by Mick Herron
“Hurt yourself?”
“No. Just practising my land and roll.”
“Yeah,” said Louisa. “In case you find yourself doing a teeny-tiny parachute jump.”
Back at Blake’s grave they gathered around Catherine, Shirley still unfocused, the rest of them growing impatient. Rain was in the air, and an occasional shiver shook the trees. Somewhere on City Road, brakes squealed.
Catherine said, “Does anyone know where River is?”
“I think he went to Kent,” Louisa said.
“His grandfather’s?”
“Uh-huh.”
“. . . Why?”
“He had a good reason,” Louisa said. “But if that’s where he is, even if he’s heading straight back, he’ll be a while.”
Catherine pursed her lips. “He didn’t respond to the text.”
If he’d been obeying protocol, Louisa thought, he’d have dumped his phone soon as the text came through. And if any of them were likely to follow the protocol, that would be River. But before she could remind Catherine of this, Catherine was speaking again. “Okay, Lamb said that once Roddy got here, I should start.”
Ho visibly swelled.
Lech said, “Could you run his exact words past us?”
“I’d sooner not.”
“Because I doubt they were a compliment.”
“Shut up, scarface,” said Ho.
“That’s enough. All of you.” Nobody, thought Louisa, did schoolteacher quite like Catherine. “Now. Some of you will remember Struan Loy.”
“Yes,” said Louisa.
“No,” said Lech.
“No,” said Shirley.
“No,” said Ho.
Catherine gave him a look. “Well, you should. He was at Slough House same time as you.”
Ho shrugged.
“What’s happened to him?” Louisa asked.
She had the feeling it was nothing good. Former slow horse wins the lottery wasn’t a headline waiting to be printed.
Catherine said, “He died. In a fire.”
Another squall of wind shook the trees, and they rustled in annoyance. Shush. Shush.
Lech said, “Okay, that’s sad, but he was before my time. So no offence, but if you’re planning a whip-round for a wreath, count me out. And why the cloak and dagger, anyway?”
“Because the fire was set deliberately. And he’s the second Slough House, ah, graduate, to die in the last few weeks.”
Lech paused. “That’s not a good statistic.”
“Hence, as you say, the cloak and dagger.”
“Who was the other one?” said Shirley.
“Kay White. Also before your time.”
“But not before mine,” said Louisa. “I thought she had an accident.”
“Yes,” said Catherine. “But the kind that might have happened on purpose.”
“We’re being hunted.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“That’s what Lamb thinks?”
“He thinks someone’s taking revenge for the Kazan hit last month.”
“I thought that was just a rumour.”
“It is a rumour, yes. But it’s also true.”
“Welcome to Spook Street,” murmured Shirley.
“By ‘someone,’ we’re presumably talking GRU?” Lech said. “They’ve sent a hit team?”
“Again,” said Catherine, “it’s a possibility.”
“But why us?” said Louisa. “We’re hardly in the frame for Kazan.”
Ho said, “But you can see why they might suspect us,” and frowned meaningfully.
“The Park,” said Shirley. “This is them, right? Dropping us in the shit as usual.”
Lech said, “That’s a stretch. Putting targets on our backs for the new intake, that’s one thing. But I can’t see Taverner selling us to the Russians.”
“Yeah, we’ve probably seen sides of her you haven’t,” said Louisa. “And anyway. This isn’t the current crew, is it? Whoever’s doing this is has got hold of an old team list.”
“Which would nevertheless include some of us,” said Catherine. “So you can see why I’d be happier if River had shown up. You’re sure he’s just out of town?”
Louisa said, “Yeah, about that. There’s something you should know.”
A rusty metal complaint interrupted her: the Bunhill Row gate was opening. It shut a moment later, and footsteps made their way along the flagstoned avenue towards where they were gathered.
Whoever it was, there were two of them.
“Scatter,” Louisa said.
