by Mick Herron
With no great hopes of it working, she flicked the light switch next to the door. All this triggered was a grunt from Jackson Lamb.
So she removed her coat and shook it. Droplets scattered, little rain dances picked up briefly by lamplight. There was a hook on the door, and she hung the coat there, then ran both hands through her shoulder-length curls. She turned to face Lamb. ‘I’m wet,’ she said.
‘Nice to see you too,’ said Lamb. ‘But let’s not get carried away.’ He eyed her critically. ‘You look like all your birthdays came at once.’
‘I look happy to you?’
‘No, old. Am I the only one round here speaks English?’
She didn’t smile. ‘Old, how kind. And busy too, what with the country being on high alert. Yet here I am, slogging across London to discover precisely what manner of shit you’re pulling now. Roderick Ho? I thought you kept him in a cage, like a gerbil.’
Lamb gave it some thought. ‘That’s pitching it a little high. He’s more like a verruca. You’re never entirely sure how you ended up with one, but they’re a bugger to get rid of.’
‘But we both know he can make a line of computer code sit up and beg. So what the fuck’s he been up to, Jackson? There was a knife at the scene, bullet holes in his walls, and broken glass all over his neighbourhood. And the Met were less than impressed with your witness statement. A domestic?’
‘I thought it best not to air the dirty laundry in front of the help. Especially Ho’s dirty laundry. Trust me, you don’t want to know.’ He waved a hand at the visitor’s chair. ‘It’s fine, it was wiped down yesterday.’
‘What with?’
‘Suit yourself.’
Taverner remained standing, hands resting on the back of the chair. ‘Playing the national security card for the cops is one thing, Jackson, even though we both know your clearance is just marginally higher than Thomas the Tank Engine’s. But acting dumb for the Park’s another story.’
‘I’m not sure you’re allowed to say dumb any more. It offends the vocally impaired. Or idiots. I can’t remember which.’
‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘Yeah, I caught that vibe.’
‘You were there, at Ho’s house, at whatever time in the morning it was. Which means you knew there was something going on. But didn’t report it. Service Standing Order whatever the hell it is—’
‘Twenty-seven three,’ Lamb said.
‘If you say so.’
‘The three’s in brackets.’
‘I don’t care if it’s in fucking Sanskrit, it’s there for a reason. If you knew there was a hit on one of your team, the protocol’s clear. You report it upwards. In this case, to me.’
‘Ordinarily, I would have. But there were special circumstances.’
‘Which were?’
‘I couldn’t be arsed.’
She drummed her fingers against the chair briefly, then stopped. Not letting Lamb see your annoyance was a primary objective of any encounter with him. A bit like not letting a shark notice your blood in the water. ‘That’s not a special circumstance, Jackson,’ she assured him. ‘That’s your prevailing condition. And this time, it might just prove terminal.’
‘If you want to go to the mats, Diana, you let me know. Because I have so much dirt on you, I’ve started an allotment.’
‘I’m sure that’ll be a distraction in your forced retirement, but it certainly won’t save you. Not this time.’
He leaned back heavily in his chair and swung both feet onto his desk. ‘If I’m gonna be threatened I’m getting comfortable. You mind if I loosen my trousers?’
‘I’d prefer it if you changed them occasionally. Look. I’m aware there are … incidents in the past—’
Lamb ticked some of them off. ‘Attempted murder. Kidnapping. And I’m pretty sure treason’s in there somewhere.’
‘—which might allow you a certain amount of leverage when it comes to negotiating your position. But we’re way past that here. So before you start stroking yourself, there’s a couple of details you might want to consider.’
‘Always like to get the details straight before I start.’
‘The Met reported a burnt-out car two miles from the scene. No body in it, so maybe whoever took a high-dive through your boy’s window survived the fall. Or maybe his pals just took his corpse somewhere else, in which case I’m sure he’ll turn up in due course.’
Lamb yawned, and put his hand back down his trousers. ‘So somebody’s either dead or they’re not. This is high-class investigative work.’
‘And the bullets found at the scene have been subjected to forensic examination.’
