by Mick Herron
‘. . . Yes.’
Ben pushed open the door and walked in.
There were six people in the room, but he only saw one to start with. Jaime Segura was a lot younger than Miro Weiss – and Miro, troubling forty, had given the impression of being older. One of those people who’d been middle-aged the day he first picked up a razor. But Segura had olive skin, dark hair, brown eyes, and though he evidently hadn’t used a razor himself recently, this mostly showed on his chin and upper lip, the way it does in adolescence. His hair was a tangled mass of feathery curls. And his clothes were a generation removed from anything Miro might yet be found dead in: jeans and a brown fake-leather jacket over a zip-up top.
He wore boots that looked like they’d seen a mile or two.
He carried the gun Neil Ashton had dropped when the car uncluttered his brain.
Closing the door behind him, Ben said, ‘So,’ which even to his own ears sounded like make weight conversation.
‘You will stand against the wall?’
‘If that would make you comfortable.’
Jaime didn’t answer.
Ben crossed to the wall, keeping a careful distance between himself and the gun as he did so.
Though it wasn’t like there was enough space in this room to confuse a bullet.
There were other eyes on him, of course, and now Ben counted them down: they belonged to two women, two boys, and a man about his own age. The eyes of the twins gazed out from a pair of heads half-buried in their father’s thighs, and even Ben – unused to children – could tell they didn’t know if he represented threat or promise. Fair enough. He wasn’t sure himself. Their father’s look was less complicated, as if Ben’s arrival bore the stamp of authority. And with that look, something other than fear settled on Ben’s shoulders – for the first time, it weighed on him that it wasn’t only his own life he had to worry about here. Strange that it was the man’s look rather than the children’s that brought this home to him.
Strange, too, that it had taken this long for the message to get through.
As for the women, the older – she’d be the cleaner; the one he’d had no information on – looked down almost before she’d looked up. But hatched-faced; that was the expression that fit – though almost before it occurred, another replaced it: anvil-faced. Anvil-faced. Her round, bitter mask bore the marks of the blows life delivered. Or maybe he was reading too much into an extreme situation. The younger woman didn’t look away. She’d be the teacher, the one who’d come back inside when she’d had the chance to flee. Which spoke of bravery, obviously, but again it might be foolish to jump to conclusions . . . And she was pretty; dark-haired, light-skinned, with eyes full of feeling – anxiety, but defiance too, and maybe hope. And here was another strange element in a moment full of them: that even with a stranger’s gun pointing at him, and a wall to stand against, he could notice a woman’s looks, and appreciate that he was the focus of her attention.
‘My name’s Ben Whistler,’ he said to the room at large.
‘Thank you,’ Louise Kennedy whispered.
He wondered whether she always sounded like that, or whether her voice, like his, was coming out twisted and unnatural. He was not trained for situations like this. He was – as Bad Sam Chapman had mentioned – a back room boy. An accountant. I’ve had the training, I’ve done the Leipzig course. I scored in the top five per cent. Which was true, except for the bit about the top five per cent. Like any good figures man, Ben knew when to fiddle the numbers.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’m here. Now what?’
The boy pointed the gun at the space precisely between Ben’s eyes.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Nott was south of the river.
South of the river was Vauxhall Cross, where Nott had once spent a working life crammed full of meetings like this, though on the other side of the desk. His role had been to smile politely at out-of-house visitors while feed-ing them through a mincer. The day he’d been told he was being relocated was black-ribboned in his memory.
‘Operations Director, Jonty. It’s not a demotion.’
It’s not a demotion carried a subtly different meaning to It’s a promotion.
‘Directing the operations of a bunch of money shufflers.’
‘Which is important. Keeping track of the pennies, that’s what it’s about these days, yes?’
‘I thought it was about defending the Commonwealth. Foiling terrorists.’
‘Well, that’s important too. And it’s felt that such an, ah, delicate task is best left to those who show aptitude for it.’
