London Rules

by Mick Herron

  Nobody had been able to tell her what had happened. It was ‘under investigation’. It was ‘too soon to tell’. The area had been cordoned off, and there’d been a roadblock in place when her motorcade exited Slough, but all of that was not for her ears, not for her eyes. Under any other circumstances she’d have blown a dozen different holes through the careers of everyone in earshot, but tonight she felt powerless. This was grief; grief was being alone in the car. But it was something else too, something she hadn’t got to the bottom of yet.

  Her last words to Dennis had been If you get caught, you’re never borrowing my Manolos again. And that was that.

  This, too, would benefit from a rewrite. As I embraced him, I had a strange presentiment, of a kind I’ve only ever once had before, when my beloved grandmother – no, grandfather – grandmother – sod it, the interns can handle the details. ‘I love you, my darling.’ I’ll always be glad those were the last words I …

  The blue light in front slowed, drew to a halt.

  Her own car followed suit.

  They were on Western Avenue. Up ahead, lights picked out the Hoover Building, under reconstruction. On the road, red fireflies streamed into central London; here, blue lights looped slowly fore and aft of her, and she was stationary in a layby, and the driver was saying something: it included the word ma’am.

  ‘… What?’

  ‘I’ve been asked to pull over.’

  ‘… What?’

  ‘You have a visitor.’

  And then the driver was leaving, and she truly was alone in the car.

  ‘How did you know where to find us?’

  Lamb sighed. ‘Give me credit. You were clearly going to be looking for the girl, and where else would she be hiding?’

  ‘Also, I told him,’ said Catherine.

  ‘Well, if you want to get technical.’

  Kim – Roddy Ho’s girlfriend – was flat on her back on the office floor with everyone gathered round her, the spectrum of concern to indifference running from Catherine Standish at one end to Jackson Lamb so far off the other, he was barely visible. ‘Timing,’ he’d said more than once. ‘Now that was timing.’

  ‘There might have been gentler ways of accosting her.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ He surveyed the assembled: J. K. Coe with a slashed chin; Shirley Dander with a torn earlobe; Louisa and River both moving gingerly. ‘Because you lot handled her with such fucking panache.’

  The conversation with Catherine had taken place over the phone in Welles’s car, after they’d left the Park; Flyte and Welles up front, Lamb sprawled in the back.

  ‘We need to find the girl,’ Flyte had said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If they haven’t killed her yet.’

  Traffic was light. London wore its evening gown: glittering sequins and overstuffed purse. Some nights it looked like an empress in rags. Tonight it was a bag lady in designer clothes.

  Lamb had said, ‘I’d have killed her. But these numbnuts had two goes at Ho and barely bruised his ego. Given that a five-year-old could take him down with a walnut whip, I don’t have much faith in their abilities.’ Before she could reply he shifted his bulk, and the seating squeaked indignantly. ‘I can’t help noticing you’re in the car.’

  ‘As are you,’ said Flyte, pinching the tip of her nose briefly.

  ‘Well, I’m hardly walking home, am I? But what’s your excuse?’

  ‘You think I should be jogging?’

  ‘I think you should be in your office, making your report. Yet here you are.’ He scratched his ear, and when he’d finished, he was holding a cigarette. ‘Because you’re in this up to your neck now, and so’s Cornwall here.’

  ‘Devon.’

  ‘Whatever. You fucked up, and he had your back at the wrong moment.’ Lamb glanced towards Welles. ‘Bet you’re wishing you never answered your phone.’

  Welles ignored him.

  Flyte said, ‘Gimball’s dead.’

  ‘Boo hoo. Shall we buy a teddy bear, tie it to a lamp post?’

  ‘You said he was in danger. If I hadn’t ignored that, it might have turned out differently.’

  Lamb eased back. ‘When they reassign you, I’m gonna put you in with Cartwright,’ he said. ‘You’ve bumped heads before, I seem to recall.’

  ‘I’ll shoot myself first.’

  ‘I’ve a gun you can borrow.’

