by Mick Herron
The squeaking stopped, and was replaced by a circular, scratching sound.
The glass globe might be a weapon. Or the lump of reshaped metal. Once a Luger, River had explained. Wartime details were involved in what followed. Now it was redesigned by Dali, and all she had to load it with was the memory of a bullet. Tt Tt Tt. From the back of the house came a brief splintering, as glass dropped to the tiled floor. The ex-gun felt complicated in her hand; she could make out what might once have been the barrel, now curled in upon itself like a sleeping lizard, but its trigger had been swallowed up inside the metal mass. There was a clicking noise which she interpreted as the unfixing of the back door’s latch, a hand reaching through a broken pane to release the sneck. Sneck: a word she’d acquired up north. A faint brushing sound as the door opened, sweeping shards of glass aside. If she could solve the gun, remind it what it used to be, she would not be defenceless. The air in the house shifted, a rearrangement she could feel even in the study. She listened for footsteps, two pairs. But they’d creep, she thought. She wouldn’t hear them now they were in the house. Missionaries creep.
If she could remind herself what she used to be, she would not be defenceless.
The silence grew closer, as if the effort someone was making to be quiet were inching through the house.
It stopped outside the study door.
As long as he was there, Lech shut himself in a cubicle and had a piss.
This is my working life, he thought. Used to be an intelligence analyst—one of the hub’s best and brightest—and now I’m in a stinking public lavatory, hoping one of my own side makes a pass. Such was the view from Slough House.
He finished, flushed, but instead of stepping out to wash his hands leaned against the door and pressed his ear to it. The noises from the subway were muffled, abstract, aquarium-like. How many men had stood where he was now, hoping for strange encounters? He closed his eyes and thought about focaccia. Imagined thumping dough: punching it over and over, only to watch it rise.
Someone entered the toilet.
“We want their ID,” Shirley had said, back in the pub. “Their Service card, their wallet, their phone. Hell, their pocket change and their door keys too. Fuck ’em.”
“These are agents in training,” Lech had said. “They’ll be sharp. In good nick.”
“I’m in good nick.”
You’re fucking high, he’d nearly said. The way she was jiggling in her seat, he’d have to scrape her off the ceiling soon. Two pints of lager had done nothing to bring her down.
The state she’d been in, he was better off on his own.
Whoever had come into the toilet was using the urinal. Lech rested his forehead against the back of his hand. The man finished, crossed the floor, ran a tap. Lech heard a paper towel pulled from the dispenser; the rustling of hands being dried. Then nothing. No footsteps; no breathing. Just a man in a public toilet, possibly holding a damp paper towel. A man in a black mac, he thought. Reversible to grey.
He opened the door, suddenly and loud, and stepped out of the cubicle.
The man was right up in front of the mirror, pulling at the corner of an eye, as if he had something in it. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t—it was a pretty obvious dawdling tactic—but what was certain was, he wasn’t the man in the mac, unless he’d changed his coat in the last five minutes, and also his head. When Lech appeared he left his eye alone, and watched as Lech, after a brief hesitation, came forward and rinsed his hands.
“It’s polite to flush,” he said.
“Already did.”
“. . . Right.” The man rubbed his eye again. He was staring into his own reflection when he said, “Looking for company?”
“Go away.”
“Because this isn’t the place.”
“I said go away.”
“There are websites, you know. Apps.”
“Fuck off,” said Lech.
The man dropped his paper towel in the bin. “I’m only saying. Get with the century, right? Unless you’re into this scene.”
Footsteps were approaching.
“Gotta go.”
He left as the man with the black mac stepped through the door into the Gents.
She was called Jane. He was called Jim.
Surnames were not offered.
“But you’re Sidonie Baker, yes? Sid to her friends.”
“Which we hope to be.”
“Oh, very much so.”
It had had an air of inevitability about it, the way the study door had opened and the couple had come in. They might have been prospective buyers, and the house a property on their list: good, airy rooms; a little question mark over the water table. So what did that make Sid, whose name they so handily knew? Their estate agent?
“River will be here soon,” she told them. “River Cartwright.”
“That’s good. But we’ll be gone by then. We move quickly.”
“Do you have a coat, Sid? Or a jacket? It’s not too warm out.”
“Still a little early in the year.”
Jane was blonde and Jim dark, though viewed from this distance, rather than from—say—an upstairs window, neither convincingly so. Sid suspected artifice, an hour in a hotel bathroom with a packet from the nearest Superdrug. They were dressed the same as the first time she’d seen them, white shirts under dark jackets and coats, and their voices were bright and well-practised. They might not be working to a script, but they were improvising the dialogue for a planned scenario, and if the effect was a little laboured, well, what could you expect from bad actors?
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.
“You need to reconsider that,” said Jane.
“You’re not well,” Jim explained. “Don’t you remember? You were being taken care of, in a very nice place, but you left early. You’re still getting those headaches, am I right?”
