by Mick Herron
Overhead, an airliner on the Heathrow approach was briefly visible below cloud, and then was gone.
Patrice slipped under the chain, one hand on the gate to prevent it wobbling. The yard seemed empty, though a light glimmered in the workshop. From his pocket he took a pair of thin leather gloves. When he snapped the poppers to tighten them at the wrist, the sound was the loudest thing on the planet.
When Louisa reached the junction the street was empty except for a fat woman, barrelling along like a boat in turbulent water. Louisa swore under her breath and did a quick 360-degree scan: there was nowhere for them to have gone. There hadn’t been time. Which meant they’d left the street altogether: entered a building, a shop, something . . .
There were no shops. A wall this side of the railway bridge was so plastered in graffiti it looked camouflaged, ready to be dropped unnoticed into someone’s acid trip; on the other side was a former gym, forfeiture notices pasted to its whitewashed windows. She glanced up at the bridge, but they’d have to be Spider-Man to have got up there. Spider-Men. And it wasn’t like they’d be working in concert.
A pro, Marcus had said. The way Chapman had ducked for cover, he’d known there was someone on his tail. So he’d have gone to ground first chance he got . . .
Beyond the bridge, set back from the road, was a pair of wooden gates: a garage perhaps, closed at the moment, a loose chain dangling from slack brackets.
Through there.
She should wait for Marcus who wouldn’t be more than a minute—make that a minute and a half. But a minute and a half was a long time for a pro; long enough to do anything he wanted.
A sudden squall of wind chased a curtain of rain down the road. It had a bracing effect. She had a task in hand: take Bad Sam Chapman to Slough House. A taxi was approaching, slowing down for her, but Louisa was nobody’s fare today. She trotted towards the gates, pushed them as wide as the chain would allow, and slipped into the yard in time to see a crowbar come hurtling at her head.
•••
He moved like he could walk between raindrops. That was Bad Sam’s uninvited thought, watching from behind one of the taxis while Patrice crossed the forecourt, heading for the workshop. In Sam’s hand was a crowbar, plucked from a toolboard nailed to the wall, and its heft in his hand triggered a slow-motion flashback: some things you don’t forget. Like: don’t swing a weapon that’s more than a foot long. The motion leaves you open as a wardrobe. No: jab, hard, at the back of the skull. Then take as long as you like to line up your second shot; your man’s not going anywhere. He’s lying on the ground, his childhood memories leaking from a punctured head.
Which was the plan, and it didn’t go wrong for some seconds. The man stood staring into the workshop as if waiting for Bad Sam to emerge with his hands up; Sam, meanwhile, rose and drifted across the forecourt behind him, the crowbar in a two-handed grip like a broom handle. And then it was gone, wrenched away so slickly, he could have sworn the man still had his back to him, but for half a moment he was staring straight into his face—yesterday’s European stranger; no doubting that now—which wore no trace of emotion, and registered little effort, even as he jabbed with an elbow, hooked with a foot, and put Bad Sam into a puddle. On his back, he saw the crowbar raised high, ready to come slamming into his skull: night night. Instead, it whipped away through the air, and Chapman’s eyes followed its flight to see it pound the wood inches from the head of a woman who’d just slipped between the gates.
I don’t know who you are, he thought, but I hope you brought a gun.
Marcus arrived too late to see Louisa squeeze between the gates, but he heard her shriek; heard the clatter of heavy metal striking wood. In his ear Shirley was gabbling, and he pulled the earpiece out to focus on the here and now. A taxi had pulled up, engine running, and through its window the cabbie was asking where Stan was, he had a service booked, but Marcus was already running for the gates, which he hit shoulder first: some give, but no damage. Through the gap, he saw Louisa sprinting towards two figures in the middle of the yard: Sam Chapman prone, and leather-jacket man standing over him. His stillness, his readiness, put the fear on Marcus: not for himself, for Louisa. But there was no way he’d get through the gap in the gates: have to lose some weight, he thought again, this time with the hollow knowledge that even if he did so, it would be too late to help.
