by Mick Herron
The new arrival was kind of a babe.
After wiping his drool-plastered lips with the back of his hand, then wiping the back of his hand on his T-shirt, Ho gave her his second-best smile, the one involving an ever-so-slightly raised eyebrow. No point unleashing full gamma force at Moment One. You have to earn that shit. And it looked like she was going to play the hard-to-get game, because she remained stony-faced as she folded her arms and leaned against the wall. She was blonde and taller than Roddy, but only by the usual four inches or so, and he recognised her now, because she’d been caught up in that mess earlier in the year, when Roddy had heroically climbed out of a window to avoid being shot. It was Emma Flyte, Head Dog. Hot dog, come to that. He’d Google-Imaged her once or twice, on the off-chance, but all he’d found were a few newspaper shots from her time in the force. She’d probably purged her online biography. That was cool: he liked them mysterious.
She said, ‘This Kim. Your girlfriend.’
Roddy nodded apologetically. It was as well she knew up front he was unavailable.
‘Let’s start with her,’ said Flyte.
River Cartwright was taut as a tennis racquet.
‘Christ on a bike,’ he said.
‘I’ve often wondered about that,’ said J. K. Coe. ‘What kind of bike?’ he added.
‘Are you insane?’
Coe looked out of the window. They were heading back to London, River driving as if Ho’s car were made of glass: every limit observed, every rule of the road adhered to. Not the time to be a bat out of hell, not when half the country’s law enforcement and most of its media would be focusing on local activity.
Before getting into the car Coe had called a news site: anonymously, from his pay-as-you-go. An alley in Slough; a man dead. Then he’d dismantled the set, tossing battery, phone and mangled SIM card onto the hard shoulder once they were under way.
‘That was a serious question,’ River said. ‘Are you insane?’
‘They used the word “troubled”. And “distressed”. Nobody ever said “insane”.’ Coe pursed his lips at the memory. ‘And these were experts,’ he said.
‘Because you not only act like a fucking psycho, you’re starting to rack up a score. What do we do now?’
‘I think we stay on the motorway.’
‘… Are you finding this funny?’
‘No,’ said Coe, though his tone suggested: Well, maybe a bit.
A police car flashed past in the opposite direction; then another, and another. River had the feeling he was driving into the heart of a storm, from which these vehicles were being hurled at great speed. The thought of what awaited them at journey’s end made him want to slam the brakes on. On the other hand, what lay behind needed intervening distance, fast.
It might be wise, he thought, to concentrate on driving for the time being.
‘See your phone?’ said Coe.
‘Why?’
‘News.’
River fished it from his pocket and tossed it at Coe, hoping it might take his eye out or something.
‘PIN?’
River told him.
Coe went online and looked at Twitter. ‘There you go.’
There were already seven tweets hazarding, announcing, speculating about what had happened in Slough. An eighth appeared. Then more. It seemed a self-propelled process, like watching facts being established through sheer weight of numbers.
‘And how does that help?’
‘I think the more confusion the better, don’t you?’
As a guiding principle, thought River, not necessarily. Though under the circumstances, maybe it was for the best.
Coe had more colour in his cheeks than River remembered seeing before; the hood of his hoodie was pooled around his shoulders and his earbuds were loose round his neck. Once before he’d killed someone: had the same thing happened then? River had the horrible feeling it might have.
He said, ‘We talked about this. Didn’t we? You said you weren’t going to kill anyone.’
‘I said I wasn’t going to shoot them.’
‘This isn’t the time to split hairs.’
Coe said, ‘I didn’t do it on purpose.’
‘You dropped a tin of paint—’
‘Knocked.’
‘—must weigh God knows how much—’
‘It shouldn’t have been left on the scaffolding.’
‘—from a height of like forty feet—’
‘I’d say thirty.’
‘—onto a man’s head.’
‘In my defence,’ said Coe, ‘if I’d been aiming for him, I’d have missed.’
‘That’s not really a defence, though, is it? More an admission of guilt.’
‘Well, it’s not like he’s a huge loss,’ said Coe.
‘Again, not helping.’ River realised he was starting to accelerate, and forced himself to ease up on the pedal. ‘Cast your mind back. The whole point was to foil the bad guys. Not do their job for them.’
‘Well, mission creep—’
‘Don’t,’ said River. ‘Just don’t.’
If he wasn’t driving he’d sink back in his seat and close his eyes, but if he closed his eyes he’d see it again: that tin of paint hurtling out of nowhere and damn near taking Gimball’s head off. One moment he was stuttering a single word over and over, now now now, and the next he was bouncing off a wheelie bin like a discarded puppet. The tin meanwhile hit the ground, leaped into the air and struck the black guy River was wrestling: he’d yelped – a high-pitched note; strangely feminine for someone who seemed, just River’s opinion, to be made of rubberised concrete – then taken off when he’d seen Gimball’s body. And still the tin’s lid remained tightly in place: they could have used that in their advertising, thought River irrelevantly. The paint manufacturers. Although it wasn’t necessarily a point in its favour, as presumably there’d be moments when you’d want the lid to come off without hassle. When you were painting a wall, for instance, rather than killing a politician. So probably not the hook for an advertising campaign. Anyway: not an important issue.
