“She’s with Lech. They’re up to something. What are they looking at?”
Roddy shrugged, and opened another browser. A quarter minute later they were looking at a street scene, broad daylight; a residential pavement. Most of it was houses, but there was an apartment block at a junction; a brick building with glass front doors showing a lobby with what looked like a cheese plant in its centre. Big green leaves, anyway. Shirley marvelled, briefly, that here they were on one side of the city looking at a building on the other, trying to recognise a pot plant in its lobby, and then reminded herself that this was film, not a live broadcast. Clues included that it was broad daylight and that Louisa wasn’t in sight, though the other screen indicated that her phone remained close by.
And was, in fact, in Louisa’s hand, and Louisa herself in her car. Lech was beside her, and they were across the road from the apartment block Lech had identified as Sophie de Greer’s address. Without being confident she was in her flat, they knew she hadn’t left it while they were watching. Louisa had suggested—several times, by this point—that the odds were she hadn’t come home yet: politicos, she maintained, worked ungodly hours, and it was only just after nine. Lech had countered by pointing out that de Greer was Swiss, and as such perhaps adhered more strictly to an acceptable timetable.
“Except if you’re right, she’s not Swiss. She’s Russian.”
“Such a thing as cover.”
Since this exchange Louisa had mostly been reading the news on her phone, wondering at what point she’d kick Lech out and head home. He had the air of one who wasn’t going anywhere until he’d been proved right. Which was possibly just another way of pointing out that he was male.
She put her phone away. “How pissed off was Roddy?”
“Don’t know.”
“Hard to tell?”
“Hard to care.”
“He has his uses, you know. Maybe we should be nice to him for a change.”
“Yeah,” said Lech. “We could scrape a few quid together and rent him a girlfriend experience.”
“I’m not that sorry.”
“How expensive could it be? To have someone stand him up, then laugh about it on Instagram.”
“Bitter, much?”
“You don’t know the half of it. Is this her now?”
It was, or seemed to be: a tracksuited figure, emerging from the apartment block and pausing on the threshold, fiddling with something on her wrist. She was blonde, but wearing goggles that obscured much of her face. Still: right approximate height, right approximate age. She bounced up and down on the spot for some seconds in a manner that had Lech nodding thoughtfully, though offered no conclusive evidence as to her identity. The tracksuit was grey, with reflective bright orange piping that matched her trainers.
“It’s about mileage, not stylage,” Louisa muttered.
“What?”
“I said, what do we do?”
Lech said, “Follow her?”
“Because obviously she’s on her way to a secret meeting.”
“Well we won’t know that until she gets there.”
She’d already made a start, bounding down the street with an ease which belied Louisa’s suggestion that she was all kit, no grit. Louisa started the car and pulled out into the empty road. Lech kept his eyes on the running woman.
“We’re going to look like an abduction attempt,” he said.
“Thanks, that’s constructive.”
“She’s probably heading for the common.”
Louisa’s trainers were in the boot, and under her blouse she wore a sleeveless vest that would pass for a running top in the dark. Or might do. “Eyes on her.” She pulled ahead of de Greer, if that’s who it was, and took the next right. A dark expanse opened up at the end of the road: that would be the common.
“She’s still behind us,” said Lech.
A parking space materialised: disabled only. My boss, my colleagues, my love life, Louisa thought. More than enough handicaps to qualify for a blue badge. She pulled into it and hopped out without turning the engine off. Opened the boot, removed her blouse. Lech joined her, facing the way they’d come, as the woman drew level on the other side of the road and then sailed past.
“Ninety per cent sure it’s her,” he said.
Louisa had shed her shoes, was doing up the laces on her trainers. “You’d better bloody be right.”
The woman had reached the road bordering the common and was jogging on the spot while waiting to cross.