In the aftermath of 7/7, a lot of careers received unwanted attention. Jonathan Nott’s desk was packed and boxed before that chat was over.
And now he was back on-site for the weekly debriefing, an increasingly uncomfortable session. These past weeks he’d eschewed the official car; had taken to walking along the river. A small enough economy – he’d have to maintain it for a couple of millennia to cover his section’s short-fall – but the river was more conducive to thought than the stream of honking traffic. Not that the relative calm had produced any brainwaves.
Other side of the desk was Roger Barrowby: aka the Barrow boy. The grammar school/redbrick background helped. Roger had thinning sandy hair, a prominent chin, and a habit of pressing the tip of a finger to its central dimple, as if trying to encourage it back into his jaw. His jacket was flaked with dandruff. Perhaps he worried too stringent a shampoo would lay waste to his suffering hair.
‘Terribly pleasant morning, don’t you think?’
‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘South Bank’s lovely, weather like this. Sun glinting off the river sort of thing.’
Nott hadn’t imagined his travel arrangements had passed without notice, and wasn’t about to rise to the bait. ‘If you say so.’
Small talk over. ‘Anything to tell us, Jonty?’
‘Apart from the fact that I’m only Jonty to friends and equals?’
Roger smiled, as if Nott had made an amusing observa-tion. ‘I’m assuming there’s no news of Mr Weiss.’
‘No.’
‘Because if there had been, you’d have let us know soonest.’
‘Soonest. Of course.’
‘You’re not being blamed for this, you know.’
‘No? I rather had the impression I was.’
‘Nobody expects anyone of your, ah, seniority to be up to speed with the digital world.’
‘We wouldn’t be bordering on age discrimination, would we, Roger?’
‘Heaven forfend. I have trouble setting the video myself. No, I simply meant that with these keyboard whizzkids, anything can happen. Turn your back for a moment, they’ve diverted the Service’s PAYE funds into their Halifax supersavers.’
‘I’m not sure “whizzkid” applies to Weiss. The man’s thirty-nine.’
A flash of annoyance crossed the Barrowboy’s face. ‘Not really the thrust of my point, Jonty. All I mean is, you’re still one of Us. Exile doesn’t change that.’
‘Exile? I was under the impression I’d been not demoted.’
‘Of course.’
‘Though I seem to remember you used to call me sir.’
‘It’s the new informality, Jonty. Makes the wheels turn faster.’
‘This is before they run you down, yes?’
‘Speaking of which, what happened this morning? Some, what would you call it, incident out Oxford way? Bit off your patch, isn’t it?’
‘I haven’t been to Oxford since my last gaudy. Which, by the way, does make it my patch, rather.’
‘Ah, the old college ties. One of your boys run over, am I right?’ Fake concentration briefly furrowed his brow. ‘Ashton?’
‘Neil Ashton.’ As you know.
‘Bit of a turnaround, eh? When the dogs get involved in hit and run, they’re normally doing the driving.’
‘The driver was an estate agent, for God’s sake. He had two children in the car. Getting a jump on the school run
.’ ‘Interesting wrinkle.’
‘It was an accident,’ Nott said.
‘Good to know. So what was Ashton up to? With Sam Chapman riding shotgun?’
‘Routine business.’
‘Sure about that, are we? Nothing to do with Weiss?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ Nott said.
Barrowby leaned back. His index finger strayed to his chin before he jerked it away – habits were something you broke in this business, whatever they happened to be. ‘And now there’s a hostage situation in a nursery school.’ ‘An unfortunate chain of events. Or possibly coincidence.’ Nott allowed his gaze to drift to the window, and a skyline that seemed to change by the week. Sometimes he wondered whether Six’s remit went far enough. Terrorists were one thing; were architects another? Hauling himself back, he went on: ‘Ashton’s gun was lost in the accident. It may – may – have ended up in the wrong hands. But nothing’s certain. The hostage taker might be a wild card. Nothing to do with us at all.’
