by Mick Herron
His uncle, the soldier, had tracked him down
Any of the above …
And Hassan allowed himself to hope.
Traffic was light, mostly taxis and night-buses. London was a twenty-four-hour city, but only if you counted the things nobody wanted to do, like find a way home in the middle of the night, or head out for a cleaning job in the pitch-dark cold of the morning. Watching through the window, River was trying to get his head round what Lamb had told them before they’d piled into separate cars: that there were three kidnappers. That one was a friendly, but it was anybody’s guess which, or how he’d react.
‘Are they armed?’
‘I’m guessing they’ve got an edged weapon of some sort. They’d look bloody stupid trying to take the kid’s head off with a gherkin.’
‘So why us?’ River asked. ‘Why not a SWAT team? Why not the achievers?’
Lamb didn’t answer.
Through the passenger window River saw a figure curled in a shop doorway under a pyramid of cardboard, but it was gone already; not even a memory. River refocused on his own reflection. His hair was shaggy, and a day’s worth of beard graced his chin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a barber’s. He supposed they’d have shaved Sid’s head first thing. Her head must seem tiny without her hair. She’d look like a Hollywood alien.
His reflection dissolved, and came back when he blinked.
It was all part of the same thing. Hobden, Moody, Hassan Ahmed, Sid being shot—it was all part of somebody else’s game, whose pieces seemed to have fallen into place for Lamb. It had been Lady Di he’d gone out to meet. He hadn’t said so, but who else could it have been? River himself hadn’t laid eyes on Diana Taverner since spending two days tailing her, all those months ago. But Lamb, slow horse or not, had middle-of-the-night parleys with her …
They passed a stationer’s, its familiar logo lit in blue and white, and a connection he’d fumbled for earlier was made.
‘It’s money, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘In that envelope. The one Moody took from your office. It’s money. It’s your flight fund.’
Lamb raised an eyebrow. ‘Flight fund? Haven’t heard that in a while.’
‘But that’s what it is.’
Lamb said, ‘Oh, right. Your grandfather. That’s where you got it from.’
He nodded to himself, as if that were a problem solved.
And he was right, of course; that’s where River had heard it. Every joe needs a flight fund, the O.B. had said. Couple of grand, couple of hundred, however much it takes. In the straight world, they’d call it fuck-you money. Dammit, I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t tell your grandmother.
River could still remember the thrill that had gone through a twelve-year-old boy, hearing that. Not because of the f-word, but because his grandfather could say Don’t tell your grandmother, and trust him not to do so. It gave them a secret. It made them joes together.
A flight fund was what you needed when you lived on the edge, and might slip off any moment. Something to feather your fall. To give you the means to walk away.
‘Yes,’ Lamb said, surprising River. ‘It’s a flight fund.’
‘Right.’
‘Not a fortune, if you’re thinking your ship’s come in.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Fifteen hundred, a passport, and a key to a box.’
‘Switzerland?’
‘Fuck you Switzerland. A bank in a two-donkey French town, four hours’ drive from Paris.’
‘Four hours,’ River repeated.
‘Why am I telling you this?’
‘So you’ll have an excuse to kill me?’
‘That’s probably it.’
Lamb didn’t look any different, was still a soft fat rude bastard, still dressed like he’d been thrown through a charity shop window, but Jesus, River thought—Lamb was a joe. He kept a flight fund pinned behind his noticeboard, which he plastered with money-off coupons and out-of-date special offer ads nobody ever saw beyond. Mis-direction. It was what a joe did, or so the O.B. had always told River: There’s always someone watching. Make sure they’re not seeing what they think they are.
Crossing the Thames, River saw a world of tall glass buildings. They were mostly in darkness, towers of unilluminated windows casting back pinpricks of light they’d found on the streets below or the skies above, but here and there a pane would be starkly lit, and through some there were figures visible, crouched over desks or just standing in rooms, their attention owned by the unknowable. There was always something going on. And it wasn’t always possible, from the outside, to understand what it was.
