Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

The desk was neatly organised, which was no surprise. Front and centre was a pile of reports that should, by rights, have been on Lamb’s own desk when he’d arrived this morning; by now, he’d have pawed them out of their pristine state, and spilled enough of one beverage or another onto them, in lieu of actually reading the damn things, to warrant their being reprinted before they were shuffled into secure folders and shipped off to the Park. The knowledge that they’d receive equally scant attention there had never prevented Standish from rendering them as professional-looking as possible. It was one of the ways Lamb could tell she didn’t have sex any more.

He picked up the reports, weighed them reflectively as if gauging the intelligence they contained, then dropped them into the wastebasket. “Prioritise,” he murmured to himself. Then he stood and moved around the small office.

A faint smell of blossom lingered in the air, or had done until quite recently. The culprit wasn’t hard to find: a small muslin bag hanging from the window frame. Lamb tugged at it gently between thumb and forefinger, but not gently enough not to snap the thread it hung from. Letting it fall, he continued his circuit. Two sets of filing cabinets. A coat stand from which a linen tote bag dangled, alongside an umbrella. All of it like a Disneyfied version of his own office: smaller translating into cosier; neater into cleaner. Well, cleaner into cleaner too, to be honest. She’d been here as recently as last night, but already the room was subsiding into a museum piece. He had the strange sensation that, given another twenty-four hours, everything would be laced with cobweb.

Get a grip . . .

There was no point turning the office over, because he already knew there were no clues here. Standish had called him twice after leaving last night, indicating that whatever had happened happened after she left Slough House . . . Still, he went through her desk anyway, on principle. The spare keys to her flat were missing, which gave him a moment’s pause before he remembered Louisa Guy had checked her place out. There was nothing else of interest except, in the bottom drawer, a bottle-shaped object wrapped in tissue paper so old it crinkled to his touch. He pulled it free. The Macallan. Seal unbroken. After studying it a moment he rebundled it, and stuffed it back in the drawer.

He looked up to find Louisa leaning on the door frame.

“What?”

“Looking for something?”

“If I was, I’d have found it by now.”

He fell back into Standish’s chair, which registered its discomfort with a sharp twang .

Louisa said, “You don’t think she’s drunk somewhere.”

“No.”

“You’re sure.”

Instead of replying, Lamb fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced a cigarette. He lit it eyes closed, and wheezily inhaled.

“What did they say at the Park? About River?”

“He’s under arrest. Something about an attempt to steal a file. You can go clean his desk out if you want.”

“Didn’t take long, did it?” Louisa said. “Catherine goes off reservation, and we’re one down not twenty-four hours later. I’d give us till the end of the week.”

“‘Us’?”

“Slough House.”

Lamb chuckled.

“You don’t think we’re a team?”

“I think you’re collateral damage,” said Lamb.

“And yet here you are, looking for clues. What was the file River was trying to steal?”

“Wrong question. You should be asking, what the hell was Cartwright doing, trying to steal a file?”

“Well, I assume it was a ransom demand,” Louisa said. “Whoever took Catherine got in touch with him.”

“Has Ho traced her phone?”

“She’s taken the battery out. Or someone has.”

Lamb grunted.

“So what now?”

“Well it’s long past lunchtime,” he said. “And no bugger’s fetched me a carryout yet.”

“So that’s the bigger picture sorted. But what about these other issues? You know, the danger your team’s in. That sort of thing.”

“Cartwright’s not in danger. They might work him over a bit, but they’ll give him to the plod soon enough. He’ll be perfectly safe.”

“But in prison.”

“Yeah, well. Silly sod should have thought of that before having his awfully big adventure. He’s in MI5, not the Famous Five.” Lamb flicked ash onto Catherine’s desk. “You’d think he’d have worked that out by now.”

“And what about Catherine?”

“Remember what I just said about collateral damage?”

“So whoever’s fucking about with Slough House, you’re just going to let it happen.”

The chair creaked dangerously as Lamb leaned back, dangling his arms over the sides. “What do you expect me to do?” he said. “It’s not as if we know who’s doing the fucking about.”

“And when we find out?” Louisa asked.

“Ah,” said Lamb. “That’ll be a different story.”

“Slough House,”Judd said. “Close it down. Today.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Do we own the building?”

“Yes.”

“Better still. We can flog it off now the market’s recovered. That’ll pay for the odd decoder ring, what?”

“And the agents?”

“Have them put down.”

“. . . Seriously?”

“No. But it’s interesting you felt the need to ask. No, just sack them. They’re all retards or they wouldn’t be there anyway. Hand them their cards, tell them goodbye.”

“Jackson Lamb—”

“I know all about Jackson Lamb. He’s supposed to know where some bodies are buried, yes? Well, newsflash, nobody spends a decade in this business without stumbling across the occasional corpse. And if he feels like kicking up a fuss, he’ll find out what the Official Secrets Act’s for. Wormwood Scrubs is more than big enough to hold him as well as Cartwright. Speaking of whom, yes, hand him over to the woolly suits. Don’t see why having a grandfather in the business should buy him any favours.”

Thus spoke a man whose own grandfather had paid his school fees.

Tearney knew what this was, of course. Slough House meant nothing to Judd; he cared less about it than she did, and she didn’t care at all. Were it not that it acted as a thorn in Diana Taverner’s side, she’d have erased it without a moment’s thought. Lamb was a Service legend, but there were museums full of one-time legends: label them, hang them on a hook, and they pretty soon lost their juju. The slow horses could be history by teatime, and would have passed from her thoughts before supper. But to wipe Slough House out of existence on Peter Judd’s word was a different matter entirely. And if she let him get away with it, she’d wind up in his pocket.

Of course, a pocket was a good place to be if you were probing the wearer for soft tissue.

She said, “Consider it done.”

•••

Donovan turnedaway and opened the van, producing something from its depths which for one heart-quelling moment Monteith thought was a pistol, with elongated neck. A silencer? But when Donovan unscrewed the cap and took a pull from it, Monteith saw it was a bottle of water.

He shook his head. Too much heat, too much excitement. From the bright sun outside to the petrol-fumed air of the car park had been like stepping from one form of battery to another: having been slapped silly by sunshine, he was now being rabbit-punched by pollution. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that London was more than one city. There was the one he was taxied comfortably about in, whose views were spacious and spoke in agreeable accents of wealth and plenty, while the other was cramped, soiled and barbarous, peopled by a feral race who’d strip you bare and chew the bones. The divide itself didn’t worry him—it was why the security business paid dividends—but he didn’t like being caught on the wrong side.