‘Making it, as you say, a coincidence. That would be a first. Why the helicopter?’
‘Chapman’s offering aid and assistance. He was in situ, after all. I sent back-up. End of story.’
‘Rather stretching the definition of your function, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I’ve been running operations since you were failing your eleven-plus, Roger. Sam Chapman’s an experienced field man. If there’s anything for us in this nursery inci-dent, he’ll be the first to know.’
‘Experienced, I’ll give you. But experience doesn’t always equate with reliability, does it?’
‘You’ll have to run that by me again.’
‘It’s been three weeks since Miro Weiss disappeared with enough money to start his own country, and Bad Sam’s no nearer finding him. How hard is he looking?’
Nott said, ‘Like you say, it’s a digital world. And Weiss covered his tracks well.’
‘I don’t care if he’s the last of the fucking Mohicans, if Chapman was trying, he’d have him by now.’ Roger Barrowby paused – he didn’t swear often, and knew Nott knew this. ‘There have been rumblings,’ he went on. ‘You police your own, we know that. In principle, we stand by that.’
‘You sound like New bloody Labour all over again,’ Nott said. ‘Identify the principle, then shoot it down in flames.’
‘It’s been three weeks. A quarter of a billion pounds. And you’re getting nowhere. We need a fresh approach.’
‘You want to call my dogs off,’ Nott said calmly. Frankly, he was surprised they’d held off this long. ‘You’re sending your own in.’
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s my section. I have jurisdiction.’
‘As I said, we stand by that principle.’
‘When I hear you people say principle, I reach for my sickbag.’
‘No need for you people, Jonty. We’re all on the same side.’
‘Easy to say.’
Roger Barrowby said, ‘The money will get lost in the wash, Jonty. You know how much cash has gone missing in reconstruction so far? Of course not. Nobody does. The brothers across the water are throwing billions at friendly contractors, and those are the sums we know about. Every time Cheney blinks, his fraternity pals go kerching. You don’t have to be a Guardian reader to know that.’
‘So you’re happy to forget all about it.’
‘But what we really don’t need,’ Barrowby went on, ‘is for anyone to point the finger at our own accounting systems. It’s one thing being made to carry the can for a misguided war. It would be quite another if we’re caught robbing the corpse afterwards. Careers have foundered on less.’
‘I’m sure Sam Chapman knows what he’s doing.’
‘I’m afraid I agree with you. The question is, did Miro Weiss?’
Nott didn’t reply.
‘Sad little numbers man, I’d call him squeaky clean except there’s something rather grubby about the type, don’t you think? Staring at screens all day, then shuffling home to an evening’s porn. I’m surprised he had the imagination for a coup like this.’
‘What’s your point, Roger?’
‘We think he had help.’
‘And you think Chapman’s it?’
‘Like you say, he’s an experienced agent. But he never made the management grade, and isn’t likely to now. Just the kind to spend the long winter nights working out his pension entitlement and feeding his disgruntlement.’
‘I don’t agree.’
‘We’re past the consensus stage, Jonty. Call him in.’
‘He’s not going to like that.’
‘He’ll be given every opportunity to make his feelings known.’ Barrowby looked at his watch. ‘I’ll expect him at one. Tell him to bring the case file.’
Heading back the long way, Nott stopped for a smoke on the jetty below the Oxo Tower, where he watched the Tate boat plough its polka-dotted furrow through the Thames. A group of tourists took photos. Presumably tourists. But he wouldn’t be surprised to find himself under surveillance: Barrowby said not, but that was the trouble with spies. You couldn’t believe a word they said.
A cormorant skidded low over the water, heading wherever cormorants went. The tourists pointed, and aimed their cameras.
Nott brought his cigarette to eye level and examined the tip, which glowed brightly as the breeze caught it. He should call Sam Chapman now, and haul him home. Chapman would not be happy. Chapman would especially not be happy if what Barrowby had suggested was true, but if so, the order wouldn’t be unexpected. Nott wondered if he’d be able to tell the difference, over a mobile connection? And answered himself: not if he had Bad Sam wired to a seismograph while it happened.