‘Don’t stop. Nearly there.’
‘The weapon they came from’s a match for one used at Abbotsfield.’
Lamb froze.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Taverner. ‘For once, I think we agree.’
Zafar Jaffrey had to stop three times on his way to the Dewdrop café: twice to accept good wishes from members of the community; once to buy a Big Issue and to discuss with its seller the problems faced by the nearby homeless shelter, where younger clients were being targeted by drug dealers. Jaffrey took notes and did a lot of nodding. He was handsome, clean-shaven, his hair just straggly enough to show independence of spirit, and when off-camera favoured jeans and open-necked shirts; a light bomber jacket today, despite Ed Timms’s warning.
‘Really, Zaf, you can’t be too careful.’
‘So I can’t wear a bomber jacket. Are you serious?’
‘It’s a gift to the Dodie Gimballs of this world.’
But whatever he wore, whatever he said, the Dodie Gimballs of this world would attack him for it; a series of hostile discourtesies for which the Dodie Gimballs of the next would answer. Besides, he liked the jacket. He thought it took a couple of years off; pushed him the right side of forty.
Now, to the Big Issue seller – ‘It’s Macca, right?’ – he delivered promises of action, of investigation, and he’d already made one follow-up phone call before arriving at the Dewdrop; pushing through the door with a shoulder, hand raised in greeting to Tyson, who sat with a bucket-sized mug in front of him, his tattoo oddly out of synch with his formal wear: white shirt, grey suit, mathematically precise knot in a red tie. Face ink aside, he looked more the politician than Jaffrey himself, though that was, admittedly, a big aside.
His phone was back in his pocket. Tyson Bowman stood as he approached, and they hugged briefly, a one-armed embrace – ‘Tyson.’ ‘Boss.’ – then sat at opposite sides of the small table, its cloth the ubiquitous red-and-white squares pattern; its ornament a cutlery holder into which sachets of ketchup and brown sauce had also been stuffed. He remembered bringing Karim here, back in the day; his younger brother not yet the aspiring martyr, but already, in Zafar’s twenty-twenty hindsight, distancing himself from what had been, until then, the everyday: people drinking tea and sharing jokes, living ordinary, godless lives. Zafar felt then what he still felt now. That there were better ways of achieving your goals than wrapping yourself in a Semtex vest.
Be that as it may, Karim’s story was not yet over. And the country he’d grown to despise remained in desperate need of betterment.
Zafar said, ‘No problems, then?’
Tyson shook his head.
‘When will it all be ready?’
‘Couple of days.’ He rubbed two fingers against his thumb. ‘On payment.’
Close up, the aspiring pol disappeared. It wasn’t that Tyson looked a thug – though he’d been anointed as such during his first two assault hearings – and it wasn’t that he looked an aspiring terrorist, though having been radicalised during his second prison term, he’d served a third for possession of extremist literature. Nor was it the colour of his skin, the close-shaven head, or even, particularly, the face tattoo – a usually reliable hallmark of forthcoming violence. No, thought Zafar; it was the attitude bottled within that package; one suggesting that social inter
action of any kind was unwelcome. Except with Zafar Jaffrey, who had reached out a helping hand when Tyson Bowman had been jobless, homeless and friendless. Zafar alone put a light in Bowman’s eyes; one he should, he knew, feel guilt at exploiting.
The waitress was hovering, pad at the ready. ‘Morning, Mr Jaffrey.’
‘Angela,’ he said. ‘Radiant as ever.’
‘You said that yesterday, Mr Jaffrey. You want to watch that. People’ll think you’re not sincere.’
He reached a hand out and touched hers. ‘People can think what they like, Angela. You’ll always be radiant to me.’
And now she smiled, and her sixty-something years fell away. ‘Will you still come here for breakfast when you’re mayor?’
‘While you’re serving, yes. But just coffee this morning, thank you.’
When she’d gone, he gave his full attention to Tyson. His bagman: a word not quite rinsed of its shadier connotations. But Tyson did, after all, carry bags on occasion.