Of course, hope is what gets you in the end.
Worse than the noise had been the silence that followed.
Hassan was holding his breath, as if he were hiding, rather than being hidden. It half-occurred to him that if these bastards knew how English he was, how wary of drawing attention to himself, they’d forget the colour of his skin and embrace him as one of their own … But no, these bastards, they’d never forget his skin. Hassan Ahmed hoped that the SWAT team, the armed police, his uncle the soldier, showed these bastards no mercy, now they’d tracked them down.
Larry, Moe and Curly.
Curly, Larry and Moe.
Hassan didn’t give a toss who they were either, all right?
But it wasn’t his uncle who burst into the cellar a minute later.
‘You.’
They meant him.
‘On your fucking feet.’
But Hassan couldn’t get up. Gravity had sealed him to the chair. So they had to help him—grab him. Drag him. Rough-handle him on to shaky legs and pull him through the door and up the stairs. Hassan wasn’t sure how much noise he made during this. Perhaps he was praying. Because you always found your gods again. For however long he’d been in that cellar, he’d been begging Allah for release; making all the bargains always made in this situation. Perhaps if Hassan had believed in Him, He wouldn’t have abandoned Hassan to the fate of dying for being one of His believers. But Hassan wasn’t allowed much time to meditate upon this. Mostly he was being manhandled up a narrow flight of stairs, at the top of which waited whatever was going to happen to him next.
He had thought the execution would happen down in that cellar.
But it happened in the kitchen.
The house was on a terrace that had seen better days, most of them pre-war. The upstairs windows were boarded over and those at ground level thickly curtained, with no light showing. A water stain spattered its façade.
Lamb said, in a harsh whisper, ‘Hands up who hasn’t been drinking tonight?’
Min and Louisa exchanged a look.
‘Here.’ Lamb handed River Moody’s gun, the .22. ‘Point it anywhere near me and I’ll take it off you.’
It was the first time River had been on a public street with a weapon. It should have weighed more.
He said, ‘You think they’re in there?’
Because the house didn’t simply look asleep. It looked dead.
‘Act as if they are,’ Lamb said. They’d driven straight past the house; had parked twenty yards down. Min and Louisa had been right behind them; now all four were crouched beside Lamb’s vehicle. River glanced at his watch. If Lamb’s estimate had been right, they had five minutes before the achievers turned up. Seven, if you wanted to be strictly accurate.
‘We’re going in?’ he asked.
‘We’re going in,’ Lamb said. ‘You and me. You can do the door.’ This last to Louisa. ‘There’s a jemmy in the boot. And you watch the back.’ Min. ‘Anyone comes out, don’t let them see you. But don’t lose them. All clear?’
All was clear. Months of waiting for a real job to do: they weren’t about to pass it up.
‘Okay. Don’t anyone get shot or anything. It goes on my record.’
Louisa fetched the jemmy, and they approached the house in a line; Min walking straight on by, heading r
ound the corner to watch the back. At the door, Louisa slipped the jemmy in at latch height like a born housebreaker. She leant on it hard, and the door splintered open. And then Lamb was moving faster than a fat man should, wielding an H&K in a double-fisted grip. He snapped to the right two steps in, kicked open a door that led to an empty room. ‘Armed police!’ he shouted. River took the stairs in three bounds. It was dark; no tell-tale strips of yellow painting the doors’ outlines. He entered the first room fast and low; spun 360, gun outstretched. ‘Armed police!’ Nothing. Just a pair of mattresses on the floor, and an unzipped sleeping bag curled like a sloughed skin. There was a shout from downstairs. He backed out, kicked open the second door: same story. Another shout: Lamb calling his name. The last door was a bathroom. He pulled the light-cord. A green stain blossomed beneath one of the bath taps, and a shirt hung from the shower rail. It was damp. Lamb shouted his name again. River ran downstairs.
Lamb was silhouetted at the end of the hallway, looking at something on the kitchen floor. His gun was in his hand, but his arm hung by his side.
