Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(3)

That any moment now, there’ll be some action.

Louisa Guy rolled her shoulder, swung from the hip, and punched Roddy Ho in the face.

That felt good.

Let’s do it again.

Louisa Guy rolled her shoulder, swung from the hip, and punched Roddy Ho in the face.

This time, Ho’s head went flying backwards into the gloom, landing on the grass with a damp thud, before rolling twice then coming to a stop, eyes down.

Which was satisfying, but also annoying. Once you’d knocked a head clean off, you could never get it to stay on again.

Louisa looked up at the early morning sky, its long clouds seemingly motionless overhead. She was on the back lawn of her apartment block, where one or two lights were coming on, her fellow-dwellers showering, breakfasting, getting ready for the off. Some would save the shower for the gym, get their workouts over before dressing for the day, but Louisa didn’t belong to a gym. Gyms were expensive. Louisa ran instead, though this morning had opted to take Roddy Ho—or his standin; a department store dummy she’d boosted from a skip the previous weekend—and give him an education. It was only the second time she’d indulged herself this way, and it was disappointing to think it might be the last, but fair’s fair, there was an argument that Roddy’s stunt double was taking the method approach. She was pretty sure if she punched the actual Roddy Ho repeatedly, his head would go flying from his shoulders before long.

And when you thought about it, it was really Lech Wicinski who ought to be pounding Roddy to dirt this week. Then again, Lech was still too sore to be handing out punishment beatings.

She collected the broken parts and took them upstairs; showered, dressed, etc; and was soon behind the wheel, a piece of toast clamped between her teeth, heading for work. She’d used a gym regularly back in the by; the Service gym not far from Regent’s Park. It occupied hidden levels below a local authority swimming baths, and on its mats, free of charge, agents in good standing could have the shit beaten out of them by experts. This wasn’t as much fun as it sounded, but did have an upside: after you’d spent an hour being thrown around like a bag of wrenches, the expert explained what moves you might make to improve your situation. Louisa had generally come away feeling more capable than when she’d gone in.

But the key phrase in all of that was “in good standing,” and slow horses were so far from standing well they had trouble lying down. Following her transfer to Slough House, the first time Louisa had tried to access the facility her card tripped the scanner, causing visible tension to the guard on duty, tension that relaxed to amusement once he’d clocked her ID. “Seriously?” he’d said. “You’d have more chance with a Starbucks card.” Nobody had been around to explain what move she might make to improve her situation, though shooting him in the head suggested itself. Unfortunately the nearest guns were on the level she’d just been refused entry to, so she’d had to walk away unconsoled.

What made this bad story worse was, it had happened what felt like a lifetime ago, and things hadn’t changed much since. And things kept on not changing, with unvarying regularity. Even when events occurred that shook the windows—like the Russian hoodlums’ toxic rampage six months back, or the Wimbledon outing, just three days ago—they folded up so small, they might as well not have happened. When you asked What next?, the answer was always: The same. So you woke up next morning and were back in the office; there were extra stains on the carpet, occasionally a missing colleague, but you got used to that. Slough House absorbed differences, leeched them of flavour, and spat them out again; sometimes you were driving to work, sometimes you were driving home, but the space between was so dispiriting, you hardly cared which. On your way there, on your way back, you were still denied entrance to the gym.

Some had this lesson waiting—Slough House had a new recruit. One who fell into that rapidly increasing demographic, the too-bloody-young. Ashley Khan might have been in primary school when Louisa joined the Service, and acted like she still was. No one likes being here, Louisa felt like saying. It’s not necessary to remind us you’re unhappy. But Khan sulked as if there were prizes involved, and what had never been the most clement working environment had a new storm cloud in its skies. True, none of them were exactly rays of sunshine—Jackson Lamb was extreme weather on his best day—but having a new colleague was a challenge, a reminder of how bad things had felt at the start, and how bad they still were. Nothing you could do changed this. Because that was the deal with Slough House: you had all the self-determination of a clockwork fundamentalist.

Her own view, Louisa thought Ashley Khan would quit. Soon. She’d invested too little of her life in the Service to throw good time away after it; there was a whole world of stuff waiting once she’d got over her rage. Though her rage, it was true, did seem to have put its foot down. Not without cause, either: on Khan’s introduction to Jackson Lamb, he’d broken her arm. This was the sort of first impression that made second impressions superfluous, and even for a millennial, raised by the internet, didn’t fall within the range of expected behaviours. No, Ashley Khan’s anger was going to have to find an outlet soon, or the woman would explode.

Now there was a thought.

Maybe she’d just short-circuit the whole process and bring a bomb into work.

And as the morning traffic thickened and her day began to crawl, Louisa wondered if that wouldn’t be the most efficient way to deal with Ashley’s anger and all the other issues bottled up in Slough House; simply to detonate them all together, in one final crowd-pleasing moment.