His coffee arrived, and they talked of changes to the day’s schedule: one meeting cancelled, another brought forward. A five-minute slot on local radio would now happen in a van, not the studio, saving everyone concerned, van driver apart, thirty minutes. Each day was busier than the previous, but then the election was in three weeks. Jaffrey was an independent candidate, and though he had ‘disappointed’ the prime minister by refusing to adopt the party’s mantle – despite having been appointed to two select committees in recent years – the pair remained ‘close personal friends’, the PM’s oft-used tactic, when he couldn’t get popular figures to endorse him, being to endorse them instead, and hope something rubbed off. Jaffrey accepted this unsought chumminess in the same way he did the Opposition leader’s frequently mentioned ‘respect’: in politics, ticking the no-publicity box was not an option. Besides, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, neither of those worthies were deluded enough to imagine their own candidate had a snowball’s chance in hell: unless the polls were even more disastrously askew than last time, or the time before that, at the end of the month Zafar Jaffrey would assume the mayoralty of the West Midlands.
Of course, there were those – the Gimballs their standard-bearers, but by no means their only champions – who believed that the election of another Muslim mayor would be one step nearer sharia law. So far, their brickbats had bounced away: there remained, at least in so far as local politics was concerned, a resistance to dogwhistle racism, which was how most observers interpreted attempts to paint Jaffrey an Islamist sympathiser. Every time Dodie Gimball illustrated an article about him with a photo of a bombed-out bus, he enjoyed a bounce in the polls. But he had no illusions about the outcome should Tyson’s recent activities become public knowledge. He’d go from persecuted minority to certified terrorist before you could say Operation Trojan Horse.
Tyson, too, would come under the hammer. Easy enough for Zaf himself to say: Well. Won’t be the first time.
His mobile rang, rupturing the moment. Ed Timms, his press flack.
‘Chief, I’m hearing rumblings.’
He said, ‘You want to share them?’
‘Word is, Dodie Gimball has some high explosives set to go off in tomorrow’s column. After Dennis has his own firework display this evening.’
‘Could you maybe turn the colour down a notch? I find facts easier to process than images.’
‘Tonight, Dennis Gimball is giving a constituency speech in which he’s going to claim you have terrorist connections. And this will be followed up by his missus in her column tomorrow. Accompanied by art, as they say. They have pictures, Zaf. I don’t know what of, but you know what they say about pictures. They prove something happened, and once we’re at that stage, it doesn’t much matter what.’
And this was how swiftly it happened; how quickly a situation burst from the realm of the potential into the here and now.
‘Where’s this speech happening?’ he said.
‘On Gimball’s home turf. Slough.’
‘Okay, Ed. It’s just more bluster. Let’s not sweat it yet.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Later, Ed.’
He disconnected.
Tyson raised an eyebrow, alert to Jaffrey’s possible requirements. ‘Something need fixing, boss?’
‘Possibly. One or two things.’
Tyson said, ‘Whatever you want, boss. You know that. Doesn’t make any difference to me.’
Zafar reached out and they shared a handclasp. It was true, he thought; it genuinely didn’t matter to Tyson what Zafar asked him to do: he was happy to do it. And the thought made him sad and glad at the same time; gave him hope for the future, but removed it altogether.
It was just like everybody said. Politics was the art of compromise.
Lamb had found a cigarette about his person and, in a rare bout of chivalry, had come up with a spare to go with it. He lit his own before lighting Taverner’s. Manners were manners, but no point getting carried away.
‘According to the BBC,’ he said, ‘which I accept means according to whatever’s trending on Twitter, the Abbotsfield killings were ISIS.’
‘That’s the assumption we’re working on.’
‘Which would make the attempt on Ho ISIS too. And frankly, that buggers belief.’
‘Beggars.’
‘Sorry. Freudian slit.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Apart from anything else, they don’t do plots, do they? They do parking a bomb in a marketplace, or driving into a village and shooting everyone in sight. But they don’t do plots.’
‘They hit specific targets. They’ve done that before.’
‘High profile, yeah. But they don’t whack seventh-tier desk jockeys under cover of darkness.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘If this turns out to be one of your games, Diana, I can’t begin to express how disappointed I’ll be.’
