by Mick Herron
And a news crew was out in the open, filming proceedings.
Something ought to be done about that, he thought, without in any way volunteering for the role. Instead, he picked the rifle up again, and tested its heft, as if he knew what he was doing. Some hundred yards behind him, someone was wailing: only word for it. It was strange to note that the weather was still fine; the sky above still blue. Rifle in his hands, Coe walked towards the van.
This was wrong, he thought. He should be crouching, hiding, taking cover. But whoever was shooting was round the corner. Bullets, thought Coe, didn’t handle angles well. As long as he stayed on the main road, he was safe.
He reached the corner, and paused. Was this psychopathic behaviour? It certainly wasn’t sensible. He wondered where Shirley Dander had got to, and whether she was about to appear, gun blazing, or whether she was dead. He had spent a lot of time, these past years, hoping nothing would happen, or that if it did, he was nowhere near. So what was he doing now? He wasn’t built for this. Last time he’d killed someone – fair play: last time he’d killed someone deliberately – they’d been unarmed and handcuffed to a radiator. It had been low risk. And even then, the recoil had sprained his thumb.
The nearest news crew was filming him now. They didn’t have guns; perhaps he should just shoot them.
Instead, he stepped around the corner.
Across the road, the policeman behind the low church wall stood and loosed two quick bursts of ammunition, which stitched a neat line of holes into a row of parked cars, one of them Roderick Ho’s. And it was behind Ho’s car that a gunman was sheltering: on the pavement, legs outstretched, his back against the driver’s door. He was fitting a new magazine into his weapon, an action he completed even as Coe watched. And then he half rolled onto his knees, levelled the gun on the car’s bonnet and issued a volley in the vague direction of the police officer. The stained-glass windows along the side of the church shattered. Why wasn’t this man looking his way, Coe wondered. Coe had a perfect sighting on him, but it was like the man hadn’t even seen him. Maybe fifty yards away. A tin duck in a gallery. Better safe than sorry, though. The gunman’s weapon was semi-automatic; he could loose off a lot more bullets than Coe in a hurry. If Coe fired and missed now, he’d get more than a sprained thumb for his pains.
So he moved nearer, slowly but steadily, sighting down the barrel as he walked.
The singing had started to falter before glass began to rain.
Shirley saw it as a series of explosions: the church’s side windows disintegrating into coloured hailstones that blew halfway across the vaulted spaces before scattering onto the congregation. It sounded like wind chimes, sounded like ice. And then the harmonies, too, disintegrated and scattered, and the hymn gave way to hysteria. The organ stopped, and screaming began. People ducked and covered, sheltering themselves and their loved ones from the kaleidoscopic downpour, and those at the ends of the pews broke ranks and ran for the door, in front of which Shirley stood.
They can’t go out, she thought. That’s where the guns are.
There was a large, old-fashioned key in the lock; she turned it, removed it, then stood facing the crowd with arms flung wide. ‘No!’ she shouted, or thought she did; everything had broken down so abruptly, she couldn’t be sure her voice still worked. The glass had stopped falling, but the alteration in the light, the swift exchange of harsh daylight for colour, was like a punch in the face. How quickly the congregation became a mob; how quickly screaming swallowed the air. A young man tripped while clambering from a bench, and the man behind trampled him in his fury to escape. She shouted ‘No!’ again, but the crowd was upon her now; she was being pressed against the door, and the breath squeezed out of her. Prayer had become panic, another unifying force, but one with no thought, no time, for its components. Someone’s foot came down on hers, and she jerked free, but it was like fighting a herd. Those caught at the front, like Shirley, were jammed fast, while those behind, still programmed for flight, pushed and shoved as if this would make a difference. She thought she heard more gunfire outside. But that was a distant problem, for on this side of the door, in this dense press of bodies, her vision clouded, and fear swallowed rationality. If this kept up, people would die. She’d be one of them. Someone was on her foot again, someone’s elbow jammed in her face. Someone’s head struck her nose, and then there was blood.
