Bad Actors полностью

He was down the driveway, yards from the stables, when he heard the people carrier at his heels, its headlights grabbing his shadow, hurling it in front of him. He braced for impact, expecting to lose contact with that shadow and everything else, but the moment didn’t come: he felt the van’s weight as it rushed past, but he was out of its path; was careering into the stableyard while it headed for the main road. There was copper in his mouth, a pounding in his chest, a sudden metal shriek as the vehicle screamed into the corpse of the wrecked gate, and then Whelan was in the stableyard, memory sending him to the far end. He hadn’t run in years; was amazed to find the ability existed. Wouldn’t have been surprised if it deserted him now, leaving him a puddle on the stones. But his newfound energy carried him on, and there it was; the external staircase by the furthest stable, leading up to the hayloft. Onestep, threestep, fivestep, seven. His knees trembled but held. Watery muscles were a childhood memory. At the top he leaned on the thigh-high wall. The people carrier was emerging onto the road, listing heavily—that broken gate had torn a hole in an offside tyre. A horrible idea grabbed Whelan’s mind and squeezed.

It wasn’t possible. He wasn’t built for this. But the van had lurched across the road, was passing slowly beneath him.

And he was, or had been, on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Hadn’t he?

If you could see me now, he thought, unsure whether he was addressing that same Majesty, Claire, Diana Taverner, Josie, or even Sophie de Greer, whoever she was. Then he clambered onto the wall and dropped onto the roof of the lumbering van.

Whose flip-flopping was its own funeral dirge, da-duff da-duff, a lament already winding down: within the minute, that burst tyre would be a roadside python. But the thump on the roof was something else and Shirley was wondering what—who—had just landed there when a baseball bat slammed into the windscreen, making a porridge of the oncoming view. Screaming his rage, Uomo Uno thumped the steering wheel, which didn’t improve the situation. The baseball bat crashed down again, and the vehicle swerved from the wrong side of the road to the right, sending something banging into Shirley’s knee. A three-kilo training weight. This was what the bastard had used to knock her out of gear.

Visions of clouting him round the head with it, pasting what passed for his brains across the dashboard, had to be put on hold. She couldn’t stand for the rocking, not to mention the wavy motion inside her head: a dull strobing light behind her eyeballs. That taste in her throat—she didn’t remember throwing up. Another outburst from Uomo Uno; another lurch from the wayward bus. These last minutes were a movie trailer; had begun with Shirley on her bed, hungry for something, she didn’t know what. Then staircases and chase scenes and fights and action . . . And someone on the roof, come to rescue her. They didn’t know about the Dander jinx, that teaming up with Shirley offered poor long-term prospects. Or maybe they did, but had risked it anyway; jumping onto a moving vehicle wielding a baseball bat . . . Whoever it was probably thought themselves the hero. And then that notion was swallowed, along with everything else, by blinding light, as the helicopter dropped its searchlight onto the limping van, and hovered above it for its last few moments of motion. A loudspeaker was shouting instructions, which almost certainly included the word Stop!, but whether that was the clinching argument, or whether the people carrier had simply run out of life, was hard to tell. With a final squealing complaint from a tyreless wheel the vehicle crunched to a halt and Uomo Uno spilled out beneath the helicopter’s all-seeing eye, in full view of the approaching police cars with their angry swirling lights. As Shirley fumbled with the door, she could see the blue devils these lights released capering across pitch-dark countryside, scaling trees, hurling themselves into hollows; each followed by another and another and another . . . Uomo Uno was sinking to his knees in surrender when Shirley fell onto the road and looked up at the stars, though they were way too distant to see. Instead, she found herself focusing on a face looking down from the top of the people carrier.

“Shirley Dander, I presume,” it said.

“Who the hell are you?” said Shirley, then closed her eyes and grabbed a little rest.

Night-time raids come in different shapes and sizes.