at once.”

Roddy said, “What’s his name?”

Lech paused. “We just called him . . . Mr. Lightning.”

“Mr. Lightning?”

“Mr. Lightning.”

“That’s coo—uh, yeah, right. No, I think I’ve heard of him.”

“You’ve heard of Mr. Lightning?”

“Yeah, right. If he’s the dude I’m thinking of. We’re kind of tight. I mean, you know. Not IRL.” He nodded towards his screens. “On the dark side.”

“I can picture it,” said Louisa. “You and Mr. Lightning. On the dark side.”

Roddy could tell she was doing just that. She had a turned-on gleam in her eyes. “So you’re Team Rodster,” he said. “Good to know.”

“Whereas me,” said Lech, “I have to say, I’m sceptical.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“But then, I’ve seen Mr. Lightning in action.”

“He’s got moves,” Roddy said. “Makes a good wingman. But it’s like Goose and Maverick. Only one Top Gun.”

“That is a good way of putting it,” said Louisa. “A really good way.” She touched her lips with her index finger. “Wonder how we could arrange for the pair of you to go head to head?”

“Can’t do it in real time,” Lech said, giving it thought. “They’d shit bricks on the hub if we roped in Mr. Lightning just to watch him trounce Roddy.”

“But maybe we could devise something,” Louisa said. “Come up with some insanely difficult piece of data for them both to retrieve—”

“What, and time them doing it? That’s brilliant.”

“Just need to work out what . . .”

Lech screwed his face up, trying to recapture a distant memory. “Here’s something,” he said. “Friend was telling me about a KGB colonel he saw once, a woman, in Bonn. This would have been . . . ’88 or thereabouts.”

“Be realistic,” said Louisa. “We want difficult, not impossible.”

Lech shrugged. “Sounds like you’re worried you’re backing Goose.”

“No, I just meant—”

Roddy said, “That’s it? A KGB colonel in Bonn?”

“At a meeting. David Cartwright was there. 1988.”

Roddy Ho cracked his knuckles. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Start your watches.”

A quarter of an hour later Lech and Louisa were back upstairs with a printout, comparing the photograph of Colonel Alexa Chaikovskaya with one of Sophie de Greer they’d downloaded from the Guardian.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Don’t know? Come on. They’re practically identical.”

“Lots of people look practically identical.”

“And de Greer’s history’s a blank. She could be a plant.”

“You’ve sold yourself on this, haven’t you? Yes, okay, they look alike. Mother-and-daughter alike. But what are the odds? That a KGB colonel’s daughter is being used in some kind of undercover play decades after mum was on the scene?”

Lech said, “David Cartwright was a big wheel at the Park, and remind me what his grandson ended up doing?”

Louisa said nothing.

“Sometimes it’s a family business.”

“Okay,” she said. “But you can’t know for sure this de Greer woman’s a blank page. Just because a newspaper comes up short on intel.”

“Well I suppose I could ask Mr. Lightning to check her out.”

“LOL.”

“But either way, you have to admit. Not necessarily that there’s something dodgy going on. But that there is a distinct possibility that there’s something dodgy going on. Back on the hub—”