by Mick Herron
The streets weren’t exactly deserted—it was a little after two—but were threadbare enough that he could drive on auto-pilot. On the fringes of the capital streetlights became more sporadic, then gave way to darkened roads whose rises and dips were sketched in by oncoming traffic. Lamb smoked as he drove, and each time he reached the filter he wound the window down and flicked the butt into the night, where it spat orange sparks into cold damp air.
Bright glittering beads at rabbit level observed his passage. Just once the car rucked, and wheels mashed fur and bone into ten yards of tarmac. The expression on Lamb’s face didn’t change, even as his cigarette shed a worm of ash into his lap.
He parked on a verge, where his tyres would leave treadmarks in the grass, and sat for a while without moving. The car’s heater had rendered the air thick and rubberised, but this had more established odours to compete with, like cigarette smoke, and the half-portion of chow mein which had slipped under the passenger seat an aeon ago, and would now require a high-powered vacuum cleaner or a certified zoologist to remove. Lamb himself wasn’t odour-free, come to that. He plugged another cigarette into his mouth without lighting it. Rubbing the corners of his eyes with his thumb and ring finger instead, he revived the images of other cars’ headlights, which looped briefly across the inside of his eyelids before spinning away into nothing.
It was a starless night, thick black cloud wrapping the sky, and the streetlamps were wreathed in mist, the hedgerows heavy with collected rain. The houses here were large and detached, each walled or fenced off from its neighbour; islanded by lawn and flowerbed, and anchored to the earth by the weight of a century or so. Their gateposts were chipped or crumbling, their driveways as rutted as farmyards’, and their hallways would be stuffed with Labradors and wellingtons, with overcoats handed down from father to son—a tightness masquerading as tradition, unless it was the other way round—because it was old money, in all its shabby glory, that owned villages like this. There’d be poorer elements, their function to mow lawns and repair boilers, but the foxes here would be red and bushy, the squirrels fat and cheeky, unlike their nicotine-addicted counterparts in London parks and alleys, while the human inhabitants would be bluff, smug, and brimming with the confidence born of inherited wealth. Lamb took care to slam the door when he hauled himself out into the cold. There was little point in discretion. He could already see upstairs curtains twitching in the nearest house.
A police car was parked by David Cartwright’s gate. Two other unmarked vehicles were nearby, one with a goon behind the wheel; the other empty, its hazards flashing. He felt its warmth as he passed. Cartwright’s front door was ajar, light puddling onto the driveway. A uniformed policeman stood there, observing Lamb’s approach with the wary contempt a street copper feels for the Funny Brigade. “Help you sir,” he said: three bare words, neither question nor statement. Lamb might as well have pulled a string on his back.
In place of an answer, Lamb produced the belch that had been brewing for the past five minutes.
“Very convincing, sir. But I’m going to need to see something laminated.”
Lamb sighed, and reached for his Service ID.
In the hallway a technician was dusting the banister for fingerprints, looking every inch an extra in a TV show. Star power was provided by the blonde in the black suit talking on her mobile. Her hair was bound in a severe back-knot, but if that was an attempt to dim her wattage, it failed; she could have painted a beard on and still sucked up all the local attention. When she saw Lamb she finished her conversation and slotted her phone into her jacket pocket. She was wearing a white blouse under the suit: her eyes were blue, her manner all business. But she didn’t offer her hand.
“You’re Lamb,” she told him.
“Thanks,” he said. “This time of night, I’m plagued by doubts.”
“We’ve not met. I’m Emma Flyte.”
“I guessed.”
Emma Flyte was the new Head Dog, in charge of the Service’s internal police squad. The Dogs sniffed out all manner of heresies, from the sale of secrets to injudicious sexual encounters: the honeytrap was older than chess, but stupidity was even older. So the Dogs were used to a long leash, roaming whatever corridors they chose, but were currently in the doghouse themselves: Dame Ingrid Tearney, erstwhile head of the Service, had used their offices to further her own interests, and while initiative was frequently applauded, getting caught exercising it was not. Emma Flyte, an ex-police officer, was the new administration’s clean-sheet appointment, though as more than one commentator had noted, if Regent’s Park was looking to the Met for an injection of integrity, it was in serious danger of an irony meltdown.
