by Mick Herron
River suspected that any debriefing that followed the shooting of an agent would be a lengthy and unpleasant process.
‘Well, how long were you planning on staying?’ Lamb asked. ‘Get a move on.’
Maybe this would be lengthy and unpleasant too.
River got to his feet and followed his boss into the light.
At the top of the stairs, nobody lurked. The paperweight felt comfortable in Min’s hand by now; a round smooth heavy presence, not entirely dissimilar to—but he thrust that thought away; stepped into Jackson Lamb’s office. The blinds were down. Pinpricks of light poked in from London’s night sky; the neon glow that settled on the city like a bubble.
Shapes took on slow substance. Desk, coatstand, filing cabinet, bookshelf. No human form. No waiting stranger.
Behind him, Louisa checked out the cubicle-sized kitchen. Unless whoever had made the noise could fit in a fridge, it was danger-free.
‘Catherine’s room.’
Similar story: desk, shelves, cabinets. But there was a skylight, and a ghostly grey light hovered over Catherine’s absence. She’d left her keyboard balanced on top of her monitor, and aligned her folders with the edge of the desk. There were shadows here too, but most of them seemed empty.
‘I’m going to turn the light on.’
‘Okay.’
It hurt both their eyes for a second, as their drunkenness re-bloomed.
‘There’s nobody here.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be.’
Doeshn’t sheem to be.
In the light, both looked washed out.
They turned back to the other office, where they could now see something leaning against the wall. It was Lamb’s corkboard, the one on which he pinned his money-off tokens.
‘Do you think—?’
Did they think it had fallen off the wall?
Movement behind them broadcast itself a moment before Min was struck.
Only a moment, but long enough for him to move, so the punch scraped his ear only, throwing him off balance but not to the floor—their assailant was clad in black; wore a balaclava; carried a small gun he wasn’t using. He’d sprung from the shadows in Catherine’s room; must have been hiding in her cupboard. His second blow caught Louisa in the chest and she gasped in pain.
Min launched himself at the stranger’s legs, and the pair of them went crashing down the stairs.
Hobbs was asleep in the plastic chair, or looked asleep. A faint smear of dribble glistened on his chin. River paused to retrieve Service card and car keys from his pocket, then followed.
Upstairs, two policemen were talking to the charge nurse, who was examining a clipboard. Lamb led River past them without a sideways glance as the nurse shook his head and pointed the cops towards the reception desk.
Outside it was dark, and starting to rain again. River’s car, which he’d left slantwise in an ambulance space, was gone. He wondered if Sid was gone too. There’d been urgency about the way those doctors, those nurses, had trolleyed her off. Perhaps they’d not heard the same factoid he had. They certainly hadn’t said Nah, head wound. They always look bad.
‘Stay with the programme, Cartwright.’
‘Where now?’
The words were cotton wool, sucking moisture from his mouth and leaving him tired and sick.
‘Anywhere but here.’
‘My car’s gone.’
‘Shut up.’
So now he was tracking Lamb across the short-stay car park; all those vehicles that hadn’t expected to be here tonight, and whose owners were inside the building behind him. He shut out the possible injuries that had brought them here, knife fights, random muggings, dicks stuck in vacuum hoses; blanked out too the picture of Sid on an operating table, her head invaded by a bullet. Or had it only plucked at her on its way past? He hadn’t been able to tell. There’d been so much blood.
‘For fuck’s sake, Cartwright.’
Two police cars were parked nearby. Neither was occupied.
Lamb drove a boxy-looking Japanese car. River didn’t care. He got in, sat back, waited for Lamb to start up. That didn’t happen.
River closed his eyes. Then opened them to a rain-flecked windscreen, each drop of water holding a tiny bulb of orange light.
Lamb said, ‘So you got locked up.’
‘Pending,’ River said. ‘Pending … whatever.’
‘And your ID’s flashing lights and blowing whistles from here to Regent’s Park. Have you any clue what you’re doing?’
‘I had to get her here.’
