by Mick Herron
“Yeah, I think you were meant to be—forget it.”
She put them on. They covered half her face. “Do I look like J.Lo?”
More like Jeff Goldblum, Lech thought. In The Fly.
They’d eaten on the move, after having delivered a metric ton of Indian takeaway to the mews house. In keeping with Louisa’s restriction, Lech had refused to countenance Shirley’s offer of driving “just until we’re clear of the city,” because, her opinion, “it’ll be quicker that way.” For one thing, he pointed out, she was way over the limit. And for another thing, there didn’t need to be another thing. Because she was way over the limit. He still wasn’t sure his argument had hit home, but the fact that he held the keys, not her, was the clincher.
The O.B.’s house was outside Tonbridge, Kent. The rain had moved west, and rush hour was over; all in all, there were worse ways of spending an evening, were it not for the company, and his awareness of impending doom.
Still with the shades on, Shirley said, “How much trouble do you think we’re in?”
“Well, we mugged someone in a toilet and the whole world seems to know about it. So quite a lot.”
“At least we didn’t kill him.”
“The fact that you see that as an upside worries me.”
“It’ll be all right.”
She sounded confident.
Lech said, “Gut feeling? Or do you know something I don’t?”
“We’re Slough House, not Park. Lamb’d sack us if he felt like it, wouldn’t need a reason. But he won’t let Taverner.”
“Yeah, one small thing? Taverner’s his boss.”
Shirley just laughed.
She toyed with the sunglasses, letting them dangle from her ears, cupping her chin. “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
Shirley waggled her fingers in front of her eyes, like a celebrity signposting fake tears. “Having your face mashed up.”
“Empowering. You should try it.”
“Do you wish you hadn’t?”
He’d hit rock bottom the day Lamb had handed him the razor. In case a third way occurs to you. Other than stitches or surgery. The latter was out of his salary bracket, and stitches would have left his face looking like a sampler made from a tabloid headline. So what did that leave, wrapping bandages round his head like the invisible man? Actually, that might have worked. But no way was he going into this with Shirley, so he just grunted, and concentrated on overtaking the sixteen-wheeler in front. Spray misted the windscreen. “You didn’t know this Sid woman, then?”
“Nah. She was dead before I started.”
“Or not.”
Shirley shrugged. “She was shot in the head. She might still be alive, but I doubt she’s the person she was.”
Lot of that about, thought Lech. He said, “You think Lamb’ll go to bat for us, then?”
He could hear her alcohol intake in her laughter. “Lamb with a bat in his hand. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near.”
Lech felt much the same about Shirley and any blunt object. Sharp ones, he’d done as much damage to himself as anyone was likely to.
She said, “But Taverner was taking the piss, wiping Slough House. So yeah, I think he’ll nobble her. Not ’cause he wants to keep us. Just to stop her taking us away.”
He thought: And this is the world I move in now. Where decisions are based, not on the greatest good or the most just cause, but simply on fucking up the opposition, even if the opposition’s your own side.
Rifling through the glove compartment again, Shirley had found some chewing gum. “Do you ever get déjà vu?”
“I feel like I’m about to.”
“We should check the boot,” she said. “See if Louisa bought a new monkey wrench.” And when Lech raised his eyebrows, said, “You never know.”
At the third time of trying, the dump-bin went through the window, and the resulting scatter of glass was accompanied by a roar of approval from the Yellow Vests, as if the windowpane had been all that was hemming them in. En masse they swept onto the road, causing traffic, which had been grumpily processing past, to come to a halt; a line of buses and taxis, taxis and buses, soon blocked both Oxford and Regent Streets, while cycle-drawn hansoms took to the pavements. From a distance it might have seemed like a celebration in progress—Victory Over Europe Day, perhaps—but in the immediate area, a violent undercurrent was palpable. One broken window wasn’t such a mess, in the scheme of things. But it seemed like a start.
Oddly, a TV crew had been in place throughout, though Yellow Vest gatherings were barely newsworthy these days; were just another street hazard, like wobbly paving slabs or charity muggers. But Channel Go had sent a van earlier in the evening, and its crew were on the street, filming the commotion. From the cab window Judd watched them weaving through the crowd with interest, not least because one of them had just the kind of legs he admired: long, and attached to a woman.
Noise rose and fell, like a wave breaking over silt.
“Meter’s still ticking, guv,” the driver said.
“I’m immensely glad that you reminded me of that. But it’s of no importance, I assure you.”
“Your money.”
“And soon to be yours.”
This promise gladdened the driver’s heart, or at least loosened his tongue. “Interested in these jokers, are you? The Yellow Vests?”
“Mmm.”
“Yeah, no, I say jokers, but they’ve got a point. It’s the voice of the people, you get down to it. I mean, it’s been a joke, hannit? These last few years? A flippin circus. It gets you wondering, who are the government to tell us what to do?”
“A strikingly acute question. And now, I have a favour to ask.”
“Anything you say, guv.”
“Stop talking. And step outside for five minutes. I’m about to take a meeting.”
Which commenced twenty seconds later, when Desmond Flint joined him.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked, climbing into the cab.
