Slow Horses

by Mick Herron

  ‘The rest of them?’

  ‘The Slough House crew. The slow horses. Get them off the streets and find out who knew what before any more damage is done. I don’t want mud sticking to Five over this. We get enough flak as it is.’

  ‘Consider it done. Safe flight.’

  For a moment, Diana Taverner sat perfectly still, looking through her wall at the kids on the hub. At all the empty spaces which would be filled in a few short hours by more kids, doing more thankless tasks. They’d have been warned about that as soon as they signed up, of course, and would have pretended to believe it, but nobody ever really did, not at first. Each and every one of them secretly expected to be appreciated. It wasn’t going to happen. She’d wanted to drop a spectacular victory in their laps. That wasn’t going to happen either. But at least she could make sure the crash happened as far off as possible, and only damaged the dead wood.

  Then she rang the crew at the Waterloo house. It was a brief, one-sided conversation: ‘Disappear the body. Clean the house.’

  Cleaning houses, when you cleaned them properly, required strong agents. Fire was the safest bet.

  Then she returned Nick Duffy’s call. He was back in Regent’s Park, though well below where she sat now. ‘Which one? … Okay. Five minutes.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Black. Alan Black.’

  River had never met him. He’d quit Slough House months before River’s arrival; one of those in whom the fire that had driven him into the Service had been quenched by quotidian drudgery. River had no idea what failure had landed Black in their company. Asking would have been like dredging up ancestral sins; enquiring which wicked uncle interfered with which parlour maid. More than that, it would have required River to care, and he didn’t.

  So why had Black’s face been familiar?

  He sat in the back, with Louisa at the wheel; Min Harper next to her. When the streetlights washed across them, their faces became doughy and unloved, but were, at least, attached to their bodies. The acrid taste of vomit stung River’s throat. Streets away, the head on the kitchen table leered at him, and probably always would.

  Because River had seen that face before. Last time, it too had been attached to its body. For the moment, he couldn’t put the parts together again: the head on the man; the man in his memory. It would come, though. River’s recall was good. Already it was churning through possibilities, plucking them like balls from the bubbling air in a lottery machine. No winners yet, but give it time.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘That it was Black?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure. Why did that bastard trash our phones?’

  ‘So no one can trace us.’

  ‘Thanks again. I knew that. I meant why’s he worried about anyone tracing us?’

  River worked it out as he spoke. ‘We’re being set up. We were supposed to be rescuing Hassan Ahmed. We find a former agent, dead. This whole Hassan thing, it must be an op. And it’s every which way screwed up.’

  ‘How did Lamb know where to go?’

  ‘It was Lady Di he went out to meet earlier, yes?’

  ‘And you’re saying she told him?’

  River said, ‘I’m saying that’s what he’s saying.’

  ‘Lamb’s running an op?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ River said. ‘Maybe. But then again, if he was …’

  ‘If he was, what?’

  River stared out of the window. ‘If he was, I don’t think he’d have screwed up like this.’

  There was silence from the front seats. Min Harper and Louisa Guy were not big fans of Jackson Lamb.

  ‘He’s carrying a flight fund,’ he told them. ‘If things had gone belly up, he’s got the wherewithal to fade away. He’d not be sending us to collect the others …’

  He was slower than his companions on this particular uptake.

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Which is why we don’t have any phones.’

  ‘And are running our arses all over London. While he’s where?’

  River said, ‘He didn’t have to fetch me. From the hospital.’

  ‘He did if he wanted to know what was going on.’

  ‘Which he would. If he was running an op.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ River asked. ‘What he said? Or head to Regent’s Park and start spilling beans?’

  This was met with silence; the sound of two bodies still fizzing with alcohol, but shocked out of actual drunkenness.

  A blue and yellow blur spun by, siren screaming. Maybe heading for the house they’d just left. But River guessed not. River guessed the tidying up of that particular mess would happen quietly.

  Then he heard: ‘I guess, if he’s not at Blake’s grave, we’ll know we’ve been screwed.’

  ‘And if we’re gunna be screwed, we might as well all be screwed at once.’