‘You called the ambulance. It was necessary to follow it?’ ‘She might have died. Might be dead now, for all I know.’
Lamb said, ‘She’s still on the table. Bullet took a chunk out of her head.’
River couldn’t look at him.
‘They say she might live.’
Thank Christ for that. He thought about the tussle on the pavement; that sudden sound. Phut. And then there’d been blood, and Sid was down, and the blood had been black on the pavement. Robert Hobden was nowhere to be seen. As for the man in black, he was halfway down the road before River had got to his knees, frightened to touch Sid, frightened to move her, unable to assess the damage. It had taken him three goes to ring for an ambulance. His fingers felt like thumbs, his thumbs like bananas.
‘On the other hand, she might not. And even if she does, she might end up with the life choices of a carrot. So on the whole, not a great night’s work.’ He reached out and clicked his fingers an inch from River’s face. ‘Wake up. This is important.’
River turned to face him. In the dim light, Jackson Lamb resembled something pegged on top of a bonfire. His eyes were madly red, as if already tortured by smoke. His jowls were whiskery. He’d been drinking.
‘Who was it?’
They tumbled in a noisy mess of arms and legs to the next landing. Louisa followed in a rush; two bounds bringing her level. Min was on the floor, the man in black draped over him like a duvet. Louisa grabbed, twisted, and encountered less resistance than she might have expected.
Like a beanbag. Like a broken scarecrow.
‘Jesus, are you—’
‘Where did the gun go? Where did it go?’
The gun was in the corner.
While Min scrambled to his feet, the man in black flopped like a beached pike, like a burst binbag.
‘Is he dead?’
He looked dead. He looked like he’d landed on his head, and bent his neck to a stupid angle.
‘I hope he’s fucking dead.’
Min collected the gun, bones clicking as he bent. He’d be aches and pains in the morning. He hadn’t taken a dive down a flight of stairs since, well, ever. And it wasn’t an experience he planned to repeat soon, except …
Except it felt good, for a moment, standing here. A vanquished intruder at his feet, a gun in his hand. Louisa gazing at him, unfeigned admiration in her eyes.
Well, that was stretching it. Louisa was looking at the stranger, not at him.
‘… Is he dead?’
They both hoped he was dead, though neither knew what he was doing here. This was Slough House, and anyone who knew about it knew it wasn’t worth raiding. But this guy had turned up armed, in a balaclava.
Armed, but he’d hidden from them.
‘No pulse.’
‘Looks like a broken neck.’
Why would a man with a gun hide from a couple armed with a paperweight and a stapler?
‘Let’s see who the bastard is.’
‘Who was it?’ Lamb asked.
‘He was kitted out. Combat gear, balac—’
‘Yeah, I guessed. But did you recognize him?’
River said, ‘I was meant to think he was one of ours. One of the achievers. But there was something not right. Even apart from him being on his own.’
‘What sort of something?’
‘Something—I don’t know …’
‘For fuck’s sake, Cartwright—’
�
��Shut up!’ River closed his eyes again, relived those frantic moments. The guy who’d shot Sid was halfway down the road before River had got to his knees … It had taken him three goes to ring for an ambulance. No, that wasn’t it, it was before then, the something, whatever it was. What was it?
He said, ‘He never said a word.’
Neither did Lamb.
River said, ‘All the way through it. Not one squeak.’
‘So?’
River said, ‘He was worried I’d recognize his voice.’
Lamb waited.
River said, ‘I think it was Jed Moody.’
Louisa peeled the balaclava from the man’s head.
From Min’s vantage point the uncovered face was upside down, but he knew who he was looking at.
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah …’
They weren’t even supposed to be here.
They were going to have to get their stories straight.
The rain was stopping when Lamb pulled out of the car park. River stared straight ahead, through the m-shape the wipers’ last sweep had left, and didn’t need to ask where they were headed. They were going to Slough House. Where else?
There was blood on his shirt. There was blood on his mind.
