by Mick Herron
‘I fired straight and true,’ Shin repeated.
‘Then it is surprising we did not kill more.’
‘I have command of this unit,’ Shin said. ‘Do you really think my daily report will not contain this conversation?’
‘I make daily reports too,’ Danny lied.
Shin fell silent.
An, squatting against the side of the vehicle, looked down at his feet, then at the panels opposite, or at anywhere that wasn’t Danny, wasn’t Shin.
Danny said, ‘I’m going to kill her first. Before we go in.’
‘I am in charge!’ Shin said. ‘You don’t do anything without my orders!’
‘Then your orders should include this,’ said Danny. ‘That I’m going to kill her first. Before we go in.’
He leaned back against the panel and closed his eyes.
From his vantage point J. K. Coe watched Dennis Gimball smoke a furious cigarette, then light a second from the trembling stub of his first. Something was going on in the politician’s mind: you didn’t have to be John Humphrys to work that out. Which was fine. The way Coe felt about pols in general, Gimball in particular, he’d have been happy watching the man’s head explode.
Even so, he tensed when a new figure appeared in the alleyway; rumbling towards Gimball like a threat on legs. There was something wrong with his face, Coe thought, then decided he was wrong. It was the shadows cast by the scaffolding, making crazy the features they fell upon.
When the newcomer reached Gimball he raised his shoulders; made himself bigger.
He was big enough to start with: even with the foreshortening his perspective brought him, Coe could see that. He was black, in a big overcoat, and his hair was razored to straight lines across his brow and round his ears. And still there was that crazy shadowing, and it took another moment for the penny to drop. He wore tattoos. Across his face, his cheekbones, inky markings swirled.
Whatever he said was a low grumble, and Coe couldn’t catch the words.
Gimball stepped back. He waved his cigarette, as if sketching in smoke, and said one word over and over: ‘Now now now …’
Coe walked back towards the ladder, so he was directly over where the pair stood. Is this it? The newcomer didn’t appear to be armed, but didn’t have to be: he looked like he could break Gimball in half if he felt like it. Which didn’t mean he was going to, and didn’t make him a terrorist: he could be a concerned constituent, an over-enthusiastic pollster, or just one of the forty-eight per cent – that tiny minority, some of whom hadn’t yet got over and moved on – making a valid political point. And since any or all of the above could feasibly involve dumping Dennis Gimball in a wheelie bin, interfering would be putting a spoke in the democratic process.
So Coe thought: I’ll just watch for a moment.
Then River came down the alley too, and things got complicated.
Louisa stood, and the bored man along her row looked sharply round: you’re the cop, she thought. Pretending not to notice, she retrieved her mobile from her pocket as she walked to the entrance, muttering into it as if in reply to a caller. Through the windows she could see Shirley by the car, eating chips from the roof. Busted. Everything else looked quiet, though there was a van which had arrived since she’d entered the building. No logo on the side, but a driver at the wheel. He was looking behind him, as if talking to someone in the back. Could be something, could be nothing. If this were a proper op, instead of the Slough House equivalent – more like a work experience outing – the van would have been opened up by now, and its occupants made to sing the national anthem. But they were playing off the cuff, and the most they could do was keep both eyes open.
Unless Shirley did something ridiculous, of course.
River shouted ‘Hey!’, and the man with the tattoo turned. He seemed expressionless, despite the nature of the moment, as if his ink-job was left to do all his features’ work.
‘Not your business,’ he said. ‘Back off.’
River came to a halt two feet in front of the pair. ‘You okay, Mr Gimball?’
Gimball said, ‘I have an important meeting to attend. Address. Get out of my way.’
It wasn’t clear which of the two he was talking to, but River ran with it anyway. ‘You heard the man. Let him by.’
‘I hadn’t finished speaking to him.’
‘But he’s finished speaking to you.’
Gimball said, ‘This has gone on long enough. Shall I call the police? Is that what you want?’
‘No need,’ River said. ‘This gentleman was just leaving.’
