Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(54)

“Was that Lech?”

It was, or had been.

He’d driven in a circle: the length of Windmill Road, then, pleasingly, left onto Sunset, which made him feel all Hollywood. He was now heading back up Parkside, whose trees hid the common from view. Louisa was out there but couldn’t offer clues as to where precisely, beyond feeling she’d run in a curve since leaving the car—nobody steered by the stars anymore, or not in London, where light pollution swaddled the city like a tea cosy. And there were two men out there with her, also following de Greer, and if they weren’t Park they could be anyone. It wasn’t so long since a pair of Russian hoods had toured Britain, leaving mayhem in their wake . . .

But once you started a hare, you had to follow it to its den. Louisa was out in the dark because of him, which meant he had to be ready to help her if needed. All those times he’d been inside the van, admiring the way the guys watched each other’s backs: here those moments were, like an immersive flashback. But he had to find her first.

He turned onto Windmill Road again. “You still with me?”

Louisa’s voice was laboured. “Uh-huh.”

“Are you on a path?”

“Not anymore.”

“Do you know what direction you’re heading?”

“I think back the way I came. But I’m not positive.”

Lech rubbed a hand across his cheeks, a gesture that had changed meaning in the past year. Once, he’d have been checking whether he needed a shave. Now, he was verifying that his face remained a welter of crazy scars.

“Can you see the road? Or any road?”

“A road. Dimly.”

It was a difficult distance away, difficult to estimate and difficult to keep in focus, and Louisa had other things to worry about, such as the way the ground dipped and lurched with every step. The two men in front had moved further apart, gaining ground on de Greer, and even as she watched they were putting a spurt on, as if this were their optimal moment; the darkest patch of ground between here and the world. She didn’t think they knew she was there. She’d turned her headtorch off, shrouding herself in darkness, which meant she wasn’t moving as quickly as them: the ghostly number eleven floating easily over the stumbly ground, the green trainers an effortless rise and fall, closing the gap between themselves and the orange piping on de Greer’s tracksuit. Only Louisa felt like a whole person; a solid figure in a murky landscape.

One thing was clear, though. Whoever these comedians were, they weren’t innocent souls on an evening run. They were closing in on de Greer the way dogs move in on prey, or the way Louisa imagined they might; with extra sudden speed, and joy coursing into their tastebuds.

She heard a woman gasp: de Greer realising she wasn’t alone.

And then the world grabbed Louisa by an ankle.

Like most falls, this one took forever, and she was already counting its possible cost before she hit the ground: she might break a bone, or mash her face into something unforgiving. But instinct reached out a helping hand: she was halfway curled into a ball before she landed, taking the brunt of the impact on her right shoulder. My shooting arm, she thought. She didn’t have a gun. Where did these thoughts come from? It hadn’t been soundless, her brief and unexpected flight, but she hadn’t cried out, and when she righted herself, and located the other figures again, they didn’t appear to have heard her. Shaken but unstirred, she got to her feet. Green Trainers and Number Eleven had come to a halt. Sophie de Greer stood halfway between them. No physical contact appeared to have occurred, but it didn’t look to Louisa like a meeting of friends.

She put a hand to her shoulder, gripped hard, and felt tomorrow’s bruise taking shape. But only a bruise. Nothing serious.

What mattered more was—shit—something was missing.

She’d dropped her mobile.

“She’s stopped moving,” Roddy said.

The pulse on his screen was stationary, as if Louisa had come to a halt out there in the dark.

They’d made a U-turn after spotting Lech, and were heading that same direction now, up the main road. To their left, hiding behind a screen of trees, lay the common. The thought of it had Shirley wriggling in her seat, as if, deep in its shadows, lay something to satisfy the restless cravings which were creeping up on her again. Which were always creeping up on her.

“How close is she?” she said.

“Dunno. But we’re nearly parallel.”

They reached a junction and turned, heading towards the roadworks, and keeping the common to their left. Its bordering trees thinned out, offering glimpses into the darkness: she peered, but couldn’t make out anything much. Roddy followed her gaze, and unlike Shirley could make out shifting shapes in the dark—the Rodster’s night vision was up there with your average cat. There were people; there was action. The scenario unfolded before him like a one-take movie: Louisa, lured onto the common by a former KGB Colonel, taking revenge for ancient defeats. There were black prisons in remote corners of the former Soviet states; Roddy knew about them—everyone did. British spies, long written off as missing in action, were among the captives; locked up with no hope of release, and treated with inhuman cruelty. It was all starting to happen right now, not far from here, in the dark. Under the pitiless eyes of ex-Colonel Alexa Chaikovskaya, Louisa was being bundled into a sack, thrown into the boot of a car, dispatched from a private airfield, and the next time she’d see daylight, it would be falling on stone-cold snow and rock. An orange jumpsuit and a bucket in the corner . . . Yeah, right. Not on Roddy’s watch. His upper lip twitched, the only outer sign to betray his mental preparation for action, and something inside him hardened at the thought of the battle to come; the split-second reflexes he’d rely on— “Red light.”