“I’m guessing you don’t really need to be told. But no, I’ve said nothing to the Park. On account of having had enough to do with them to see me through the rest of my life.”
“Okay. Well, thanks for putting me in the picture.” He realised this sounded ungracious, but it was said now. Words were slippery beasts. “I suppose we’d better think about how and when the book might have gone astray.” Even to his own ears, he sounded like a third-rate Sherlock. “Or who might have—”
“Way ahead of you,” said Erin.
“You have a suspect.”
“Well, I know it wasn’t me. So that only leaves one candidate,” she said.
Like a blue tit tapping on a milk bottle top, some things only have to happen once, somewhere, before they’re happening everywhere, all the time. In Slough House, this morning’s milk bottle was Roddy Ho, unless he was the tit—either way, it was in his office that the slow horses congregated, eager to investigate a rumour that had circulated with the usual speed of rumours in offices: No one knew how it started, but everyone was in sudden possession of the same facts.
“Roddy, hi!” said Ash.
“Roddy, ha!” said Shirley.
“Roddy, hey!” said Louisa.
“Roddy,” said Lech. “Huh.”
Roddy did something that switched all his monitors to screensaver mode. “What do you want?”
“We can’t go on together,” said Shirley, “with suspicious minds.”
“Yeah, lighten up,” said Louisa. “We just want to know about your wound.”
“My money’s on some kind of street hassle,” said Lech. “You know, like you were facing down a horde of angry squaddies.”
It was true that this was the kind of action Roddy was likely to find himself elbows-deep in come a Friday night, but that was due to his movie choices.
“Either that,” Lech continued, “or a Girl Guide gave you a dead leg.”
“To match your head,” said Shirley.
Ash had wandered to the window and leant against the wall, arms folded. “But I reckon you’ve got yourself some body art. That’s what I reckon.”
So she’d been giving him some thought. Figured. As a reward, Roddy gave her a look he’d been practising lately, involving one half-closed eye and a slight curl of the lip. Half amused approval, half invitation, basically.
“You about to throw up? Because I am not watching that.”
“Is she right?” said Shirley. “You’ve had a tat done?”
“Joined the brotherhood,” Roddy admitted.
“You’re in a boy band now?” Louisa asked.
“The brotherhood of . . . wrestlers.” Which is what his ink slinger had called Roddy, meaning he was like The Rock or someone. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“So what is it?” Ash said. “My guess is a motorbike in flames.”
“Or a unicorn jumping over a rainbow.”
“Or some kind of heraldic thing,” said Lech. “Like a dickhead, rampant.”
“It’s none of those,” said Roddy.
“Let’s see it,” Shirley demanded.
“It’s not ready yet.”
“What, the transfer’s still wet?”
“It’s not a transfer.”
“I think it probably is,” said Lech. “On account of tattoos hurt. And you’ve got the pain threshold of a marshmallow.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got the pain threshold of . . .
“Come on, Rodster,” said Louisa. “No point going under the gun if you’re not gunna show it off.”
“‘The gun’?” said Lech.
“What they call the tattoo machine,” she explained. “The way they call crybabies ‘wrestlers.’ Because of all the wriggling.”
Ash said, “There’s a thought. We could just wrestle him to the ground and strip his bandage off.”
“It would take all three of you,” Roddy said.
“It would seriously not,” said Shirley.
“I’m supposed to keep it covered another twenty-four hours.”
“But we can’t wait that long,” explained Ash.
“Clinching argument,” said Lech. “Shirley, do the honours?”
Roddy sighed, and held up a palm. It had been bound to come to this—there was always speculation about the RodBod behind his back. Murmurs about his six-pack, mutterings about his butt. Just this morning, entering Costa, he’d heard his usual barista whisper “massive cock” to her colleague. He rolled his sleeve up and peeled the bandage away carefully, not because he was worried about it hurting, but because he didn’t want anything to smudge.
Everyone went quiet.
“What are we looking at?” asked Louisa at last.
“It’s a hummingbird,” said Roddy. “Duh.”
“Yeah, that’s never a hummingbird,” said Lech. “Maybe a platypus?”
“Or a sheep,” said Shirley. “Is it a sheep?”
“Do sheep have five legs?” Ash asked.
“That’s not a leg.”
“. . . Ew!”
“It’s a dung beetle, I think,” said Louisa. “An upside-down dung beetle.”
Shirley tilted her head. “Actually, yeah, a beetle. But why dung specifically?”
“Because it’s shit.”
“It’s a hummingbird,” Roddy repeated, arranging his bandage back into place. “Philadelphians.”
There was a moment’s baffled silence. Then Louisa said, “Philistines!” and Shirley high-fived her.
“This tattoo artist,” asked Lech. “How much did you pay him for making your arm look like a duck crapped on it?”
“And where’d he learn his trade, prison?”
“Everyone having fun?”
And this was Catherine, who was standing in the doorway regarding the pack of them like a secondary school teacher who’d just tracked down vapers.
