Slow Horses

by Mick Herron

  ‘We could dump him,’ Larry said suddenly.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Anywhere. We could park and walk away.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘… Disappear.’

  Right. But nobody ever disappeared. They just went somewhere else. ‘Keep driving,’ Curly told him.

  It still powered through his arm, the force of that blow. The blade had half-disappeared in Moe’s back—it looked like he’d sprouted an extra limb—and then there was blood everywhere, some of it pounding through Curly’s ears. Larry’s mouth flapped, and maybe he’d shouted and maybe he hadn’t. It was hard to tell. It probably only lasted seconds. Moe coughed what remained of his life on to the kitchen table, and all through Curly’s arm the power sang.

  But cutting his head off, leaving it there … Why had he done that?

  Because it was legend.

  Outside, rows of shops dawdled past. Even when their names weren’t familiar, they were knock-offs of ones that were: Kansas Fried Chicken, JJL Sports. Everywhere was like everywhere else, and this was the world he’d grown up in. Things used to be different. Gregory Simmonds, the Voice of Albion, was very clear on that point. Things used to be different, and if the natural children of these islands were to enjoy their birthright, they had to be that way again.

  He checked behind him. There they were on the back seat: the digicam and its tripod; the laptop and all its cables. He wasn’t sure how that worked, but it didn’t matter. Getting it on film was the main thing. He’d work out how to post it to the web later.

  The axe was there too, wrapped in a blanket. In videos he’d seen, they’d used swords; whacking great blades that sliced through bone like butter. Curly had an English axe. Different strokes for different folks.

  A giggle escaped him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Keep your eyes on the road.’

  Legend. In the pubs and on the estates, on the internet, in all the places where people still said what they thought and weren’t afraid of being locked up for saying it, they’d be heroes. It would be a life lived in the shadows, one step ahead of the cops. He’d be the conquering hero, Robin Hood, famous for dealing this mighty blow; showing the foreign fanatics that they weren’t the only ones who could draw blood, that not all Englishmen were too frightened to fight back. That there was a resistance. That resistance would win.

  He looked sideways and recognized the fear Larry was trying to hide. That was okay. All Larry had to do was what he was told, and he’d do that because he wasn’t currently capable of independent thought.

  If he was, it would have occurred to him that they’d stand a better chance of getting away if there was only one of them doing it.

  But Larry kept driving.

  Chapter 13

  This darkness was smaller than the last. Hassan was hooded again, with a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, his knees tucked up to his chest, and his hands bound.

  When he flexed them, the cord dug into his wrists. But even if it snapped, what would he do? He was in the boot of a moving car. His captors still had him. Two captors, because one was dead. His head had been left on the table in that house.

  They’d brought him up from the cellar, into the kitchen, and there it had been, on the table. A human head. It sat in a pool of blood. What else could he say about it? It had been a head, and Hassan had seen films in which severed heads had been displayed, and had laughed at how ‘unrealistic’ they were, without it ever occurring to him that he had no frame of reference for the level of realism achieved. And now he did. And all he could think was that a real severed head was little different from a movie severed head, with one critical difference: it was real. The blood was real. The hair and teeth were real. The whole thing was real. Which meant that what he’d been told, We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web, was also real. Fucking Paki.

  He had wet himself, and the jumpsuit clung to his legs. He wished he could remove it, and dry himself off. Wished he could have a shower, and change, and go to sleep, somewhere which wasn’t the boot of a moving car. If he were going to make wishes, perhaps that was the end he should start at. He should wish he were free and safe, and could worry about changing his trousers in his own sweet time.

  The comedy voice in his head had fallen silent. There were issues that were not suitable for comedy. This argument had weekly been shot down in flames at the student stand-up society; try putting forward that point of view, and you’d be accused of fascism. Freedom of speech mattered more than notions of taste and propriety. Hassan Ahmed had agreed with that. How could he not? When the moment came, and he took his stand at the mic, it was all going to come out. Daring, edgy stuff. Nothing off-limits. That was the contract between stand-up and audience: they had to know you were baring your soul. Except now Hassan had encountered a severed head on a kitchen table, and had immediately understood that this was not something that could ever be the subject of a joke. And even if it could, it was not a joke that Hassan could make. Because it proved that the people holding him were capable of cutting off heads.

  The thumps and jolts and crashings would not stop. The cord binding his wrists would not fray. Hassan would not find himself unleashed, but would lie suffering until the car reached its destination, and then he too would reach his destination. This was his last journey.

  So even if he could. Even if he could make the best joke ever. Even if he could make the best joke ever, with its subject the decapitation of unwilling humans, this was not a joke Hassan could ever make, because Hassan was never going to make jokes again. Not that he had made that many to begin with. Because if he were to be uncompromisingly harsh on himself—if he were to tell the truth, observing the contract between stand-up and audience—Hassan would have to admit this too: that he had never been particularly funny. He could make jokes, yes. He could ride riffs. He could unreel a comedy thread and wrap it round the usual observation posts: quips about old people shopping, and teenagers texting, and how nobody smiles on buses. But only in his head. He had never been himself in public. And now never would be. Doing so would remain forever on the list of things Hassan had intended to do in his twenties; a list which would never grow longer and never grow shorter, for Hassan’s twenties were not going to happen.

