Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

And now he was back in Slough House.

“We thought you were Lamb.”

“Thanks.”

Louisa said, “You’ve been at the Park. Why’d they let you go?”

“I don’t know. Catherine still missing?”

Marcus said, “Do you know where she is?”

River showed them his phone.

Louisa took it and moved nearer the window, holding it at an angle to the light. The picture didn’t change—Catherine, handcuffed, gagged, sitting on a bed.

“So that’s why you went haring off to HQ?”

But River was looking at Ho’s monitors. “Who’s that bastard?”

“I don’t like you walking behind me,” Ho said.

“Name’s Sylvester Monteith,” said Louisa. “What makes him a bastard?”

“He’s the one took Catherine. How come you’ve got him onscreen?”

“I don’t like you—”

“Shut up.”

Marcus said, “His body was just dumped in SW1.”

“Someone killed him?”

“They were fly-tipping too. Don’t leave that out.”

River wasn’t in the mood. “He was on the bridge. Earlier. He’s the one sent me to the Park. He wanted a file.”

Marcus remembered a figure on the bridge when he and Shirley went looking for River and found ice creams instead. Probably best not to mention that now, or ever.

Louisa said, “If he took Catherine and he’s dead now, what’s happened to her?”

Shirley took the phone, and studied the picture.

River said, “This bastard wanted the PM’s vetting file.”

“Did you get it?”

“Not hardly.”

“She’s sitting up,” Shirley said.

“What?”

“Catherine. In this photo. She’s sitting up.”

“So?”

“Usually, victim photos, they’re lying down.”

River stared at her. “Is that a fact?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. This looks unusual, that’s all. Staged.”

“You think it’s faked?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t look . . . desperate.”

River shook his head.

Marcus said, “In what way?”

Shirley handed him the phone. “She doesn’t look frightened.”

“She’s handcuffed, for Christ’s sake,” River said.

Marcus said, “Yeah, she’s handcuffed. But Shirley’s right. She doesn’t look frightened.”

“You don’t seriously think she’s part of whatever’s happening?”

“I can’t see her dumping a body from a van,” Marcus admitted.

Roderick Ho said, “Would you just get away from behind my desk? I don’t like being crowded.”

“Keep your hair on,” Louisa told him, and he scowled.

River retrieved his phone from Shirley and examined the screen again: Catherine, with her wrists in cuffs. Did she look frightened? It was hard to tell. Catherine, mostly, didn’t give much away: she could be screaming on the inside, and you’d never guess. Maybe that’s what she was doing, most of the time. But the fact was, he hadn’t stopped to consider it. Seeing the photo had been enough to light his fuse.

Louisa said to Ho, “Have you found the CCTV yet?”

“No. Because I haven’t started looking.”

“Might now be a good time?” River said.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Ho announced loudly, making it clear he was addressing everyone present.

“Grow fucking up,” Shirley suggested.

“Amen to that,” Jackson Lamb announced, having scaled the stairs soundlessly.

Everybody froze.

The twomen were on Hungerford Bridge, crossing the sluggish river. The South Bank skyline, so enticing after dusk, looked brutal this time of day. On the railway bridge a train had come to an unscheduled halt, and sat in the sunshine, its passengers slowly poaching. Donovan and Traynor observed their plight with detachment. Both had been in hotter situations.

“So where’s the body?” Traynor asked. “Monteith’s. You left it in the van?”

“No, I dumped it outside Anna Livia Plurabelle’s. You eaten there? It’s supposed to be good.”

Traynor left it a beat before he said, “You’re not kidding. Are you?”

“If I’d left him in the van, they could have made it never happen. He’d have just disappeared. Or had a heart attack in bed. This way they can’t cover it up, not so easily. So they’ll have to play along.”

“Have you made contact?”

“With Dame Ingrid Tearney, yes.” Donovan stopped walking, looked up at the sky. “This bloody weather. The heat. It’s not natural.”

“In the circumstances, that’s quite fitting, wouldn’t you say?”

“Good point.”

They moved on.

Traynor said, “So what’d she say?”

“That we use the Slough House crew, Standish’s team. That’s how I know she’s keeping this off the books. This Slough House, it’s where they put the fuck-ups.”

“That fills me with confidence.”

“It’s not like we need them for anything. They take us where we want to be. We get what we’re after and fade away.”

“After dark, then.”

Donovan nodded.

Traynor said, “So now we play the waiting game.”

“You’d rather be under fire, wouldn’t you?”

“Every time.”

And the two men, who had sheltered under walls together while bullets chipped at the brickwork, shared a laugh that carried them the rest of the way across the Thames.

Lamb threwhis jacket at the coatrack and missed. “Hang that somewhere,” he instructed nobody in particular, and pulled the chair out from the room’s second desk, the one on which Ho collected software packages and grease-stained pizza boxes. As he dropped into place he swept them to the floor. “That’s better. Now. I could have sworn you all had jobs to do.”

Ho said, “I told them to go back to their own rooms, but—”

“Yeah yeah, shut up.” Lamb folded his hands across his stomach. He’d brought odours of tobacco and sweat from the great outdoors, and seemed happy for them to circulate. “So. What are we all looking at?”

Louisa said, “We’ve found the man who snatched Catherine.”

“Sylvester Monteith,” said Lamb. “Former chum of Peter Judd, current mess on the pavement.” He observed their bewilderment with a practised sneer. “What, you wanted to surprise me?”

“Judd’s involved, isn’t he?”

“My, my,” said Lamb, admiringly. “Here’s me thinking you’d been banging your brains out every night, and it turns out they’re still functioning.”

Ho threw Louisa a puzzled glance.

Shirley stifled a giggle.

Lamb said, “What about you, Cartwright? Fun day so far?”

“It’s been . . . different.”

“I’ll bet. Taking a run at the Park? You’re in the Secret Service, not the Secret Seven. You should know that by now.”

“Monteith sent me this.”

He showed Lamb his phone. Something passed across Lamb’s eyes, then flitted away. His lip curled. “She look frightened to you?”

“That’s what I said,” Shirley announced.

“Yeah, and when you tie a woman up, I’m sure you do it properly.” Lamb threw River’s phone back at him. “Monteith’s crew was a tiger team. Hired by Judd. And you, you moron, played right into his hands.”

Marcus said, “So who whacked him?”

“That’s the thing about tigers, isn’t it? Some of them turn out to be real.”

“So who were they testing?” River asked. “Us or the Park?”

Lamb stared at him for what felt like a full minute and, Lamb being Lamb, might well have been, before starting to laugh. Still being Lamb, this was a full-body exercise: his frame shook, and his guffaws filled the room. Head flung back, he looked like an evil clown. Where a shirt button had popped, a hairy patch of stomach winked at the room.

“Jesus wept,” he said at last. “Sorry, but that is just so fucking funny. Us or the Park. You’ll be wanting a licence to kill next.” He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and humour vanished. “Do you seriously think Judd wants to test how effective or secure Slough House is? He wants this place packed into a skip, and when I say ‘this place,’ I’m including you comedians.”