Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(99)

Shirley dropped to a crouch and the biker moved forward, knife extended, between the two huge blue brushes. Behind his visor, she knew, he was grinning.

He’d stop grinning now.

“You’re all washed up, dickhead,” she said, slamming the green button with her palm.

Nothing happened.

She did it again.

Nothing happened.

Fuck.

He pushed his visor up. “Seriously?”

“. . . What?”

“You think hitting that button’ll make the car wash start?”

Well, yeah. That’s what she’d been hoping.

“It’s not even switched on.”

“I thought that’s what I was doing.”

He was shaking his head. “There’s a code.” Even with his accent, she could tell he thought this ridiculous. “You buy a ticket at the counter, it’s got a code stamped on it, you key it into the pad at the entrance. Then the washer starts.”

“So what are these buttons for?”

“Might be a manual override,” he conceded. “But it won’t work when the whole thing’s powered down.”

“You know a lot about car washes.”

“I work at a car wash, man.” He dropped his visor. “Idiot.”

“What do you mean, you work at a car wash?” Shirley said, but he was already rushing her again, with his small but wicked knife.

Just wait.

He’d spent most of his life just waiting, and here he was, doing it still.

A car had arrived and its occupant had joined Sophie and Sparrow in the café: a hulking sort, looking like he’d be comfortable whacking a cleaver into sides of meat all day long. Bachelor could picture himself, almost, deciding this was a sinister development; deciding to intervene . . . All it would take was true grit, a smidgin of star quality, and the ability to step out from the wings and act like a hero.

He shivered, and wished he had a hip flask. Wished, while he was at it, he had ten years’ less bad luck behind him, or ten years’ more self-belief. Or even just ten minutes’ grace in which to summon up the qualities he needed, now, while the café door opened and the two men came out, Sophie sandwiched between them. She didn’t so much as glance in his direction, and afterwards he convinced himself that this was the reason he remained in the shadows; nothing to do with that new arrival, whose watchfulness as the trio crossed the road suggested professionalism, or at least experience. No: Bachelor made no move because all was evidently going according to Sophie’s plan. Which meant his role now was to just wait.

Every extra knows the show’s about him.

Every stand-in knows she’s the star.

But John Bachelor . . . Bachelor, watching the car ferry Sophie de Greer down Glasshouse Street, understood that his marquee moment was never going to happen. The car turned at the junction, and London’s backdrop came into focus once more: its shop windows tired and garish, like a peep-show worker going off shift; its soundtrack a distant medley of overlapping noise. He was part of it, but just a small part, mostly unnoticed. His star didn’t shine as brightly as it might. Though when you thought about it, that was true of everyone.

The cardboard punnet had grown cold in Whelan’s hands, and, next to him, the boy from the garage was bouncing on his toes like an activated desk toy. Since Shirley and the biker had disappeared into the car wash they might as well have been transported to another planet. He’d heard the occasional crashing noise, plus a brief interlude of what sounded like dialogue—but he must have imagined that—and otherwise only the swooshing of tyres when a car passed.

The boy said, “I hope the police get here soon.”

Or a Service team, thought Whelan. It couldn’t be more than two minutes since this kicked off: even so his eyes kept flicking skywards, as if that helicopter might be approaching, its crew preparing to rappel earthwards, and deal with the situation. Somebody had to.

She’d been wielding a spork for Christ’s sake.

He turned to the boy. “Don’t you have a—?”

A what? A shotgun, a time machine? A cutlery set?

Then Shirley came rolling out of the car wash, her sweatshirt flapping loosely behind her, and a moment later the biker appeared too, his slow-motion swagger a statement all by itself: this fight was nearly over.

Sparrow was climbing into the back seat next to Sophie when Benito said, “What am I, an Uber?”

It took him a moment to get what was meant.

“I’d sooner be in the front anyway,” Sophie said, climbing out and into the passenger seat. That was okay. It made no difference.

“Turns out she’s not in Dorset after all,” he’d told Benito on the phone, after Sophie had made contact.

“Where most of my crew went,” Benito said. His accent wasn’t that thick, considering, but he was the most Italian Italian Sparrow had come across: the five o’clock shadow, the curly hair, the hint of volatility beneath a handsome, battered surface. The shoes. Other men might have felt themselves in the shade anywhere near him, but Sparrow felt only that two-way connectivity alphas feel.

“I was fed bad information.”

“The . . . opposition they ran into. This wasn’t a rival team.”

“No.”

“They were soldiers. Armed.”