London Rules полностью

There are those who regard Roderick Ho as a one-trick wonder; a king of the keyboard jungle, sure, but less adept in other areas of life, such as making friends, being reasonable, and ironing T-shirts. But they haven’t seen him in action. They haven’t seen him on the prowl.

Lunchtime, just off Aldersgate Street. The ugly concrete towers of the Barbican to the right; a hardly more beautiful housing estate to the left. But it’s a killing box, this uncelebrated patch of London; it’s a blink-and-you’re-eaten battlefield. You get one chance only to claim your scalp, and Roddy Ho’s prey could be anywhere.

He knew damn well it was close.

So he moved, pantherlike, between parked cars; he hovered by a placard celebrating some municipal triumph or other. In his ear, driven like a fencepost by the pounding of his iPod, an overexcited forty-something screeched tenderly of his plan to kill and eat his girlfriend. On Roddy’s chin, the beard he’d grown last winter; rather more expertly sculpted now, because he’d learned the hard way not to use kitchen scissors. On Roddy’s head – new development – a baseball cap. Image matters, Roddy knew that. Brand matters. You want Joe Public to recognise your avatar, your avatar had to make a statement. In his own personal opinion, he’d nailed that angle. Neat little goatee and a baseball cap: originality plus style. Roderick Ho was the complete package, the way Brad Pitt used to be, before the unpleasantness.

(Gap in the market there, come to think of it. He’d have to have a word with Kim, his girlfriend, about coining a nom de celeb.

Koddy.

Rim …?

Nah. Needs work.)

But he’d deal with that later, because right now it was time to activate the lure module; get this creature into the open and bring that sucker down. This required force, timing and use of weapons: his core skills in a nutshell … Whoever came up with Pokémon GO must have had Roderick Ho on their muse’s speed-dial. The name even rhymed, man – it was like he was born to poke. Gimme that stardust, he thought. Gimme that lovely stardust, and watch the Rodster shine.

All reflex, sinew and concentration, Ho shimmered through the lunchtime air like the coolest of cats, the baddest of asses, the daddy of all dudes; hot on the trail of an enemy that didn’t exist.

A little way down the road, an enemy that did turned the ignition, and pulled away from the kerb.

That morning, on her way to the Tube, Catherine Standish had dropped in at the newsagent’s for a Guardian. Behind the counter a steel blind had been drawn to hide the array of cigarette packets, lest a stray glimpse prove a gateway to early death, while to her left, on the topmost row of the rack, the few pornographic magazines to survive into the digital age were sealed inside plastic covers, to nullify their impact on concupiscent minds. All this careful protection, she thought, shielding us from impulses deemed harmful, but right there by the door was a shelf of wine on special offer, any two bottles for nine pounds, and up by the counter was a range of spirits all cheerfully marked two quid down, none of them a brand to delight the palate, but any of them enough to render the most uptight connoisseur pig-drunk and open to offers.

She bought her newspaper, nodded her thanks, and returned to the street.

One journey later, she remembered it was her turn to pick up milk for the office – no huge feat of memory; it was always her turn to pick up milk – and dropped into the shop next to Slough House, where the milk was in the fridge alongside cans of beer and lager, and ready-mixed tins of G&T. That’s twice without trying, she thought, that she could have bought a ticket to the underworld before her day was off the ground. Most occasions of sin required a little effort. But the recovering alcoholic could coast along in neutral, and the temptations would come to her.

There was nothing unusual about this. It was just the surface tension; the everyday gauntlet the dry drunk runs. Come lunchtime, the lure of the dark side behind her, Catherine was absorbed in the day’s work: writing up the department’s bi-annual accounts, which included justification for ‘irregular expenses’. Slough House had had a lot of these this year: broken doors, carpet cleaning; all the making-good an armed incursion demands. Most of the repairs had been sloppily done, which neither surprised nor bothered Catherine much: she had long ago grown used to the second-class status the slow horses enjoyed. What worried her more was the long-term damage to the horses themselves. Shirley Dander was unnervingly calm; the kind of calm Catherine imagined icebergs were, just before they ploughed into ocean liners. River Cartwright was bottling things up too, more than usual. And as for J. K. Coe, Catherine recognised a hand grenade when she saw one. And she didn’t think his pin was fitted too tight.

Roddy Ho was the same as ever, of course, but that was more of a burden than a comfort.