Real Tigers

by Mick Herron

  When he at last looked at her, his eyes were still the bad-times stormy blue.

  She said, “Bailey didn’t give much away.”

  “Bailey?”

  “Private joke.”

  “Glad to see you’re making friends. I thought you’d given that up.”

  “Is that what this is about? Have you been nursing a passion for me all these years, Sean?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think yet. What happened to you?”

  He laughed, or nearly did. It was a noise, anyway, and had an edge of amusement to it. “We’ve both come down in the world, haven’t we?”

  “Oh, I get by. You, though. You look pretty rough.”

  He glanced down at himself.

  “Not your clothes. It’s you, Sean. You’re not the man I knew. It’s like you’ve taken a slow-acting poison.”

  “A slow-acting poison.”

  She gave her signature shrug, which is to say she held her palms upright, to show she had nothing to hide.

  “Quite the lady, aren’t you? Now you’ve given up the booze.”

  There was a looser aspect to his movements than earlier, as if his joints had been oiled. This would have been enough to tell her he’d taken drink, even if she hadn’t been able to smell it on him. She pictured him downstairs, the downstairs she hadn’t seen. A comfortably shabby room, looking out on that courtyard with its outhouses and its double-decker bus, if that’s what it was. There’d be a sideboard, a drinks cabinet: straight out of fifties’ rep. He’d have poured from a cut-glass decanter, downed it in one, then poured another for a more contemplative sip-and-savour. Nothing to dull his edge, he’d have thought, because everyone thought that. Like smokers unable to smell their habit on their clothes, drinkers always thought themselves unaffected.

  Her hands had curled into fists. Thinking drinker’s thoughts could do that.

  Uncurling them, she brushed at her skirt, as if it harboured crumbs. There was something very precise about her movements, and this seemed to annoy him.

  “All buttoned-up. Who’d think to look at you the times we once had?”

  “I’m an alcoholic, Sean,” she said calmly. “I had lots of times, did lots of things. I wouldn’t do them now.”

  “Too good now.”

  “It’s not about goodness.”

  “You were, though. On your back or on your knees, you were always good.”

  He waited for her to respond, but she said nothing. Just regarded him unflinching, simply being who she was now instead of who she’d been then, and letting him know she felt no shame or self-disgust. Simply the determination never to be that person again.

  Only when he looked away did she speak.

  “What do you want, Sean? If you’re expecting a ransom, you’re going to be seriously disappointed, but either way, what brings you upstairs? A chat about the weather?”

  That seemed to amuse him, for some reason. But the answer he gave was, “To find out who you trust.”

  “I’m not in the mood for that conversation.”

  “It’s not a conversation. Just a question. Which of your colleagues would you trust with your life?”

  “With my life,” she said flatly.

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, “I used to trust you. Does that count?”

  “Someone from Slough House,” he said. “I need a name. Longridge? Cartwright? Guy?”

  So this wasn’t about her. It was about Slough House.

  Probably, when you got down to it, it was about Jackson Lamb.

  “Catherine?”

  She gave him a name

  He left, locking the door behind him. For a long while afterwards she sat in the same position: upright, with her hands clasped on her knees. A Mad Governess again, and not just mad, but locked in an attic. That would give Shirley Dander a laugh, supposing she caught the reference.

  After a while Catherine lay on the bed instead, and after a further while, slept.

  However many miles away, in whichever direction it was, Slough House boiled in the morning’s heat. Everyone was there by nine save Catherine and Lamb, and the former’s unfamiliar absence struck a jarring note. It did with River, anyway, and as he stood by the kettle, pouring a cup of instant coffee, he asked Louisa, who was brewing a pot of the real stuff, if she knew where the other woman was.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Louisa?”

  “What?”

  “Seen Catherine?”

  She shook her head.

  Why bother? Since Min’s death she was a walking time bomb: not much given to conversation, but if you listened carefully, you could hear her tick.

  River took his cup to his office, and contemplated another day of studying ancient passport applications, scanned and pasted into a database so creaky, if it was a boat you’d be watching rats abandon it. Picking up a biro, he tapped it against his front teeth. Eight and a half hours of this, minus whatever he could get away with for lunch. Five times that to make up the week, and forty-eight weeks in the working year . . . He might see this task off before his fortieth, if he really hammered it. Yeah: get a wiggle on, and he could celebrate putting this to bed alongside the big four-oh.

  Or he could just beat himself to death with a hole punch.

  Gathering one up, pumping it like a stress reliever, he crossed to the window whose gold-tooled lettering spelled ww henderson, solicitor and commissioner for oaths for the benefit of those on the street who wondered what poor fools toiled away in here. An oath or two had been uttered in these parts, that was true. The hole punch clacked in his hand. He heard the downstairs door open then close, and thought, Catherine, then: no. She comes up the stairs like a ghost. Lamb could too when he felt like it, but this morning he was his usual bothersome presence: navigating the staircase with the grace of a hippopotamus steering a wheelbarrow. He thumped past River’s office, then into his own room overhead; the precursor, usually, to a one-man-band performance: the farting, cursing, furniture-rattling overture to the day. River returned to his desk, where his pile of passport applications had grown while his back was turned. It wasn’t going anywhere, and until it did, neither was he. But he hadn’t done more than pluck the topmost sheet off the pile before it occurred to him that the expected overhead symphony hadn’t occurred; that what he was listening to now was that kind of silence that descends before a tree comes crashing down . . . He stood. When the thumping started, he was already halfway out of the door.

