Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(55)

“. . . Wha’?”

“Red light!”

Roddy braked, and screeched to a halt in the path of the tourist coach coming the opposite way.

The noise of the coach’s brakes—like a pair of pigs being sheared—startled Lech, who was close at hand, having pulled over on the far side of the roadworks, where the road became two lanes again. He was standing by the car, mobile in hand, peering into the darkness beyond the trees, and hearing nothing from Louisa’s end. He’d said her name twice before the noise of the near-collision nearly made him drop his phone, though that same sound, transmitted through the ether, reached Louisa, the squawk erupting just yards from where she stood, and more audible than Lech’s voice had been. She scooped her mobile up gratefully, and turned back to where the men had waylaid de Greer, if that’s what they were doing. If that’s who she was. She switched her headtorch back on and ran to within yards of where the trio had clustered. “Still here,” she said into the phone. Then called to the group in front of her: “Hey!”

The woman had seen her approaching. The men hadn’t, and didn’t look welcoming.

“Hey,” Louisa said again. “Are you okay?”

The one with the shirt reading Number Eleven said, “You talkin’ to me?”

“I was talking to her,” Louisa said.

The blonde woman pushed her goggles onto her forehead. It was de Greer, Louisa noted with relief. One possible way of the evening ending up a fiasco was off the table. Others remained.

“Are you okay?” Louisa repeated. “Do you need help?”

It seemed to her that the woman smiled.

Green Trainers said to Louisa, “We’re all friends here. We’re just having a chat.”

“Yeah, no, it just seems an odd place to be doing that? So I wondered.”

“No need.”

The accent, she thought, was Italian. The looks matched: dark features, generous stubble, probably black hair—hard to tell in this light—but product definitely involved. The guy had been running for ten minutes, and his mop looked like he’d just stepped out of a wardrobe.

Ignoring him, she spoke to de Greer. “That’s right? They’re friends of yours?”

De Greer said, “I’ve never seen them before in my life.”

“She’s joking,” said Green Trainers.

“Then we have a problem,” Louisa said, “because I don’t have a sense of humour. But I do have a phone. You want me to call the police?”

“What we want,” said Number Eleven, “is for you to fuck off and mind your own business.”

“Hey hey hey,” Green Trainers said, and spread his arms forgivingly. “Let’s not get taken away. Come on. My friend and I, we’d like to invite you ladies to join us for a drink.”

“The same friend who just told me to fuck off? Yeah, let me think about that.” Louisa looked pointedly at de Greer. “And let’s get some uniforms here, shall we?” She raised her phone, and it said, “Louisa?” Cutting Lech off, she said, “Nine nine nine,” thumb poised to hit the number.

Give them a chance, she thought, to just head off of their own accord.

They didn’t.

Instead, Number Eleven lunged towards her at the same time as Green Trainers said, “No, don’t—”

It wasn’t clear to which of them he was speaking.

Louisa, anyway, didn’t get to make the call, though Eleven didn’t manage to snatch her phone, either; she sidestepped him, letting her arm drop as if it held a cloak, as if he were a bull. Pity she had no sword. He snorted past, whirled abruptly, and threw a blow that wasn’t a full bodied punch, more of a slap, which caught her on the shoulder. He thinks I’m a girl, she thought, and hit him on the nose, then danced back. He howled, more in anger than in pain she thought, and then again—more worryingly—in what sounded like delight. He bunched his fists. Seemed she wasn’t a girl anymore.

Still dancing, she tucked her phone into her jeans pocket, trying to ignore the fact that it immediately started to ring. Lech, she thought, and threw the thought away. Concentrate on the moment. Lech, not as far away as she supposed, was left staring at his own phone in frustration: Answer, damn it. And then: Where are you? He walked past the line of trees; felt the grass beneath his feet. It would be the height of stupidity to just set off into the dark and hope to find her; on the other hand, there weren’t any doors nearby he could kick down. This was as much as he could do.

So that’s what he did, his vision gradually adjusting to the dark that stretched out in most directions. He liked the dark, Lech Wicinski; in the dark, his face was no more scarred than anyone else’s. But this dark had a solid quality to it he didn’t often encounter on his night-time treks; the dark feels different when not buffered by buildings. It occupies the air more completely. The world behind Lech dropped away as if a curtain had fallen, smothering the light and killing most of the sound, not all of which was mechanical. Tempers were being lost; voices raised. Roddy had stalled trying to reverse out of the coach’s way, and the coach driver, an excitable type, had climbed out of his cabin to offer advice, much of which was retrospective in nature, and covered areas Roddy might usefully have attended to before venturing onto the roads or, indeed, leaving his mother’s womb.