But this gentleman had other ideas. When River reached out to grab his elbow he swatted it aside and squared up. He was bigger than River, broader, and it didn’t look like this was the first time he’d raised his fists in an alley, but River had been taught to fight by professionals, and if he hadn’t come top of his class, he’d never come bottom either. Which was a great comfort to him when the tattooed guy kicked him in the stomach.
All of this observed from above by J. K. Coe, who was coming to the conclusion that he’d better either intervene or climb into the building and disappear.
River bent double, and the man put a hand on his head and pushed him backwards. He fell over.
Gimball said, ‘That’s it. I’m calling the police.’ He had his phone out: a visual aid. He waved it about. ‘I’m calling them now.’
The man plucked the phone from his grasp and threw it at the wall, where it shattered.
‘Now now now now now …’
‘Now nothing. You listen to me.’
‘Now now now …’
The man grabbed Gimball by the lapel one-fisted, and pulled him close.
Oh Christ, thought J. K. Coe.
River scrambled to his feet.
‘Now now now …’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
River seized the man by the shoulders, and the man released Gimball and turned, ready to plant a heavy fist in River’s face, but River drove his elbow into the man’s nose first. Blood flew, but the man blocked the follow-up punch with a forearm and lunged forward. The pair went crashing into a wheelie bin, then slid to the ground, the man on top. He raised his fist again, but River was already twisting free: he grabbed the man’s wrist, aborting the punch, and at the same time headbutted him in his already damaged nose while Gimball watched in horror.
‘Let me by!’
But he trembled on the spot like a man at a dogfight, worried that if he tried to pass, one or the other would turn on him.
River was on his feet now, and planted a kick which caught the man on the shoulder, though Coe assumed he’d been aiming for his head. This produced a grunt but no serious damage, and then the man was upright too, bobbing and weaving, muttering words: come on then, come on. He dodged River’s next punch, and the one after, then threw one of his own, aiming for the throat: if it had connected, River would have been all messed up. But he’d pulled back and the jab kissed air: from where Coe was watching, it looked choreographed, deliberate. Gimball was wedged against one of the bins, and might possibly climb inside it soon, if assistance didn’t show up; River and his opponent seemed to have forgotten he was there. It was all about the fight, now. It was all about being top dog. Coe checked his options again, and they hadn’t changed: fight or flight. River didn’t even know he was here, for God’s sake. He could force a window, clamber through and make his way to the street. Go back and scrape River off the ground later. Except …
Except if it was him down there and River up here, River would come to his aid.
He thought about that for a moment, long enough to see the next two seconds of action, neither of which were much fun for River, who caught a blow on the side of the head which would have him hearing bells for a while. Helping River, it occurred to Coe, would involve getting in the way of such moments: giving the man another target to bounce his fists off while River caught his breath. So okay, a window it was, and Coe turned to retrace his steps, but as he did so his foot caught
that stray tin of paint, knocking it from its perch; sending it swirling, lid over base, thirty feet down to the alley below.
Oh shit, he thought.
Five minutes later, miles away, Shirley finished her chips and the streetlights flickered on, making the world subtly different. It was time, she thought. Whatever was going on with that van: it was time for her to make a move. Because if anything was going to happen, shadow-time was its cue.
She should fetch Louisa, really, but what good would that do? Two of them and just one weapon: if there were bad actors in the van, bringing Louisa would double their targets. She crumpled the fish-and-chip paper, wrapped it round the empty polystyrene carton, and left the resulting brick-shaped wedge on the car roof. She could feel the wrench up her right sleeve, its head digging into her palm. When she loosed her grip it would drop into her hand seamlessly, or that was the idea. In an ideal world, she’d have got to practise the move.
Marcus? she thought.
You go, girl.
She went.
Shin was staring at his phone. ‘There is something,’ he began.
‘She’s coming.’
‘What?’
‘The woman,’ An said. He had taken over the watcher’s role; had his eye pressed to the peephole in the van’s back door. ‘She is approaching.’
‘Then we move,’ Danny said.
