by Mick Herron
Nearly there. River closed his laptop. The O.B. would be dozing again by now; enjoying a cat’s afternoon in the sun. Time had rolled round on him, that was all. River was his grandfather’s handler now.
Sooner or later, all the sins of the past fell into the keeping of the present.
‘You stupid cow!’
He’d been thrown sideways and the noise in his head had exploded: manic guitars cut off mid-wail; locomotive drums killed mid-beat. The sudden silence was deafening. It was like he’d been unplugged.
And his prey was nowhere to be seen, obviously. His smartphone was in pieces, its casing a hop-skip-jump away.
It was Shirley Dander who’d leaped on him, evidently unable to control her passion.
She crawled off and pretended to be watching a car disappear along the road. Roddy sat up and brushed at the sleeves of his still new leather jacket. He’d had to deal with workplace harassment before: first Louisa Guy, now this. But at least Louisa remained the right side of her last shaggable day, while Shirley Dander, far as the Rodster was concerned, hadn’t seen her first yet.
‘What the hell was that for?’
‘That was me saving your arse,’ she said, without looking round.
His arse. One-track mind.
‘I nearly had it, you know!’ Pointless explaining the intricacies of a quest to her: the nearest she’d come to appreciating the complexities of gaming was being mistaken for a troll. Still, though, she ought to be made to realise just what a prize she’d cost him, all for the sake of a quick grope. ‘A bulbasaur! You know how rare that is?’
It was plain she didn’t.
‘The fuck,’ she asked, ‘are you talking about?’
He scrambled to his feet.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s pretend you just wanted to sabotage my hunt. That’s all Kim needs to know, anyway.’
‘… Huh?’
‘My girlfriend,’ he explained, so she’d know where she stood.
‘Did you get a plate for that car?’
‘What car?’
‘The one that just tried to run you over.’
‘That’s a good story too,’ Roddy said. ‘But let’s stick with mine. It’s less complicated. Fewer follow-up questions.’
And having delivered this lesson in tradecraft, he collected the pieces of his phone and headed back to Slough House.
Where the day is well established now, and dawn a forgotten intruder. When River returns to take up post at his desk – his current task being so mind-crushingly dull, so balls-achingly unlikely to result in useful data, that he can barely remember what it is even while doing it – all the slow horses are back in the stable, and the hum of collective ennui is almost audible. Up in his attic room, Jackson Lamb scrapes the last sporkful of chicken fried rice from a foil dish, then tosses the container into a corner dark enough that it need never trouble his conscience again, should such a creature come calling, while two floors below Shirley Dander’s face is scrunched into a thoughtful scowl as she replays in her mind the sequence of events that led to her flattening Roderick Ho: always a happy outcome, of course, but had she really prevented a car doing the same? Or had it just been another of London’s penis-propelled drivers, whose every excursion onto the capital’s roads morphs into a demolition derby? Maybe she should share the question with someone. Catherine Standish, she decides. Louisa Guy too, perhaps. Louisa might be an iron-clad bitch at times, but at least she doesn’t think with a dick. Some days, you take what you can.
Later, Lamb will host one of his occasional departmental meetings, its main purpose to ensure the ongoing discontent of all involved, but for now Slough House is what passes for peaceful, the grousing and grumbling of its denizens remaining mainly internal. The clocks that each of the crew separately watches dawdle through their paces on Slough House time, this being slower by some fifty per cent than in most other places, while, like the O.B. in distant Berkshire, the day catnaps the afternoon away.
Elsewhere, mind, it’s scurrying around like a demented gremlin.
3
THERE WAS A STORY doing the rounds that the list of questions traditionally asked of head injury victims, to check for concussion – what’s the date, where do you live, who’s the Prime Minister? – had had to be amended in light of the current incumbent’s tenure, as the widespread disbelief that he was still in office was producing a rash of false positives. Which might explain, thought Claude Whelan, why he insisted on being addressed as PM.
But like all his ilk the man was dangerous when cornered, and one thing politics was never short of was corners.
‘You know the biggest threat Parliament faces?’ he asked Whelan now.
‘A cyber—’
‘No, that’s the biggest threat the country faces. The biggest threat Parliament faces is democracy. It’s been a necessary evil for centuries, and for the most part we’ve been able to use it to our advantage. But one fucking referendum later and it’s like someone gave a loaded gun to a drunk toddler.’ He was holding a newspaper, folded open to Dodie Gimball’s column. ‘Read this yet?’
Whelan had.
The PM quoted from it anyway: ‘“Who are we to turn to for protection? Yes, we have our security services, but they are ‘services’ only in the sense that a bull ‘services’ a cow. In other words, dear readers, a cock-up of the first magnitude.”’
Whelan said, ‘I’m not entirely sure that works. She goes from plural to—’
‘Yes yes yes, we’ll get the grammar police onto her first thing. Do they have actual powers of arrest, do you think? Or will they just hang her from the nearest participle?’
