Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

Sly was another pygmy, of course.

“You’ll catch yourself using that term in public,” his agent had admonished. “Then there’ll be trouble.”

Judd shrugged such wisdom off. There was always trouble, and he always rose from the resulting miasma looking a lovable scamp: lovable, anyway, to that gratifyingly large sector of the populace to whom he’d always be a figure of fun: breathing a bit of the old jolly into politics, and where’s the harm in that, eh? As for those who hated him, they were never going to change their minds, and since he was in a better position to fuck them up than they were him, they didn’t give him sleepless nights. The public, on the other hand . . . The public was like one of those huge Pacific jellyfish; one enormous, pulsating mass of indifference, drifting wherever the current carried it; an organism without a motive, ambition or original sin to call its own, but which somehow believed, in whatever passed for its brain, that it chose its own leaders and had a say in its own destiny.

And catch yourself saying any of that out loud, he thought as he lifted his glass, and you can kiss the lovable-scamp image goodnight.

But none of this was making Sly Monteith appear, damn the man. He was milking the moment, obviously; the only time in his life he’d have the Home Secretary on hold. If he had any political sense he’d bank the credit, but Monteith had always been a second-rater, with the second-rater’s habit of dropping rehearsed reflections into conversation. Ingrid Tearney had suggested he was a crony, which was a joke—Monteith would give his left bollock to be a crony—but he had at least proved useful today, his tiger team giving Judd the weapon he needed to de-fang Dame Ingrid. Cronydom, though; friendship; that was dangerous territory. How could you know someone would never turn out a liability? His glass needed refilling, and the cute waitress was nowhere in sight. Suppressing a sigh, he did the job himself.

Some kind of commotion was in progress on the street, vehicular squealing, and people hurrying past. You didn’t expect that round here. Judd sipped wine, and found pleasure in the thought that he’d bent Ingrid Tearney to his will not an hour ago. That ridiculous Slough House: in itself, an unimportant anomaly, but any victory mattered. Tearney’s reign as head of the Service would come to an abrupt end if he chose to make a stink about this morning’s incursion into the Park, and forcing a policy decision on her served to underline her necessary deference. Besides, if his party stood for anything, it was for defending the right of the strong to flourish, which meant preventing the weak from taking up unnecessary space. Slough House was an excellent example of precisely that. But what was going on outside, and where had the staff vanished to?

Diners nearer the windows were craning forward to see what was happening. Without a clear view from his booth, Judd stood abruptly and dropped his napkin. Sirens were sounding, their distant, interlooping wails a disorganised commentary on city busyness. The irritation Judd had been feeling slipped into something less comfortable. He made for the door, aware that he was drawing glances: might be something, might be nothing, but there was never any harm in showing himself prepared for an emergency. The redheaded waitress was by the door, peering outside, all pretence at professionalism history. A few yards down the road lay a lump, obscured by people crouching round it.

“What’s going on?”

“There’s been an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

The girl didn’t know.

The sirens grew closer.

The lump was wearing a grey suit.

Someone was speaking into a mobile phone: “No, I swear, he was dumped here by a van. Guy got out, opened the back door, and unloaded him like he was a sack of rubbish . . . ”

Judd looked both ways, but saw no van.

“Took off like a bat out of hell . . . ”

The first police car arrived, and its occupants jumped out and approached the body at a run.

“Okay, okay, let’s have some room here. Let’s have some room.”

“Could everyone please back off, please.”

The first officer dropped to one knee by the body and began speaking urgently into his radio.

Judd’s first thought was that this was Tearney’s work; an emphatic declaration that she wasn’t his lapdog. But that didn’t survive long. If the Service she headed was this efficient, Monteith’s tiger team would have been wrapped in chains and dumped in the Thames by coffee time.

“Did anybody see what happened? Could those of you who saw what happened give your names to my colleague here, and we’ll be taking statements just as soon as—”

Judd shook his head, and stepped back into Anna Livia’s.

“I’m ready to order,” he told the waitress.

“And your guest?”

“Won’t be joining me after all.”

It meant he had the bottle to himself, of course. But gave him plenty to think about while he waited for his lunch.

PART TWO

true enemies

Y ou could feasibly throwa tennis ball and cover the distance between Slough House and St. Giles Cripplegate, but if you wanted your ball back, it might take a while. For there was no straight route through the Barbican, which resembled an Escher drawing assembled in brick by a spook architect, its primary purpose being not so much to keep you from getting where you were going, but to leave you unsure about where you’d been. Every path led to a junction resembling the one you’d just left, offering routes to nowhere you wanted to go. And set down in the middle of all this, like a paddle steamer in an airport, was the fourteenth-century church of St. Giles, within whose walls John Milton prayed and Shakespeare daydreamed; which had survived fire, war and restoration, and which now reposed serenely on a brick-tiled square, offering quiet for those needing respite from the city’s buzz, and a resting place for poor sods who’d got lost, and given up hope of rescue. Today there was a book sale under way, with pallets of paperbacks laid on trestle tables along the north aisle, and an honour-box on a chair awaiting donations. A few moody browsers were picking over the goods. Apparently ignoring them, Jackson Lamb clumped past and sat on a bench in the nave, near the back. Three rows ahead, an old dear was picking her way through a private litany of petition and remorse. The way her shoulders trembled, Lamb could tell her lips were moving as she prayed.

Separating herself from the book-fanciers, Ingrid Tearney joined him.

He said, “Cripplegate. You think they had their own private entrance?”

“I expect they were beggars.”

“You’re probably right. Probably both kinds. Lucky and poor.”

“I’ve heard a lot of things about you, Mr. Lamb. But never that you were one for whimsy.”

“I don’t spend much time in churches. It’s maybe rubbing off.” He raised one buttock off the bench, like a man preparing to fart, but reconsidered, and settled back onto an even keel. “I’m having a busy day. Half my team’s gone AWOL, and now I’m missing lunch. What’s important enough to let my takeaway get cold?”

“An hour ago, I agreed to close down Slough House.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You don’t seem bothered.”

“If it was going to happen, we’d not be sitting here. I’d be in my office, listening to Diana Taverner crowing down the phone.”

“Maybe I wanted to tell you in person. A perk of the job. It’s not like your department’s a jewel in the Service’s crown, after all. It’s more like a slug in its lettuce patch. There’ll be few tears shed in the Park when the memo goes round.”

Lamb said, “I don’t suppose you can smoke in here.”