She, Lech and Shirley made for the shadows round the side of the fenced-off graves. There was tree-cover, and bushes against a high brick wall: hideouts for children, but no place of safety. If whoever had come for Struan Loy and Kay White was coming for them, they’d be easy pickings. Louisa ducked into shadow and dropped to one knee, but when she peered back, Catherine and Ho remained standing in the light, staring after them.
Oh, crap.
It was Lamb making his way towards the graveside, and he wasn’t alone. Leaning into him was a young Indian woman whose right arm hung at an awkward angle, her left hand gripping the opposite shoulder as if holding everything in place. Lamb was propelling her forwards with a grace unusual to him, or not often on display. Her face was scrunched up in pain, and she was coughing softly, or whimpering.
Lamb said, “All right. Daddy’s home.”
Somewhat sheepishly, Louisa led the others out of the shadows.
Ho sneered. “I knew who it was,” he told her.
“Catherine did,” Louisa said. “You’re just slow to react.”
Catherine, meanwhile, was studying the young woman. “Who’s this? And what have you done to her? She looks hurt.”
“She’s fine,” said Lamb.
“But she looks hurt,” repeated Catherine.
“Okay, I broke her arm. But other than that she’s fine.”
Catherine stared at him. “What?”
Louisa said, “You broke her arm? For God’s sake! We need to call her an ambulance.”
“First one with a phone gets fired,” said Lamb. “You should have gone dark when you got the text. Or do I need to remind you you’re supposed to be fucking spies? Here. Hold this.”
“This” was the woman, and it was Lech he was speaking to. Who looked alarmed to find himself having to wrap a restraining arm around a captive, especially an injured, unhappy one. “Are you okay?” he asked her, as Lamb shoved her into his orbit.
“Bastard,” she said.
“Who is she?” said Shirley. “And how come you got to break her arm?”
“Bitch.”
“Can I break her other one?”
“Nobody’s breaking anything,” said Catherine.
“She’s Park,” said Louisa.
“Oh, somebody’s awake,” said Lamb. “Thank you, Lara Crufts. Hope you didn’t trip over any tombs back there. Yes, she’s Park, and she’s here courtesy of the Boy Blunder. You can always rely on Odd-Rod to make the right mistake.”
Ho tried on his meaningful-frown face again.
“He means she tailed you,” said Lech. “Idiot.”
“And you were waiting to intercept her,” said Catherine. “But why did you have to break her arm?”
“Because if I’d broken her leg I’d have had to carry her,” Lamb said. “I mean, it’s not rocket science.”
“We need to get her seen to,” said Catherine. “You can’t just—”
“It’s a clean break,” said Lamb. “What am I, an amateur? And Taverner’ll make sure she gets what she needs, just as soon as she’s delivered a message.”
“What message?”
“That whatever game Diana’s playing’s gone sideways, and we’re the one
s hanging off the edge. You got that, Southpaw? These words are for your boss’s ears only. Tell her I want to talk about Kay White and Struan Loy. In one hour. She knows where I’ll be.” He lobbed a key at Lech, who took it one-handed. “Best let her walk out. Watching her climb the fence’d be funny, but we’re on the clock here.”
“You’re sure this is—”
“What I’m sure is, I don’t want to hear the next words out of your mouth.”
For a moment the little group was still, as if enacting a tableau: the end-point of a pilgrimage, gathered by this grave. Then all except Lamb watched as Lech walked the injured woman down the path towards Bunhill Row.
“All that just to get Taverner’s attention?” said Catherine, once they were gone.
“Well, I considered leaving a horse’s head in her bed,” said Lamb. “But the logistics are insane.”
“Sid’s alive,” said Louisa.
A revelation that didn’t seem to surprise Lamb. “And Cartwright’s with her?”
“I think so.”
“Then you mean she was alive,” said Lamb. “Him too.” He brushed his mouth, and a cigarette appeared. “Whoever these fuckers are, they’re not amateurs either. And like I said, we’re on the clock.”
When he lit his cigarette, he was briefly burnished by a halo of flame.