A man at the back of the crowd was tearing at the people in front of him. He hooked an arm around a woman’s throat, and threw her to the floor.
Shirley closed her eyes, and felt the door groan. If it gave way now, she’d be crushed beneath this zombie onslaught.
She should have let them take their chances with the gunmen. The screaming grew louder; the panic soared. Something pressed into her stomach, part of someone else’s body, and she couldn’t tell what it was, but it would be among her final sensations. The slow unlearning of how to breathe. This was what being buried alive was like. Buried alive by people. She swallowed blood: her final meal. If she could reach her gun she would shoot herself. In the moment of arriving at this decision, it felt like a prayer, or as much of one as she’d made in adulthood. Let me reach my gun. I won’t hurt anybody else.
Then there was a bell.
People were still screaming, still pushing; Shirley was still fighting for breath, but there was a bell behind the noise now: behind it, below it, alongside it; at last above it; the ringing of a bell. It was clear and musical, and the more insistent it became, the more the screaming subsided. The elbow was removed from Shirley’s face, and whatever had been pressed against her stomach relaxed, and she breathed again: bad air, full of sweat and fear and the stink of interrupted death, but air. She realised she was clutching something – an arm – and let it go. The press of people pulled back, some still lying on the floor, and there was crying and whimpering and other scared noises, but the screaming had stopped, and the bell was still ringing.
Shirley could see now, all the way to the altar, where the vicar stood swinging a handbell high and low. Even as she watched, he slowed and stopped. Behind him, the rose window remained intact. But along the right-hand wall the tall narrow windows had been shattered, and whatever stories they had told lay in fragments on the floor and the pews, and caught in people’s hair. Outside the church, another story had ended too: the gunfire had ceased. In its place came static and chatter, and bellowed oaths and distant sirens.
And now, at the far end of the aisle, appeared a young man holding a short-barrelled machine gun.
The press of people fell away from Shirley, and she stepped over those who remained on the floor. Gradually, everyone was becoming aware of the gunman, but instead of renewed panic a desperate calm fell. Those still on the pews bowed their heads, as if a refusal to watch what he planned to do would negate its effect, and those who had scrambled towards the door scuttled for what cover they could find.
Some remained standing, however, staring him down.
How had he got there? Shirley wondered.
And then: back door. There was always a back door.
Almost without realising she’d done so, she had drawn her own weapon, Marcus’s gun, and held it in front of her in a two-handed grip.
Half a dozen paces, and she was in the aisle herself.
‘Put the gun down,’ she called.
The man stared at her. Glanced down at his weapon, then stared at her again.
She should shoot him without warning. He was armed, he was dangerous. He had been here before. There were dozens of people all around, every one of them an innocent target, and he could cut them to ribbons within seconds. Even dying, his finger could shred their lives. She should shoot him now: put a bullet in his head. She was a good shot. She could kill him from here.
He was, by the look of him, seventeen. Maybe eighteen. Hard to tell.
‘Put that down,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll kill you.’
He didn’t put it down.
She kept walking towards hi
m. A good shot already, and he was getting easier by the moment.
Someone was hammering on the church door, from outside.
‘Put it down,’ she repeated.
Off to her left, a child hiccuped in fear.
Again the hammering, which now became a dull thump, as if a battering ram were in use.
Behind the gunman, up on the altar, the priest had closed his eyes; was mumbling in prayer.
The gunman’s mouth trembled.
‘Now,’ she said.
One shot. She could put a bullet through either eye: it was up to him. Or he could lose his weapon, but he would have to do it now.
If she took another step, the muzzle of her gun would meet his forehead.
He looked down at his weapon once again. Shook his head as if denying its reality, or this moment, or his presence.
She should kill him now. Before he remembered himself. Before he taught Abbotsfield how to die again.
Her gun met his skin.
‘I shot up the sky,’ he told her.
Shirley reached for his weapon, and he released it to her grasp.