  ‘It’ll save time.’

  River felt grateful, though wasn’t entirely sure why.

  ‘Okay. So did either of you get those addresses?’

  Without taking her eyes from the road, Louisa Guy recited them, note perfect.

  ‘Nice one,’ said River, impressed.

  ‘Well, if they turn out wrong, that’ll be a clue, won’t it?’

  ‘We’d better split,’ he said. ‘You do Loy and Ho. Drop me here. I’ll head back for White.’

  ‘You’ll manage for transport?’

  ‘Please,’ River said. The car slowed; stopped. He got out.

  ‘See you later.’

  In a different car, Curly screamed in mirthless laughter.

  ‘What? What’s funny?’

  ‘You think they’d have let it lie otherwise? When we chop the Paki’s head off?’

  ‘The plan was never to do it.’

  ‘Your plan was never to do it,’ Curly said. ‘Your plan.’

  Hassan was in the boot. They’d pulled the hood over his head, and tied his wrists. If you shout or make a noise, I’ll cut your fucking tongue out.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Know what?’ Curly asked.

  ‘That he was a … spook.’

  Curly tapped the breast pocket of his denim jacket, where his mobile nestled. ‘Got a call, didn’t I?’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to have a phone.’

  ‘Good job I did. Else we’d still be back there with that fucking traitor. Waiting for the SAS.’

  He wasn’t supposed to have a phone, it was true. Mobile phones could be traced: Larry’s rule. But before they could trace you via your phone, they had to know it was yours. Otherwise it was only a mobile signal, and everyone had one of those. So he’d bought a pre-pay, and had used it to call Gregory Simmonds, the Voice of Albion, every couple of hours. Because any time Simmonds stopped answering his phone, that meant the cops were on to them.

  Curly had encountered Simmonds through the British Patriotic Party’s website, where he’d posted messages as Excalibur88, the 88 meaning HH, Heil Hitler. This was just after the Lockerbie bomber had been sent home. There’d been scenes on TV of him meeting a hero’s welcome: happy flag-waving crowds. Meanwhile the BNP was being taken to court, because it was against the law to have a party only for true Englishmen, and believers’ names were being plastered on the internet, an invitation to left-wing thugs to throw bricks through windows, and threaten wives and families.

  The issue, Curly posted, was simple. White man dies in a bomb attack? String up a Muslim from a lamppost. Right here, right now. Didn’t matter who. It wasn’t like the tube bombers had checked out their victims in advance, making sure there weren’t kids or nurses on the trains. You string one up and then another, to show them who they were dealing with. Kick me once, I kick you twice. And then jump on your head. That’s how you win a war, and this was a war.

  So then he’d been contacted by Gregory Simmonds, the Voice of Albion. A short man with tall opinions, Simmonds had made his money in long-haul logistics, what used to be called removals. He’d founded th
e Voice because he was sick of seeing this once-proud country dragged downhill by scumbag politicians in the pockets of foreign interests—conversation with him was like listening to a party broadcast, but he wasn’t all talk. Voice of Albion was about action. There were a couple of other guys Simmonds knew, a plan coming together. Was Curly interested in action?

  Curly was. Curly would have liked to be a soldier. Never worked out, so he was mostly unemployed, but he did a weekly off-the-books stint as an exit-coordinator at a club, what used to be called bouncing. This was in Bolton. There were more exciting cities, more exciting lives.

  So anyway. Officers stayed behind the lines, but Simmonds was putting the plan together, with help from these other guys, Moe and Larry.

  What they had in mind was an internet execution.

  Most people would have chickened out hearing that. Most people would have thought Simmonds was out of his mind. But Curly, because he knew Simmonds was expecting him to say something, and he hated doing what he was expected to do, just drank the lager Simmonds had been buying all evening, and waited.

  Until Simmonds said: Thing was, they didn’t actually have to cut anyone’s head off. They just had to make it look like they were going to. Show the world it could be done. That was the point. Show they could do it if they wanted. That if there was a war, it would be fought on both sides. Was Curly in?

  Curly thought about it, but not for long. He was in.

  The only part he’d had trouble with was the bit about not actually doing it.

