Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

He remembered a late instruction he’d given, and something tightened behind his waistband. “The woman. Did you, ah . . . ”

“Shake her up a bit?” said Donovan, screwing the cap back on the bottle. His voice was flat, but Monteith heard judgment in it.

He bridled. Rank be damned: money went one way, respect the other. That was business.

“Just a joke, man. Is she still at the house?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want to speak to Judd in person before we all stand down.” He paused to look around before continuing. “No point changing shirts before the final whistle.”

There was nobody in sight, and the only vehicle in earshot was on the level below, and getting lower. Out on the street, traffic noise didn’t count; it was simply the natural state of being, like the buzzing round a hive.

Donovan said, “You don’t trust him, you mean.”

“. . . Why wouldn’t I trust him?”

The van’s back doors were still open. The soldier put a foot on its floor and began retying a bootlace. “Because he’s a sneaky piece of shit.”

“. . . I beg your pardon?”

“Your pal. Peter Judd. He’s a sneaky piece of shit.”

“He’s also a senior officer in Her Majesty’s Government. So I’d thank you to keep a civil—”

“Where are you meeting him?”

“—Did you just interrupt me?”

Donovan put his boot back on the ground, and Monteith was forcibly reminded that the older man was bigger, fitter; altogether more . . . substantial.

He took a step back. “Let’s not forget who pays your salary, Donovan.”

“Yes, let’s not do that.”

“You’re lucky to have a job at all, with your record.”

“Don’t kid yourself. My record’s the reason you hired me. Puts hair on your balls, doesn’t it, Sly? Having the real thing about the place, instead of plastic heroes.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Oh, I thought you enjoyed it. Makes you think people like you, doesn’t it, when they call you Sly?” Donovan leaned closer, to bestow the following confidence. “I have to tell you, though. That’s not the reason they do it.”

“Ring Traynor. Now. Tell him to release the woman, and get back to the office. And you can consider that your final act in my employment. You’re sacked.”

Even Monteith could hear the quiver in his voice, the barely repressed anger. Let Donovan give him one more excuse . . .

Donovan laughed. “Sacked? You don’t want to try for, what, ‘cashiered’? Tinpot little general like you, I’d have thought ‘cashiered’ more up your street.”

“If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be queuing up for your jobseeker’s allowance. Bit of a change from the parade ground, that, was it? Lining up with all the ex-squaddies for your charity handout?”

Donovan shook his head, facing the floor, but when he looked up, Monteith saw he was laughing. For a moment he thought the last few minutes had just been erased, that Donovan had been having a soldier’s joke, but that bubble burst in short order. Donovan wasn’t laughing with him, but at what he’d just said.

“‘Charity handout’? I swear to God, I’ve fought wars against people I had more respect for.”

Monteith said, “I’ve had enough of this. Ring Traynor. And give me the keys to the goddamn van.”

“Where are you meeting Judd?”

“This conversation is over.”

“Not yet it isn’t.”

Forgetting the keys, Sly Monteith turned to leave, and the next moment the world whipped past him like it was a yo-yo: he was heading for the doorway and its urine-perfumed stairwell, and then he wasn’t. Instead, he was slammed back against the van’s panels, breathless, his ankles dangling in space. Donovan’s fists were scrunching his lapels, and Donovan’s voice was drilling into his ear.

“Once more,” Donovan suggested. “Where are you meeting him?”

There was a sudden sense of release, several sudden senses of release, and Monteith’s feet were back on the ground, and the contents of Monteith’s bladder were heading the same way. Donovan’s face twisted in contempt, and as much to prevent him expressing it as anything else, Monteith found the words tumbling out.

“Anna Livia Plurabelle’s.”

“. . . Where?”

“Park Lane. Really quite decent, they do a good . . . ” Monteith’s memory, or imagination, tailed away. What did they do that was good? A sudden taste of spring lamb in a blackcurrant jus filled his mouth, almost real enough to wash away the smell of his own piss.

Standing in a car park, slumped against a van. Discovering that the scheme he’d been orchestrating had been someone else’s all along . . . Every age calls forth its heroes : he’d thought that just this morning. Back when he’d been one of the heroes he was talking about, surrounded by memorials to idiots who’d thrown everything away.

At least that had been their choice.

“What time?”

Monteith said, “Half an hour?”

His trousers were clammy, and for a disconnected second he pictured himself turning up at Anna Livia’s— no one used the ‘Plurabelle’—steaming in the sunshine. What the hell was PJ going to say? Except PJ wasn’t going to say anything, or not to him, because no way was Donovan going to let him walk out of this car park.

He felt the soldier’s hand on his neck.

“This is what you’re going to do,” Donovan said. “You’re going to lie quietly in the back of the van. Nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t want to get in the van.”

His voice sounded as if it were coming from some distance away. From down the hall, the far side of the kitchen . . . From the pantry where he used to hide when he was small, and things weren’t going right.

“Doesn’t matter what you want. I’m going to tie you up, but I’m not going to hurt you. No worse than what we did to the woman.”

Monteith wasn’t thinking about the woman. He was thinking about being left in the dark of the van; tied up and gagged . . .

“What’s all this about?”

“Not your concern.”

Donovan pulled him round to the back of the van, one of whose doors hung open. The smell was the usual aroma of men and petrol and motorway miles and motorway food. The thought of being locked inside it filled Monteith with horror.

“I’m going to throw up,” he said.

He retched, bending double. Donovan swore under his breath, but relaxed his grip a fraction, and Monteith wriggled out of his jacket.

“Oh for God’s sake,” muttered Donovan, and took off after the runaway.

You didn’thave to go back far to recall a culture that said: Yes, we like a drink at lunchtime. The political culture, he meant—Peter Judd was well aware that the culture in general was chucking booze down its neck like a mental hobo. But the political culture, meaning Westminster, had cleaned up its act since the millennium, a shift in which Judd himself had played no small part. A public disavowal of some of the more famous extravagances of his youth had, near as damn it, established a party line, or at least had drawn a line across which his party didn’t dare tread. Backbenchers were like those dipping desk-toy ducks—start one off, and it would continue until forcibly stopped. Or in this instance, stop until forcibly started. Once the House’s reputation for being more or less sober during daylight hours had been salvaged, and his own status as architect of the “New Responsibility” (copyright, some broadsheet reptile) safely established, Judd was happy to revert to drinking at lunchtime when he felt like it. One of the advantages of being a Big Beast in a Parliament noted for its stunted brethren.

Pygmies, he thought, swirling the quarter inch of Chablis, breathing in the perfume, then nodding at the girl to fill the glass. Anna Livia’s chose its staff carefully. This one was a redhead, her hair tamed with a black bow matching the shoelace tie that dangled onto the table as she poured. Flesh-toned bra, so as not to show beneath her blouse. Such observations came naturally to Judd, who could no more look at a woman without assessing her bedability than he could see a microphone without minting a soundbite. She smiled—she had recognised him, of course—then replaced the bottle in its bucket and moved away. He’d leave a decent tip, and get her number. He was supposed to be behaving himself, for reasons of marital harmony, but a waitress hardly counted, for God’s sake. He glanced at his watch. Sly was late.