Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

“And Wikipedia isn’t helping?”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you? I expect he’s got someone wiping it.”

“So a quick glance would be all you need.”

“That’s right.”

“And maybe I should turn round while you’re doing that. A quick three-pointer.”

“. . . If you like.”

“Well, if I wasn’t watching, I wouldn’t be involved, would I? So that would save me being your accomplice while you break the Official Secrets Act. And I really can’t be doing with a five-year stretch in Holloway. Prison food plays havoc with the digestion, so I’ve read.”

River didn’t have to turn to know they had company. As he felt his arms gripped from behind, and the plastic restraints clip into place, he was conscious mostly of Molly Doran’s gaze, which was partly pitying, partly curious, as if his behaviour was beyond anything she could readily understand. And this from a woman familiar with Jackson Lamb, he thought. I must really be in trouble.

She didn’t speak again as he was taken, moderately politely, from the room.

When Catherineheard the padlock being shifted, she sat up on the bed, feet on the floor. Wasn’t this how prisoners responded to a rattle on their chain?

She’d thought it would be Bailey again—the young man who’d taken her photo—but it was the second soldier; the one whose presence at the Angel had driven her back onto the streets. Like Sean Donovan, he had the lifetime soldier’s way of entering a room: taking it all in in one sweeping glance. Nothing could have changed since the last time he’d been in here, but that was no reason for taking chances. This done, his gaze rested on Catherine.

She waited.

“Sorry about this,” he began.

But he didn’t look sorry.

T ime was, walking upSlough House’s stairs made every day midwinter for Louisa. Now, she carried her own weather with her. Stepping through the yard, pushing open the door that always stuck, didn’t affect her. It was a mood she was already part of, wherever she happened to be.

On the first landing she stopped at Ho’s office. Ho was at his desk, four flat screens angled in front of him as if he were catching a tan. He was nodding in time to something, which the well-padded earphones dwarfing his head suggested might be music, but could as easily be the binary rhythms of whatever code was conjuring the images swarming on his screens. More than once she’d come into this room and he hadn’t even noticed, though he’d configured his workstation for a view of the door: when he was in the zone, if the webheads still said that, it was like he’d relocated to the moon. Because while Roderick Ho was a dick, that was only the most obvious thing about him, not the most important. Most important was, he knew his way round the cybersphere. This was arguably the only thing keeping him alive. If he weren’t occasionally useful, Marcus or Shirley would have battered him into a porridge by now.

But today he wasn’t on the moon because he was watching her as she stepped into his office. He even pulled his earphones off. That put him in Jane Austen territory, etiquette-wise: Louisa had known him to hold a palm up, as if warding off traffic, if he suspected somebody was about to speak when he was doing something more interesting, like popping a cola can, or preparing to exhale.

He said, “Hello.”

. . . That was weird.

“You feeling all right?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why?”

“No reason. Can you trace Catherine’s phone?”

“No.”

“I thought you could do that. GPS. Whatever.”

“I can, but only if it’s on. And it’s not on.”

“You already tried? Was that your idea?”

He shrugged.

Marcus was standing behind her now; Shirley too. Marcus said, “You didn’t find her, then.”

Shirley said, “We didn’t find Cartwright either.”

“I can tell,” Louisa said. “Here, you missed a bit.”

She touched her upper lip, and Shirley rubbed her own, obliterating a smudge of ice cream. She scowled at Marcus. “You could have said.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Ho was watching all this as if it were taking place behind bars. Louisa said to him, “How about River’s phone?”

He shrugged again, sulkily this time. “I’d need his number.”

Louisa read it out to him off her own.

Ho said, “Have you got everyone’s number in there?”

“No.”

Shirley nudged Marcus.

Ho’s fingers started salsa-ing across his keyboard.

Louisa walked to the window. Same view as from hers, but lower down. She thought: when I joined the Service, this was not what I was expecting. The same view every day, with minor variations.

For a while last year that had seemed less important, but like everything else, this had turned out a false reprieve. Life’s cruellest trick was letting the light in, just enough so you knew where everything was, then shutting it off without warning. She’d been bumping into the furniture ever since.

Back in her flat, replastered into a section of wall behind her fridge, was a fingernail-sized uncut diamond, booty from a heist she’d helped derail. She had no idea how much it was worth, but couldn’t see that it mattered much.

Min, you stupid bastard, why did you have to die?

And then she shut that thought off because there was nowhere it could lead her that would do anyone any good.

Ho finished tapping. “Cartwright’s blocked,” he said.

“What do you mean, blocked?”

“His phone’s on, but he’s somewhere that’s scrambling the signal.”

“Like somewhere with thick walls?”

Marcus said, “No, like somewhere with the ability to fuck with GPS.”

“Golly,” said Shirley, who’d been Comms in her pre-Slough House life. “Wonder where that might be?”

The roomhe’d been locked in was underground; its only window one-way, and that from the other side. From where River stood it was a mirror. About a metre square, it threw back at him the room’s blankness and his own oddly calm exterior. Inside his chest his heart thumped like a little drummer boy: all beat and no tune.

The minutes he’d been counting down were long gone, and their deadline history. These men have poor impulse control . . . Soon they’ll be loosening their belts. He watched his reflected hands curl into fists. He’d made more than one poor choice this morning. Principally, he should have stayed on the bridge and dropped the man off it. Whatever happened to Catherine would have happened anyway, but at least he’d have wiped the smirk off that chancer’s face.

And why didn’t I do that? he asked himself.

He’d have sat, but there was nowhere to sit. The room was bare; a cube, near enough. There was no handle on the door. There was no visible light fitting either, though the ceiling emitted a steady bluish glow, which lent his reflection an alien cast. Alien, except he belonged here. It was where he’d willed himself, as much as if he’d offered his wrists to Lady Di half an hour ago. Lock me up , he should have said. I’m here to steal, and I don’t have a prayer.

There were protocols, and even a slow horse knew them. Slow horses, after all, underwent the same training as any other kind. Threats to fellow officers, actual physical danger, required immediate, official response: the line of command in River’s case ran upstairs through Slough House and onto the desk of Jackson Lamb. Who, for all his faults—and that wasn’t a short list—would walk through fire for a joe in peril; or make someone walk through fire. By ignoring that, River had stepped across the chalk line, and by bluffing his way into the Park, he’d made things worse twice over.