  And because he didn’t know Larry or Moe, which meant he didn’t trust them, he’d played stupid in their company and kept in touch with Simmonds behind their back. Which was how he’d got the call forty minutes earlier, the Voice of Albion ringing him for a change, breathy and terrified. Compromised was the word he used. It had filtered down through a contact in the BPP. The mission was compromised. They should get out. They should disappear.

  Simmonds didn’t use Larry’s name. Didn’t have to. If one of them was a spy, it had to be Larry, who’d managed to make every decision sound like his own.

  ‘Which way?’

  Rising panic in his voice. Curly kept his own flat: ‘Just keep driving.’ They were still south of the river. But not turning back was the main thing.

  He could have run when Simmonds’ call came through. He could have been down the stairs and out the front. The others didn’t know his real name. He could have been part of the nightlife in minutes, miles away.

  Instead he’d stood and run a finger along the grimy bedroom wall. Adapted himself to the moment; let these new circumstances sink in. And then he’d left the room and walked downstairs and along the hallway into the kitchen.

  The axe leant against the wall like a household tool. Wooden handle, red-and-grey blade, like in a cartoon. Curly had plucked it with his left hand in passing; tossed it into his right without breaking stride. Nice weight. Smooth in the hand. Soldiers felt like this, shouldering rifles.

  In the kitchen Moe, at the table, half-turned at his approach. Larry was against the sink, can of Coke in hand. Both were same as always: Moe with a black tee-shirt, and that stupid goatee tickling his chin; Larry with his busy eyes and mildly fuzzed head, his rolled-up sleeves, smart jeans, new trainers. Looked like he was playing a role. As if this was a game, not like we’re actually going to cut his head off: Larry’s superior in-charge smile stuck to his jaw. The smile slipped when he saw Curly. Words were spoken:

  What

  Why

  For fuck’s sake

  They slipped past Curly; unimportant moments, swallowed by the business at hand.

  He’d swung the axe in a sweeping motion that almost caught the ceiling, but instead carved a graceful slice from the air before slamming to a halt in his target’s back.

  The force of the blow sent a shockwave up his arm.

  Moe coughed blood and slammed facedown on to the table.

  Larry had always done the talking. But Moe had been the thinker.

  Now Curly said to Larry, ‘Not too slowly. Don’t draw attention.’

  Larry, on whose face a superior in-charge smile wasn’t likely to reappear soon, upped their speed.

  Curly could still feel it in the muscles in his arm. Not the swing of the axe, but the abrupt stop it had come to. He rubbed his elbow, which seemed to give off heat, like a newly extinguished lightbulb.

  In the boot of the car, bound and gagged, Hassan clenched his body tight, as if this might hold his life in place.

  ‘Downstairs’ at Regent’s Park meant different things, depending on the context. Downstairs was where records were kept; downstairs was where the car park was. But there was another downstairs, much lower, and downstairs, in this context, took you lower than the building was high. This downstairs wasn’t anywhere you wanted to be.

  In Central London, there’s almost as much city beneath the streets as above. Some of this is publicly available: the underground itself, of course, and certain sites of special interest, the War Rooms and various bomb shelters among them. And then there’s everywhere else. Sometimes, names leak into the public domain—Bastion, Rampart, Citadel, Pindar—but they remain off-limits; part of Fortress London, the complex of subterranean passages and tunnels—the ‘crisis management facilities’—that exist less to defend the capital itself than to protect its systems of government. If the worst happens, whether toxic, nuclear, natural or civil, these are the redoubts from which control will be reasserted. They are fundamental to London’s geography, and appear on no A—Z.

  And then there are the other, less acknowledged hidden places, like those under Regent’s Park.

  The elevator ran slowly, and this was deliberate. A long slow descent had a weakening effect on anyone here involuntarily, inducing in those who were conscious a nervous, vulnerable state. Diana Taverner passed the while checking her reflection. For a woman who’d had less than four hours’ sleep in the past thirty, she thought she looked pretty good. But then, she thrived on the dangerous edge. Even when life was on a smoother track, she took corners on two wheels: office/gym/office/wine bar/office/home was a typical day, and sleep was never high on her agenda. Sleep was ceding control. While you slept, anything might happen.