She said, “You know Mr. Cartwright?”
“Which one?”
“Either. Both.”
“The younger one works for me. His grandfather gave me a job once. You want to show me the damage?”
She handed him a pair of paper boots. “Treat it as a crime scene.”
Lamb left a lot of crime scenes in his wake. Arriving at one after the event was something of a novelty.
So was putting on a pair of paper boots, or so Flyte seemed to think. She watched with fascination as he attempted to slip the first one over his left shoe without bending over.
“It might help if you did your laces up.”
“I don’t suppose . . . ”
She didn’t grace that with so much as a smile.
Sighing, he got down to floor level and tied his laces. That done, the paper boots went on easily. When he regained his feet, his face was red and he was breathing heavily.
“I’d say you’re out of shape,” she told him. “But I’m not sure what shape you’re aiming for.”
He leered. “Offering to take me in hand?”
“Not even with these on.” She wore latex gloves. “It’s in the bathroom. That’s upstairs,” she added, as if his general knowledge wasn’t necessarily reliable in such matters.
Lamb led the way. The staircase was narrow for the size of the house, the pattern on its carpet a faded blurry mix of blue and gold. On the wall were a series of prints, pencil sketches of hands and faces, as if the artist was working up to something big but hadn’t got there yet. On the topmost one, an outstretched palm, the glass was smeared with blood. Lamb paused, then glanced down at the technician below. “Missed a bit.”
The landing was lined with books, shelved around a windowseat looking onto the front garden. The nearest open door was a bedroom, Lamb assumed the old man’s; lining a corridor were three other doors, one closed, with, at the far end, another set of stairs: attics and boxrooms, one-time servants’ quarters. On the wall opposite one of the open doors was another bloody handprint. You didn’t have to be a detective. He took the cigarette from his mouth, wedged it behind his ear, and jammed his hands into his pockets.
Behind him, she said, “Lamb?”
He paused.
“It’s bad in there.”
“I’ve seen bad before,” he told her, and entered the bathroom.
The body lay on the floor, which was where bodies usually ended up, in Lamb’s experience. He’d seen them hung in trees too, and washed up on shorelines, and a few snagged on barbed wire, dangling like broken puppets. But by and large, when you had a body, the floor was where it was going to finish. A little of this one had washed over the bathtub, too: its face was a pulped absence, a reminder that flesh and bone were temporary at best, and prone to rearrangement. He was probably imagining the smell of cordite in the air. Blood and shit were more prominent: besides, the trigger had been pulled on this scene easily a couple of hours ago.
“He was carrying this.” Flyte handed him a laminated card, much like the one he’d shown the policeman, but fresher, newer. When he held it at the right angle, its hologram configured into something like River Cartwright’s face.
“Uh-huh.”
He crouched down for a closer look, without any of the creaking or visible effort he’d made when tying his laces. The body wore jeans, black boots, a black V-neck over a white sweatshirt. It had had teeth once, and a nose, eyes, all the usual stuff, but none of that was currently available for identification purposes. The hair was carrying a lot of evidential weight, then: this was fairish, leaning towards brown, though substantially bloodied up at the moment. Cut short, but not excessively so, which fitted Lamb’s memory of his last sighting of River Cartwright. There were no rings on the fingers, no jewellery of any kind. That, too, was a match.
“Did he have any identifying marks?” Flyte asked.
“He used to have a face,” Lamb said. “That any help?”
“Tattoos? Scars? Piercings?”
“How the fuck should I know? I make them wear clothes round the office.”
“We’ll do blood work. But the faster we can do this, the better.”
“A mole,” Lamb said. “He had a mole on his upper lip.” He glanced at the bathtub. “You’re gunna need a pair of tweezers and a sieve.”
“So this is him.”
“What do you think?”
“I’d appreciate a response.”
Lamb passed a hand across his face, but when he took it away his expression hadn’t altered. “It’s him,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
“It’s River Cartwright,” Lamb said, and rose easily and left the room.
