by Mick Herron
Some days it all fell apart.
Except, except, not today, because there he was again, that beautiful bulky Russian, stepping from an alcove where he’d stopped to examine a menu … Min only realised his heart had been racing because it now climbed down to normal.
Keeping the same careful hundred yards behind, he followed the Russian along the Edgware Road.
Jackson Lamb was in his office, where the only light source was at knee-level, a lamp that sat on a pile of telephone directories. Enough of it crept upwards to cast troll-like shadows across his face, and bigger ones across the ceiling. On the desk, next to his feet, was a bottle of Talisker, and in his hand was a glass. His chin was on his chest, but he was awake. He seemed to be studying his cork noticeboard, to which was pinned a montage of out-of-date money-off coupons, but he might have been staring straight through it: down a long tunnel of remembered secrets, though he’d claim if questioned that he’d been wondering whose turn it was to fetch him cigarettes. A claim he’d validated in advance by recently stubbing out the last of his current pack.
He seemed oblivious to everything, but didn’t so much as flicker when Catherine Standish spoke from the doorway where she’d been standing for almost a minute. “You drink too much.”
In answer, he raised his glass and studied its contents. Then drained it in a single swallow, and said, “You’d know.”
“Yes. That’s my point.” She came into the room. “Having blackouts yet?”
“Not that I remember.”
“If you can joke about it, you’ve probably not started wetting yourself. There’s a treat in store.”
“You know what’s good about reformed drunks?” Lamb said.
“Please tell.”
“No, I’m asking. Is there anything good about reformed drunks? Because from where I’m sitting, they’re just a pain in the arse.”
Catherine said, “You know, that would still work if you took the word ‘reformed’ out.”
Lamb gave her a penetrating stare, then nodded thoughtfully, ruefully, as if arriving at a gentle appreciation of her wisdom. Then he farted. “Better out than in,” he said. “You know, that would still work if it was about you.”
Proving once and for all that she couldn’t take a hint, Catherine went nowhere. Instead she said, “I’ve been doing a little digging.”
“Oh god.”
“And you know what?” Moving two box files onto the floor, she claimed the chair they’d been occupying. “The night Dickie Bow died, that mess with the trains?”
“Amaze me.”
“Someone sabotaged a fusebox outside Swindon. The network meltdown was a fix. You don’t think that’s suspicious?”
“I think it shows a lack of faith in First Great Western,” Lamb said. “The idea that you need to resort to sabotage to create chaos, that’s preposterous.”
“Very funny. What are you up to, Lamb?”
“It’s above your pay grade. Let’s just say I found a loose thread, and pulled it.” He looked at his watch. “Are you still here?”
She said, “Yes. And guess what? I’m not going anywhere. Because it took me a while to work it out, but I got there. I don’t know why you wanted me in Slough House, but you did. And you’re not going to get rid of me, are you? I don’t know why, but I know it’s so. You feel guilty. I don’t like you and doubt I ever will, but beneath all your stupid drunken offensiveness, you’re paying off some debt, and that gives me an advantage. It means you can’t shut me up.”
Lamb said, “That was cute. If this was a film you’d let your hair down now and I’d say, but Miss Standish, you’re beautiful.”
“No, if this was a film I’d stake you through the heart, and you’d disappear in a cloud of dust. Dickie Bow, Lamb. He was a has-been.”
“Yep. He’d have fitted in round here like a dream.”
“He was also a drunk.”
“Further comment would be tactless.”
She ignored that. “I pulled his records. He—”
“You what?”
“I asked Ho to pull his records.”
“I hope you’re not corrupting that kid. We’ve already got a ringer on the premises.”
“A what?”
He said, “Lady Di tells me one of our newbies is her snitch. Find out which, would you?”
“It’s on my to-do list. Meanwhile, Bow. You know he spent the past three years on the nightshift in a Brewer Street bookshop.”
“I doubt the booktrade’s what pays their rent.”
“No, he was downstairs with the dirty mags and the sex toys.”
Lamb spread his hands in a forgiving gesture. “Really, who hasn’t found themselves, one time or another, leafing through a porn mag with a dildo in their hand?”
“A fascinating glimpse into your home life. But let’s not change the subject. Last time Bow was in play Roger Moore was James Bond. You really think he found a Moscow hood and tracked him halfway across the country?”
Lamb said, “He died.”
“I know he did.”
“That’s what makes me think he found a Moscow hood and tracked him halfway across the country.”
“No. Dying doesn’t prove he found a Moscow hood. All it proves is he’s dead. And if a Moscow hood killed him, that doesn’t mean you found a thread and pulled. It means a thread was dangled, and you snapped it up.”
Lamb said nothing.
“Exactly as you were meant to.”
Lamb said nothing.
“You’ve gone quiet. Run out of funny comments?”
Lamb pursed his lips. He looked like he was about to blow a raspberry, which wouldn’t have been the first time. But instead he unpursed them, sucked his teeth, then leaned back and combed his hair with his fingers. To the ceiling he said, “Untraceable poison. Dying message. Give me a fucking break.”
Now it was Catherine’s turn to be fazed. “What?”