  Because these people were never going to let him go. Not without killing him first. We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web. Fucking Paki.

  The car bounced and bashed him, and Hassan Ahmed tried to make himself smaller. In his mind, he escaped in seventy different ways, but his body remained in the boot.

  The common wisdom was that car-theft gave you a buzz, but that probably only held true if your evening hadn’t already involved blood, firearms and a severed head. The car was a beat-up Austin, taken from a sidestreet, and River guessed its owner’s reaction on finding it gone would be a sigh of relief. There were no spare keys in the glove compartment or behind the rearview mirror, but there was a mobile phone in the former; a chunky grey thing that looked like River’s own phone’s distant ancestor. Hotwiring took him seven minutes, which was probably six minutes fifty over the record. He’d driven back the way they’d come, crossed the river at Blackfriars, then tried to use the phone to call the hospital again, only to find it was pre-pay, and out of credit.

  This, at least, gave him a buzz, but not a welcome one. Throwing the phone through the window would have relieved his feelings, but he settled for swearing heavily. Swearing was good. Swearing helped. It kept his mind off the possibility that Sid was dead; kept it, too, from flashing back to the head on the kitchen table, raggedly sawn from its owner.

  But why had it been familiar?

  He didn’t want to dwell on it, but knew he had to … The answer was buried within his subconscious and ought to be within his grasp. He stopped swearing. Remembered he was on a mission, and came to a halt at a junction, reestablishing his bearings. He was on Commercial Road; heading for Tower Hamlets, where he’d collect Kay Wh
ite. Stationary, he was hooted by a car behind, which swung out to pass him. He swore again. Sometimes it was good to have a visible enemy.

  Because God knows, River thought bitterly, he was weary of the invisible kind.

  Pushing thoughts of severed heads aside, he resumed his journey. Another two minutes, and he found his turning: on the left-hand side was a three-storey brick-built block, its matching window frames and guttering marking it out as association housing. Maybe twenty yards ahead, double-parked outside what could easily be Kay’s address, was the car that had hooted him three minutes ago: lights on, engine running. A figure hulked behind the wheel. River reversed into a space, and disconnected the ignition wires. Got out and walked back to the main road. Turned the corner, dropped to one knee and peered back round, just as a man brought Kay White out of her home and loaded her into the waiting car.

  She was neither cuffed nor roughly handled. The man was guiding her by the elbow, but it could have been taken as support if you didn’t know what you were watching. He settled her into the back seat, and got in after her. The car moved off. The moments during which River could have done anything to stop any of this had been over before he got here, and he wasn’t sure what use he’d have made of them anyway. The last time he’d tried an intervention, Sid had wound up lying in the street.

  The car reached the next junction, turned, and was gone.

  River returned to the Austin, and stole it all over again.

  Struan Loy’s night had started promisingly. He’d had a date, his first in three years, and had planned it like an attempt at Everest, the base camps being wine bar, Italian restaurant and her place. Base one had proved a tremendous success, inasmuch as she had turned up; base two less impressive, as she’d left halfway through, and base three remained whereabouts unknown. Loy had returned home to an unmade bed and three hours’ sleep, interrupted by the arrival of Nick Duffy.

  Now he sat blinking in harsh underground light. The room was padded, its walls covered with a black synthetic material which smelled of bleach. A table dead centre had a straight-backed chair on either side, one of them bolted to the floor. This was the one on which Loy had been told to sit.

  ‘So,’ he said to Diana Taverner. ‘What’s up?’

  He was aiming for a carefree delivery, with about as much success as Gordon Brown.

  ‘Why should anything be up, Struan?’

  ‘Because I’ve been brought here in the middle of the night.’

  And certainly looked like he’d dressed in the dark, thought Taverner.

  ‘Nick Duffy brought you here because I asked him to,’ she said. ‘We’re downstairs because I don’t want anyone to know you’re here. And we’re not having this chat because you’ve done anything wrong. We’re having it because I’m reasonably sure you haven’t.’

  She leant just enough on reasonably for him to pick it up.

  He said, ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  Taverner said nothing.

  ‘Because I’m pretty sure I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Pretty sure?’

  ‘A turn of phrase.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘I mean, I know I haven’t done anything.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Or not since, you know.’

  ‘Not since that e-mail suggesting that your boss and mine, Ingrid Tearney, was an Al Qaeda plant.’

  He said, ‘It was the outfit she wore on Question Time, you know, that desert-gown thing …’

  She said nothing.

  ‘It was a joke.’

  ‘And we have a sense of humour. Otherwise you’d not have seen the light of day since.’

  Loy blinked.

  She said, ‘Only kidding.’

  He nodded uncertainly, as if receiving his first glimpse of how unfunny jokes could be.

  Diana Taverner glanced at her watch, not caring he knew it. He only had one chance to climb on board. This wasn’t a decision he could mull over, and get back to her in the morning.