She wished she had a gun.
The crowbar carved its lunch from the gate just inches from her head, then clattered to the ground: not a gun, but it would do. She scooped it up. Chapman was down, and the pro was standing over him but watching her; measuring the distance between them, gauging her intent. She lobbed the bar from one hand to the other, and his stance adjusted minutely, but even as she changed hands again, because there was no way she was using her left, he was moving forward, stepping inside her swing so it was only her forearm struck him, and she dropped the crowbar as the yard turned upside down.
When she hit the ground she rolled, but not far enough to avoid his kick, which caught her left hip, and her leg went numb.
Two of them, and both down. It had taken seconds.
There was no pride in the thought. He was simply monitoring the situation.
Patrice bent to collect the crowbar, the nearest tool for finishing the job, and as he did so Chapman scrambled to his feet. The old spook had been right to go for the jab, not the swing, and if they were all sitting round a café table now it wouldn’t take either of them long to persuade the woman of her mistake either. But rules were made to be broken, provided you knew what you were doing; an excuse favoured by assassins as much as poets. Patrice dropped to a crouch, his back perfectly straight, and when he swung the tool into Chapman’s knee he heard the joint pop even above Chapman’s scream. Never outlive your ability to survive a fight, Patrice thought.
He turned to the woman, but she was gone and something was flying towards him, a metal can, its contents spraying wide as it rotated in the air. It would have caught his face had he not been wielding the crowbar; as it was, he deflected it effortlessly, like a first-class batsman despatching the short ball. While he was doing that the woman was making a dash for the workshop, where any number of weapons might be waiting. So he threw the bar again: not javelin-fashion, but more like skimming a stone: it struck her ankles, and if she hadn’t broken her fall with her hands, she’d have smeared her nose across her face. And this was as much comfort as the next twenty seconds had to offer her, he thought, because any chance he could leave her alive had disappeared when she came into the yard. Though she hadn’t been alone, he remembered, a memory that took solid form the moment it occurred, as a black London cab slammed through the gates, sending blades of wood shivering into the rain; it screamed at Patrice sideways as the driver hit a handbrake turn, then tossed him over its shoulder as casually as a bull discarding an apprentice toreador.
Somewhere in the background, an angry cabbie was shouting.
“And then he got away,” said Shirley.
“Yeah, well—”
“Like a ghost. Or a ninja.”
“Or a ninja ghost,” said Ho.
“Fuck off,” Marcus told him. And to Shirley: “Yeah, like a ninja. Or something.”
Because when you hit someone with a London cab, they generally stayed hit long enough for you to collect their ears, let alone their insurance details. But this guy was smoke: he must have gone over the cab’s roof and hit the ground feet first. Which were already moving, like in cartoons: if not a ninja, at the very least Daffy Duck.
Though when Daffy Duck whacked folk with heavy weapons, they assumed odd shapes for a second or two, then shook their heads and walked away intact.
“How you feeling?” he asked Louisa.
“Same as last time you asked,” she said. “That was ibuprofen, not horse tranquillisers.”
They were back at Slough House, in Marcus and Shirley’s room, and L
ouisa’s jeans, ripped in her fall, were rolled to the knee while her feet soaked in a plastic washing-up bowl nobody had known Slough House possessed—nobody except Catherine Standish, that is, who’d been there when they returned. It was a weird sort of reunion, with Louisa limping, and Bad Sam Chapman taking the stairs one at a time.
“You’re back,” Marcus had told her, unnecessarily.
She’d touched him, briefly, on the elbow. Then said: “Why’d you bring them here? They should be in A&E.”
“Slippery slope,” Lamb said. “Once you start giving this lot the professional attention they require, there won’t be enough of us left for a game of darts.”
“You can play darts on your own,” Roderick Ho said.