Louisa, thinking of River, shivered, and the first few spots of rain began to fall.
The car moved slowly along the lane, or that was how it felt to Sid. Slowly in the way that you moved slowly towards an undesirable appointment: your legs heavy, the pavement hostile, but time pouring away at its usual speed. Darkness was falling fast, in response to strange rural gravity. There were no overhead lights, but the car’s beams picked out hedgerow and gatepost, painting them in brief, minute detail, some of which fluttered away when lit. Moths, Sid thought. Moths and midges. There’d be more disturbances all around, sudden startlings and departures, if she could only see them. The creatures of the night reacting to the large bomb travelling past.
Sid was in the back seat, Jim next to her. Jane driving. Jane seemed calm and deliberate, her every move in tune with the car’s progress. Jim, seatbelt in place, was half-turned towards Sid, his expression one of benign insincerity. It would be better all round, his face suggested, if we could get this done without wasting more breath: on words, on smiles, on life. But he’d be prepared, if necessary, to lend an ear to any plea Sid might care to make, provided Sid didn’t expect him to act on it.
Sid’s sojourn in the study seemed like ancient history; like a walk in an orchard on a summer’s day.
And that lump of concrete, she belatedly realised, had been a fragment of the Berlin Wall. Hence its presence in the O.B.’s study. Much of his life had been dedicated to bringing that wall down, or that was how it appeared in retrospect. Perhaps it had simply been dedicated to fighting those who’d put it up, the wall itself being no more than a marker of which side he’d been on. Given a different birthplace, he might have been equally happy resisting the values of the west. Either way, at the end of the long road travelled, that chunk had come to rest on his bookshelf, symbolic of a temporary victory. Because history was cyclical, of course, and more walls would be built, and there’d always be those who hoped it would be better on one side than the other, and die attempting to find out. And in the longer run those walls would fall too, along with the despots who’d built them, crushed by the bricks they’d stacked so high. Walls couldn’t last. All the same, Sid wished she’d slipped that concrete lump into her pocket while she’d had the chance. There’d be something equally cyclical about using it to smash Jim’s face in.
Though its weight in her pocket would have alerted him, of course. They were assuming Sid was weak, and unlikely to defend herself, but Jim would have noticed if she’d tried to smuggle a brick out in her jacket.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked at last.
“We’ve told you,” said Jim. “To the hospital.”
“No, really. Where are you taking me?”
He said, “Trust me. It amounts to the same thing in the end.”
Jane dipped the headlights to allow an oncoming car to pass undazzled, and cranked them up again once the lane ahead was clear. Sid caught a glimpse of a lone tree in a field, its limbs a crazy tangle of malice, and then it was gone.
And the end, whatever it might be, drew nearer.
From across the water drifted the sound of an old man mumbling in song, the same words, same cadence, as if he were caught in a loop of prayer. It stirred a memory in Diana that she couldn’t pin down as she walked the towpath towards Islington, where the canal disappeared into a tunnel. It had rained, only briefly, but enough to disturb hidden odours that sweetened the evening air. Houseboats lined the path, some of them floating plinths for what, in the shadows, seemed Heath Robinson contraptions designed to prepare their vessels for flight, but which would disassemble in ordinary daylight into bicycles and watering cans, recycling bins, seedling trays. From houses on the other side the occasional noises of family life filtered out: voices and snatches of music. But, a solitary runner apart, the towpath was empty. Diana was heading for the farthest bench, the one just this side of the tunnel. On it waited Jackson Lamb.
From this approach he looked like an exhausted tramp, and for a moment she wondered if he were the source of that mumbled prayer. His shoes were scuffed lumps, the hems of his trousers frayed, and his overcoat might have been stitched from the tattered sail of a pirate ship. And she had little doubt that the odour of cigarettes and scotch would grow apparent the nearer she came, interrupting the softer smells the rain had released; little doubt, too, that for all his repose he knew damn well she was approaching, had been aware of her since she set foot on the towpath. And for half a second she had a troubling glimpse of another Lamb inside the shell of this one; one who had posed for the image in front of her, and whose carefully composed decrepitude was a sculptor’s trick.