When Lamb looked at her, his eyes were clearer than they ought to have been, given the level of the bottle.
“You really think I’m stupid?” he asked.
Up ahead was the flat. It was the top floor of a dump held up by mould and damp, whose painted-over windows had trapped the air inside for decades, making it an olfactory museum of poverty and desperation, smells Kyril was familiar with. Most rooms were hot-beds: men coming home from work as others left for the nightshift. Communication was nod-of-the-head. Nobody cared about anyone else’s business.
Which was how The Man liked it, but Kyril was a people person. One of his strengths. So much so it could be taken for a weakness, which was why Piotr had decided Kyril couldn’t speak English this morning.
“What’s the harm? They’re civil servants.”
“They’re spooks,” Piotr had said. “Civil servants? They’re spooks. You believe that Department of Energy crap?”
Kyril had shrugged. Yes, he’d believed that Department of Energy crap. Probably not a great thing to admit.
“So I do the talking,” Piotr said.
And Piotr had been right, because if the guy was from the Department of Energy, how come he was tailing Kyril now?
Though if he was a spook, how come he was so bad at it?
There was always the chance there were others Kyril hadn’t spotted, but he figured Harper was alone, which suited him fine. Harper wouldn’t present problems. Kyril could snap him in half with one hand, and throw him in opposite directions.
That made him smile. He didn’t enjoy violence, and hoped the need wouldn’t arise.
But if it did, he could handle it.
Shirley Dander opened her eyes. The crack running outwards from a corner of her ceiling was the shape of a continent, an unfamiliar animal, a dimly remembered birthday. For long seconds she hovered inside its reach, and then she was awake, and it was just a crack.
Her skull pulsed to someone else’s beat. Whoever was playing that drum had stolen the daylight.
Risking movement, she turned her head to the windo
w. It wasn’t dark, but only because there was a city outside, pouring its electric wash over everything. So the light bleeding through her thin faded curtain was yellow and automatic, and came from a nearby lamppost.
The bedside clock blinked at her. Nine forty-two. Nine forty-two? Jesus.
At Slough House, after giving Jackson Lamb her report, Shirley had suffered a cocaine crash. These were not unfamiliar, but generally planned for, and came with a duvet, a tray of brownies and a DVD of Friends. When you were heading for a hard landing, an office with an inquisitive colleague was not the place to be.
“Good morning, was it?”
Marcus Longridge would not have believed the effort her grunt of reply required.
But the man would not give up. “Enjoy your trip?”
This time she managed to shrug. “Country. I can take it or leave it.”
“More a beach girl?”
“Less of the ‘girl’.”
In front of her, the virtual coalface once more. One brief taste of the outside world and she was matching faces again, like trying to play snap without a twinned pair in the deck. She’d told Lamb she’d been up all night, that tracking down Mr. B had been what she’d done instead of sleeping, but all that earned her was a toothy snarl. “You’ll be looking forward to home-time then, won’t you?” he’d said.
Marcus was still watching. “I need food,” he said. “You want anything?”
A dark room, a quiet bed, the temporary absence of life.
“Shirley?”
“Maybe a Twix.”
“Be right back.”
When he’d gone, Shirley crossed to the window. After a moment, Marcus had appeared on the street below. Instinctively she’d drawn back, but he hadn’t looked upwards; just crossed the road, heading for the row of shops. As he walked, he held his mobile to his ear.
Paranoia came with the territory. Every hangover she’d ever known—beer, tequila, cocaine, sex—had left her furtive and hunted. But even allowing for that, she’d been certain she was the subject of that phonecall.
Back in the here and now, she groaned softly. This did nothing to change the quality of the light, the pulsing of her skull, or the black pit that opened every time she closed her eyes.
Nine forty-five, winked her clock. She could stay where she was for another ten hours, and maybe that would make her all right again.
Maybe …
She gave it five minutes; then got up, dressed, and headed out into the evening.
Kyril had vanished once more. When Min turned the corner to discover this he swore under his breath, tasting beer again: but still. It wasn’t the end of the world. It suggested that the target had reached his destination.
Doss-house had been his first thought when he’d heard that the taxi had dropped them on the Edgware Road. He wasn’t wrong. These buildings were tall and imposing-looking, but their glory days were long gone, and regeneration hadn’t taken off yet: banks of doorbells showed they were multi-occupancy, and the blankets and newspapers taped across windows betrayed the low-paid status of their inhabitants.
You and me both, mate, thought Min. Then a hand like a rock gripped his shoulder, and something cold and blunt and steel pressed into his neck.
“You’re following me, I think, yes?”
Min said, “I—what? What you talking about—”
“Mr. Harper. I think you’re following me. Yes?” The steel thing pressed harder.
“I just—”
“You just what?”
Just need a moment to think up a story, thought Min.
The steel thing pressed harder.
“So now you know what?” Kyril said. “Now you find out what happens to Department of Energy guys who get too nosy, know what I mean?”
Lamb opened a drawer and produced a second glass, chipped and dusty, into which he poured a careful measure of Talisker he then placed within Catherine’s reach. Then he refilled his own glass, with a measure a little less careful.
“Chin chin,” he said.
