by Mick Herron
The car was swampy with food odours. Louisa wound the window down to let some of them escape.
‘Speaking of houses.’
This was River.
She said, ‘Yeah?’
‘I went to the house the other day.’
‘Your grandad’s?’
River nodded.
‘Must be strange, him not being there.’
‘I think it’s the first time I’d ever been alone in the place. That can’t really be true. But it felt like it.’
It had been like stepping into someone else’s past. The books on the shelves, the coats on the rack, the wellingtons by the back door. It had been a decade since River moved away, and there’d be remnants of his presence, sure; chips on the skirting board, boxes in the attic, the odd shelf of teenage reading. But the house was the O.B.’s now, and before then had been the O.B. and Rose’s, River’s grandmother. Walking through it, he had felt himself a stranger, as if someone had curated a museum of his grandparents but forgotten to apply the labels. He had found himself touching objects, trying to place them in a chronology he had only ever known a small part of.
‘What’ll happen to it?’
‘Happen to it?’
Louisa looked away, then looked back. ‘He’s not going to live forever, River.’
‘No, I know. I know.’
‘So are you his sole heir?’
‘My mother’s his next of kin.’
‘But is he likely to leave it to her?’
‘I don’t know. No. Probably not.’
‘Well then.’
‘It’s not like I’m just waiting for him—’
‘I know.’
‘—to die, I’m not—’
‘I know.’
‘—counting the days. Yeah, I’ll probably inherit. And yes, it’ll come in handy. God knows, London’s pricey. But I’d rather have him around, if it’s all the same to you. Even now. When he’s away with the fairies half the time.’
‘I know,’ said Louisa.
Between his fingers, his styrofoam container screamed like a clubbed seal. Or like one of those murdered penguins: a mad target. Did it even count as terrorism when no mammals were killed?
‘Here he comes,’ Louisa said.
Ho was leaving his house, stepping straight into an Uber.
‘Game on,’ she murmured, and took off in its wake.
Lamb was coiled like a spring, if you meant one of those springs on a rusted old bedstead. He was semi-sprawled on his chair, eyes closed, one foot on his desk, a cigarette burning to death in his right hand. Through a gap in his unbuttoned shirt Shirley could see his stomach rise and fall. The smoke from his cigarette was a blue-grey spiral, but broke into rags when it hit the ceiling.
Still daylight outside, barely evening yet, but Lamb punched his own clock, and won on a technical knockout. In his room it was forever the dead zone; the same time it always was when you woke with a start, heart racing, and all your problems waiting by the bed. Shirley was half minded to turn tail and use the stairs the way they were intended: down and out. But she’d already missed that window.
‘If you’re after a rise,’ he said, still with his eyes closed, ‘just think of me as Santa Claus.’
‘… You’re giving me a rise?’
‘I’m saying ho ho ho.’
‘I’m not after a rise.’
‘Holiday? Answer’s the same.’
‘Marcus had a gun,’ Shirley told him.
This caused one eye to open. ‘Okay,’ he admitted. ‘That wasn’t going to be my next guess.’
‘Can I have it?’
‘Yeah, why not? It’s on a shelf back there.’ Lamb indicated a corner with a blunt head movement. ‘Help yourself.’
‘… You’re kidding, aren’t you?’
‘Course I’m fucking kidding. I don’t read all the management shit, but I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to arm staff just ’cause they’re bored. That’s the main reason British Home Stores failed.’
‘I’m not bored.’
‘You’re not? Sounds to me like a criticism of my leadership style.’
‘I’m bored,’ Shirley amended, ‘but that’s not why I want Marcus’s gun.’
‘If you need a paperweight, steal a stapler. Everyone else does.’
‘The Park has an armoury.’
‘The Park has a spa and a gym too. It even has a crèche, can you believe it? If you were keen on employee benefits, you should have borne that in mind before fucking your career up.’ He moved his foot from the desk, dislodging some probably unimportant papers in the process, and leaned forward to kill his cigarette in a teacup. ‘Telling you that counts as pastoral care, by the way. There’s a feedback form somewhere, if you can be bothered.’
