Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(79)

“Your colleague needs assistance,” she told him. When he didn’t move, she said, “Now,” and he made to speak, changed his mind, and hurried into Rashford’s, where he’d discover the impromptu game of Twister at the foot of the stairs.

The SUV was still double-yellow parked, an infraction being investigated by one of London’s traffic enforcers, a paramilitary-uniformed Nigerian woman. She had her phone out, taking details, but froze like Elsa at the sight of a well-dressed middle-aged woman accessorised with hat and gun.

Diana, coming within three inches of her, said quietly, “Check it against your don’t-even-think-about-it list, bury the paperwork, and find somewhere else to monitor. Clear?”

The woman nodded.

“Excellent.” She waited another beat, and the warden scurried away.

And now the remaining Dog. It was presumably the gun, she thought—it couldn’t be the tote bag, classy as it was—that was reducing everyone to marble. Instead of approaching him, she crooked a finger. He came to her with the air of one summoned by dread. She spoke.

“Your boss is in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, this Candlestub bullshit will be history by bedtime, and I’m First fucking Desk. You have two seconds to decide where your loyalties lie, and by loyalties I mean career prospects.”

“Ma’am,” he said.

“Good choice. Here.” She handed him Kelly’s gun. “Now, door.”

He put the gun in his pocket and opened the back door for her.

“Quick as you like.”

The others were piling out of Rashford’s as the SUV took off down Cheapside, a motley looking bunch, dim and ragged, as if a trip to see the wizard hadn’t paid off the way it ought. But Diana didn’t look back. She was too busy instructing her driver.

“This is private,” Roddy whispered furiously.

“It’s not as private as all that,” Ashley pointed out. “I’m here, for a start.”

He’d dialled into his Zoom call because obviously—obviously—as soon as he’d done that she’d make herself scarce: go make a cup of tea or whatever. But she’d just pushed her chair back and settled in to watch: cramping his style. Which was a lot of style to cramp, but she was putting effort into it.

“Is there someone with you?” Leia Six asked.

Which was another problem: he’d got his Leias mixed up. Six was definitely not the Leia he’d experienced the meet-cute tension with.

“No,” he told her.

“Yes,” said Ashley, leaning into shot. “Hi. Are you Roddy’s girlfriend?”

“No. Are you?”

Ashley made a fingers-down-the-throat gesture, and Leia laughed.

“Do not talk to her!”

“He means you,” Ashley said.

“He means you!”

“Dick move either way.”

“Out of my room,” Roddy ordered.

“You’re in his room?”

“It’s an office,” Ashley said. “We work together.”

“What’s he like?”

“You can do better.”

“Now!”

“Is he always like this?”

“I’ve only known him, like, a week. But yeah, appaz.”

Roddy seized a cable and pulled it from the monitor, to no obvious effect.

“I’d better go,” Ashley said. “He’s disconnecting printers now.”

“We should do this again,” Leia said, and vanished from Roddy’s screen.

“Look what you did!”

“What?” said Ashley. “We were just chatting.”

“She was supposed to be chatting to me!”

“Whatever. Anyway, she’s cool. You should date her.”

“. . . You think?”

“Definitely.”

Roddy smirked.

“I mean, she can tell you’re a prat. But if we ruled prats out, we’d never get laid. Are we doing some work now? Catherine’ll be down in a minute.”

Roddy flexed his fingers.

“So tell me something about Vassily Ronsakov I don’t already know,” he said.

“Well, for a start, he’s called Vassily Rasnokov.”

“That’s what I said.”

“But his nickname as a teenager was The Fireman.”

“Because he used to put fires out?” said Roddy.

“No,” said Ashley. “Because he used to start them.”

Lech and Louisa were walking back down Cheapside. “They wanted to check my shoes,” Louisa was saying. “Who’d they think I was, Rosa Klebb?”

“Well, from a certain angle . . .”

“Fuck you.”

“Consider me fucked,” said Lech. “That was cool, by the way. Getting us out of there.”

Because Kelly had wanted to arrest them.

“Good plan,” Louisa had told her. They were standing in a shabby group on the pavement, the SUV a memory in distant traffic. “You can take my statement now, if you like. It involves your target driving away in your car with your gun.”

There’d followed an exchange of pleasantries, after which the slow horses had made their departure.

“Do you think that counts as mission accomplished?”