Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(48)

He said, “If you’re having difficulty with the script—”

“Didn’t say I was having difficulty. I said it’s got the wrong words.”

Roddy’s right hand gripped the hilt of his light sabre. This couldn’t be seen by anyone, but it was important to have the props if you were going to project the image. Subtle, but key. Not that it was his actual light sabre, which was in a cupboard at home, in the box he’d never taken it out of, but a standin he’d improvised using a length of strip lighting, an adaptor cable, and duct tape for a handle. He’d plugged it in, and it actually hummed when he wielded it, but you had to be careful not to turn it on for long, on account of duct tape peeling off when it got hot. All of which was information the bolshy Princess Leia might usefully have been given—she might get the message that you gave it a hundred per cent or you took an early bath—but Roddy just sighed. Sometimes the points you wanted to make screamed like an X-Wing over the heads of the ill-informed. More in sorrow than in wrath he terminated her part in the discussion, then gazed at the remaining faces. “I’ll say it again,” he said. “South Bank CosPlay. One of the biggest gatherings of the Jedi community on this or any other planet. And only one of you can go as Princess Leia.”

“Well, that’s not true,” one of the women said. “We can all go as Princess Leia if we want.”

Roddy terminated her too. “Only one of you can go as Princess Leia with me,” he told the others.

“Jesus screaming fuck!” said Shirley.

“Force-be-with-you-I’ll-be-in-touch,” said Roddy, killing his screens.

“I mean, shit!”

“Get out of my office!”

“Door was open.”

“No, it wasn’t!”

“It clearly was. Are you on Zoom? Is that a cape?” She came further into the room, whose door had indeed been open, once she’d very quietly given it a push. “Are you . . . are you dressing up?”

Roddy said, “It’s not a cape.”

It was in fact a cagoule draped over his shoulders, and he let it fall to the floor as he stood. If this was an attempt to reassert his dignity, it failed.

“Is that a light sabre?”

“No.”

“Can I have a go?”

“No. What are you doing here?”

“Collecting my iron.” She held it up in evidence. “But fuck me, this is brilliant. The others are literally going to shit themselves. I mean, literally. There is going to be shit, everywhere.”

“You tell them and I’ll fuck you up.”

“Totally worth it. Who were those women? They were women, right?”

“Friends.”

“You haven’t got any friends.”

“Neither have you.”

“Dickhead.”

“Beast.”

“Asshat.”

“Spreader.”

“. . . Spreader? What does that even mean?”

Roddy said, “You know, like, spreader. Like, you spread the virus.”

“Nobody says that.”

“Some people do.”

They glared at each other; Shirley brandishing her iron, Roddy with one hand on the hilt of his light sabre.

If you strike me down now, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Shirley said, “So what was that, anyway, some kind of fancy dress booty call?”

“None of your business.”

“Seriously, this is everyone’s business by first thing tomorrow. You might as well save us the bother and fill in the blanks.”

“I don’t fire blanks,” Roddy said. With his free hand he waved at his laptop, nestled amidst the ranked screens. “Say hello to my leetle fren’.”

“You don’t scare me.”

“Someone sounded their horn at me in a crosswalk once. I came right back here and sold their house.”

“You’d have to buy me one first.”

“I’ll trash your bank account.”

“Already trashed.”

“. . . You’re gonna find you’ve ordered all this shit you don’t even want.”

“Yeah, that’s normal. What planet are you on?”

Roddy looked about to reply, but thought better of it.

Shirley came further into the room, placed her iron on Lech’s desk, then levered herself up, and sat swinging her legs. What had looked like a dead loss of an evening had turned around, and she was planning on getting her luck’s worth. But even as she watched Roddy’s face enact the seven deadly sins, it occurred to her that there was more than one way to skin a nerd.

He was waiting for her to speak, so she let him wait longer. His room was the same as hers, more or less; the same as all the offices, bar those on the top floor. But his had more kit, both on his desk and on the rackety metal shelving round the walls. Unattached keyboards and lengths of cable; boxes of floppy disks and thick-spined operating manuals. All of it junk, but if you piled up enough junk, you left your stamp on a place.

On Lech’s side some attempt had been made to create a mess-free area, but not enough of one to bear fruit.

“Who’d you share with before Lech?” she asked him.

“Nobody.”