“You haven’t got any friends.”
“Neither have you.”
“Dickhead.”
“Beast.”
“Asshat.”
“Spreader.”
“。 . . Spreader? What does that even mean?”
Roddy said, “You know, like, spreader. Like, you spread the virus.”
“Nobody says that.”
“Some people do.”
They glared at each other; Shirley brandishing her iron, Roddy with one hand on the hilt of his light sabre.
If you strike me down now, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Shirley said, “So what was that, anyway, some kind of fancy dress booty call?”
“None of your business.”
“Seriously, this is everyone’s business by first thing tomorrow. You might as well save us the bother and fill in the blanks.”
“I don’t fire blanks,” Roddy said. With his free hand he waved at his laptop, nestled amidst the ranked screens. “Say hello to my leetle fren’。”
“You don’t scare me.”
“Someone sounded their horn at me in a crosswalk once. I came right back here and sold their house.”
“You’d have to buy me one first.”
“I’ll trash your bank account.”
“Already trashed.”
“。 . . You’re gonna find you’ve ordered all this shit you don’t even want.”
“Yeah, that’s normal. What planet are you on?”
Roddy looked about to reply, but thought better of it.
Shirley came further into the room, placed her iron on Lech’s desk, then levered herself up, and sat swinging her legs. What had looked like a dead loss of an evening had turned around, and she was planning on getting her luck’s worth. But even as she watched Roddy’s face enact the seven deadly sins, it occurred to her that there was more than one way to skin a nerd.
He was waiting for her to speak, so she let him wait longer. His room was the same as hers, more or less; the same as all the offices, bar those on the top floor. But his had more kit, both on his desk and on the rackety metal shelving round the walls. Unattached keyboards and lengths of cable; boxes of floppy disks and thick-spined operating manuals. All of it junk, but if you piled up enough junk, you left your stamp on a place.
On Lech’s side some attempt had been made to create a mess-free area, but not enough of one to bear fruit.
“Who’d you share with before Lech?” she asked him.
“Nobody.”
“And who before that?”
“Can’t remember.”
“You ever had a partner?”
“A what?”
“Forget it.” She gestured towards his desk. “You’ve got these tracing apps, right?”
Roddy rolled his eyes.
“Can you find Louisa’s car?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On what happens if I do.”
“Maybe people don’t get to hear about your little Star Wars production.”
“‘Maybe’？”
“Tell me where she is, and I won’t say anything.”
“。 . . How do I know I can trust you?”
She laughed. “It’s Slough House. You can’t trust anyone.”
Oddly, this seemed to reassure him.
He went back round his side of the desk and by the time she’d joined him had set something in motion: a little icon that looked like a silverfish trying to eat itself was toiling away on his largest screen. A blink or two later and this coloured itself in: they were looking at a skeletal street map, laid out in straight lines as if someone had tidied the city up in a burst of optimism. Pulsing dead centre was a red circle, like a pimple waiting to explode.
Shirley said, “Isn’t this just Find My Friends?”
“。 . . So?”
“So how come you and Louisa are sharing that?”
Because Louisa didn’t know was the strictly accurate answer. Some apps wormed their way into your phone as soon as you clicked on the email. Or they did if you knew what you were doing.
“Where is this, anyway?”
He zoomed out, so they could see the bigger picture. “Wimbledon.”
“What’s in Wimbledon?” Shirley said, but she was talking to herself.
The car was parked not far from the common, though she supposed you were never that far from the common if you were in Wimbledon to start with.
“What are they looking at?”
“‘They’？” said Roddy.