Catherine didn’t respond. Nor did she glance at her glass.
“The Swindon fusebox was sabotaged, yes. You really think I’d go plodding about the shires without making sure it was necessary? The trains were scuppered about the same time our friend Mr. B was laying a trail for Dickie Bow.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t lay a trail down a well-kept pavement. You make the hunter work.”
“He wanted Bow to follow him.”
Lamb put his glass down to give her a slow handclap.
“And wanted you to do the same,” she said. “You found something on his body, didn’t you?”
“On the bus. His phone. With an unsent text.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Keyed in his dying moments?”
“Keyed by Mr. B, more like. There was a scrum when people realised he was dead. Mr. B would have been part of it, keying the message, shoving the phone between the cushions.”
“What was the message?”
“One word,” said Lamb. “ ‘Cicadas’.”
“Which evidently means something.”
“To me, yes. Shouldn’t have meant anything to Bow, though. Another reason I know it’s a fake.”
“And the untraceable poison?”
“Ten a penny. Most untraceable poisons aren’t actually untraceable, but you have to find them before they fade away. A clapped-out wino has a heart attack, most post mortems’ll just read heart attack.” He made a magician’s gesture with his hands. “Pouf. End of. But there’ll have been a puncture wound somewhere. Easy enough to prick someone in a crowd.”
Catherine said, “Hardly foolproof, is it? What are the chances you’d have checked between the cushions for Bow’s phone?”
“Someone would’ve. You don’t off a spook, even a clapped-out nobody like Bow, without making waves. Didn’t used to, anyway. Seems Regent’s Park’s got better things to do these days.” He reached for his glass. “Someone ought to let them know. You never leave your corpses by the pool.”
“I’ll circulate a memo.”
“Besides, if I hadn’t found that clue, there’d have been another. All the way up to Mr. B giving a taxi driver a bollocking for taking him to the wrong place. That’d not be forgotten in a hurry, would it?” Lamb curled a lip. “The cabbie’s a trip wire. He’d have been on the phone the moment Shirley left him.”
“Meaning he knows we’re following his lead.”
“Like good little bloodhounds.”
“Is that wise?”
“What’s wise got to do with it? We either follow his trail or forget about it. And that’s not an option, because whoever’s behind this is old school. Takes an old school spook to know a street rat like Bow would take his bait in the first place. Whoever’s pulling the strings is playing Moscow Rules. Regent’s Park might be too busy to think that’s worth following up, but I don’t.”
“Are you going to say his name or am I?”
“Say what?”
“Alexander Popov,” said Catherine Standish.
The room was small, and the window open. It was cold, but still: a bead of sweat dislodged itself from Min’s hair and trickled down his neck. The eyes of the other two men never left his. There was always the possibility he was faster than both, but deep in his gut he knew that that was slim beyond reckoning: either one, on their own, and he might have been in with a chance, but the pair together made for formidable opposition. Once, his reflexes might have been up to this. But he was growing older every moment, and had been drinking earlier, and—
A fist slammed on the table.
Three shots …
Min was fast, but fast didn’t cut it. Maybe anywhere else in London, he’d have been fine, but here and now in this room he was toast.
The third shot, he spilt most of. Piotr and Kyril were already leaning back, empty glasses lined up, roaring.
When he could speak, Kyril said, “You lose.”
“I lose,” Min admitt
ed. The three vodkas joined the two from the previous round, and the one from the round before that. Plus the penalty shots for having lost both. Plus the beers he’d drunk in that pub near where he worked, though finer details, such as what the pub was called, and where he worked, had grown hazy. These guys, though—these guys. These guys were kind of crazy, but it was surprising how quickly barriers broke down when you got past the job descriptions. Like his own, which was to keep an eye on these guys without them knowing he was doing so.
It was possible he’d compromised that particular part of his mission.
“So tell me,” Kyril said, “When I did that thing with the key. When I—”
“Stuck it in the back of my neck, you bastard!”
Kyril laughed. “You thought it was a gun, yes?”
“Of course I thought it was a gun! You bastard!”
All three were laughing now. It was a picture, for sure: Min, convinced his last moments had come. That a Russian spy had a pistol screwed into his neck, and was about to pull the trigger.
Kyril stopped laughing long enough to say, “I couldn’t resist.”
“How long did you know I was there?”
“Always. I saw you on your bicycle.”
“Jesus,” Min shook his head. But he didn’t feel too low. Okay, so he’d messed up, but it hadn’t had serious consequences. Though he was pretty sure it would be best if nobody else got to hear about it. Specifically Lamb, he thought. And Louisa. And everybody else. But specifically them.
Piotr said, “Don’t feel too bad. We do security. We’re trained to spot faces in crowds.”
“Just like you are trained to do whatever it is you do in the … Department of Energy,” Kyril added. His broad smile supplied invisible quotation marks.
“Look,” Min began, but Piotr was waving a hand, as if seeing him off on a journey.
“Hey. Hey. Arkady Pashkin is an important man. You think we don’t know there will be … interest in him? Government interest? We’d be worried if there wasn’t. It would mean he was no longer important. And people who aren’t important don’t need people like us.”