He also wondered if he’d still be Operations Director come the end of the week. And knew the answer to that, too.
When the boy pointed the gun at the space precisely between Ben’s eyes, Ben stared straight back. This was the moment his life should have been flashing before him, but what he was mostly looking into was the future that wouldn’t happen now – his trip to Brazil: margaritas, señoritas, hasta la vistas . . . A very long moment passed.
The boy lowered the gun.
Ben released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
The boy said, ‘You are Ben Whistler.’
Ben nodded. He wasn’t sure he could speak.
‘Why you send men to kill me?’ the boy asked.
The instructions on the packet read Smokers die a slow and painful death, but in Bad Sam’s mood, frankly, that was a plus. He lit up while waiting for the woodentop on duty to locate someone who understood the game’s rules: that a spook was a picture card, while a local plod was a two. The skies overhead rolled big and ordinary, but that was just one more piece of today’s global mistake – there should be lightning bolts, seismic shifts. Whistler was inside the annexe, but Bad Sam was stuck out here, on the wrong side of the cordon.
Thou shalt not fuck things up. That was the lost frigging Commandment, as far as Bad Sam Chapman was concerned. As for Thou shalt not kill: it didn’t take a genius to find a loophole in that one.
His mobile chirruped and he fished it out. 00000000000 read the number ID: third time in ten minutes. But he wasn’t interested in calls from the office right now. They’d be trying to pull him home. He dropped it in his pocket, muffling its drone.
The woodentop returned. ‘Sorry, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to move away.’ He didn’t sound sorry.
He took a breath. ‘You read my card?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I mean read. You can read, can’t you? You didn’t just look at the picture?’
‘We have a situation in progress, sir. All civilians are to maintain a safe distance from the perimeter.’
Situation. They watched too much television, these idiots. Perimeter. ‘I look like a civilian to you?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir. But if I have to ask again, we’re approaching an arrestable offence.’
This
kid was, what, twenty-five? Twenty-six? Shit: what-ever experience he had, attempting to arrest Bad Sam Chapman didn’t figure in it yet.
But he didn’t need to look around to know there were five other cops in striking distance, this being the operative phrase in an armed situation.
‘Is Fredericks here?’
He knew damn well Fredericks was here.
‘Sir?’
‘Your commanding officer. Superintendent Malcolm Fredericks.’
‘He’s who suggested you move away, sir.’
Chapman nodded, twice. Lightning flashed and earth-quakes rumbled.
And here came another cartoon character: a round, red-cheeked man who probably showed borderline on the annual medical. He made a waving gesture for the woodentop. ‘I’ve got this, Morse.’ He couldn’t possibly have said Morse. He turned to Bad Sam. ‘You’d be Chapman.’
‘And you?’
‘Faulks. Detective Inspector. We’re rather stretched. I’ve better things to do than play messenger.’
‘So.’ Chapman forced his shoulders back, an age-old method of easing tension. Didn’t work. ‘You’ve word from your Super, right? I’m persona non. Well, maybe he’s for-gotten the facts of life –’
But Faulks was shaking his head. ‘The Supe wouldn’t care if you fucked off and died. But this is your boss, not mine. Spook Central? They want you home. I got the impression they’re not too happy with you.’
Chapman, cut off mid-stream, couldn’t find his direction straight off. ‘. . . Spook Central?’ Aiming for sarcasm, but missing.
‘You’re Six.’ Not a question. ‘And this is a domestic hostage-taking. I’ve no idea why Whistler was invited, but you’re not. Leave, or you’re heading for the cells. Lives are at risk here.’
‘You spoke to Whistler?’
‘Like I say, he was invited. Sonny Jim wasn’t talking to me. So I briefed your pal, I’m holding his hardware. And your bosses want you home.’ He arrived at a nasty smile. ‘Seems you’re no more popular there than you are here.’