Whelan nodded his appreciation. He was a short man with a high forehead and a pleasant manner, the latter a surprise given his years among the intelligence service’s backroom boys, a fraternity not known for its social skills. His ascent to the top rank had been unexpected, and largely due to his not having been involved in the crimes and misdemeanours which had resulted in the desk being vacant in the first place. Having clean hands was an unusual criterion for the role, but his predecessor’s shenanigans had ensured that, on this occasion at least, it was politic.
It did mean, though, that his experience of actual politics was on the thin side. His required learning curve, as Second Desk Diana Taverner had pointed out, was steeper than a West End bar bill.
Now he said, ‘Twelve people died. However indelicately she phrases it, it comes under the heading fair comment.’
‘Fair comment would be laying the blame with the homicidal cretins who committed the murders. No, Gimball has her own agenda. You’re aware of who she is?’
‘I know who her husband is.’
‘Well then,’ said the PM. ‘Well then,’ and slapped the newspaper against his thigh, or tried to. There wasn’t really room for the manoeuvre.
They were in what was best described as a cubbyhole, though was informally known as an incubator. Number 10 was a warren, as if an architect had been collecting corridors and decided to use them all up at once. Offices of state aside, every room in the building seemed an excuse to include a bit of extra space between itself and the next one along, in most of which, at any given time, a plot was being hatched. Hence ‘incubator’. They were ideal for the purpose, as they were only really big enough for two people at a time and thus reduced the amount of political fear that could be generated, political fear being the fear that the blame for something bad might fall on someone present.
The meeting they’d just come from, discussing the events in Derbyshire, had triggered an awful lot of this.
‘And the bastard wants my job,’ the PM continued.
‘He certainly gives every indication that he’d enjoy running the country,’ Whelan agreed. ‘But, Prime Minister, with all due respect, he’s his party’s sole MP. What possible threat could he represent?’
‘He’s indicated that he might be willing to rejoin the party.’
‘… Ah.’
‘Yes, bloody ah. And
not indicated to me, you understand. To various … sympathetic ears. Which includes half of those in my own damn Cabinet.’
It didn’t much matter whether this meant the entire Cabinet had offered one sympathetic ear apiece, or half the Cabinet both. Either way, the PM was beleaguered: the referendum voting the UK out of the European Union meant he had to steer a course he’d openly campaigned against, whatever his private views on the subject, and only the lack of a strong contender within the party – the most obvious candidates having been brought low by a frenzy of backstabbing, treachery and double-dealing on a scale not seen since the Spice Girls’ reunion – had allowed him to hang on to power this long. But if Dennis Gimball had indicated that he might be tempted back into a fold he’d left ‘with supreme reluctance’ some years previously, in order to join a one-issue party spearheading the Brexit campaign, a whole new ball game was in the offing. And few believed the PM’s balls would see him through the current game, let alone a new one. Apart from anything else, he had a terrorist atrocity to deal with.
But all Whelan found himself able to say was, ‘Rejoining? That’s not terribly likely, surely.’
‘Not likely? Have you been paying attention? Not likely is the new normal. He’s got a wife writing a twice-weekly column that amounts to a press release for the sack-the-PM brigade, and when he’s ready to make the jump he’ll expect to be warming his arse on my seat within two months. And this new-found taste for democracy’ – which he made sound like a synonym for paedophilia – ‘means he’ll have fifty-two per cent of the population scattering rose petals at his feet while he does. And it’s not just me they’ve got in their sights, either. The main reason he’s appointed himself scourge of the Secret Service, ably abetted by his tabloid totty, is that I’ve given you my full backing. One hundred per cent confidence, remember? An actual hundred, rather than a hundred and ten, or even, God forbid, a hundred and twenty, which I like to think speaks to the absolute fucking sincerity of the gamble I’m taking here. What I’m saying, Claude, is, we stand and fall together. So I’m going to ask you again, without my oh-so-honourable chums taking notes on your answer, how close are you to rounding up these trigger-happy bastards? Because if we don’t see closure on this soon, the second highest-profile casualty is going to be you. Maybe they’ll stick our heads on adjacent spikes. Won’t that be cosy?’
It occurred to Whelan that if the PM showed half as much fervour when addressing the nation as he did when contemplating his job security, he wouldn’t be regarded as such a lightweight.
Whelan said, ‘I held nothing back from the report I just delivered. Arrests aren’t imminent, but they will take place. As for guarantees that another attack of the kind can’t happen, I’m not able to give that. Whoever these people are—’
‘ISIS,’ the PM spat.
‘Well, they’ve claimed credit, yes. But whoever the individuals are, they’re currently under the radar. They could be anywhere, and they could be planning anything. We’re not in a position to deliver certainties. But I’d repeat that I don’t think door-to-door searches in areas with a high Muslim population would be useful at this stage.’
‘Well, that’s where we differ. Because anything to show that we’re actually doing something would, I feel, be useful at this stage.’
‘I understand that, Prime Minister, but I’d urge caution. Provoking resistance from the radicalised segments of the community would be playing into their hands.’