  That was when his phone had buzzed: Catherine Standish, with the latest from Slough House.

  While Lamb was talking, Flyte said to Welles, ‘When I asked you to cover for me, I didn’t know things were going to hell. I’m sorry. You’re still off duty. You can walk away now.’

  Welles said, ‘I signed Lindsay Lohan here into the Park. There’ll be questions about that.’

  Flyte thought for a while, then settled on a one-size-fits-all response. ‘Shit.’

  ‘It’s not so bad at my gaff,’ Lamb said, ending his call. ‘We have a new kettle.’

  ‘You’re enjoying this.’

  ‘It’s called a positive attitude,’ said Lamb. ‘Watch and learn. Oh, and Hampshire? Change of plan. My team think the girl’s at Ho’s house.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Too early to say. Their last search and rescue didn’t work out so well. Worth a trip, though.’

  Welles pulled into a layby. ‘We should head back to the Park,’ he said. ‘Lay it all out for Whelan or whoever.’

  ‘Yeah, not a great idea,’ said Lamb. ‘Remember?’

  Flyte rolled her eyes. ‘What now?’

  But it was Welles who answered. ‘When they came for the blueprint, they knew what they were looking for. They had inside info.’

  ‘Shit,’ she said again.

  ‘Which means someone’s been a bad apple,’ said Lamb. ‘Be nice to know who before we go waltzing in like Little Red Riding Crop.’

  ‘Hood.’

  ‘Different movie.’ He looked at Welles. ‘You gonna sit there all night?’

  ‘Depends on what my boss says.’

  ‘Did you train him with a stick? Or send him to school?’

  Flyte said, ‘If they had inside info, how come they needed Ho?’

  ‘Just one of the many things we’re not gonna find out sitting here.’

  ‘I screwed up,’ she said. ‘That happens around you a lot, doesn’t it? Like gravitational pull. And I’ll take the rap. But I don’t plan to spend the rest of tonight in a room next to Roddy Ho. Not if there’s a chance we might track these bastards down.’

  So they’d headed to Ho’s house instead, arriving there, as Lamb hadn’t yet tired of saying, with impeccable timing.

  Now, in Slough House, Catherine knelt to hand another paper tissue to Kim, who snatched it and pressed it to her nose. The nine that Shirley, Louisa and River had granted her the previous evening was looking more like a three and a half now she’d been slam-dunked by a car door; maybe a four, Shirley conceded, if you were into that kind of thing, ‘that kind of thing’ being bruised and swelling features. Mental note: don’t land on your face, she thought. Not from any kind of height. Height was about the only physical thing Shirley had in common with Kim. Well, that and, presumably, a yearning for medication, though in Kim’s case that would be a current predicament rather than an ongoing condition.

  ‘Has she said much yet?’ Lamb asked.

  ‘You’ve been standing right there,’ Catherine reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, I might have drifted off,’ he said. ‘On account of I can see up her skirt.’

  Catherine straightened Kim’s clothing.

  Emma Flyte said, ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s purely academic interest. But do you plan to pull a gun on her and cuff her to a chair?’

  ‘Twice in one day? Not without medical supervision.’

  Kim, still prone, swore at him. She’d been doing this at intervals since coming round in the car on the way to Slough House.

  ‘We should take her to hospital,’ said River again, his tone indicating that he didn
’t hold out much hope of being listened to.

  ‘Yeah, we could do that,’ said Lamb. ‘Or you could shut up.’

  Louisa said, ‘It’s gone midnight.’

  ‘If I wanted the speaking clock, I’d have dialled your number.’

  ‘I was just pointing out, it’s a new day. And it seems we’re set on making it even worse than the old one.’

  ‘You were a Gimball fan?’

  ‘I’m a fan of not worrying that we’re all about to be arrested.’

  ‘I’m starting to sense a guilty conscience.’ Lamb looked at River, then Coe, on whom his gaze lingered. ‘Wonder whose it could be?’

  Welles said, ‘If she’s got a line to the crew that shot up Abbotsfield, we should be asking her questions. Not watching her bleed out.’