‘If the shit hits the fan again,’ Shirley said, ‘I don’t want to be left hiding behind a door that’s mostly cardboard. When that mad spook stormed the place, we were fighting him off with a kettle and a chair.’
‘Dander, I’d hate you to get the idea that I give even the smallest of fucks about this, but you’re a junkie with a short fuse. Putting you in charge of a loaded gun would be like giving a three-year-old a box of matches. It might make for an entertaining ten minutes, but I’d have HR on my back before you can say “fuck me, smells like bacon”. Besides, I hate to harp on about the paperwork. But Standish has me signing fifteen forms a day as it is.’ He held his hand up in front of him, and grimaced sadly. ‘I’m think I’m developing repetitive strain injury.’
‘Nobody would know,’ she said. ‘Marcus shouldn’t have had it in the first place. It’s not even legal.’
Lamb affected shock. ‘You mean, if he’d been caught with it, he could have been charged with a criminal offence?’
‘Yep.’
‘Dodged a bullet there, didn’t he? Shame he didn’t make a habit of it.’
For what might have been half a minute she stared at him, but he’d adopted his most benign expression – post-coital warthog, or thereabouts – and gave every indication of being prepared to hold it until his final trump. And given Lamb’s capacity for farting, which was paradoxically bottomless, that could be a long time coming.
Anger fucking management. Her session should be a doddle after this little chat.
‘What happens if we get attacked again?’ she said by way of farewell.
‘The kettle got replaced, didn’t it?’ Lamb said, closing his eyes once more. ‘Go quietly on the stairs please. Some of us are of a sensitive disposition.’
Over at the Park, meanwhile, orders were filtering down the great chain of being.
Jaffrey’s squeaky clean, yes?, the PM had asked Claude Whelan. Because I’m hearing rumours.
‘First Desk wants to be sure that Zafar Jaffrey is … reliable,’ Lady Di now told Emma Flyte.
Nobody’s reliable, Flyte thought. This is politics, not DIY.
But all she said was, ‘How soon does he want to know?’
‘Ten minutes ago,’ said Lady Di. ‘Why are you still here?’
There was bad blood between them, if not as bad as there might have been. Both, for instance, were still standing. But Emma Flyte, being cursed with exceptional beauty, was used to hostility from both genders, though it was usually delivered in disguise. In some ways, Lady Di’s frank dislike was refreshing. And besides, Flyte had Claude Whelan’s support, so here she still was: Head Dog, which meant chief of the Service’s internal police, a branch of Five which had historically morphed, now and again, into a private squad administering to the merciless whims of one First Desk or other, but under Flyte’s leadership had become what it had originally been meant to be, or at least be seen to be: an impartial department dedicated to the purging of unacceptable in-house activity. Hunting out naughty spies, basically. Flyte’s usual intractability on this point was the main bone of contention between herself and Taverner, but here and now, she was prepared to allow the margins to grow misty. Nothing to do with a quid pro quo for Whelan’s backing
, but a tacit acceptance that when the Park was under the hammer, everyone did what was needed. And since Abbotsfield, the Park was under the hammer.
Besides, Lady Di – ever the professional – never let her animosity show unless it was absolutely necessary, or she felt like it.
So Flyte simply said: ‘Just planning my next move, sir,’ and headed off to set things in motion, which first off involved getting Devon Welles to access the available background and bring her up to speed.
Devon, like herself, was former Job: real police, which meant he knew when to follow orders, when not to bother, and where the nearest pub was. In this instance, it took him forty minutes to pull together the threads the Service had wrapped around Zafar Jaffrey to date: two full-scale vettings and a handful of once-overs.
‘A lot for a middleweight pol,’ she observed.
‘It would be a lot for a middleweight white-bread pol,’ Welles corrected. ‘But outside the London mayor, Jaffrey’s the highest-profile Muslim player in the country. And each vetting preceded a public handshake with the PM. Who is not the type to be seen cuddling up to anyone dangerous.’
