Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

She said, “You’re talking about letting him die.”

“I’m not sure what the alternative is.”

But a Lamb-like crack came to mind: They could re-skill him. Use him as a speed bump.

She said, “Look, I don’t have time for this right now. Are you sure there’s no family? Weren’t there cousins?”

“Don’t think so.”

“But anyway—it’s hardly a decision we can make standing on a bloody staircase.” She fixed him with a glare, but let it soften. “But I’ll look into it. You’re right. If there’s nobody else to take decisions, the Park will have to do it. Though I’d have thought the medical staff . . . ”

“They’re probably terrified of liability.”

“God. They’re not the only ones.” She looked at her watch again. “Is that it?”

“. . . Yes.”

“You’re not going to explain why you should be back on the hub? Why Slough House is a waste of your talents?”

“Not right now.”

“Good.” She paused. “You’ll be informed. About Webb, I mean. James. Whatever’s decided.”

“Thank you.”

“But don’t do this again. Turn up unannounced. Or you’ll end up downstairs.”

This time there was no softening in her expression.

Thirty-two minutes.

“Off you toddle.”

“Thank you.”

River walked back down the stairs, sure she was watching him every step of the way. But when he reached the bottom and looked back up, she’d gone.

Thirty-one minutes.

Now came the tricky bit.

The manfrom the bridge was elsewhere now; in Postman’s Park, whose neat little garden was a popular lunch spot for local workers, mostly because of its shelter, the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. The tiles on its walls were dedicated to those who’d given their lives in the attempt, sometimes futile, to rescue others, and recalled Leigh Pitt, who “saved a drowning boy from the canal . . . but sadly was unable to save himself,” and Mary Rogers, who “self-sacrificed by giving up her lifebelt and voluntarily going down in the sinking ship.” Thomas Griffin was fatally scalded in a boiler explosion at a Battersea sugar refinery, returning to search for his mate, while George Elliott and Robert Underhill “successively went down a well to rescue comrades and were poisoned by gas” . . . Sylvester Monteith—“Sly” to those who knew him, or simply suspected his true nature—was drinking iced tea from a polystyrene cup, and wondering why self-sacrifice was deemed so honourable. Every age calls forth its heroes, he supposed. For his own part, he’d come to manhood in the eighties, and his response to any of these emergencies would have been one of pragmatic withdrawal. Later, he would have been among the first to deplore the inadequacy of the equipment at fault, and to enquire about the possibility of furnishing much-improved replacements, at a price that could only be deemed reasonable from the point of view of all future miners, sugar-refinery workers, ship-goers, and foolhardy passers-by. All would be safer, some would get richer, and the world would turn. So it goes.

Meanwhile, to ensure that the world was in fact still turning, Monteith checked his watch. It was some twenty minutes since he’d dispatched River Cartwright on a mission which was as much an act of self-sacrifice as any of those memorialised on the walls of Postman’s Park. That was one of the things they didn’t tell you when you signed up for duty, Monteith thought. That there was a huge divide between those who lit the cannon, and those who flung themselves in front of it. Lighting the cannon was the path to a long, happy life. The one he’d lit for Cartwright was unlikely to prove fatal, but it would make exile at Slough House seem like an extended vacation.

Even fast horses finish at the knacker’s yard. That slow horses get there first was one of life’s little ironies.

He finished his tea and reached for his phone.

Sean Donovan answered on the first ring. It sounded like he was driving.

“You’re on your way?”

“Yes,” said Donovan.

Monteith paused to admire a passing jogger: her hair damp, her T-shirt tight, her head bobbing in rhythm to whatever was pulsing through her earphones.

“How’s our guest?”

“How do you think? She’s unharmed, a little nervous and very pissed off.”

“Well, she won’t have to endure it much longer,” Monteith said. “Not that there’s any harm in giving her a little scare in the meantime.”

Donovan was silent for a moment, then said, “That’s what you want?”

“It is.” The jogger had gone, but the feeling she’d provoked still lingered: a wish to hear a woman squeal. The fact that Monteith wouldn’t hear it mattered less than that he’d have caused it.

He said, “What’s your ETA?”

“Thirty.”

“Don’t be late,” Monteith said, and ended the call.

Collecting his empty cup, he dropped it into a bin, and paused to look once more at the tiles affixed to the shelter’s walls; their fragments of story, each highlighting an ending, because there was nothing to the beginnings and middles that anyone would want to hear about. He shook his head. Then he left the little park and hailed a taxi.

River walkedback up the stairs. Behind him, the woman at the security desk called out.

He turned. “I forgot, I need Ms. Taverner’s signature.” He mimed a scribble in the air. “I’ll be one minute.”

“Come back down. I’ll page her again.”

“She’s just there.” He pointed towards the next landing, then waggled his laminated visitor badge. “One minute.” He reached the landing, and was out of sight of the desk.

Thirty minutes.

Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

Truth to tell, Catherine Standish was no longer at the front of his mind. The op was the op. This was enemy territory, and the fact that it was also headquarters simply gave it an extra edge.

He pushed through a pair of swing doors. River was coasting on memory, an imperfect blueprint in his head, but there ought to be lifts here. Unclipping the laminate from his shirt, he stuffed it into a pocket, and yes, here they were, in a thankfully unpeopled lobby. What he’d have done had Lady Di been waiting was a question for another life.

Pressing the button, he fished his mobile out. Regent’s Park’s front desk was still in his contact list: unused for years, but still stored because . . .

Because you always hung onto the numbers, in case your old life was given back.

It was answered on the second ring.

“Security.”

“Possible threat,” he said, pitching his voice low.

“Who is this?”

“There’s a couple in a car out front, twenty yards down the road. Making like a lovers’ quarrel, but the male is armed. I repeat, the male is armed. Suggest immediate response.”

“Could I have your—”

“Immediate response,” River repeated, and ended the call.

That might keep everyone occupied for a little while.

The lift arrived and he stepped into it.

Sean Donovanwas entering London from the west. The van’s air-con was unreliable, so until Monteith’s call he’d been driving with the windows open, the twin blasts nearly cooling the interior. But now he closed them to ring Traynor, who answered in his usual way:

“Here.”

He didn’t ask Traynor if everything was okay. Benjamin Traynor had served with him in hot places; crouched with him behind walls being pounded to dust above their heads. If Traynor couldn’t handle one middle-aged woman in an attic, they should both reconsider their futures. Especially the next twenty-four hours.

He said, “I’m in the city. Everything’s on schedule.”