Lamb said, ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’
Any debriefing that followed the shooting of an agent would be a lengthy and unpleasant process …
He said, ‘Watching Hobden.’
‘I got that much. Why?’
‘Because he’s got something to do with the kid. The one who’s—’
‘I know which kid you mean. What makes you think that? Because he hangs out with wannabe Nazis?’
River felt his certainties washing away before Lamb’s belligerence. He said, ‘How did you find me?’
A pedestrian crossing brought them to a halt. A hooded troupe of youth dragged itself across the road in front of them. Lamb said, ‘Like I said, lights and whistles. A Service name pops into the system, cops, hospital, whatever, and you’ve got morris dancers and fucking whatnot blowing gaskets. That your idea of undercover? You’re called River, for Christ’s sake. There’s probably about four of you in the whole of Great Britain.’
River said, ‘And the Park let you know about it?’
‘Well, of course not. Do I look like I’m in the loop?’
‘So?’
‘Slough House may be a backwater, but there’s a couple of things we do have.’ The lights changed. Lamb drove on. ‘Ho has the people skills of a natterjack toad, but he knows his way round the ether.’
The people skills of a natterjack toad. It was like there was a whole other world somewhere, in which Jackson Lamb didn’t think that sentence might be used of him.
‘I’m having difficulty imagining Ho doing you a favour.’ Then River added, in fairness, ‘You or anyone else.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t a favour. I had something he wanted.’
‘Which was?’
‘What does Ho always want? Information. The answer to a question that’s driving him buggy.’
‘What’s that?’
‘How come he’s ended up in Slough House?’
River had wondered that himself, on and off. He hadn’t cared much. Still, he’d wondered. ‘And you told him?’
‘No. But I told him the next best thing.’
‘Which was?’
Lamb’s face gave away less than Buster Keaton’s. ‘I told him why I’d ended up there.’
River opened his mouth to ask, then closed it.
Lamb used the hand he wasn’t driving with to find a cigarette. ‘You think Hobden’s the only right-wing fruitcake in the country? Or was he the only one you could think of at closing time?’
‘He’s the only one I know of who’s had two spooks sicced on him in the past forty-eight hours.’
‘So you’re a spook. Congratulations. I thought you’d failed your assessment.’
‘Fuck off, Lamb,’ he said. ‘I was there. I saw her shot. You know what that’s like?’
Lamb turned to study him through half-open eyes, causing River to remember about the hippo being among the world’s most dangerous beasts. It was barrel-shaped and clumsy, but if you wanted to piss one off, do it from a helicopter. Not while sharing a car.
‘You didn’t just see it,’ he said. ‘It was down to you. How clever was that?’
‘You think I let it happen deliberately?’
‘I think you weren’t good enough to stop it. And if you’re not good enough for that, you’re no use to anyone.’ Lamb changed gear like it was a violent assault. ‘If it wasn’t for you, she’d have been tucked up in bed. Hers or somebody else’s. And don’t think I haven’t noticed the looks you’ve been giving her.’ The car growled onwards.
River said, in an unfamiliar voice, ‘She told me she was a plant.’
‘A what?’
‘That she’d been put in Slough House for a purpose. To keep an eye on me.’
‘Was that before or after she got shot in the head?’
‘You bastard—’
‘Don’t even bother, Cartwright. That’s what she told you, is it? That you’re the centre of the universe? Newsflash. Never happened.’
For a dizzy moment, River was aware only of a ringing in his ears; of a throbbing in his palm from yesterday’s burn. All of it had happened, even Sid’s words: I was put there to keep an eye on you, River. You’re not supposed to know about this. That had happened. The words had been said.
But what they meant was anyone’s guess.
The Chinese restaurant, which even when open looked derelict, was definitively shut. Lamb parked opposite, and as they crossed the road River caught a glimmer of light from one of the higher windows.
Probably a reflection from the Barbican towers.
‘Why are we here?’
‘Somewhere you’d rather be?’
River shrugged.