  Lamb eyed his crew—some say “team”; he preferred “minions”—with a malevolent eye, the other being scrunched shut against the smoke from his cigarette. The blinds were drawn as usual, but sunlight had found a little leverage, and was currently painting stripes on the wall, and across the heads and shoulders of said minions, who were bunched like suspects in an old-fashioned film.

  In the same hand that held his cigarette Lamb was wielding a Danish pastry, and he waved it now in their general direction. “You know, seeing you all together, it reminds me why I come into work every morning.”

  Golden crumbs and blue-grey smoke flew in opposite directions.

  “It’s ’cause I’ve a cockroach infestation at home.”

  “Can’t think why,” murmured River.

  “It’s rude to mutter. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s bad manners.” Lamb bit off some pastry and continued, mouth full, “Christ, it’s like being in a zombie movie. You lot need to perk yourselves up. Where’s Standish?”

  “Haven’t seen her,” Ho offered.

  “I didn’t ask if you’d seen her. I asked where she is. She’s usually here before me.”

  “But not always.”

  “Thanks. Next time I forget what ‘usually’ means, I’ll know who to ask.”

  “Bathroom?” Shirle
y suggested.

  “Must be the world’s longest dump she’s taking,” Lamb grumbled. “And I speak as an expert.”

  “None of us doubt that.”

  “Maybe she has a domestic emergency,” Marcus said.

  “Like what? Her bookshelves got out of alphabetical order?”

  River said, “It’s always possible she has a life you don’t know about.”

  “Like you, you mean? How is your old pal Spider?”

  Meaning Spider Webb, “injured in the course of duty” according to the official report—“injured in the course of being a dickhead, more like” (Lamb)—and still on life support; unlikely ever to make a full recovery, or even regain consciousness. River had visited him a number of times, though how Jackson Lamb knew that was one of those things that made Lamb Lamb: you didn’t know how he managed it, but you wished he wouldn’t.

  Knowing an answer was expected, River said: “He’s hooked up to about seven different machines. Nobody’s expecting him to wake up anytime soon.”

  “Have they tried switching him off then switching him on again?”

  “I’ll ask.”

  Lamb displayed yellowing teeth and said, “Has anyone actually checked the bog?”

  “She’s not in there.”

  Louisa said, “She’s probably got a doctor’s appointment. Or something.”

  “She seemed all right yesterday.”

  “Sometimes people need to see doctors. They don’t actually have to be visibly injured.”

  “This is the Secret Service,” said Lamb. “Not frigging Woman’s Hour. And besides, she should have called in.”

  “It might be on the chart,” Ho suggested.

  “There’s a chart?”

  “On her wall.”

  Lamb stared at him.

  “It says when people are absent—”

  “Yeah, I’d worked that out, mastermind. I’m wondering why you’re still here. Go and check it.”

  Ho left.

  “Why the big concern?” River said. “Maybe her train’s buggered. Happens all the time.”

  “Yeah, because she was last late when, exactly?”

  But Lamb wasn’t looking at them when he said this. He’d glanced instead at his mobile, which was on the desk in front of him.

  She tried to get in touch, River thought. And Lamb ignored her call.

  My God. Is he feeling guilt?

  Lamb killed his cigarette end in yesterday’s half-full teacup.

  “Besides,” he said. “It’s not like her to disappear.”

  “‘Disappear’ is a bit strong,” said Shirley.

  “Really? What would you call it?”

  “. . . Not being here?”

  “And what would happen if we all did that? What would it be like if I was just not here all of a sudden?”

  Shirley seemed about to speak, but changed her mind.

  “It would be like Hamlet without the prince,” River suggested.

  “Precisely,” Lamb said. “Or Waiting for Godot without Godot.”

  Nobody touched that one.

  Ho returned.

  “Well?” said Lamb.

  “It’s not on the chart.”

  “And that took you five minutes? An idiot would have been back in half the time.”

  “Yeah, that’s because—”

  Everyone waited.

  Ho slumped.

  “Pop it on a postcard,” Lamb said. “No hurry.”

  He glared round the room.

  “Any more bright ideas?”

  The phone in River’s pocket vibrated, and he sent up a prayer of thanks it was on silent.

  “Maybe she left a note on somebody’s desk,” he said.

  “When?”

  “She might have got here first and had to leave in a rush. I’ll go check.”

  He slipped out of the room.

  “Anyone notice a note on their desk?” Lamb asked the rest of them.

  “We might have mentioned it,” Marcus said.

  Lamb’s lip curled. “Well, thank you, action man. Good to know you’ve not lost your edge.”

