Joe Country полностью

“Because every day you come into work, open my mail, bring me my tea, and these are all things you used to do for him, back in the good old days.”

The good old days, when she’d have opened that bottle without a second thought; when its contents would have measured out the first half of an evening, the half spent wondering whether she’d have a quiet night, or maybe get a little drunk. Just to take the edge off.

“And I’m the one blew his brains out.”

And that’s what she had to live with. She’d grown used to Lamb over the years; used to the idea that this half of her life, the dry half, was to be spent in the employment of a gross, unpredictable bastard who had, like it or not, saved her. Without him she’d have been discarded after Partner’s death, and who knew if her fledgling sobriety would have survived that? So buried somewhere deep in what she felt for Lamb was gratitude, because he was the reason her raft remained afloat. And then she learned that he’d killed Partner. The darkest stain of all, and the one that had taken longest to come to light.

“That’s what Taverner told you.”

“And you’re here to tell me that’s not true,” she said.

“No,” said Lamb. “I’m here to tell you how it happened.”

Good jobhe had Wicinski’s number . . . First suspicious move and the Rodster’ll tie you in knots.

So yeah: good times. The RodMan had Wicinski’s number, and was currently watching a visual simulacrum of it—its avatar a steaming turd—hanging steady just off Great Portland Street, an address GoogleMaps indicated was a pub. Stopping for a drink, huh? Hanging with your mates? But why there, Wicinski? Why a pub nowhere near your place of work, your home address? Oh yeah, Roddy-O’s got your number.

He had Lamb’s number too, and had just used it.

Good times.

Roddy was at home, in front of a bank of monitors, four of them: thirty-two inch plasma screens, their combined weight not much more than a couple of the pizza boxes stacked on the floor. It was new kit, bought with the dosh his insurance company had coughed up after the robbery; a robbery carried out by the Service’s security team, though this was a detail Roddy hadn’t felt it necessary to include on the claim forms. It had been a major aggravation. But live and learn: one of his screens was now rigged to a CCTV camera above his front door. Even the Rodster could be caught unawares, but not twice.

The room was middle storey and had a mostly glass wall: previous occupants had used it as a kind of urban conservatory, which went to show that no matter what your postcode, you couldn’t rule out hippy neighbours. As a result of the same incident which had seen his computer kit go walkies, Roddy had had to have one of the big windows replaced. He’d managed to undercut the original quote by some distance, a triumph slightly mitigated by the way it now rattled a lot when the wind blew, and a fair bit when it didn’t. But then, he was generally plugged into his sound system while he worked, and no rattle could interrupt that mess. He’d been listening to the classics lately—Guns N’ Roses; Deep Purple—an indication of growing maturity. There was a specially wistful drum solo on Live in Japan. That shit had escaped him when he was younger.

The turd avatar just sat there, steaming. Drinking solo, or a meat-space chat? Roddy couldn’t tell.

He took a long pull on an energy drink, which was electric blue and promised enhanced mental receptivity. Even the RamRod took what help he could get: no shame when you were a 24/7 guy, which Roddy was, except for when he was asleep. The turd, meanwhile, just sat there. One day, Roddy thought, a little investment, a little more hardware, he’d be able to activate screen-vision when tagging a mobile, and see who his target was mixing with, and what was going down. Give him extra edge, if that was possible. More edge than a cliff, babes, he imagined himself saying. (He really needed someone to say this stuff to.) More edge than a polyhedron. But better look that one up first.