  ‘So now you’re in Slough House,’ she said. ‘How’s that working out?’

  ‘Well, you know …’

  ‘How’s that working out?’

  ‘Not so great.’

  ‘But you haven’t quit.’

  ‘No. Well …’

  She waited.

  ‘Not sure what I’d do otherwise, to be honest.’

  ‘And you’re still wondering whether you’ll ever be let back upstairs.’

  ‘Upstairs?’

  ‘The Park. Do you want to hear something really funny, Struan? Do you want to hear how many people have made the journey back from Slough House to Regent’s Park?’

  He blinked. He already knew the answer to that. Everyone knew the answer to that.

  She told him anyway. ‘None. It’s never happened.’

  He blinked again.

  She said, ‘Of course, that doesn’t mean it never will.

  Nothing’s impossible.’

  This time he didn’t blink. In his eyes, she saw wheels starting to turn; possibilities sliding into place like tabs into slots.

  He didn’t speak, but he shifted in his chair. Leant forward, as if this was a conversation he was sharing, rather than an interrogation he was subject to.

  She said, ‘Have you noticed anything unusual at Slough House lately?’

  ‘No,’ he said, with absolute certainty.

  She said nothing.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he added.

  She checked her watch again.

  ‘What sort of unusual thing?’

  ‘Activity. Activity above and beyond the normal course of events.’

  He thought about it. While he was doing so, Diana Taverner reached for her bag, which she’d hung on the back of her chair. From it she produced a black-and-white photograph, three inches by five, which she placed on the table between them. Turned it so it was facing Loy. ‘Recognize him?’

  ‘It’s Alan Black.’

  ‘Your former colleague.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Seen him recently?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You haven’t seen him lately in Jackson Lamb’s company?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that presents us with a problem.’

  She sat back and waited.

  ‘A problem,’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes. A problem,’ she agreed. ‘Tell me, Struan. How would you like to be part of the solution?’

  In Struan Loy’s eyes, wheels turned again.

  ‘Should we go round the back?’

  ‘Can we get round the back?’

  ‘There might be an alley.’

  Min Harper and Louisa Guy were at Ho’s place; had pulled into the last available space moments before another car had arrived, slowed, then headed on down the street and parked. The pair watched without speaking while a man emerged.

  They were in Balham, a stone’s throw from the railway line. Brixton, where they’d stopped for Struan Loy, had been a washout: he was either not at home or had died in his sleep. Like all the slow horses, Loy lived alone. That seemed a stark statistic, and it was odd that it hadn’t occurred to Min Harper before. He didn’t know whether Loy was single from choice or circumstance; divorced, separated or what. It seemed unsatisfactory, this ignorance about his colleagues, and he’d thought about raising the subject with Louisa, but she was driving. All the alcohol they’d put away earlier, it seemed a good idea to let her concentrate on that. Come to think of it, there was other stuff they should be discussing, but that too had better wait. From out of nowhere, they were on an op. How had that happened?

  ‘So …’

  The man they’d been watching slipped out of sight.

  ‘Okay. Let’s try it.’

  Crossing the road, Min felt his jacket bang against his hip. The paperweight. He was still carting the paperweight he’d used earlier, when confronting the masked intruder who turned out
to be Jed Moody. He rubbed his thumb along its surface without taking it from his pocket. He hadn’t hit Moody with it. Hadn’t needed to. They’d taken a tumble, and only Min had got to his feet. He supposed that should go in the account book somewhere, in the opposite column to the one where he’d stepped off a tube train without a disk, and his career had gone whistling away down the dark tunnel.

  He hadn’t liked Jed Moody, but didn’t enjoy knowing he’d been the instrument of his death. He suspected he hadn’t got to the bottom of that feeling yet. Everything had happened so swiftly since that he hadn’t yet taken it on board.

  Leave it for now, he thought. You could coast for a while on that mantra. Leave it for now.

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘Looks doable.’

  They’d found a thin strip of unpaved passage between the backs of one row of houses and those on the next road. It was unlit, overgrown, and neither had a torch, but Ho lived only four houses along. Louisa led the way. The bushes were wet, and hung with cobweb. Underfoot was slick with mud, and they were walking close enough that if either went down, both would. Any other night, it would make for a comedy moment.

  ‘This one?’

  ‘That’s what I make it.’

  Light showed from an upper storey. Ho seemed to have an upstairs conservatory. They climbed the fence, a flimsy wooden construction, and as Min dropped into the paved-over garden, a plank snapped cleanly behind him with a noise like a bullet. He froze, expecting alarms or sirens, but the noise simply disappeared into the dark. No curtains twitched; no voices were raised. Louisa Guy dropped next to him.

  For another moment they waited. Min’s hand dropped to his pocket again, and his thumb stroked the paperweight’s smooth surface. Then the pair advanced on the back door.

  As they got closer, Min thought he could hear music.

  Audible music strained from an upstairs room, and light bled skywards from a skylight. It was what—after four? And Dan Hobbs could hear the music out here in the street.