  It might while you were awake, too. Her agent, Alan Black, was dead; killed by the Voice of Albion thugs. Any other operation, and that would be it: the whole house of cards would have folded. There’d be an inquiry. When an agent died, there was a ripple effect. Sometimes the splash was so big, careers were washed away.

  But this had been run under Moscow rules, like a deep-cover op on foreign ground. As far as Black’s record showed, he’d quit the Service last year, and Taverner had had only one face-to-face with him since he’d gone under. The Voice of Albion was a below-the-radar bunch of Toytown fascists, consisting, until Black had stirred them up, of one man and his dog. None of the op details—the safe-house address, Black’s co-conspirators, the vehicles they’d used—existed anywhere on paper or, God forbid, the ether. And yesterday’s report to Limitations had kept the details scanty; a ‘watching brief’ fell far short of surveillance, and Taverner couldn’t be blamed if Albion had slipped the leash … It was patchy, but Taverner had sealed leakier ops. One watertight report was worth any amount of tradecraft.

  The elevator eased to a halt. Diana Taverner stepped into a corridor markedly different from those above ground level; here was exposed brickwork and bare concrete floor, pitted and puddled like a temporary pavement. Water dripped. It was an atmosphere that required careful maintenance. To Taverner’s mind, it reeked of cliché, but tests had proved its effectiveness.

  Nick Duffy waited, leaning against a door. The door had a peephole, but the cover had been slapped across it.

  ‘Any problems?’

  His look answered that, but he said it anyway. ‘None at all.’

  ‘Good. Now fetch the rest.’

  ‘The rest?’

  ‘The slow horses. All of them.’

&nb
sp; He said, ‘Fine,’ but didn’t move. Instead he said, ‘I know it’s not my place to ask. But what’s going on?’

  ‘You’re right. It’s not your place.’

  ‘Right. I’m on it.’

  He headed for the lift now, but turned when she called. ‘Nick. I’m sorry. Things have gone arse over tit. You’ve probably noticed.’ The vulgarity startled Taverner almost as much as it did Duffy. ‘This kidnapping business—it’s not what it seemed.’

  ‘And Slough House is involved?’

  She didn’t answer.

  He said, ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Bring them in. Separately. And Nick—I’m sorry. He was a friend, wasn’t he? Jed Moody.’

  ‘We worked together.’

  ‘Lamb’s story is he tripped over his own feet, broke his neck. But …’

  ‘But what?’

  Taverner said, ‘It’s too soon to say. But take Lamb yourself. And watch him, Nick. He’s trickier than he looks.’

  ‘I know all about Jackson Lamb,’ Duffy assured her. ‘He put one of my men down earlier.’

  ‘Then know this too.’ She hesitated. ‘If he’s involved in this kidnapping, he’ll disappear sooner than be brought in. And he’s a streetfighter.’

  Duffy waited.

  ‘I can’t give an instruction, Nick. But if people are going to get hurt, I’d rather it was them than us.’

  ‘Them and us?’

  ‘Nobody was expecting this. Go. The Queens’ll give you their mobile locations. Call in soon.’

  Duffy caught the lift.

  As Diana Taverner tapped the fingerpad to unlock the door he’d been leaning on, she thought briefly of Hassan Ahmed, who had ceased to be a priority. One of two things was going to happen to Hassan. He’d turn up on a street corner, unharmed, or his body would be dumped in a ditch. The latter was more likely. Having killed Black, the Albion crew weren’t likely to let Hassan live. In their shoes, Taverner wouldn’t wait. But maybe that was just her. She set a high priority on watching her own back.

  The fingerpad buzzed. The door unlocked.

  She stepped inside, prepared to break a slow horse.

  There was silence from the boot. They’d have drugged the kid again, but it was Moe who’d had the chloroform, and if he’d had more, they’d not found it. Moe had been responsible for most things: choosing the target, finding the house, all the website stuff. Larry had thought he was in charge, but it was Moe all the time. Fucking spook.