Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

The old woman glanced back at them, religious irritation on her face.

“It would be the work of a moment to put you all on the street. It’s not just that what your team does is barely worth doing. It’s that when they start doing things they’re not supposed to be doing, the mess they make requires serious attention.”

Lamb nodded proudly.

“One of your operatives shot and killed a Russian citizen not long ago.”

“I remember,” said Lamb. “He’s still upset he didn’t get a bonus.”

“Slough House is supposed to be a punishment posting. Your . . . slow horses?”

“They get called that.”

“They’re supposed to throw the towel in. Pursue opportunities more in keeping with their talents. Like local government, or petty crime.”

“‘Petty’ is uncalled for,” Lamb objected. “They have weapons training.”

“I hope you’re not making life easy for them.”

Lamb paused, and seemed to be contemplating the surroundings: old stone, quiet air, wooden benches. Hymnals were slotted into ledges in front of them, and motes of dust, some of which might have been breathed in and sneezed out by Shakespeare, danced in coloured shafts of light that beamed through the windows. It was almost cool, compared to the bakery outdoors. Compared to Slough House, it was a slice of Paradise.

“I think I can safely say I’m not doing that,” he said at last.

“Or too hard.”

He looked at her.

“Because overdoing the punishment, letting them know you relish putting the boot in . . . Well. That can be counterproductive, don’t you find? The sort of thing that makes some people dig their heels in harder. Alpha types, I mean.”

“You’ve not met Roddy Ho, have you?”

“You keep deflecting.”

“And you keep going round the houses. Any chance of getting to the point? I have underlings to bully.”

“Peter Judd.”

“Our new boss, God help us all. What about him?”

“He’s the one wants Slough House shut down.”

Lamb shook his head. “I doubt that.”

“Trust me. He just got through explaining it.”

“Trust you? There’s a topic for another day. No, what Peter Judd wants is to wave his dick about. Metaphorically, for a change. And you’re the one he’s waving it at. Slough House just happens to be in the way. You’re not seriously telling me you haven’t worked that out for yourself?”

Again, the old woman looked back and glared. Lamb waggled his fingers in return.

Ingrid Tearney looked across at the book-browsers. They’d been joined by an elderly gentleman who’d taken a seat next to the honour-box. Whether this showed lack of trust remained open to question. He might have been planning a heist. She’d lowered her voice when she next spoke:

“I got that far, yes, thank you. It seems Mr. Judd has his eyes on a higher prize, and requires my cooperation. This little purge he’s suggested is his way of showing me where the power resides.”

Lamb said, “Higher prize.”

He’d taken a cigarette from his pocket; one of his regular tricks. Few people ever saw him with a packet in his hands. He made no move to light it; instead rolling it between finger and thumb, as if telling a rosary of his own invention.

He said, “If he wants to bring down his own government he’d be better off concentrating on the chancellor. Coke and hookers were a quiet night in for that lad, back in the nineties. One good splash in the tabloids and he’s history. The PM wouldn’t last long after that. They’ve always been a buy-one-get-one-free package.”

“The trouble with leaks is, they’re generally traced to their source. And if Judd wants the party grassroots on his side, he’s got to be seen to be squeaky-loyal. No, he doesn’t want to stage a coup, he wants to be acclaimed a saviour. While the leadership falls apart, he’ll be glad-handing local worthies and organising charity balls. Not a hint of treachery in sight.”

“Charity ball,” wondered Lamb. “Is that like a pity fu—”

“We’re in a church.”

“Fair dos.” He studied his virgin cigarette in puzzlement, then tucked it behind an ear. “Well, you didn’t bring me here to play Chinese whispers. You’ve already let his tyres down, haven’t you?”

“He punctured himself.”

“Tell me.”

Leaning closer, Dame Ingrid told him about the tiger team run by Judd’s old school chum, Sly Monteith, and about how Lamb’s department had been used as a wedge to prise open Regent’s Park.

“So they took Standish,” Lamb said, his tone neutral.

“That’s right. And sent a picture of her, bound and gagged, to your Mr. Cartwright as an incentive.”

“Unnecessary effort,” Lamb said. “Offering him a biscuit would have done the trick. So that was Judd’s plan. How many ways did it go wrong?”

“Mr. Monteith’s body was dumped on a pavement in SW1 about an hour ago.”

“And this came as a surprise?”

“The Service doesn’t solve its problems with brute force, Mr. Lamb.”

“Maybe not in SW1,” Lamb agreed. “So who left him in the gutter? Let me guess. His own boys?”

“So it would seem,” Tearney said. “I had a rather unusual telephone conversation a short while ago with a gentleman who tells me he’s, ah, now in charge of Mr. Monteith’s enterprise. And that the goalposts have shifted.”

“The tigers weren’t as tame as they pretended, then,” said Lamb. “What is it he wants?”

Dame Ingrid told him.

All ourproblems would melt away if we could sit peacefully in a room. Catherine had heard that somewhere, probably at an AA meeting. Fractured pieces of wisdom, cobbled together from half-remembered axioms: put them together, and you had what passed for a philosophy, in the twilight world of the drunkard. And sober drunks could be just as dull as the real kind. Something else she’d learned at meetings.

Sitting peacefully in a room was what she was doing now, but it didn’t feel like her problems were melting away.

It must be past lunchtime, she thought. The sun was high, and the heat stifling. The air she’d coaxed through the window tasted more summery than London air, with a sweeter tang, but she was enough the city girl to find it overpowering, and would almost have preferred it if that bus in the yard revved its engines, blasting noisome fumes into the atmosphere. Apart from anything else, country air reminded her of the voices.

The voices had come to her during her “retreat,” which had been spent in a perfectly comfortable, perfectly respectable sanatorium in the Dorset countryside; a hideaway for Service casualties. Among all those walking disasters—joes who’d done too much, seen too much, had too much done to them—she’d been far from the only drying-out drunk: it was a jagged brotherhood she’d joined, a shattered sisterhood. Everyone was a walking collection of angles, though the facility itself seemed to have had most of its edges smoothed away. Sudden noises were discouraged, but happened regardless. A tray would drop on a tiled, percussive floor, and the whole community would ring for minutes. When it struck her to wonder what havoc a fire drill would cause, she’d had to bite her tongue to keep from hysterics.

Her room had been about the size of the one she was in now. Through its window was a view of a smooth, very English lawn bordered by ash trees. Occasional twinned piercings in the turf indicated where croquet hoops had been fixed, but this game, being outwardly genteel but actually vicious, had been found too reminiscent of Service life to be a soothing pastime, and the hoops and mallets were disposed of. Those perfectly circular wounds in the lawn remained, a grassy stigmata just barely visible, and maybe they’d heal themselves, and maybe they wouldn’t . . . There was no end to the spirals of thought that could catch you; carry you away like Dorothy in her tornado, and drop you into a brighter land where logic eased its grip. The sober world, on the other hand, remained bleached of colour. Even the lawn, even those ash trees, were grim and grey and lifeless. Well, of course the ash trees. Why else were they called that?