He was holding a semi-automatic weapon, nursing it as if it were his newborn.
‘We move,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll take the woman, then we go in.’
It would not be like Abbotsfield, Danny knew. There they were uniformed, and in the open air: blue skies above, and old stone buildings echoing to their presence. There had been water babbling nearby, and deeply rooted trees bearing witness. It was as though they had stepped through the centuries, bringing warfare to a world that thought itself free of bloodshed. Here, there were no hills to scream down from, and no birds to take flight. There would be walls and windows, that was all, and the dying would know themselves deep in the heart of their city: but they’d still die. It was the final, necessary lesson. That they’d die.
And first among them would be that woman with her stiff-armed walk; approaching them now, An said; walking towards them with intent.
Danny reached for the handle on the back door.
‘No. Wait.’
And this was Shin again, still caressing his phone, but looking at Danny, and speaking with more authority than of late.
Danny scowled, and gripped the handle. The gun hung over his shoulder, its webbed strap as familiar to him as the feel of his shirt, of the belt round his waist.
‘I said wait!’
The door released, and air broke in, a sudden waft of summer evening pushing past the reek of male bodies.
Then An put one hand on Danny’s sleeve, and with the other reached across him and pulled the door shut.
‘What?’ Danny said.
Shin, putting his phone away, said, ‘It’s already done. We must leave.’
‘What do you mean, already done? How—’
‘Go! Drive!’
This to Chris, who sat at the wheel.
‘—can it be done?’
Chris started the van, which gave a sudden lurch.
‘No! We have a mission!’
Shin leaned forward and struck Danny across the face. ‘Enough!’
Danny looked wide-eyed at An, but An refused to meet his gaze.
‘This goes in my report,’ Shin hissed. Then, to Chris again, ‘Why are we still here?’
The van pulled away.
Louisa had come to the window again, ignoring the irritated glances from her fellow citizens, while Zafar Jaffrey explained how a modern city, a model community, found space for all within its embrace: there were no exclusions, no pariahs. Yeah, fine. Until a bunch of them turn up with guns and start their own exclusion process. But she was a little ashamed of that knee-jerk response: occupational hazard, she supposed. Which didn’t mean other people shouldn’t be setting their sights higher.
Outside, Shirley had left her car-roof picnic; was walking down the road in a purposeful way, her stiff right arm offering a clue to the monkey wrench’s current whereabouts. She seemed to be heading for the van, whose back door popped open at that moment. Something happening, Louisa thought, and at the same moment became aware of a murmuring behind her; Jaffrey’s audience responding to external events. Shirley flexed her arm, and Louisa saw the wrench drop cleanly into it, and then the van door closed again and the vehicle coughed into life. Shirley started to run. Behind her, Louisa could hear chairs scraping, and shocked noises, Oh my Gods and Bloody hells. Her phone buzzed. The van pulled away, and Shirley was going full pelt now, shouting something, Louisa couldn’t hear what. Oh Jesus, she thought, and then Shirley was in the middle of the road and the wrench in full flight; it arced, graceful as a swallow, and hit the departing van’s back door with the business end before clattering to the ground. Shirley came to a halt, put her hands on her knees, and stood panting and doubtless swearing, but her quarry was gone. The whole thing had taken maybe four, five seconds.
Louisa shook her head. If they were ordinary solid citizens in that van, we’re going to be hearing about that, she thought.
It’s tails, she’d told River. You get Coe.
She shouldn’t have lied. Coe would have been less trouble.
Then she returned to the crowd behind her, to discover what the fuss was about.
9
LAMB SAID, ‘FUCK ME. So that happened.’
On the BBC website, video had been posted of a scaffolding-clad alleyway, where folk in white jumpsuits teamed about. Either ABBA had reformed in Slough, or a body had been discovered there.
Dennis Gimball, according to social media.
Catherine said, ‘There’s been no official confirmation, but …’
‘But everyone’s favourite Europhobe just made a hard Brexit.’ Lamb magicked a cigarette from thin air, then thinned the air further by lighting it. ‘And here’s me having gone to the bother of sending Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and the other one to stop that happening.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘I sometimes wonder why I get out of bed in the morning.’