“Who was that guy?” Sam Chapman asked. “Why was he following me? Why were you following me, come to that?”
“God, I hate catch-up scenes,” Lamb said. “And a thank-you would be nice. I did just save your life.”
“Didn’t see you there.”
“Yeah, well, I let others do the spade work.” He glanced at Marcus. “Just a phrase. Let’s not involve the thought police.”
“We’d need a swat team,” Marcus muttered.
While this was going on, Catherine had found the plastic bowl for Louisa to soak her ankles, and produced some ibuprofen. Louisa claimed through gritted teeth she was fine, but her ankles looked like she’d done service on a chain gang.
“The skin’s not broken,” Catherine told her. “That’s something, anyway.”
It didn’t feel like much to Louisa, but having Catherine say so was reassuring somehow. “You back for good?” she asked.
“I hope not,” Catherine said, then followed Lamb and Chapman out of the room and up the stairs.
“She brought the O.B. with her,” Shirley told them.
“The O.B.’s here?”
“Upstairs with the Moira.”
Marcus shook his head. Chaos seemed the order of the day. That was certainly what Stan-the-garage-man had thought, when he’d returned to find his forecourt a war zone: a black cab steaming in the rain, his gates in splinters. Marcus had shown him his ID, pointing to the line about Her Majesty’s Service, and told him they were Duty Men, apprehending a VAT defaulter. Stan had cast an uneasy eye towards his workshop, which was doubtless where he kept his books, and piped down. Though he did ask who’d pay for the gates.
“Send the invoice to your local tax office,” Marcus said. “They’ll see you all right.”
And now Marcus felt good, or better than in recent memory. It wasn’t just smashing through the gates that had done the trick; nor sideswiping the bad guy in the process. It was more that he hadn’t had to use his own car. This felt like a turning of the wheel; his luck shifting back to its proper position.
Except for the part about the bad guy getting away.
He said, “I clipped him with the taxi, I know I did. Felt the impact.”
“And then he got away,” said Shirley.
“Shirl,” Marcus said. “If you’d been there, you’d have decked him. We get that. But you weren’t, and he’s smoke. Okay?”
“Just saying.”
“Any word from River?” Louisa asked.
“Not even a postcard. Don’t you hate it when colleagues go on holiday and—”
“When did Catherine get here?”
“I bet he won’t even bring chocolates back. About half an hour ago.”
“What kind of state’s the O.B. in?”
“He looked like a ghost. Confused and scared.”
“River was worried about him.”
“Yeah, well,” Shirley said. “Running off to the continent’s a good way of showing it. Cool jeans, by the way.”
“Ripped jeans.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“I pay good money for unripped jeans.”
“Kim wears ripped jeans,” Ho said. “She’s my girlfriend,” he explained.
“Really.”
“Ripped jackets too.”
“Are you still here?”
“Yes,” Ho said. They stared. “No,” he said, and left. Before he’d crossed the landing, they heard Lamb bellowing down the stairs for him.
“Ripped jackets?” Marcus said. “Is that a thing now?”
“No,” said Shirley. “And asking if something’s a thing now isn’t a thing any more either.”
“You think Chapman has any idea what’s going on?” Louisa asked.
“I hope somebody does,” said Marcus.
When Ho got to Lamb’s office Lamb threw a handful of takeaway cartons at him. “These things have been breeding. When you’ve chucked ’em out, go next door and fetch some new ones. Full.”
“. . . Full of what?”
“Chinese food, idiot,” Lamb said. “Or ‘food,’ as you people call it.”
Ho brushed a lump of congealed rice from his jacket, then tried to rub the stain away. “What kind, I meant?”
“Surprise me.”
Bad Sam eyed Ho with pity. “It’s Roderick, right?”
“. . . Yes.”
“Roderick, would you let me piss on you for a quid?” he asked.
“. . . No.”
“So why’d you let him do it for free?”