  Louisa said, “Can we go get on with our jobs now?”

  “You’re very eager. Discovered a taste for paper-shuffling, have we?”

  “Well, it’s pointless and boring. But at least we can do it in silence.”

  “My my. I’m starting to think we should go on one of those team-bonding courses. Though maybe we should wait till your mother hen’s back in the coop. What was that?”

  None of them had heard anything.

  “That was the back door. Standish!”

  He bellowed this loudly enough, and unexpectedly enough, that Shirley actually felt her bladder release, just a tiny bit. But there was no reply from downstairs, and no Catherine Standish appeared.

  “Where’s Cartwright gone?” Lamb said suspiciously.

  “Bathroom?” said Shirley.

  “That’s your answer for everything this morning. Something you want to share with us?”

  “I’ll go look.”

  “Stay bloody there! Another member of staff goes missing, I’ll lose my deposit.” He bellowed again, this time for River, but River didn’t appear either.

  In the quiet that followed, Louisa thought she could hear the windowpanes ringing.

  “Jesus wept,” said Lamb at last. “It’s not like I’m not glad to see the back of you, but we’re supposed to be a functioning department.”

  Marcus snorted, but it might have been hay fever.

  “Right,” said Lamb. “Enough of this. You”—he indicated Louisa—“go find Standish. And if she’s face down in a pool of sick, I want photos. And you two”—this was Marcus and Shirley—“find out where Cartwright’s got to and bring him back.”

  “By force?”

  “Shoot him if you have to. I’ll sign off on it.”

  Leaving Roderick Ho.

  “I’ll go with Louisa,” he said.

  “No you won’t. She can screw up on her own. With you to help, it’ll just take longer.”

  The others were already heading downstairs, but Ho lingered at the door and looked back.

  “What?”

  Ho said, “That’s because an idiot wouldn’t have checked as carefully as I did.”

  “Well, you’ve saved yourself a stamp. Feeling better?”

  Ho nodded.

  “Good,” said Lamb. “Now fuck off.”

  The incoming message had been from Catherine’s phone, and River had opened it heading down the stairs, still congratulating himself on a neat escape. He was expecting a brief explanation for absence: late-running tube, sudden illness, alien invasion. What he read instead was an even briefer summons—

  Pedestrian bridge. Now.

  Which didn’t sound like the Catherine Standish he knew.

  An attachment came with it and he paused on the landing while it effortfully opened—it took half a second to work out what he was looking at: a woman, handcuffed, gagged, like a come-on for an amateur porn site except she was fully clothed and, Jesus, it was Catherine . . .

  Why the hell would anyone take Catherine?

  Pedestrian bridge.

  Now.

  There was only one pedestrian bridge it could be; not a dozen yards away, spanning the road between the tube station and the Barbican. And before checking it out there were alarm bells to ring: slow horse or not Catherine was an agent of the security service, and Regent’s Park ran a full-court press when one of their own came under threat . . . As for Lamb, he’d hang River out to dry if he took another step without putting him in the picture. That was something to think about, so River thought about it as he stuffed the phone away, and took the rest of the stairs three at a time.

  It was a
lready stifling outside, the heat much worse in the mouldy backyard. Round the alley and out on the street, and there was a man on the bridge, looking down on the traffic like all this activity amused him . . . Too far away to make out his face, but that was the impression River gained, as he ran up the road, through the station entrance, up the stairs and onto the bridge.

  One hand on its railing, the man was waiting for him, and River had been right: he did look kind of amused. He was fiftyish, lean, in a suit the colour of early mist; his dark hair tinged with silver. His yellow tie might have come from a club; his superior smirk, he’d have had drummed into him about halfway through Eton or wherever. And he wore rings on both little fingers, confirming one of River’s deepest prejudices.

  At River’s approach, he removed his hand from the railing. Extended it, as if expecting a handshake.

  Instead, River took him by the lapels. “Where’s Catherine?”

  “She’s perfectly safe.”

  “Not what I asked you.” River drew him closer. “Answer carefully. Speak slowly.”

  “She’s. Perfectly. Safe.”

  Making a joke of it; in vowels, if not cut glass, at least precision-tooled.

  River shook him like a stick. “The photo showed her handcuffed. With a rag in her mouth.”

  “To get your attention. You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “On a bridge above a busy road, yes. You want to go over that railing?”

  That earned a broader smirk. “You’re not going to tell me you don’t know how this works, are you? Ms. Standish is safe and will continue to be so provided I make a phone call within the next thirty seconds. So I rather think you’d better stand back, don’t you?”

  Over grey-suit’s shoulder, River saw a couple on the street below pause, and one of them point their way.

  He loosened his grip.

  “That’s better. Much more civilised.”

  “Don’t push it.”

  The man produced a phone and exchanged a few brief words with someone. That done, he put the phone away and said, “So you’re River Cartwright. Unusual name.”

  “It means someone who makes carts.”

  “Ms. Standish said she trusted you. With her life, as it happens.”