Behind her the door splintered and gave, and the church filled with noise once more.
It might have been the following day; might have been the day after.
Late afternoon had claimed Slough House, wrapping it in curdled heat. In her office, Louisa Guy was scraping paint from the window frame, in the hope of being able to open it and set a breeze loose through the building. River Cartwright was reaching for his ringing phone; J. K. Coe studying traffic. A smell of damp patrolled the staircase; lurking on landings, peeling paper from walls. Shirley Dander, flat on her back, was listening to the feverish ticking of a clock, wondering whether time was moving faster or she herself slowing down. Behind a closed door Catherine Standish was brushing her hair, nine ten eleven times; when she reached thirty, she’d stop. Roderick Ho was nowhere. And Lady Di Taverner was ascending the stairs, trying not to touch anything, even the stairs.
‘Fuck off,’ Lamb growled from his room, as she raised her hand to knock.
‘I’m not even going to ignore that,’ she told him, entering, closing the door behind her and crossing to the room’s single window.
Lamb had his feet on his desk, one cigarette smouldering in an empty packet seeing service as an ashtray, another clenched in his mouth. Grey hairs poked through the missing button on his shirt, and he scratched them absent-mindedly while watching her fiddle with the blind, her evident intent being to open the window it shielded. ‘I’d tell you you’re wasting your time,’ he said, ‘except I’m finding it quite entertaining.’
She gave up. ‘There’s no air in here. Would you put that damn thing out?’
‘Sure.’ He stubbed it out, then lit another. ‘That all you wanted?’
‘You wish.’ She eyed the visitor chair with distaste, and dragged it further away from Lamb’s desk. Then stood with her hands on the backrest. ‘We need to discuss your staff.’
Lamb leered.
‘This is me, not some intern,’ she said. ‘Dick jokes aren’t going to cut it.’
‘Everyone’s a critic.’
‘J. K. Coe. Thoughts?’
‘Recent reports claim he’s a hero.’ Lamb yawned. ‘Familiarity, on the other hand, suggests he’s a dick. I expect the truth is somewhere in the middle. As usual.’
‘Thanks for the insight. The officer on the scene says Coe walked right up to the gunman, who was firing a semi-automatic at the time, and shot him in the head, point-blank range. With a rifle.’
‘Yeah, I saw the photos. They look like Jackson Pollock threw up on a pizza.’
‘Coe was asked why the gunman didn’t see him coming. You know what he said? He said he approached him very, very quietly.’
‘I’m gonna start locking my door,’ said Lamb. ‘It’s creepy enough when he just sits staring at his fingers.’
‘Shirley Dander, meanwhile, is endangering a churchful of people by waving an unauthorised gun around. Her target also had a semi-automatic weapon. The potential casualties don’t bear thinking about. She should have taken him down the very first moment.’
‘She did an anger management course. It obviously backfired. But look on the bright side, you got one of them alive. Isn’t that a treat for your knuckle-twisters? Except, no, hang on – did I hear a rumour?’
‘He was wounded in an exchange of gunfire before entering the church,’ said Lady Di. ‘He was DOA at the nearest hospital.’
‘Funny, Dander didn’t mention him being wounded.’ He waited, but Taverner remained expressionless. ‘Huh. Well, I hope for his sake it was an authorised gun did the damage. We finished?’
‘Not even nearly. You sent two of your crew to Abbotsfield. Are you out of your mind?’
‘Opinions differ.’
‘Trust me, not at the Park they don’t. And then there’s Slough. Coe – him again. Cartwright and Coe were in Slough the night Gimball was killed.’
‘Cartwright and Coe,’ said Lamb. ‘Sounds like a solicitors’ firm, doesn’t it?’
‘You were supposed to be in lockdown. But unless they’ve got a pair of identical twins, we’ve CCTV coverage of them lurking around where it happened.’
‘Do you suppose they found any clues?’