  ‘I might have misjudged you, Dorset,’ Lamb told him. ‘Though as spectator sports go, I’ve heard worse ideas.’ He dropped to his knees. ‘Let’s be clear about this,’ he said to Kim, and though he spoke softly, nobody had any trouble hearing every word. ‘We know what you’ve done, and we know what happened as a result. You’ll tell us everything we want to know, or your life as a free woman is over as of tonight. That clear enough?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ she told him through gritted teeth.

  ‘That was gonna be your second option.’

  ‘Jackson …’ Catherine warned.

  ‘Yeah, all right. Jesus. When did making a joke get to be a criminal offence?’ He got back on his feet and turned to Emma Flyte. ‘There you go. I’ve warmed her up for you.’

  ‘You’re going to let me do this?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be the expert.’

  She knew better than to congratulate him on his attack of common sense. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘the rest of you can clear out.’

  Which, once they’d looked to Lamb for confirmation, they all did.

  As she approached the Gimball woman’s car, Di Taverner’s mobile rang and she paused on the edge of the layby to take it. Traffic was light, but moving fast, and she had to speak, to listen, against a background of engine noise.

  ‘We’ve confirmation of a known face at Slough.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Picked up on CCTV in the town centre, minutes after the news of the death came in.’

  ‘Quick work.’

  ‘He rang bells on the face recognition software, on account of being highly decorated.’

  For a moment, Taverner’s mind swam with images of valour. ‘He’s a soldier?’

  ‘An ex-con. With facial tattoos.’

  The speed limit, and possibly a local record, was just then broken by a passing hothead.

  Taverner waited until it had echoed into the distance before saying, ‘Let’s leave the imagery aside, shall we, and stick to the facts?’

  The Queens of the Database, as the Park’s comms and surveillance tribe were known, were prone to sporting verbal fascinators; one of the consolations, they claimed, for not getting out much.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Name of Tyson Bowman. He’s an aide to Zafar Jaffrey, who’s—’

  ‘I know who Jaffrey is. Any idea why he was in Slough tonight?’

  ‘Not yet. The police have barely started trawling their captures. We got this sooner because Jaffrey’s flagged, and any associates light up the circuits.’

  The CCTV feeds had been supplied to the Park, the theory being that any hits would be shared immediately. Everyone knew this rarely happened, though the reason wasn’t usually policy driven; was more often due to information snagging on the red tape that dangled on jurisdictional borders like flypaper.

  She said, ‘Okay. Was Jaffrey in Slough too?’

  ‘No. He was addressing a meeting in Birmingham.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said again. ‘Let’s see if we can organise a pick-up without the locals getting into a tizzy. It’s probably a coincidence. But.’

  ‘I’ll see who’s within range. Shame he didn’t flag earlier. We had a pair on the ground.’

  Taverner, who’d been about to disconnect, held her thumb. ‘… What?’

  ‘A pair of agents in Slough. They flagged too.’

  ‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, that is a shame. Remind me who they were?’

  Up close, the girl didn’t resemble the younger Claire as much as he’d thought; was narrower of feature, with skin ever so slightly pitted where adolescence had left its cruel marks. But even if you stripped away all other reference points, the facts remained that she was young, she was female, and that was enough to provoke certain memories. And there was this, too: he’d summoned her and she’d come. Sometimes, that was all it took.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Josie.’

  She waited. ‘… Was there something you needed?’

  Whelan blinked and recovered himself. ‘A man called Blaine, goes by Dancer. He runs a stationer’s somewhere near St Paul’s, but it’s a cover for various … activities, I’m told. Is he on our books?’

  ‘I can find out.’

  ‘Good girl. I mean, thank you.’

  He watched through the wall as she returned to her desk at a trot and began harvesting information: a digital rake, a digital scythe. He noticed how her blouse protested when she stretched; how she bit her bottom lip in concentration, and his throat clicked.

  There was someone in his doorway.

  ‘… Yes?’

  ‘This for you, sir.’

  This was a transcript of the interrogation of Roderick Ho.