‘Probably just to spread sweetness and light.’ Catherine was texting; calling River and Louisa home. She didn’t call it ‘home’, obviously. When she’d finished she looked up to see Lamb glaring at her iPad: she’d put it on his desk to show him the breaking news. Aware of how brief Lamb’s relationships with technology could be, she plucked it from his ambit. ‘So. Gimball’s dead and the bad guys are winning. Not our finest hour.’
Lamb sniffed. ‘On the other hand, this proves our theory’s right. So, you know, swings and roundabouts.’
‘I’m sure that’s a great comfort to the deceased.’
‘He sleeps with the silverfishes,’ said Lamb. ‘That’ll have to be comfort enough.’
Catherine left the room to boil the kettle. When she came back with two cups of tea, Lamb had his unshod feet on his desk. All five toes were showing through one sock; three through the other. It was as close as you could get to not wearing socks, she thought, without actually not doing so. She put a cup in front of him and resumed her seat. Lamb farted meditatively, then said, ‘So where does this leave us?’
‘Well,’ Catherine said. ‘You had working knowledge of the possibility of an assassination attempt on Dennis Gimball, but all you did was send a couple of unarmed desk operatives to stand around while it happened. And failed to inform the Park because you were worried they’d issue some scorched-earth protocol to cover up the fact that the potential assassins are following the Park’s own join-the-dots destabilisation playbook. Did I miss anything?’
Lamb stared for a while, then said, ‘That was hurtful. Tact’s just something that happens to carpets far as you drunks are concerned, isn’t it?’
‘I did miss something,’ Catherine said, unperturbed. ‘You had Emma Flyte locked to a chair while this happened.’ She s
ipped tea. ‘That’s going to look good on the report.’
‘Nah, that plays in our favour. If she’d called it in soon as we loosed her, we’d be neck-deep in Dog shit by now. We’re not, or no more than usual. Which means she kept it to herself, which means she took my point. Anyone who knows what’s going on needs to keep their head down. This one’s toxic.’
‘They’re all toxic, Jackson.’
He looked at her sharply, but she was staring into her tea, as if expecting to find leaves there, as if expecting them to offer answers.
Her phone buzzed, and she checked the incoming text. ‘Louisa and Shirley are heading back.’
‘A grateful nation sighs its relief.’
‘Claude Whelan’s a sensible man, you know. Bypass Lady Di, take this straight to him. He’s not going to have us all buried in some black prison somewhere just because we know more than we should.’ She sipped tea. ‘They don’t really have troublesome agents taken care of any more. If they did, you’d not have lasted this long.’
‘Depends how much trouble they cause. But let’s wait and see what the Fantastic Four have to report before making any decisions. I mean, I don’t wipe my arse before taking a dump, do I?’
‘I’d rather not speculate.’
Lamb sneered, then, having brought his arse to mind, scratched it vigorously. ‘Could be worse, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s not as if one of our lot actually killed the bastard, is it?’ And then he stopped scratching. ‘What was that?’
Someone had just entered Slough House.
Roderick Ho was enmeshed in a dream in which Kim – his girlfriend – was explaining that the various credit card refunds she’d asked him to arrange had been a ploy, to allow her to amass enough cash to buy him a present. This went some way towards explaining her phenomenally poor luck in her online dealings, whereby one retailer or another was forever deducting funds from her card without the promised goods showing up. It was the act of a gentleman to put such matters right, particularly if the gentleman in question (the Rodster) had the ability to wander untrammelled behind the world’s digital mirror, moving numbers from one place to another as the mood took him. Even so, he felt a very specific kind of pleasure wash over him at the news. Indeed, if the watch she then presented him with hadn’t been a small octopus, he might have remained in the dream longer. As it was, it wrapped tiny boneless tentacles around his wrist and emitted a strange kerthunk noise, which, as Ho opened his eyes, coincided exactly with the opening of the door.