River said, ‘Upstairs is clear.’
Lamb said, ‘We need to go.’
His voice was ghoulish. Warped.
Louisa Guy approached River from behind. She was holding the jemmy in a two-handed grip. ‘What is it?’
‘We need to go. Now.’
River moved closer and stepped through the kitchen doorway.
The body sprawled across the kitchen floor had once been taller. Now it lay in a pool of gore, around which a fat bluebottle hummed busily.
Behind him, Louisa said, ‘Oh sweet Jesus.’
On the kitchen table sat a head, raggedly removed from its owner.
River turned and pushed past Louisa. He barely made it out before throwing up into the gutter.
They crossed the black river in a blue car, red memories staining their minds. Enough blood staining their cuffs and their shoes to render them bang to rights at a glance, let alone after forensic study.
The one driving said, ‘Did you have to …’
‘Yes.’
‘He was …’
‘He was what?’
‘I just …’
‘You just what?’
‘I just wasn’t ready for it.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘No, well, he wasn’t either, was he? But guess what? Makes no fucking difference. He’s just as fucking dead.’
He was. He was dead. They’d left his head on the kitchen table.
How much deader could he get?
Chapter 12
‘Phones. Now.’
Dumbly, they fumbled for their mobiles.
‘Where’s Harper?’
He was arriving at a trot. ‘What happened?’
‘Your phone,’ Lamb said.
‘My phone?’
‘Now, damn it!’
Min Harper fished out his mobile phone; added it to the three Lamb was holding; watched in horror as Lamb dropped all four down the storm drain at his feet.
‘Okay, go. Fetch Ho, Loy and White. I’ll get Standish.’
All of this, to River, like a dream sequence; voices booming in and out of focus; the nearest streetlight swimmy. He felt empty-legged, like a wind might knock him over, and didn’t want to look back at the house with its still-open door, with its kitchen, with its table on which sat a severed head. If a head could sit. If a head could sit.
‘For fuck’s sake, Cartwright, don’t do this now.’
River said, ‘I’ve seen him before.’
‘We’ve all seen him before,’ Lamb said.
Louisa Guy ran a trembling hand through her hair. Min Harper touched her elbow, and she shook him off.
‘He was one of us, Cartwright. He was a slow horse. Now get moving. Get the others. Don’t go home.’
River glanced at Min and Louisa, and read their expressions accurately. ‘We don’t know where they live.’
‘Give me strength.’ He rattled off addresses: Balham, Brixton, Tower Hamlets.
‘Then where?’
‘Blake’s grave. Soon.’
They left in separate cars.
A bare minute later, two black vans arrived, and figures piled out.
‘A spook.’
‘But …’
‘But fuck all. He was a spook. End of.’
He made a chopping motion with one hand.
In both their minds, a head fell to the floor.
‘I’m …’
‘You’re what?’
‘I’m just …’
‘You’re scared.’
‘You killed him.’
‘We killed him.’
‘I didn’t even know you were gunna do that.’
‘Did you think this was a game?’
‘But it changes everything.’
‘You’re a nancy. Nothing’s changed.’
‘Nothing’s changed? We killed a copper—’
‘Spy.’
‘Spy, copper, what’s the difference? You think they’ll let this lie? You think they’ll—what?’
Because Curly had thrown his head back and screamed in mirthless laughter.
Diana Taverner was in her office. It was shortly after three, and the hub was mostly empty; only a couple of the kids hunched over a console, coordinating surveillance of an animal rights group. She’d just put the phone down. The tactical ops squad—‘the achievers’—had gone into the house near Waterloo; it was empty, save for a body. They’d cut his head off. The good part, if you could call it that, was that he’d been dead before that happened.
A fingerprint scan was on its way, but she already knew whose the body was. It wasn’t Hassan Ahmed’s, so it had to be Alan Black’s. Her agent. Jackson Lamb and his crew were nowhere. Her earlier worst thoughts, about things going even more wrong, had come to pass. It was as well she’d set a back-up plan in motion.