‘Are you allowed to say “white-bread” to me?’
‘I’m pretty sure you just asked for a black coffee in my hearing.’
They were in the canteen, which was where a lot of meetings took place that either weren’t private at all, or were so private they wanted to appear not to be.
Welles said, ‘The scanners were run over the whole family three years back, when his brother went off to Syria, and again when he announced his candidacy for mayor. He came through with, well, nobody ever has flying colours. But clean in every way you’d want him to be. Family’s middle class but he’s got the common touch, v. good on TV – did that interview, you probably saw it, where he cried on screen talking about how he and his family had failed his brother, how it was imperative that other Muslim families in the UK did not fail their sons. After that he sat on a few committees, made the right noises on Question Time, got himself appointed a special adviser to the PM. And here we are.’
‘Tell me about his brother.’
‘Karim. Quite a bit younger, twelve years, that area. He was radicalised without anyone noticing. Bad internet connections, mostly – that sounds like a techie problem, but you know what I mean. He got involved in a couple of forums that’ve since been shut down. First the family knew about it, he was posting a video from Syria. And the last thing they knew, a couple of months later, he was playing gooseberry in someone else’s date with a drone. Syria’s one place where you really don’t want to go celebrity spotting, isn’t it?’
‘I’ll scrub it from my bucket list. What about entourage?’
‘Jaffrey does a lot of work with radicalised youngsters – recovering radicals, that is. Gets them speaking in schools, writing blogs, doing podcasts. And he recruits his staff from their number. So what we’ve got is a lot of vetting reports with more hedges than Hampton Court maze. That’s just a quick overview, obviously. But still …’
‘Nobody’s putting their career on the line to guarantee they’re all spotless.’
‘That’s about the size of it.’ Welles paused. ‘Plus, I just had a word with a former contact. A print reptile.’
She said, ‘You spoke to a journo?’
‘When the digital revolution’s won, we’ll all be speaking to them on a daily basis. “Yes, I will have fries with that.” Meanwhile, they have their uses. And this one works on Dodie Gimball’s paper. It seems Gimball’s filed a piece claiming Jaffrey has links to an, ah, unsavoury individual dealing with guns and fake paperwork. Dodie’s done the sums, and come up with terrorism. In fact, she’s drawing a direct connection between Jaffrey and the group responsible for the Derbyshire killings.’
Flyte said, ‘Oh – kay. Ten minutes after I’m handed a brief to make sure our man’s a white-hat, it turns out he’s in the frame for a mass murder.’
‘More like an hour,’ Welles said. ‘And are you allowed to say white-hat?’
‘Even we haven’t tagged those responsible for Derbyshire. How the hell would Gimball know?’
‘Doesn’t matter. She’s got some dirt and is about to throw it, that’s all. She’s married to Dennis, the anti-Europe MP. Probably has an agenda we don’t know about.’
‘Everybody does,’ grumbled Flyte. She finished her coffee and stood. ‘Thanks, Dev. But keep digging.’
‘Will do.’
She left in search of Lady Di.
Catherine put the kettle on and, while waiting, scrubbed at a stain on the kitchen counter. There was always something. Not long ago, she’d imagined herself out of Slough House for good, and the life she’d led during those few months had been serviceable enough: evenings had followed afternoons had followed mornings, and during none of them had she drank. But they weighed heavy. There are worse things an alcoholic can have on her hands than time, but not many. Her flat was a model of order; virtually a caricature. In order to spend time tidying, she had to mess things up first. Here in Slough House, mess came as standard. So yes, there was always something.
But not all stains scrubbed away. Some while back there’d been three deaths inside Slough House, which even Lamb allowed was pretty high for a mid-week afternoon. They’d lost a colleague, and a former spook, and a captive had been shot dead too. Catherine was perhaps the only one to mourn this final death. It wasn’t so much the loss of life as the manner of its taking: J. K. Coe had committed murder, and Catherine believed that such actions had consequences. This was nothing to do with religion or spiritual awareness, just her hard-won knowledge that bad things followed bad. Circles were traditionally vicious. Catherine suspected other shapes had teeth too, but better PR.