Lamb said, ‘We both know you know nothing, Cartwright. But that doesn’t mean Regent’s Park won’t be looking for you.’ He led the way round the back, to the familiar scarred door. ‘I won’t say this is the absolute last place they’ll look, but it won’t be top of their list.’
Entering, they were met with the sound of newly established silence.
River wasn’t sure how they knew this, but both did. The air trembled like a fork in the darkness. Somebody—some bodies—had recently stopped moving; some bodies were waiting up the stairs.
‘Stay,’ was Lamb’s harsh whisper.
And then he was heading up, light as a whisper. How did he do that? It was like watching a tree change shape.
River followed.
Two flights later he caught up, and here was what they’d missed: Jed Moody, a balaclava peeled from his face, dead as a bucket on the landing.
Sitting three and five steps up respectively, Min Harper and Louisa Guy.
Lamb said, ‘If you had issues with him, I could have spoken to HR. Arranged an intervention.’ He tapped Moody’s shoulder with his foot. ‘Breaking his neck without going through your line manager, that shit stays on your record.’
‘We didn’t know it was him.’
‘Not sure that counts as a defence,’ Lamb said.
‘He had a gun.’
‘Better,’ Lamb said. He regarded the pair of them. ‘He used it earlier, if it helps. Shot Sid Baker with it.’
‘Sid?’
‘Christ, is she—’
River found his voice. ‘She’s alive.’
‘Or was twenty minutes ago,’ Lamb corrected. Bending his knees, he went through Moody’s pockets. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Ten minutes ago.’
‘Maybe fifteen.’
‘And you were planning on what, waiting for it all to go away? What were you doing here anyway?’
‘We’d been over the road.’
‘In the pub.’
‘Can’t afford a room?’ Lamb produced a mobile phone from Moody’s pocket. �
�Where’s the gun?’
Harper gestured behind him.
‘He look like using it?’
Harper and Guy exchanged glances.
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ Lamb said. ‘This isn’t a court of law. Did he look like using it?’
‘He was carrying it.’
‘He didn’t point it exactly.’
‘You might want to reconsider your position on that,’ Lamb said, fishing a faded brown envelope from inside Moody’s jacket. ‘Son of a bitch!’
‘He was in your office.’
‘We figured he was on a raid.’
Watching the pair of them in contrapuntal gear, River recognized something new going on; a shared conspiracy that hadn’t been apparent before. Love or death, he figured. Love in its most banal guise—a quick fumble in the stairwell, or a drunken snog—and death in its usual weeds. One of the two had fused this pair together. And he flashed again on that moment on the pavement outside Hobden’s, when whatever had been starting to grow between himself and Sid Baker ended.
Her blood was on his shirt still. Possibly in his hair.
‘He had a balaclava on.’
‘Didn’t look like a junkie thief.’
‘We didn’t mean to kill him, though.’
‘Yeah,’ said Lamb. ‘It’s all very well being sorry now, isn’t it?’
‘What’s in the envelope?’ River asked.
‘You still here?’
‘He took that from your office, didn’t he? What’s in it?’
‘The blueprints,’ Lamb said.
‘The what?’
‘The secret plans.’ Lamb shrugged. ‘The microfilm. Whatever.’ He’d found something else: Moody’s black-wrapped form hid more pockets than a magician’s. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said again, only this time with less venom; almost with admiration.
‘What’s that?’
For a moment, it seemed Lamb was about to secrete what he’d found in the folds of his overcoat. But he held it up to the light instead: a brief strand of black wire, the length of a straightened paperclip, with a split-lentil head.
‘A bug?’
‘He bugged your office?’
‘Or maybe,’ River said, ‘he was on his way to bug your office.’
‘After the evening he’d had, I doubt tapping my office was top of his list,’ Lamb said. ‘No, he was cleaning up. Prior to getting out.’ He hadn’t finished his body-search yet. ‘Two mobiles? Jed Jed Jed. I’m surprised you had enough friends to carry one.’