It was an argument Whelan had made three times already that morning, and he was prepared to make it again but was distracted by an alteration in the offstage atmosphere. The background noise from the nearest corridor, the hum people make when they want everyone else to know they’re busy, had subsided over the last ten seconds, to be replaced by the lesser but far more ominous sound of the same people reading news alerts on their phones.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘I don’t hear anything,’ the PM said.
‘Nor I,’ said Whelan. ‘That’s what worries me.’
They emerged as someone was turning up the volume on a rolling news channel, which was screening amateur footage of a violent aftermath.
There was blood, there was panic, there was debris.
Closure, it appeared, wasn’t happening any time soon.
‘It’s been brought to my attention that you arsewipes are not happy bunnies.’
This was Jackson Lamb. The arsewipes were his team.
‘So I’ve convened this meeting so you can air your grievances.’
‘Well—’ River began.
‘Sorry, did I say “you”? I meant me.’
They were in Lamb’s office, which had the advantage, for Lamb, that he didn’t have to move anywhere, and the disadvantage, for everyone else, that it was Lamb’s office. Lamb smoked in his office, and drank, and ate, and there were those who suspected that if he kept a bucket there, he’d never leave. Not that its attractions were obvious. On the other hand, bears’ caves weren’t famously well appointed either, and bears seemed to like them fine.
‘Did one of you jokers put a whoopee cushion on my chair, by the way? No? Well in that case I’ve just farted.’ Lamb leaned back and beamed proudly. ‘Okay, you’re all uptight because there’s a national emergency, and somewhere at the back of your tiny little minds you’re remembering you joined the security services. That rings bells, yes? The bright shiny building at Regent’s Park?’
‘Jackson,’ Catherine said.
‘It gives me no pleasure to have to say this, but keep your fucking mouth shut while I’m talking, Standish. It’s only polite.’
‘Always happy to have you mind my manners, but do we really need to hear the lecture?’
‘Oh, I think it’ll be good for morale, don’t you? Besides, the new boy can’t have heard it more than once. I’d hate him to feel he was missing out. What was your name again?’
‘Coe,’ said J. K. Coe, who’d been there a year.
‘Coe. You’re the one gets panic attacks, right? Behind you! Just kidding.’
Catherine put her head in her hands.
Lamb lit a cigarette and said, ‘Where was I? Oh yeah. Now, I’m a stickler for political correctness, as you know, but whoever decided we’re all equal needs punching. If we were, you wouldn’t be in Slough House touching your toes when I tell you, while the cool kids over at Regent’s Park are saving the world. Except for parts of Derbyshire, obviously.’ He inhaled, and let smoke drift from his mouth, his nostrils, possibly his ears, while he continued: ‘And if we let you help them out, you’d doubtless end up doing the only thing you’ve ever proved yourself good at, which is making a bad situation worse. Any comments so far?’
‘Well—’ River began.
‘That was rhetorical, Cartwright. If I really thought you were going to speak, I’d leave the room first.’
‘Every manhunt needs backup,’ Louisa said. ‘CCTV checks, vehicle backgrounds, all the stuff we’re used to. You don’t think the Park would appreciate our help?’
‘Make an educated guess.’
‘… Yes?’
‘I said educated,’ said Lamb. ‘That guess left school at fifteen for a job at Asda.’
‘I just thought—’
‘Yeah, well, you don’t get paid to think. Which is just as fucking well in your case.’ Lamb shifted in his chair and shoved his free hand down his trousers. Scratching commenced. ‘Now. As I was saying before everyone decided this was an open forum, there’s a lot going on, and you’re not part of it. So let’s fuck off back to our desks, shall we? Devil finds work for idle wankers, and all that.’
‘Hands.’
‘Yeah, hands, sorry. Word association.’
They trooped out, or half of them did. Lamb leaned back, eyes closed, his hand still down his trousers, and pretended not to notice that Shirley, Louisa and Catherine remained in the room. Chances are he’d have kept this up all day, but Catherine was having none of it.
‘Are you done? Or have
you not started yet?’
He opened an eye. ‘Why, are you running a meter?’
‘Shirley has something to tell you.’
‘Oh, fuck.’
‘I think you mean, “What is it, Dander?”’
‘Yeah, that’s probably what I meant,’ said Lamb. ‘But my autocorrect kicked in.’ He withdrew his hand and opened his other eye. ‘What is it, Dander?’
‘Someone tried to run Ho over.’
‘Just now?’
‘At lunchtime. In the street.’ Shirley paused then added, for clarity’s sake, ‘With a car.’
‘Maybe they mistook him for a squirrel. I’ve talked to him about that beard.’
‘It was deliberate.’
‘Well, I’d hate to think of Ho being run over accidentally. It would be robbing the rest of us of a moment’s pleasure. Where did this happen?’
‘Fann Street.’
‘And the three of you witnessed it?’
‘Just me,’ said Shirley.
‘So what are you two, her backing singers?’
Catherine said, ‘If someone targets one of us, it means we’re all at risk. Potentially.’