“Don’t mind him,” Lamb explained. “It’s the pain talking.”
“When you open your mouth, that’s a pain talking. What are you finding so funny?”
This to Catherine.
“You two,” she said. “It’s like watching dinosaurs having foreplay. Or Top Gear.”
“We’ve met, haven’t we?” Bad Sam asked.
“One of my happiest memories.”
“You’re very perky,” said Lamb. “Happy to be back?”
Catherine told Ho, “He doesn’t need food, he’s already eaten. But find me some ice, if you can.”
Ho slipped away, still rubbing at the mark on his new leather jacket.
She said, “I’ve told you why I’m here. The Park are looking for the old man. I thought it best to bring him somewhere safe.”
“Which old man are we talking about?” Chapman asked.
“Your ex-boss,” Lamb said. “David Cartwright.”
“Cartwright? He’s still alive?”
“Yeah, but we’re in injury time,” Lamb said. “The guy who tried to whack you? There’s a lot of that going round.”
“He tried to kill Cartwright?”
“Not personally. That particular gentleman ended up with a flip-top head. But I’m assuming the two events are not unconnected. Unless it’s just open season on clapped-out spooks.”
“I’m pretty sure if that happened, you’d be top of most people’s list,” Catherine said.
Chapman said, “Well if the Park are looking for him, why’s he here? He’d be safer with the professionals.”
“Well, that rather depends who signed off on the murder attempt.”
He stared. “You think someone at the Park wants to kill David Cartwright? And me?”
“It’s a theory.”
“They already gave me the sack,” Chapman said. “It’s a bit fucking cheeky having me murdered too. Besides, I’m old news. I don’t even know who’s running the place now. Tearney went, didn’t she?”
“A victim of political correctness,” Lamb said sadly.
“Didn’t she arrange several murders?”
“Well, that too. But the new boy, his name’s Whelan, hasn’t been there long enough to start throwing his weight around. No, if this things got its roots in the Park, it’s like you. Old news. From back when Cartwright was one of the movers and shakers. You used to watch his back, didn’t you?”
“Sometimes. It’s not like he needed full-time supervision.”
“But he went walkabout occasionally.�
��
“What are you getting at, Jackson?”
“You went with him to France.”
“Oh Christ,” said Sam Chapman. “This is about Les Arbres, is it?”
Moira Tregorian, too, was wondering at the turns the day had taken; from the secret thrill at the death of a colleague—well, it wasn’t as if she knew him well—to its baffling reversal; from the lunch she’d expected to be an induction into the rituals of Slough House to the interrogation it had turned into instead. How well did she know Claude Whelan? What was the point of contact between her—Regent’s Park’s erstwhile office manager; wielder of the power of overtime; desk allocator to the Queens of the Database; timekeeper extraordinaire; marshal of the service contracts; fielder of stationery-related enquiries; occasional duty-officer—and the brand-new, squeaky clean First Desk? Did they belong to the same book club? Frequent the same church? Had they, perhaps—even spooks have their carnal moments—indulged in an office indiscretion? And Lamb’s blandly neutral choice of word here, barely more loaded than a water pistol, was utterly belied by his expression, which was a popish leer. She’d suspected Mr. Lamb would be an awkward customer. She hadn’t realised how much work “awkward” could be made to do.
And then this: the arrival of her predecessor.
Whatever Moira Tregorian might have expected of Catherine Standish, this wasn’t it. She had seen drunks before: who hadn’t? They tended to vibrate slightly, as if tuned to a higher frequency than everyone else, and their skin was saggy and their hair poorly tended. They served, in other words, as a warning. But Catherine Standish seemed intact, a word Moira wasn’t sure she’d used of a person before. She was intact: nothing obvious missing. It was disappointing, somehow, though she had managed to keep this reaction to herself, she hoped.
Meanwhile, she was still sorting through a hundredweight of memos from the Park, and now had an observer in the corner.