What was important was, they’d left the scene.
He’d got to his feet. His assailant was gone; River was left staring in fear and astonishment, and J. K. Coe had appeared. We’d better go, he’d said, and then he was hustling River out of the alley, leaving a scene of quiet destruction behind them: one dead Gimball, one tin of paint. All those wheelie bins, clustered round like mourners.
‘We shouldn’t have left,’ he said now.
‘Yes we should,’ said Coe.
‘You said it was an accident. So—’
‘It was.’
‘—so why did we leave? It only makes us look—’
‘We had to.’
‘—like we’re guilty of something, like it was a hit.’
‘We had to,’ Coe repeated. He glanced across at River, then back at the road unfurling in front of them, all its marginal twinklings, its brief reflections, amped up to maximum. ‘Think about it. We were there unofficially—’
‘Lamb sent us.’
‘—because we’re Slough House, not Regent’s Park, and Slough House doesn’t get sent anywhere, doesn’t matter what Lamb says.’
‘We left the scene of a crime.’
‘An accident. One in which the security service’s loudest and most public critic was … glossed over. Sorry.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake—’
‘So any suggestion of Service involvement in his death, including our presence, will be blanketed. You understand? The Park will cover it up. Whatever the cost. And you and me – we’re not expensive, if you see what I mean.’
‘This is a fucking nightmare.’
‘It is what it is,’ said Coe. ‘On the upside, we do have a readymade scapegoat.’
‘You’re gonna put this on the black guy?’
‘Let’s not play the race card. I don’t care what colour he is, he was there to kill Gimball. The fact that he didn’t—’
&
nbsp; ‘That you did.’
‘—by accident, yeah, the fact that he didn’t’s neither here nor there … Its lid stayed on, did you notice?’
‘The paint?’
‘Yeah. Would have been a real mess if it hadn’t.’
‘It’s a real mess anyway,’ River pointed out. ‘Was he one of them?’
‘One of the Abbotsfield crew? How should I know?’
‘Because he didn’t have a gun, did he?’
‘I imagine he’d have used it if he did. Are you going to drive this slowly all the way?’
‘I thought it best not to attract attention,’ said River, through gritted teeth. ‘In the circumstances.’
‘Not sure five miles an hour under the speed limit is the best way to do that.’
That this was a good point didn’t improve River’s frame of mind. He sped up though, nudging, then jostling, the limit. Coe meanwhile – at last – closed his eyes; assumed what had until recently been his default setting, though without inserting his earbuds. He had one final comment to offer.
‘Probably a tricycle,’ he said.
River didn’t ask.
She wanted to know about his work, Ho said.
‘And why was that?’
… Because she was interested.
‘You told her you worked for the intelligence services?’
No. She thought he worked for a bank, but she’d quickly cottoned on that he was no mere desk jockey.
‘Imagine me just shuffling papers?’ Ho shook his head. ‘No, she could tell I did the digital dance, you know?’ He trilled a little riff on the tabletop in front of him. ‘The keyboard solo.’
‘And how did she work that out?’
‘… I told her.’
‘And once she knew you were a computer ace, Roddy, what did she ask you for?’
Just to help her out occasionally, that was all. So that’s what he did. Because she was Kim – his girlfriend.
Emma Flyte was trying hard not to shake her head, or sigh deeply, or even just burst into tears. ‘Help her out with what?’
Little stuff.
Sorting her credit card troubles, for example: she was always having trouble with her credit card. Or being defrauded in restaurants. So occasionally he’d step into the breach and, well, yeah, make sure everything got sorted.
Flyte didn’t have a word for the expression that accompanied this. It seemed intended to be a conspiratorial smile, but looked like a wasp-victim’s smirk.
‘And you didn’t have a problem with that?’
Well, you know, he explained. Chicks. Right?
‘So when did it stop being about the money?’
Well, it wasn’t the money as such, more the principle—
‘When did it stop being about the money?’
And so it was that Emma Flyte learned that a few months previously Ho had woken up one morning and, well, it must have been the tequila’s fault, because he had no memory of the previous evening and Kim, his girlfriend, was acting all moonstruck, telling him how much it turned her on, all the secrets he’d told her. But that was okay, because she was basically family, right? She was his girlfriend.
Sweet God in Heaven, thought Flyte.
‘Your girlfriend. But apart from her name, and a false address, and the fact that she’s Chinese, you know damn all about her, right?’
For the first time, Ho looked puzzled. ‘Chinese?’
‘Well she is, isn’t she?’
‘No,’ said Ho. ‘She’s Korean.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Danny said. ‘How come Gimball’s dead?’
Shin said, ‘Somebody killed him.’
‘But who? And why does that mean we let Jaffrey live?’
An said, ‘Because the plan calls for a populist leader to die. And a populist leader died.’
‘But we didn’t kill him!’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
They had left the scene at speed, the van still ringing from the wrench hurled by the madwoman.