Best to take the offensive. Best not to be anywhere near him, in fact, but he’d sent a damaged telegram in the form of a trainee spook, and she’d had little choice but to heed his summons.
“You fractured my agent’s arm,” she said, taking a place on the bench as far from him as possible.
He opened his eyes. “I warned you not to fuck with my joes.”
“A twenty-three-year-old woman, for God’s sake!”
“Yeah, I’d have done the same to a forty-year-old man. This is what a feminist looks like.” He studied her. “Moving on. ‘I might have made a mistake.’ Your words. And guess what? My death count’s rising faster than the PM’s dick at a convent school prize day. So. Want to explain the nature of your mistake? Or should I take a stab at it myself?”
He shifted as he spoke, and for an uncomfortable moment, she wondered if he were reaching for a blade.
But no. Not Jackson Lamb’s style.
She said, “Making mistakes is something every First Desk does, it goes with the territory. But whatever’s going on with your old crew, that’s landed out of nowhere. Nothing to do with current operations. So best thing all round would be if you just leave things to me, to the Park.” She felt her eyelid tremble, and hoped he didn’t notice. “I gather you’ve gone dark. That’s sensible. Stay that way until I give the all clear, and the rest of your team will be fine.”
“That’s a relief. Do I get a kiss night night now?”
“You need to trust me on this, Jackson.”
“Funny thing. When I hear the words ‘trust me,’ I get the feeling someone’s pissing in my shoe. So like we were saying, you made a mistake. This have anything to do with that club on Wigmore Street? Run by Maggie Lessiter?”
Diana said, “She tries to keep that quiet.”
“Yeah, and I tried to keep this quiet.” He farted, a three-note trumpet solo, then eased his buttock back onto the bench. “But someh
ow word got round.”
“God. Don’t you ever consider impersonating a human being?”
“Never met one worth pretending to be.” He put a cigarette in his mouth, but didn’t light it. Possibly for fear of igniting the atmosphere. “Public schoolboy hang-out, isn’t it? Spotted dick for pudding, and matron rapping knuckles with a wooden spoon. Drawing lots to see who gets to be Prime Minister.”
“So I enjoy the occasional lunch off the premises,” Diana said. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, you’ve taken a dip in the money pit. Because nobody pulls off a hit on a foreign holiday, especially not a Russian one, without serious brass in their pocket. And everyone knows there’s no spare cash for Service jollies, what with You-Know-What costing the earth. So when you greenlit that Kazan op, you did it with a suitcase full of used banknotes. And where better to find one of those than Lessiter’s club?”
“This is pure fantasy.”
“Nothing pure about it. You’ve been there all right. Ho ran your Uber records.” He shook his head. “I mean, seriously. You’re supposed to be Head Spook. You’re about as under the radar as a Goodyear Blimp. But anyway, yeah, I wanted to know where you were when you started using Slough House as a dartboard. And who you might have been hanging out with.”
Diana looked away, towards the deeper darkness of the tunnel the canal headed into, or out of. Like most things, it was a matter of perspective. She said, “You’re confusing separate issues. What happened to White and Loy had nothing to do with any of this.”
Lamb had found a lighter somewhere, and lit his cigarette at last. “So I got Ho—and I have to tell you, he might be a twat, but he’s a talented twat. I keep expecting him to start firing ping pong balls—so anyway, I got Ho to look at who else might have been having lunch there same days as you, and guess whose credit card he found?” He exhaled smoke, making sure it blew in her direction. “Bullingdon Fopp. Bespoke PR services to rich tossers everywhere, in the shape of one Peter Judd. Now, why was I not surprised at his name cropping up? UK politics’ hardy perineum.”
Taverner winced. “I assume you mean perennial.”