Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

And as he was doing it, Ho thought about what Lamb had said about Louisa banging her brains out. That had been cruel. Louisa was currently single. If she had a boyfriend, she’d talk about him: something Ho had learned not just from Mama Internet, but from listening to women talk—on tubes, on buses, in bars, on the streets. Granted they weren’t actually talking to Ho, but he had ears and facts were facts, and the ones with boyfriends never shut up about it . . . No, Lamb had been way off base, but Ho had to admit: the thought of Louisa banging her brains out was one he’d return to later, back home.

Meanwhile, he was accessing hard intel.

On one of Black Arrow’s business accounts nestled a reference to temp. prop .—a substantial payment two months back, and another for half that amount on the same day of the following month. A deposit plus rental, Ho surmised. Temporary property. Lots of reasons why a security firm might want temporary possession of a property, especially—this was a few moves later, back on Google Earth—especially one out in the long grass, somewhere north of High Wycombe; a three-storey building with a few barn-like structures nearby, and there, slap in the middle of a courtyard, what looked like—and indeed was—a double-decker London bus.

Ho hit print again, and this time collected the results.

•••

Not farfrom the Park was a recently renovated swimming baths, its façade now boasting a row of hoarding-sized photographs: kids splashing about, an old fellow with goggles that made him look like a beat poet, a mother holding a child while its eyes blazed with delight. All very wholesome. Round the back was a metal-studded fire door marked not for public use. Marcus flashed his Service card at the topmost stud, and there was a short pause before the door emitted a low buzzing noise and a click, then opened.

He let himself in. Technically, like the other slow horses, he wasn’t allowed here, but he had an advantage over the rest of the Slough House crew in that he’d once kicked doors down and pointed guns at bad guys, the kind of CV that impressed those who manned exits at Service facilities. This particular example greeted Marcus with a complicated handshake topped off with a toothy grin, and let him sign the log with his usual squiggle, a barely decipherable Jackson Lamb .

The shooting gallery was seven levels below the surface, beneath the baths, the gyms, the changing rooms. Marcus felt pumped heading down. Money in his pocket; his skin glowing from his bike ride—his shirt was soaked through, but he felt good, his muscles moving in smooth rhythms. He took the stairs three at a time, enjoying the sense of separation that increased with every flight. You could spend too much time in the world. Every so often you needed to check out, and if you could do that somewhere with live ammunition, so much the better.

So in the gallery he glad-handed another old comrade and shared an ancient war story; stole a bottle of water from the staff-only fridge, and drained it in one unbroken swallow; then mopped his still-sweating upper body dry with a handful of paper towels. After that he donned safety goggles, wrapped a pair of ear protectors round his head, signed for a Heckler & Koch, and planted ten straight bullets into the outline bad-guy-torso target thirty yards down the shooting corridor.

Yeah, he thought. Turned a corner.

Back in control.

Peter Juddsaid, “The way this was supposed to end, I’d have your boss’s balls in my pocket. Instead, she’s holding mine. Care to explain how that came about?”

“I know as much as you do,” Taverner said. “Sean Donovan—what can I say? He went off message.”

That earned respect. Monteith had suffered, Judd’s best information suggested, a single massive blow to the head; chances were, he was dead before he hit the ground. He was certainly dead before he was tipped from a van in SW1. Either way, “off-message” was as pithy a summation of that process as Judd had recently encountered.

“You’re sure it was Donovan?”

“No. But if it wasn’t, he’d have come forward by now. He must know his boss has been murdered.”

Judd nodded, and pursed his lips. “Sly was a hero-fucker. He probably wet himself when Donovan applied for a job.” He tapped the newspaper against the bench. “When you brought this tiger team idea to me, you knew I’d use Monteith.”

Diana Taverner said, “It was because you had a contact in private security that I suggested it. You know that.”

“I know you told me that. It’s hardly the same thing. Did you know Donovan then?”

She shook her head.

“I have this weakness. Call it a foible. I like people to use words when they answer questions. That way I know whether they’re lying or not.”

Taverner looked him in the eye. “I’d never heard of Sean Donovan when I came up with the tiger team plan.”

Judd regarded her without speaking. It was rare for him to spend long with a woman without making a pass—and “long,” in those circumstances, could mean anything over a minute—but he knew how to prioritise. Besides, it was only postponing the inevitable, and the way things were going, when he did get round to bedding her it would be in the nature of a punishment, which suited him fine. Her too, if he read the signs aright. At last he said, “Tearney says whoever contacted her, who we assume’s Donovan, is after the Grey Books. Is there anything damaging in them?”

“To national security?”

“To me .”

“Not that I’m aware of. Do you have reason to think there might be?”

“If I don’t feature in the paranoid fantasies of the internet’s bedsit warriors, I’m not doing my job properly. And as long as mud’s being flung around, some of it’ll stick. What do you think he intends doing with this nonsense once he’s acquired it?”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re supposed to be in Intelligence. Hazard a guess.”

“I can only suppose he’s looking for confirmation of whatever pet theory he’s adopted.”

“And we have no idea what that is?”

“Something military, I’d imagine. How important can it be? This is junk material. He might be researching a screenplay for all we know.”

“I do enjoy levity in its right place. Which does not include when I’ve just been fucking compromised by the head of my own security service.”

Diana Taverner knew enough not to respond to this.

Judd worked his way through a train of thought, carriage by carriage. At last he said, “Tearney will let Donovan get away because then I’m well and truly on her hook. As far as she’s concerned, my scheme backfired and left one man dead and a mentalist with his hands full of Service secrets. The fact that they might as well be toilet paper’s neither here nor there, because the press’d lap it up either way. So all I can do is kiss her arse and pretend I’m enjoying it.” He slapped the bench with the rolled-up paper, frightening a pair of pigeons into flight. “If, on the other hand, she finds out the tiger team was your idea, she’ll skin you slowly and feed you to spiders. So I might be in her pocket, but you’re in mine, Diana. Which means my interests are yours. I trust you’ll keep that in mind.”

“Depend on it,” she said.

Without warning, he reached out and clasped her right breast with his free hand. He squeezed hard. “If I thought this was all part of some game you’re playing, I’d be very disappointed. I hope you appreciate that.”

He’d expected fear, or at the least alarm. What he didn’t expect was her hand on his crotch, and a reciprocal squeeze.

“Are you sure?” she said. “You don’t feel disappointed to me.”