An said, ‘Gimball’s dead, and nobody will believe it’s a coincidence. They will believe it was part of the plan, and that in itself will mean the plan works. Don’t you see?’
Danny stared, as did Shin, though Shin was trying to pretend that he too had been going to say that very same thing.
‘So for now, we should lie low.’
Lying low meant parking near the university, where the natural camouflage was greatest. Still bewildered at the sudden alteration in the evening – still angry he felt two steps behind the others – Danny found himself thinking about the girl, Kim, a low-rent con-artist who’d been working the target. She had family back in North Korea; distant, but not so distant she was happy to let them become the object of official attention. Or perhaps she was just savvy enough to realise that some offers, you didn’t say no to. However distant those family members might be, her own face, her eyes, her teeth, were within reach, and easy collateral.
Her name had been given to them by the SSD, which had recruited Danny and his companions when they were children, and had provided for all their needs since. Their task was to bend her to the SSD’s will, which was, in turn, the will of the Supreme Leader, whose destiny was to bring low His enemies, and see them scuttle in terror. Like his four – now three – companions, Danny was an instrument of that destiny. Like them, he had come to this country as a student, under the flag of a different nation, his studies a mask for a mission years in the planning. The van they now lived in, the jeep they had long since torched, the weapons they had collected from a lock-up garage on the outskirts of Preston – all had been provided by the SSD. On the other side of the world, the Supreme Leader feasted in His palaces, and Shin made nightly reports, and nightly received instructions. Through His vessels, the Supreme Leader spoke to them, directing them in their mission. And all around the world, other groups like theirs would be activated too, and tearing down the houses of His enemies. The mad American had woken the tiger, and now he and all his allies would pay the price. The world would learn that there were many different ways of being locked and loaded.
The Supreme Leader’s glory was a global fact. Kim understood the serious folly of refusing Him. So she had accepted the orders they gave her, along with the pills she had slipped in the target’s alcohol, ensuring a night of oblivion. In the morning, she had convinced him this had been spent sharing secrets. If the target thought he had already let slip the true nature of his employment, he would find it easier to release subsequent, apparently trivial proofs.
A week later, the document was in their hands. And so it began.
Later still, once the wheels were in motion, they had been instructed to cover their tracks; to get rid of the girl and Ho too, before the significance of the stolen document became apparent. As with any conjuring trick, it would not do for the magic to be revealed before the final flourish. So Shin had finished the girl in her own home; but as for Ho, twice they had attempted to deal with him, and twice he had eluded their efforts. Despite himself, Danny felt respect. Ho was evidently a highly skilled agent, adept at evading danger. A worthy enemy in this milksop nation.
But he worried. They had been told that the plan was unalterable, and yet here they were, altering it. For the moment, he would go along. But if there were further derailments, further rearrangements, he would have to take action.
The Supreme Leader would expect no less.
‘I don’t get it,’ Shirley said. ‘How come Gimball’s dead?’
Louisa was tailgating some idiot crawling at eighty. ‘Because the bad guys got him.’
‘Yeah, but they were in Brum. In that van. Coming for Jaffrey.’
‘Until you scared them off,’ said Louisa.
‘Yeah.’
‘With a monkey wrench.’
Shirley nodded seriously.
‘You actually saw them?’
‘They were in the back of the van.’
‘So you actually saw them.’
‘It was a va
n, not a shop window.’
‘So you didn’t actually see them.’
Shirley shrugged. ‘They were opening up. That’s when I went for them.’
Running down the road, brandishing a chunk of metal: you could see why the folk in the van had decided to be elsewhere.
Especially if they were, say, a bunch of locals, rather than a tooled-up gang of murdering psychopaths.
Shirley said, ‘Did you see my throw? It actually stuck in the door. Hung there for a second.’
‘So I noticed.’
‘No wonder they scarpered.’
‘Shirley, do you really think that van was full of terrorists?’
‘Yep.’
‘Really? Armed terrorists?’
‘No match for Superwoman.’ Shirley mimed throwing the wrench, though there wasn’t room in the car to do it full justice. It looked more like she was chucking an imaginary ball for a non-existent dog.
‘You don’t think they might have been, say, ordinary citizens? Who you terrified?’
‘Nope,’ said Shirley.
‘So what happened in Slough? If the terrorists were in that van, coming for Jaffrey—’
‘Before I frightened them off.’
‘—before you chased them with a metal stick, what happened in Slough? Are there two gangs out there, or what?’
‘Maybe they split in two.’
Maybe they had, conceded Louisa. It was difficult arguing a point when you had no reliable information or accurate knowledge. Unless you were online, obviously. ‘Does it say how Gimball was killed?’
‘Nope.’ Shirley scrolled through Twitter again, where precise intelligence was being posted by informed witnesses. ‘But I expect he was shot. Or stabbed.’
‘Or poisoned or suffocated,’ agreed Louisa. ‘You’re probably right.’
She was thinking about the sequence of events back there; the precise moment when news of Gimball’s death had wafted through the public consciousness like wind through long grass. She said, slowly, ‘The van left as soon as the news broke. There were people in the library finding out about it on Twitter while I was standing by the window, watching.’