Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

But in the absence of colour, new sounds arrived. The voices turned up that first week. It was as if a small crowd of people, forever out of sight, had an awful secret to impart to Catherine all at once, so what reached her was an unbroken mutter of syllables, never approaching clarity. They were her secret sharers, and from the start she had known they existed only in her own delirium, and that the secret they were desperate to share was that she would fall and break at the next opportunity. There was no sadness or triumph in this. It was simply what was bound to happen: ultimately she’d be waved away from this hospital-like seclusion and rejoin the world of noise and lights and sharp edges, where the first thing she’d do would be to open a bottle and jump in.

She’d clung onto this as the first real hope, during those early days. She could stand all of it—the cure, the recovery; the effort demanded of her to regain her pride and her knowledge of who she could be—provided oblivion remained a constant possibility. Even now, most mornings, that thought woke with her. The voices had disappeared in time, and the effort to become herself once again had succeeded in the sense that it remained her daily struggle, but she’d never entirely forgotten them; rather, she’d bundled them in rags and stowed them in the lumber room of her mind. This was not an accepted recovery tactic, but it had worked for her, so far.

And so lost was she in this memory that she gave a small cry when the door rattled, as if her long-ago voices had assumed corporeal form, and were arriving now to take her away.

“You all right?”

This voice was Bailey’s.

Catherine composed herself, and stood. “I’m fine.”

He undid the padlock and let himself in, a manoeuvre complicated by the tray he was carrying. On it were a cardboard-packed sandwich, an apple, what looked like a flapjack tightly wrapped in cellophane, its price-sticker visible, a small bottle of water, a 25-mililetre bottle of Pinot Grigio, and a plastic beaker.

“Thought you’d be hungry,” he said.

He laid the tray on the bed.

Unable to take her eyes from it, Catherine gestured numbly towards the window. “There’s a bus out there.”

“I know.”

“Why is there a bus out there?”

Even to her own ears, she sounded like she was reciting phrases from a teach-yourself-English book.

“The people who own this place, that was their tour bus, I think.”

“They have a band?” Images of an ancient movie swam briefly into focus. Pinot wasn’t her favourite wine, but its sudden appearance had displaced previous pleasures. Summer Holiday . That was the film.

Bailey laughed. “They ran a tour company. Ferrying folk round local sights?”

“I don’t even know where we are.”

“No, well. Everywhere’s historical, isn’t it?”

Catherine said something else. She wasn’t sure what.

Bailey said, “Went bust, I suppose. This place used to be a farm. Now it’s a holiday let. Next stop, it’ll probably be a youth hostel.”

“How long are you going to keep me here?”

“Not long.”

“This isn’t going to end well,” she said. “You’re messing with serious people.”

“Ben and the colonel, they’re serious too.” He nodded at the tray before turning to go. “I brought you some wine. Little treat.”

“I noticed.”

“Better drink it before it gets warm.”

He opened the door, making the padlock key do a little dance between the index and second fingers of his left hand as he did so.

“Bailey?”

“What did you call me?”

“The others are soldiers, but you’re not. Are you?”

He didn’t answer.

Seconds later she’d have heard the clunk-click of the padlock being fastened if she’d been listening, but she wasn’t. All her attention was on the tray he’d placed on the bed, and the toy-sized bottle of wine it held.

The long-ago voices remained silent.

“You’re kidding,”Lamb said.

Nothing about Tearney’s demeanour suggested she was kidding. “It seems that Mr. Monteith’s scheme was hijacked by someone in pursuit of, ah, a particular world view.”

“He’s batshit crazy, you mean.”

“That would appear to be the case.”

The woman three rows ahead had apparently lost herself in prayer. Or perhaps she had simply given up hope of silencing the background murmur.

“The Grey Books,” mused Lamb. “That’s the creepy shit, right?”

“We’re an intelligence service, Mr. Lamb. We keep records on everything. Even, as you call it, the creepy shit.”

“And now this tiger, whoever he is, wants a peek.” Lamb fished the cigarette from behind his ear, glared at it, and put it back. “And all he has in his corner is Standish. Does he seriously think he can use her as a lever?”

Tearney said, “We value our operatives. It’s a moral imperative that we safeguard them from harm.”

“Yeah. Besides, if you give him what he wants, you’re putting Peter Judd’s balls in a vice.”

“You have a gift for the pithy phrase.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Tearney’s own gift was for serenity, it seemed. Talking low, indecipherable to anyone more than a whisper away, her expression had barely changed throughout their discussion. A witchy figure, it was often said, but that wasn’t a view Lamb subscribed to. Witches got under your skin. Dame Ingrid was more witches’ ground staff: she’d keep the broomsticks in order, though you couldn’t trust her not to sabotage them if she felt it was in her interests.

Now she said, “It’s not my policy to bow to hostile demands, but it seems the simplest course in the circumstances. The material this man’s after is worthless. Once he has his hands on it, and your agent has been released unharmed, he’ll be taken care of.”

But Lamb was following his own thread, and wasn’t about to let it get tangled with hers. “Of course,” he said, “it’ll have to be under the bridge, won’t it? Here’s Judd, sanctioning an attack on his own Service that ends with his old mucker dead and a tiger team off the leash. Assist in a cover-up, and you’re a co-conspirator. But let the tigers get away with it, that puts Judd deeper in the shit.”

“You have an agile mind, Mr. Lamb. I don’t think anyone ever denied that.”

“And it’ll be that special bespoke shit. The kind only you know where the shovel is.” He leaned heavily back against the bench. “Long story short,” he said, “that’s why I’m missing my takeaway. You want my crew to deliver the goods to this guy. Off the books. To make sure you’ve got the Home Secretary where you want him.”

“Well, it is one of your own you’ll be rescuing. Besides,” Tearney said, “there’s something appropriate about your, ah, remedial group assisting in a frankly demented exercise. What’s the phrase I’m looking for? Oh yes—horses for courses.”

“Yeah, I know they do,” said Lamb. He scratched his thinning hair, then examined his fingernails suspiciously. When he’d finished, he said, “Judd’s man wasn’t the only one using Slough House as a drain rod.”

“Given the nature of the operation, I can hardly order you to undertake it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Though if you decide you’d rather not play ball, your department will be history by this time tomorrow.”

“Please. Don’t tempt me.”

He leaned forward, ran a finger round his neck, peered at it, and wiped it on his trousers. Then he looked at Dame Ingrid.

“I assume we’ll be collecting the material without the cooperation of those currently holding it?”

She nodded.

“Still. In the current climate, that’ll probably be workfare teenagers or rent-a-cop has-beens.”