She caught up with him in the garden. He was smoking a cigarette, though the one behind his ear was still in place. Way overhead, a tear in the clouds allowed moonlight through: this cast a silvery tint on damp grass and wet hedges. A set of cast-iron furniture was arranged on the crazy-paved patio. One of its matching chairs had toppled over: it lay in a mad position, legs in the air, like a stranded tortoise.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Bit of a head,” said Lamb. “I’m not normally a drinker, but I had a sherry before dinner.”
“I’ll skip the pastoral stuff then. He was shot twice. Both times in the face.”
“Seems excessive. Though he could be annoying, I’ll give you that.”
“You don’t seem too concerned.”
The look Lamb gave her was blandly unexpressive. “I’ve lost joes before.”
“You were an Active.”
“While you were still in mittens. The neighbours hear anything?”
“Not until we turned up.”
“So who called it in?”
“He had a panic button.”
“Police?”
“No. Us.”
“So what was the response time?”
She said, “We don’t come out of this well. He pressed it at 21:03. First responder got here at 21:49.”
“Forty-six minutes,” said Lamb. “Good job it wasn’t an emergency.”
“It was his third call in three weeks. The two previous occasions, he’d forgotten what the button was for. He’d pressed it to find out.”
Lamb tapped his temple with a finger.
She rolled her eyes. “His last medical checked out okay. He’d admitted occasional memory lapses, but nothing significant. He could remember the date, his phone number. Who the PM was.”
“Impressive,” Lamb agreed. “Could he remember what he looks like?”
“All I’m saying, there was no reason to think he was anything other than a bit scatty. And certainly none to expect this.”
“And here’s me thinking the panic button was for the unexpected.” Lamb squashed his cigarette end on the table. “If we were first responders, why are there woodentops here?”
“SOP when there’s a body.”
He whistled. “I knew we’d gone corporate. I didn’t know we’d been spayed.”
“You’re maybe out of the loop. These days, we try to operate within the law. Which means drink-driving’s a definite no-no, by the way. Did you not get that memo?”
“Couldn’t read it. My decoder ring’s broken. So where is he, anyway?”
“Where’s who?”
“David Cartwright, who do you think?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” said Emma Flyte after a pause. “We have no idea.”
“I thought you said he had a button. Did nobody mention they’re traceable?”
“Thanks, I’ll make a note. But I’ve already traced his particular button to the kitchen table.”
“Did you look underneath it?”
“He’s not in the house, he’s not out here in the garden. Not with the nearest neighbours. We could do a canvass, but until we get word on how to play this, we don’t want to be flying too many flags.”
“What about the gun?”
She shook her head.
“So, to sum up,” said Lamb. “A former senior spook—I mean, seriously, this guy knows more secrets than the Queen’s had chicken dinners—blows his grandson’s face clean off then disappears into the night, armed. Oh yeah, and he’s lost his marbles.” He shook his head. “This is not gunna play well on Twitter.”
“At least we picked the right week to bury bad news.”
“What, Westacres? You’re joking. Any bomb that goes off in London is an Intelligence Service fuck-up, which ironically enough describes young Cartwright too. Trust me, there’ll be keyboard warriors joining the dots as soon as this hits the web.”
“We’ll wrap it up before it comes to that.”
“The next sound you hear will be me, expressing confidence.” He farted, and reached for the cigarette behind his ear.
Something rustled down the far end of the garden, but it was just the great outdoors, not a former senior spook. Lamb lit his cigarette, still staring in that direction. The clouds overhead healed themselves, and what little moonlight there’d been shimmered out of view.
“So you’re the boss of the famous Slough House,” Flyte said. “Isn’t that where they keep the rejects?”
“They don’t like to be called that.”
“So what do you call them?”
“Rejects,” said Lamb. He broke off his study of the darkness and turned to face her. “And you’re the new broom. For some reason, I was expecting someone less . . . female.”
“Do I detect a trace of sexism?”
“Christ, not you too. Sexism, sexism, blah blah blah. It’s like you’re all constantly on the rag.” He exhaled a blue cloud. “How long have you been a Dog?”
“Two months.”
“And before that?”
“I spent eleven years in the Met.”
“Uniform?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just painting a mental picture.”