Echoing that thought, the phone rang. Ingrid Tearney, her boss. They’d spoken earlier; Taverner had called her from the canal. She was somewhere over the Atlantic, nearer New York than London.
‘Ingrid,’ she said.
‘I’m hearing rumours. What’s going on, Diana?’
‘Like I said earlier. It’s Jackson Lamb.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘It looks like it.’ She leant forward; rested her forehead on her palm. Commit to the action, and the voice follows. ‘The body at Waterloo? It’s Alan Black’s. He used to be one of Lamb’s. Quit last year, but maybe he didn’t after all. It looks like Lamb’s been playing him all along.’
‘Jesus wept. This cannot be happening.’
‘Best I can tell, Lamb was running the kidnapping to make a personal score. Or else, God knows, to make the Service look good. Either way, it’s shot to hell. His agent’s murdered, and the others are gone, Hassan Ahmed with them. And there’s no reason on earth they should stick to their deadline now.’
‘Christ, Diana, this is your watch—’
‘Mine? Slough House hardly falls under my jurisdiction, does it? Before we start the recriminations game, let’s get that on the record. And face facts. The body’s one of Lamb’s people. Lamb knew where to go, for Christ’s sake.’
Ingrid Tearney said, ‘He was there, then. At Waterloo.’
‘Yes. I don’t know where he is now. But we’ll trace him.’
‘In time?’
‘Ingrid, at this stage he knows as much about Hassan Ahmed’s whereabouts as we do. His op’s blown. We’re looking at damage limitation. I know you’re shocked. But he’s always been a loose cannon. And ever since the Partner business—’
‘Careful.’
‘I don’t officially know what happened then, but I’ve a shrewd idea. And anyone who can do what Lamb did probably thinks he’s above scrutiny. I’ve been worried about him for some time. That’s why I put Sid Baker in there.’
‘And what did she report?’
‘That Lamb runs the place like a mad herm
it. Sits in his top-floor lair with the blinds drawn. It’s not a big surprise he’s tipped over the edge, Ingrid.’
She was using her name too often. She’d have to watch that.
‘What’s Baker said about tonight?’
‘She’s in no position to say anything. She was one of tonight’s casualties.’
‘Hell’s teeth. Did I miss the meeting where war was declared?’
‘We’re mopping up. I’ve one of Lamb’s people downstairs. It won’t take long to get cast-iron proof. All we need is something that puts Lamb with Black since Black quit the Service. Let’s face it, Jackson Lamb’s not the Friends Reunited type.’
‘You’re very keen on playing the judge.’
‘Well, it’s a fucking mess! We’ve got the body of a rogue agent, in a house where Hassan Ahmed was held. How’s that going to play with the boy’s uncle? We can swear we’ve clean hands till the cows come home, he’s still going to smell Service involvement. And this is a man HMG hopes is going to come down on the side of the moderates. We’ve got to clean it up.’
‘There’s a crew there now?’
‘Yes. But they’re not investigators, and they don’t do forensics. If anything’s marked clue, they’ll pick it up. But otherwise …’
‘But otherwise they might miss something that would help the cops find Hassan,’ Tearney finished.
Both fell silent. A blinking light on Taverner’s phone told her she had another call. She ignored it. The receiver felt hot, but she gripped it so tight her hand trembled.
‘Okay. Bring him in.’
‘Lamb?’
‘Lamb. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.’
‘What about Hassan Ahmed?’
‘I thought you’d covered that.’
London rules, she thought. London rules. ‘I’m going to need to hear you say it, Ingrid.’
Some decisions, she wanted other people’s fingerprints on from the start.
‘Oh, Christ. Having Mahmud Gul’s nephew killed on our soil is one thing. Having him killed with our connivance is another. Leave him to the cops, and pray they get to him in time. Either way, I don’t want Five appearing in their write-ups.’
‘Lamb’s not likely to come quietly.’
‘He’s not an idiot. Get Duffy on to it. And bring the rest of them in too.’