“And they’re going to get worse without treatment,” said Jane.
“So what we’ll do is, we’ll leave a note for your Mr. Cartwright, tell him where we’re taking you so he can come visit.”
“But the sooner we get you there, the better.”
“Traffic can be murder.”
“How did you know I was here?” she said.
“Well, we popped next door, had a word with the nice lady.”
“That’s the thing about the country, isn’t it? People taking notice of what’s going on around them. This was a city, you could be living here months, nobody would even know your name.”
“Years, even.”
“Like Jane says. Years.”
“Is this yours?”
Jane had found Sid’s jacket, draped over a chair.
“You might want to put that down. It looks like a heavy nuisance.”
Sid looked at the aimless gun in her hand. Stupid choice of weaponry; like going into battle wielding a holiday souvenir.
Tt Tt Tt.
The noise it made hitting the carpet was a faint echo of assault.
“Good girl,” said Jim.
“Now here’s what we do,” Jane said. “We all get into the nice warm car out there, and we head back to where you can be taken care of. Somewhere you should never have left in the first place.”
Sid found her voice. “You’re not from there. From the farm.”
“No, dear. But we’re who they call when they need someone brought back.”
“Runaways.”
“Like yourself.”
She could make it as far as the door, she thought. Or maybe not all the way to the door. She could make it most of the way to the door, and then Jim would have her. Unless Jane had her first.
Use your little grey cells, ma chère.
The ones she still had left, her bullet meant.
“Or you could keep running,” Jane told her. She sto
oped to pick up the metal lump, and caressed it for a moment while looking at Sid. “You could run next door, even. Tell the nice lady we’re taking you somewhere horrid.”
She replaced it on the shelf.
“But she won’t believe you,” said Jim. “On account of, we’ve already had a chat with her.”
“And she knows you’re unstable,” said Jane. “Apt to injure yourself.”
“Save anyone else the trouble.”
“So best not make a fuss. Here, put your jacket on.”
It makes, how you say, the good sense, her bullet said.
Because she wouldn’t get as far as the door.
Jim was holding her jacket for her to slip her arms into. Be Villanelle, be Lara Croft. But she remained Sidonie Baker, and he remained unaware of any other possibility. Allowing herself to step backwards into his nearly embrace, she felt the jacket swallow her up.
“All ready?” Jane asked.
You are, how you say, fucked, said the bullet.
Jim opened the door with a butler’s flourish, and ushered Sid through it. Let’s take the back door, he suggested, in such a smooth undertone it barely required speech marks. Jane, leaving last, extinguished the lights. There was a circular hole in the back door’s pane, an expertly removed slice of glass through which one or other had reached to unlock the door and gain entrance. Exit was more easily achieved. As they led her to the car, Sid stared at the neighbour’s house, what was visible of it behind its screen of hedge. There were lights on, but no signs of movement. She hoped they had done nothing to harm her, the neighbour lady. There was no reason why they should, of course. But recent history spoke of collateral damage; of disregarded shrapnel ripping holes through innocent lives. If there were such a thing any more, thought Sid, as an innocent life—but that thought felt way too heavy; felt like a thought for a final journey. She sat in the back, Jim next to her. The seatbelt was too tight, but she made no attempt to adjust it. Some things, you learned to live with.
And now would be a good time to punch this man in the head.
This was principally because he was having a piss: one of the top three moments of attention being elsewhere. Except he was being remarkably quiet, so was either pretending or was one of those types—which included Lech—who couldn’t urinate with a stranger nearby. So maybe he was ready for an incoming blow, and would twist aside the moment Lech launched his attack, leaving Lech with one of those cartoon wounds you get from punching a concrete wall: a throbbing boxing glove of a hand, pulsing in time to a muted trombone.
Also, Lech was more a strategy man, or had been back at the Park: gathering data, making observations; occasionally getting very particular about finicky details. Putting the anal into analyst. When someone needed punching, there were numbers he could call. It wasn’t about being a wuss; it was about playing to your strengths. And besides, if he’d got it wrong, and this guy was a civilian, punching him in the head wouldn’t go down well. A thing about Slough House, it wasn’t so much a last-chance saloon as an out-of-options off-licence. Any mistake you made would be your last inside the Service, and punching a shy stranger in the head in a public toilet probably counted.
So instead of getting physical, Lech said, “Busted.”
The man didn’t turn round. “. . . You what?”
“I said, you’re busted.”
“No idea what you’re talking about, mate. Do you mind? I’m trying to have a piss.”
“You’re Park. You’re supposed to tail me without being spotted. But guess what? You’ve been spotted.”
The man in the mac either finished pissing or finished pretending he’d been pissing or gave up trying to piss altogether. He zipped up and turned, looking Lech in the eye. “Don’t know what your game is, but find someone else to play it with, yeah? Because keep bothering me, and you’ll end up head first down one of those, get me?” He gestured towards the urinal behind him. “Head first,” he repeated, and made hard shoulder contact as he headed for the door.