“I spent some years in uniform, naturally.”
“Have you still got it?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be shy,” he said. “A figure like yours, and a uniform handy. That’s gunna make some man very happy.”
“Maybe I’m gay.”
“Well, picturing that’s gunna make a lot of men very happy.”
“This isn’t an appropriate conversation, Lamb. Apart from anything else, one of your team just died.”
“I’m working through my grief. I might need a little leeway.”
“I think what you need is to go. Thanks for your input. We’ll confirm your identification once the blood work’s through.”
“No hurry. I’d hate it to clash with my denial phase.” He dropped his cigarette and trod on it. “The last Top Dog had a run-in with an iron bar, did they tell you that? He’s upright again, but I heard they’ve pinned feeding instructions to his shirt.”
“The grapevine says it was young Cartwright wielding the bar.”
“Grapevines say a lot of things. But it’s mostly the wine talking. The guy before him, h
e was altogether classier.”
“Bad Sam Chapman.”
“That was just a name. He wasn’t that bad.”
“Except for the bit about losing a quarter of a billion pounds.”
“I said he wasn’t bad. I didn’t say he was perfect.” Lamb put his hands in his pockets. “Good luck with finding the old bastard. That’s what the boy used to call him.”
“Affectionately, I hope.”
“River thought so. But he was a bastard all right. I guarantee that.”
As he brushed past, she wrinkled her nose and said, “Have you showered lately?”
“Tempting offer,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s appropriate right now. Apart from anything else, one of my team just died.”
He walked through the open French windows and into the house.
“No, really,” Emma Flyte murmured to his back. “You had me at ‘fuck.’”
In London, dawn broke along the familiar fault-lines, grey light seeping through cracks, drawing round the edges of the tallest buildings. The forecast was for more dull weather, a promise kept by the rain rolling in to dampen the capital’s streets: taxis were already on the prowl as the first wave of commuters came crashing out of the tube stations, wondering where its umbrellas were. Where once there’d have been newspaper vendors on corners, now there were kagoule-clad youngsters, mostly Asian, handing out the free-sheets to passers-by, many of whom were using them as makeshift rain-protection. The warning lights at pedestrian crossings counted down to zero, buses came lumbering out of the gloom, and another day dragged itself from sleep, inviting miserable winter to do its worst, again.
A COBRA meeting had been called for 7:30, the early start a traditional method of indicating the serious intentions of all concerned. We may not be getting anywhere, the subtext read, but at least we’ve had very little sleep. Pre-meeting meetings were thus taking place from 6:00 onwards, as various Head Desks herded their ducks into a row, and some of the faces round the tables were new: over the past months, significant changes had been rung in the personnel called forth by crisis. Life in Whitehall’s corridors was sometimes compared to a game of musical chairs, an image conjuring genteel notions of women in bonnets, men in stiff collars, and a well-rehearsed string quartet pausing mid-note. No pushing, no shoving, no tears before bedtime: a gentle ruffle of applause awaiting the victor. But the reality was more like a mosh pit, with thrash metal accompaniment. Most of those playing were too deafened by reverb to notice when the music stopped, and losers wore the imprints of winners’ boots on their faces. Still and all, it sometimes happened that the most skilful players of the game found themselves outmanouvred. Peter Judd, for example, erstwhile Home Secretary and Prime Minister manqué, had retired into what passed for him as private life, his business interests—the official story going—having become incompatible with a political career. Dame Ingrid Tearney, former Head of the Intelligence Service, had likewise surrendered the reins of office, in her case to take up a role at one of the heritage charities dedicated to preserving Britain’s traditional verities: not so different in aim, perhaps, from her former life, but involving, it was to be hoped, less carnage. And there’d been other retirements too, from Westminster; none of them—it can’t be repeated often enough—remotely connected with ongoing police investigations into the sexual abuse of children: on the contrary, all were dictated by loftier concerns—to allow fresh blood into the body politic; to make way for younger guns; to give elbow room to the distaff side, as one outgoing notable put it, his vocabulary indicating how firmly his finger was held to the pulse of contemporary life. So the music had stopped, the music had started again, and bruised and bloodied players were licking wounds and picking sides.