“I know,” Judd beamed. “Almost as if your people had a mind of their own.”
“I mean—this wasn’t . . . A peaceful gathering. That was my instruction.” He closed the door. “But this, this . . . The police are lining up on Oxford Street. This’ll make us look like criminals.”
“As so often happens when laws are broken,” said Judd. “But do stop worrying. Here.”
He handed Flint a silver flask. Flint took it, uncomprehending.
Judd said, “The Home Secretary is unlikely to order the police to move in without the PM’s say-so. And since he has a way of being hard to find when decisions are called for, we have a little time.”
“This was deliberate. A troublemaker. None of my doing. This is the work of one of those, what did you call them? An Asian something?”
“Victoria’s Secret Agents,” said Judd.
“. . . What?”
“Just my little joke. Agents provocateurs.”
“And you said they’d been dealt with. That you’d persuaded MI5 to withdraw them. But now this happens. And there are TV crews, for God’s sake!”
Judd said, “Take a drink. Calm your nerves.”
Flint looked at the flask, then raised it to his mouth. Swallowed and said, “And you’re making jokes. I thought you were going to be my political saviour. Just earlier today you said that. And here we are now, and my movement, the movement I started, looks minutes away from building a bonfire in the middle of fucking London! And what have you done in the meantime?”
“Well,” Judd said, “I arranged for someone to throw a bin through a window.” He held a hand up to forestall interruption. “And I know what you’re going to say. That can’t have taken more than a phone call. But you have to know who to call. That’s where the expertise comes in.”
&nbs
p; “. . . You are out of your bloody tree, mate! You are mad as a box of Frenchmen!”
“And the same person I called to borrow a bin chucker from arranged for the first of those TV crews to be here. Channel Go. I think I mentioned them earlier. Now, be a good chap, take another belt of that rather special brandy, and run a comb or something through your hair. Because it would be best if you made your play before they do light actual bonfires. The optics would be a little, what shall I say? Reminiscent of darker times?”
“. . . What you on about?”
“Channel Go isn’t here to film a riot, Desmond. It’s here to film you.”
“. . . Me?”
Judd nodded in the direction of the increasingly restless mob. “Oh yes. You wanted an opportunity to shine, didn’t you? Well, that’s what I’m giving you.” He leaned across to open the door of the cab. “Your destiny awaits. You can thank me later. Here, take this. Oh, and leave the brandy. There’s a good chap.”
He made no attempt to hide the thoroughness with which he wiped his hip flask before drinking from it. But Desmond Flint had left the cab by then, and had far too much on his mind to take offence.
River pulled into a layby half a mile short of home, and Sid handed him his dismantled mobile. He inserted the battery and powered up.
“If you’ve all gone dark, won’t Lamb have disabled his phone too?”
He remembered the last time Lamb had switched Slough House’s lights out: he’d gathered their mobiles and posted them down a drain. On the other hand, Lamb was freer with other folks’ possessions than he was with his own. But “Soon find out,” was all he said.
Lamb answered on the seventh ring. “What fresh bollocks is this?”
“Me.”
“Not dead yet, then.”
“It would seem not.”
“And Baker?”
“I’d probably have mentioned it first thing.”
“So you’re breaking protocol why, to tell me you finally got her knickers off?”
“Someone came for her. Two someones.”
“And . . . ?”
River said, “They’re no longer a problem.”
“Well, treat my billy goats rough.” Lamb paused. “Okay, good. Unless they were just pollsters or windowcleaners or something. You wouldn’t be the first pair to go to town on a passer-by tonight.”
River didn’t know and didn’t care. “There’s a car. It’ll need tidying away.”
“So now I’m your valeting service.”
“Jackson, I’m not in the fucking mood.”
“That’s clear. I assume you’re calling from nowhere?”
The middle of. River said, “I thought it best to put some distance us and the . . .”
“Recyclables,” suggested Lamb.
“Yeah. So, are we still dark? Or can I get the Park to do their thing?”
“No. Just get back where you started from. Wicinski and Dander are heading there now.”
“And then?”
“And by then I’ll have a plan. Are the, ah, empties likely to be noticed any time soon?”
“Let’s hope not.”
“Yeah. When did hope ever let us down?”
Lamb disconnected.
Sid said, “Well, anyone eavesdropping on that’ll assume it’s just another Wednesday evening.”
Her voice was stronger.
River said, “He knows you’re alive. Probably always has done.”
“He sounds like he hasn’t changed.”
“No. If anything, he’s more so.”
“What were those names he said?”
“Wicinski and Dander. Lech and Shirley.”
“And he’d already despatched them to the O.B.’s. So he was worried about you. Us.”
“Not sure worry comes into it.” He removed the battery from his phone once more. “It’s all a game. He’s just shifting pieces round the board.”
“Isn’t that what your grandfather used to do?”
“There’s no comparison.”
“If you say so.”
“Barely common ground, even.” He scowled quickly, for no reason. Then asked, “You all right?”
Sid looked at her hands. They’d almost stopped shaking. She said, “There was this voice I kept hearing. In my head.”