  Whelan frowned when he saw the name at the top: Emma Flyte? Wasn’t she supposed to be at Slough House? It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, but he was alone again, the transcript’s bearer having slipped back into anonymity.

  He scanned the pages. Ho was a slow horse – all branches of the Service went by one unofficial name or another; Whelan himself was a weasel; but the slow horses were different, their name tinged with contempt – and like the others of his type, his brief bio was a study in decline. From Regent’s Park to Slough House; a distance that could be walked in a brisk thirty minutes, though the return journey was unclockable, because nobody had ever made it. Oddly, though, there appeared to be no defining blot on his copybook. Exile was usually preceded by some catastrophic performance failure; Ho was simply assigned there, as if he’d been misaddressed in the first place, and his re-delivery a simple correction of error.

  Which wasn’t the point. Whatever had sent Ho to Slough House, he clearly belonged there, because the honeytrap he’d fallen into was ludicrously familiar. If the Park ever got round to producing a training manual in comic-book form, here was its template: a bar-girl latching on to a keyboard warrior whose sex life probably depended on a Wi-Fi connection. And having got what they wanted, the girl’s controllers evidently decided to eliminate him, which was where Ho bucked the odds by getting lucky. But what the hell had they been after, anyway?

  Josie was back, panting a little, but Whelan barely noticed. He’d focused on two pieces of information on the typescript in front of him, the first of which concerned the girl. A UK citizen, but of North Korean descent.

  The second was the nature of the document Ho had passed her way.

  ‘… Sir?’

  It took him a moment to swim back to the here and now.

  ‘You wanted to know about Dancer Blaine,’ Josie said.

  ‘… Did I?’

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  ‘Do you know,’ Whelan said, ‘I’m not entirely sure.’

  ‘Your name’s Kim Park. You’re Roderick Ho’s girlfriend, or passing as. And he supplied you with documents you subsequently dealt to some very bad actors. You’ve been aiding and abetting terrorism, Kim. You know what the penalty for that is?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  While her nose was a mess, and her eyes black and swollen, the girl’s mouth was intact and functioned fine. Underneath the hostility, though, Emma Flyte could hear fear. Hard case or not,
she was young and she was damaged. And Flyte didn’t feel good about pressing down on a fracture; on the other hand, this kid had greased the wheels on a series of events that had the entire country reeling. Having a car door bashed in her face was about as gentle a reception as she could currently expect.

  ‘This isn’t going to last long, because if I don’t get answers within five minutes, I’m washing my hands. The next crew who come for you – and it will be a crew – they’ll be rougher than me. They see a young girl like you withholding information and they light up like football players at a roast. I think you know what I’m saying. There are different ways of doing this, but all of them end with you spilling everything you know. Your choice.’

  ‘This is England,’ the girl said. ‘They can’t do that. So fuck you.’

  ‘This is England, and a few days ago a village got shot up by the bastards you’ve been playing show and tell with. Maybe you had reasons for going along with them. Maybe they threatened you, threatened your family. But you might as well hear this now because you’ll certainly hear it later. It makes no difference to anyone what forces were brought to bear. Not to anyone. As far as the rest of us are concerned, you might as well have been there yourself, Kim. You might as well have been pulling a trigger.’

  ‘I was nowhere near.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Never did, in legal terms, and less than ever in the current climate. All you can do now is cooperate, in the hope it gets less nasty down the road. Tell me you understand that. And don’t say—’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Four minutes. The clock’s running, Kim.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  But the fear was getting louder.

  She was alone in the car, but only for moments. When the door opened, a woman climbed in and joined her on the back seat. She was about Dodie’s age, and wearing it without obvious surgical assistance. Her shoulder-length hair was chestnut brown, and her suit Chanel, dark-blue or black; her blouse crimson. She nodded at Dodie and said something. Dodie had to ask her to say it again.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Who are you? What are you doing in my car?’

  ‘My name’s Diana Taverner.’ She paused, as if anticipating recognition. ‘And I’m sorry to interrupt your journey, but it’s important that we speak.’