‘I’m sure the Met’ll let us know. We’re handing the coverage to them. I imagine your pair’ll be invited in for questioning, ooh, twenty seconds later.’
Lamb took the cigarette from his mouth and studied it, his face a blank. ‘You’d hand over two joes to the Met?’
‘They’re not joes, Lamb. Slough House doesn’t do joes. You’ve been allowed to run this place on sufferance, because of what you did for the Service—’
‘Yeah, I remember it well.’
‘—but there are lines and there are limits, and you’re way over both.’
‘Nobody gave me a game plan. I was handed the keys. I still have them.’
‘Yes, well, you’ll be asked for them back before long. This has got too messy. Your rejects are supposed to be shackled to their desks, not hotdogging it all over the map. And we haven’t even started on Roderick Ho. A traitor? Here? You haven’t the budget to replace the coat hooks, but you’re glamorous enough to have your own fully fledged traitor?’
Lamb slotted his cigarette back into place, and his lip curled as he inhaled. Unless he was smiling. It was hard to tell.
Di Taverner said, ‘So you won’t be getting him back, either. No, it looks like happy hour’s over, Jackson.’
‘Unless,’ said Lamb.
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless I can make all your dreams come true.’
She made to speak, then stopped.
There was a clock ticking somewhere, but she couldn’t see it.
She said, ‘Is this going to turn into another one-liner about your staff?’
‘You might get lucky. But first off, it’s about our so-called traitor. Thing is, that classified document that’s caused all this trouble? The one you really don’t want to become public knowledge?’ He breathed out smoke. ‘It wasn’t classified.’
Taverner laughed. ‘This again? It was on the database. Everything on there’s classified.’
‘But not this.’ Lamb opened his drawer, pulled out a sheet of paper, handed it across. ‘That one’s a copy. But check the coding.’
She did, with narrowing eyes. ‘Is this a joke?’
‘Oh, now you want me to bring on the funny? No, it’s not a joke.’ From the still open drawer he produced a bottle and two glasses. He put them on the desk, paused, and put one of the glasses away again. Into the other, he poured an absurd measure of Scotch. ‘Want to hear a story?’
‘I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell one.’
‘Yeah, but sit down.’ She didn’t move. ‘I’m serious. You’re gonna hear this. But you’ll sit down for it.’
‘Your gaff, your rules, eh?’ But she sat on the chair at last, still holding the sheet of paper.
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Lamb nodded in its direction. ‘Nineteen years ago, that was declassified, just like the coding shows. Signed off on by Charles Partner, because he was First Desk then. And nobody can declassify except First Desk.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘But it wasn’t his idea. It was part of an operation called Shopping List. Because there was a traitor in the Service at the time. Oh, not a great big one like Partner himself – we already know about him. But a low level one whose name doesn’t matter, a man who had heavy debts, and thought one way of settling them would be to sell some secrets.’
He raised his glass to his lips, swallowed.
‘Unfortunately for Mr Nobody, he’d barely got as far as hanging his shingle out before he was rumbled. No payday for him. But some bright spark decided this might be just the hook to hang his brolly on. And so was born Operation Shopping List. You see, Mr Nobody had already dipped his toe in murky waters, and there were a few interested parties who knew he was for sale. And what they wanted to know was, what were his goodies like?’
‘So we provided him with some,’ Lady Di said.
‘Oh, yes. He was given a load of worn-out secrets, all jazzed up to look shiny and new. Nothing like feeding the opposition a bowl of dog shit dressed up as caviar. But before said dog shit could be offered as bait, it had to be declassified, else Operation Shopping List itself would have been an act of treason. You can’t go offering classified material for sale, even as part of a sting. Even when that material’s of no strategic value.’
‘Like the Watering Hole paper,’ she said.
‘Yep. A worthless little strategy dreamed up by some ex-colonial, back when topis were the rage. Sounded good in summary, though. How to destabilise a nation state. Leave out the bit about it being fifty years behind the times, and you’d have a lot of Dr Evils salivating over that one.’