She looked around for somewhere to tap her ash, then gave in to the office ambience and knocked it onto the carpet. ‘Games?’
‘It’s not escaped my memory that someone tried to kill me in this very room not long ago. We’ve never discussed that properly, have we?’
Every so often, when you were gazing into the fetid swamp of Lamb’s personality, a fin broke the surface.
Taverner said, ‘Let’s stick with the evils of the day, shall we? What shape is Ho in?’
‘He’s got a cut on his ear.’
‘Bullet wound?’
‘Poor housekeeping.’
‘Nobody else damaged?’
‘Dander was there. She had to hit the deck sharpish. But one of the advantages of being built like a football is, you learn to take a kicking.’
‘Everyone on the premises now?’
‘I don’t take a fucking register, Diana.’
‘I thought you did.’
‘Well, yeah, okay, I do. But that’s just to annoy them, not for official purposes.’
‘So …’
‘So everyone’s here, yes.’
‘Good. Because as of now you’re in lockdown.’
Lamb rolled his eyes.
‘I’m serious. No phones, no internet, and nobody leaves. Ho’s coming back to the Park. Whatever shit he’s stepped in, we need to examine his shoes. Meanwhile, the rest of you are in detention. With debriefing to follow.’
Lamb said, ‘Okay, why not? I’ll keep ’em in order. We can play murder in the dark while we wait for you lot to clear your schedules.’
Taverner laughed then stopped. ‘Oh, sorry, were you serious? When I want a fox to guard a hen house, you’ll be top of my list. But meanwhile, I’ll have Flyte babysit. You’ve met our Emma?’
‘The thought of her has gladdened many a long night.’
‘Careful. Some of us are used to you. Others might bring charges. Get your crew organised, why don’t you? I’m surprised Standish isn’t already here.’
‘Do you know, I’m not sure she likes you all that much.’
‘I’m not sure she likes you, either. And yet you keep her on. Have you ev
er told her why?’
Lamb gave her a long hard look, but Diana Taverner sat on committees; Diana Taverner chaired meetings. If long hard looks could make her crumble, she’d have been dust long ago.
At last he said, ‘She knows her old boss was a traitor, if that’s what you mean.’
‘And does she know he tried to implicate her in his treachery? That she was his cut-out, all set for framing?’
‘She’s probably worked that out.’
‘And that you put the bullet in his brain? Or does she still think he did that himself?’
Lamb didn’t reply.
She said, ‘Be fun to be a fly on the wall when she finds out.’
‘What makes you think she will?’
‘Christ, Lamb. Of all the secrets you’ve ever kept, which one screams to be heard the loudest?’
There were noises off: bodies arriving downstairs. The Dogs, Lamb assumed. Come to take Ho to the Park, and nail the rest of them down. He heard Standish open her door and emerge onto the landing. ‘What’s going on?’ she called.
‘There you go,’ said Lady Di. ‘Keen investigative mind at work.’
Roderick Ho would have been pleased, though unsurprised, to learn that he was the reason Kim’s heart was beating faster.
When she’d got home last night, the taxi having dropped her two streets away – in her line of work, it was best to keep her address quiet – she’d sat up late watching The Walking Dead and drinking vodka mixed, at first, with cranberry juice, and when that ran out, with more vodka. Sleep had come suddenly, without warning, and she’d woken with drool bonding her to her pillow and a thumping heart. Things had gone bad. Or were about to. Sometimes these feelings were misaddressed, emotional mail meant for someone else, but they were always worth acting on. The worst-case scenario was the one you planned for.
So she showered and dressed in three minutes, and grabbed her emergency kit from the wardrobe: passport, both savings books and two grand in cash, plus a change of clothing and the bare minimum of warpaint, all bundled inside a getaway bag. Nothing else in her room mattered. The rent was by the month; her housemates temporary friends. She’d leave them a note – an invented emergency – and walk out of their lives forever. Or run. Her heart hadn’t slowed yet, and if it wasn’t the organ you placed the most trust in, it was certainly the one you wanted to keep doing its job.