She finished scrubbing, made two cups of tea, and carried both, along with the dishcloth, up to Lamb’s room.
He stirred. ‘Did I accidentally establish an open-door policy? Because if so, I didn’t mean my door. I meant everyone else’s.’
Catherine put the two cups on his desk, removed a single sock, a comb missing so many teeth it needed dentures and an empty sandwich carton from the chair on the visitors’ side, and wiped it with the dishcloth. Then she sat.
‘It’s like a royal visitation,’ he grumbled. ‘If your arse is so particular, why’s it attached to you? What are you after, anyway? As if I didn’t know.’
‘Someone tried to run Roddy over.’
‘Yeah. You might have missed the bit where we had a meeting earlier? That was covered under Any Other Business.’
‘And you said it never happened.’
‘I pointed out that Dander’s a coked-up idiot,’ he said. ‘A subtle difference, I know. But subtlety’s always been my strong point.’
He farted, and reached for his tea.
‘Can you actually do that at will?’ Catherine asked, despite herself.
‘Do what?’
‘… Never mind. So you believe her. Despite her issues.’
The slurping noise he made would not have disgraced a pig.
‘And yet you let her think you didn’t.’
‘Jesus, Standish.’ He opened his desk drawer. She knew what was coming, and here it was: a bottle of Talisker. He opened it and poured about a week’s worth into his cup. ‘Complete the following, would you? Upon receiving information of a credible threat to an agent …’
Light dawned.
‘… Okay.’
‘Yeah, that’s not the exact wording.’
She could see no way out of this. ‘A report of same must immediately be made to local station head (Ops).’
‘I could actually hear the brackets there,’ he said. ‘And what’s our local station, remind me?’
‘Regent’s Park.’
‘Regent’s Park. So Service Standing Rule number whatever it is—’
‘Twenty-seven (three).’
‘Thank you. Demands that a full report of this morning’s events be made to Lady Di Taverner, who will doubtless copy Claude Whelan i
n. For a supposedly secret service, there’s a lot of stuff happens in triplicate.’ Lamb took a healthy gulp of what had been tea. ‘Ah, that’s better. Luckily, Service Standing Rule twenty-seven three is superseded by London Rules, rule one. Which is …?’
He cupped a hand behind a monstrous ear.
London Rules were written down nowhere, but everyone knew rule one.
‘Cover your arse.’
‘Precisely.’ He belched, proudly. ‘Because you may not have noticed, but Slough House isn’t exactly in Regent’s Park’s wank bank. In fact, there are those who’d happily tie us in a sack and drop us in the Thames.’ He shook his head at the thought of being unpopular, produced a cigarette from somewhere, and lit it. ‘So any time they get an opportunity to start writing memos about us, it’s in our interests to squash such opportunity before it comes to fruition. Do stop me if I’m going too fast.’
‘Your turn of speed is always impressive,’ she said. For someone your size, she meant. She waved away smoke. ‘Have you ever thought about quitting? You might live longer.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Good point. So what you’re saying is, whatever’s put Roddy in someone’s crosshairs has also put us in Regent’s Park’s firing line.’
‘But only if they find out about it.’
‘What do you think Roddy’s done? Or seen?’
‘Christ knows. Downloaded the Archbishop of Canterbury’s porn stash? Whatever it is, I doubt he knows he’s done it. There’s something about him, what’s the word I’m looking for?’
‘… Otherworldly?’
‘Fuckwitted. Too fuckwitted to know when he’s stepped in someone else’s shit. Then starts treading it everywhere.’
‘He’s left for the evening,’ Catherine said.
‘I know. I felt the average IQ rise.’
‘What happens if they take another pass at him?’
‘If this morning’s attempt is anything to go by, it’ll end up on one of those video blooper programmes. It’s a good job they’re not on our side. If they were, they’d be assigned here.’