Reasonably convincing, Lech thought, and time was he’d have stepped aside and assumed he’d made a mistake, or at least allowed for the possibility. But that was back when his face was still the one he’d grown up with; before it resembled a five-year-old’s drawing of a railway junction.
ID, Service card, wallet and phone.
Pocket change and door keys too.
Fuck ’em.
“You haven’t washed your hands,” he said.
“Piss off,” said Black Mac, and Lech threw his punch.
It was an uppercut, without a huge amount of force behind it, and his target was the side of Black Mac’s head, offering the chance that his hand would come off worst. All in all, though, it wasn’t a bad punch, maybe a five out of ten, and could have been a seven or eight if it had made contact. As it was, he missed by a couple of centimetres, as Black Mac jerked his head aside, giving the distinct impression that being attacked by strangers was not entirely outside his range of experience. Better trained; in better nick. Or just better. You couldn’t rule it out.
Then he hit Lech twice in quick succession, both times in the stomach, and Lech staggered backwards, crashing through a cubicle door and only remaining upright by bracing himself against the walls with outstretched hands, essentially offering a full-body target for the next blow. Which, it turned out, was a real beauty; the kind you’d find yourself thinking about on waking for the next few months, and observing its anniversary by hiding your head under a pillow and weeping quietly.
Luckily for Lech it was Shirley delivering it, and Black Mac on the receiving end.
When River arrived the house was dark, like a line from a rock and roll song. He parked on the verge, noticing fresh ruts where another vehicle had lately stopped. Might be something, might be nothing, but instead of collecting the shopping from the back seat—he’d brought bread, cheese; a few other things Sid might like—he headed straight for the house, going round the back. The door was unlocked. Also, there was a hole in the glass—neatly engineered rather than hooligan breakage.
“Sid?”
The empty house replied in its usual fashion.
“Sid!”
Pointless, now, to essay stealth, so he charged through the hall, a memory of Rose’s complaint—Don’t run in the house, darling—rising from the tiles. The study was in darkness. Sid had been here—her blanket was puddled on the floor; there was a half-full glass of water next to a spreadeagled book—but wasn’t now. River ran upstairs, in and out of empty rooms. Bare walls stared from every direction.
Back in the study he collected himself, and tried to remember his training. There was no sign of conflict, merely of interruption, though the large glass paperweight presented to the O.B. on his retirement had found its way to the floor. He picked it up, surprised as always by its weight; peered into it for answers before replacing it on its shelf. Wherever Sid was, she had taken her jacket; also her shoes. If people had come for her, would they have bothered about those details? But then, if people had come for her, it was a racing certainty next door’s sentinel would know about it. The thought, the deed, the space between the two: he was banging on Jennifer Knox’s door within seconds.
“Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“So late.”
It wasn’t late, was barely eight, but darkness was threading its way through the local lanes, and the neighbourhood nestling down like a pigeon.
“Mrs. Knox, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t disturb you if it wasn’t an emergency, but I really need to know, were there callers next door? Did a car come?”
“Is this about your friend?”
“About my friend, yes.”
“She went off in the car with the other two. Just five minutes ago.”
“Which other two?”
“The couple from”—her
voice lowered a notch—“the hospital.”
“Okay,” said River. “When you say a couple—”
“A man and a woman, yes.”
“In a car.”
“It was silver, I think. Or white. It’s hard to tell with the streetlights.”
She backed away from the front door, ushering him in. He stepped inside, leaving the door open. He would need to leave in a hurry. Would need no obstacles.
But Mrs. Knox was heading into her sitting room. “Would you close that, please? Keep the warm in?”
He pushed it to, and followed her. “Did they say where they were going?”
“They said she wasn’t well. Did I do the right thing?”
“Did they say where they were going?”
“Only she’s been there days, and doesn’t come out at all. And I thought the house had been cleared? What’s she been sleeping on?”
“Mrs. Knox—”
“They looked surprised when I said she was in there. They thought the house was empty.”
He took a moment to wrap his mind around that. They’d come looking for Sid, but hadn’t expected to find her? Or hadn’t been looking for Sid at all?
“But they knew who I meant when I said you had a friend staying.”
“And did they say where they were going?”
She furrowed her brow.
“Mrs. Knox—”
“Please, I can’t bear to be badgered.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s important. I really need to know where they were taking my friend.”
“They said they’d be taking her back to the hospital. And that I shouldn’t worry if she seemed upset, because she’d been off her medication for a while.”
“Did you see them leave?”
“You didn’t tell me she’d been on medication. It’s only fair to let people know.”
“I’m sorry.” Various stories flew in and out of mind: harmless conditions requiring minor dosages. But all of this was wasting time. “Do you know which direction they went?”
“I’m not sure, which way’s the hospital?”
River said, “There are different routes. I really need to catch up with them. Which way—”