“That’s okay. We all get them.”
“Shut up. It was, I thought of it as my bullet. The one I was shot with? It was like it talked to me.”
River pulled away, his eyes on the dark road ahead. “Okay,” he said again.
“Only it kind of drowned. When she was holding my head in the lake.”
Tt Tt Tt. Pp Pp Pp.
“Not a peep since.”
Qq Qq Qq.
River drove on. The road had grown familiar again: the usual bends, the usual straights. The patch of trees ahead were squared off where they overhung the road, remodelled by the regular passing of a bus. “I’m not an expert. But maybe that’s what happens, maybe traumas . . . cancel each other out.”
“Seriously? You’re not an expert?”
“Yeah, shut up.”
“Because that sounds like seven years of medical school talking.”
River said, “You sound fine. Maybe you should walk from here.”
She smiled, and looked down at her hands again. “Thanks. By the way.”
“No need.”
“She’d have killed me.”
“I know. But you did pretty good yourself.”
Sid said, “I’m not sure good’s the word I’d use.”
“You or him.”
“Yes. I know.”
“And I don’t ever want it to be you again.”
He pulled aside to allow an oncoming car to pass, and they rounded another corner, and then were home.
Catherine said, “They’re alive, then.”
“The night is young.”
Louisa said, “‘Recyclables’? ‘Empties’?”
“It seems our hit squad caught up with Romeo and Juliet, and wonder of wonders, came off second.” Lamb shook his head. “Good job I’m not a gambling man. I’d have lost the house.”
“And they’re both okay?”
“’Spect so. What am I, NHS Direct?”
“It’s over then,” said Catherine.
“Yeah, sure it is,” said Lamb. “Someone sics a hunter-killer crew on me, I’m basically just happy to call it bygones.”
Roddy said, “I was hoping to see some of that action myself.”
They all stared, and Louisa said, “You do realise you said that out loud?”
Because there were no tables, the floor was a mess of foil trays and cardboard covers, plastic knives and forks. In place of the new-paint smell that had lingered like a not-yet-broken promise, the mingled aromas of baltis and bhajis, dhansaks and dhal had taken over, along with—because Shirley had fetched Lamb a plastic lighter—cigarette smoke. Catherine had retaliated by opening the window. Lamb had glared at her as if this were the first skirmish in what might turn out a prolonged war.
Louisa said, “And you know who this someone is?”
“His proxy was a Dog called Tommo Doyle. But the man himself’s some kind of media playboy. Like a Bond villain, without the cool name.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Damien Cantor.” He looked at Ho. “Box of tricks all powered up, is it?”
“Always,” said Roddy.
“Except when it isn’t, you mean. Okay, go fetch me Damien Cantor.”
Roddy looked momentarily confused.
“Information relating to him,” Catherine explained.
“And tell him to be quick about it,” Lamb said.
But Roddy didn’t need that translated, and shuffled off to his laptop.
“
I’ve read about Cantor,” Catherine said. “He’s the Channel Go man. Pegged as the new Branson.”
“Haven’t we suffered enough?”
“He wields a lot of influence.”
“And tried to buy more by selling Slough House.” Lamb found another cigarette. “So pardon me if I don’t rush to take out a subscription, or whatever you have to do to watch the fucking telly these days.”
“Does Taverner know he sold us out?” Louisa asked.
“Yeah, but he’s currently got her bollocks in a mangle. And she hasn’t worked out what to do about that yet.”
Catherine said, “If Diana Taverner’s been compromised, she’s not fit for office.”
“And if being compromised got you the sack, we’d have vacant desks from here to Number 10,” said Lamb. “Not that that’s a bad idea. But I barely have time for a quiet smoke, never mind cleaning the orgiastic stables.” He adopted a martyred expression, lit his cigarette, and—presumably out of habit—threw the lighter over his shoulder. It disappeared through the open window. “So let’s deal with one bastard at a time, shall we?”
“Oliver Nash is chair of Limitations,” Catherine persisted. “We should talk to him.”
“Nash is a bureaucrat. If I want my bins emptied, he’s who I’d trust to put the bin-emptying contract out to tender. But Taverner goes to the mats, which is what you want First Desk to do. And besides, we’ve had our moments.”
“Didn’t she once try to have you killed?”
“I didn’t say they were good moments.”
Looking up, Roddy Ho said, importantly, “Cantor lives in The Needle.”
Louisa, who had memories of The Needle, said “Lives there?”
“It’s where his offices are. But he’s got an apartment too.”
“It’s like having my own personal Yellow Pages,” said Lamb. “Or, you know. Just Pages in his case.”
“So what exactly do you have in mind?” Catherine asked. “Bearding him in his den?”
“Isn’t bearding when you marry the Earl of Wessex? He’d probably sooner I killed him.”
“If you’re planning a murder, the rest of us are leaving. I mean it.”
“And there’s that moral high ground you love.” Lamb reached for the whisky Lech had furnished, which Lamb had received with the grace of a minor royal being offered a turd. “Must be cold up there. Explains the late-onset frigidity. Does he have family?”