Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

The returning pigeons fluttered away again at Judd’s raucous, earthy burst of laughter.

Chicken baguette.It wasn’t much to ask.

But Marcus had been gone forty-five minutes, and it looked like lunch would have to be an office daydream: one of those brief reveries where you remember what it was like, last time you’d had something decent to eat. The past few weeks, supper had been whatever Shirley could scrape out of the fridge, eaten standing up. Drink: she was okay for drink—she couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t had one of those. But food, she pretty much relied on getting something solid into her at lunchtime, which meant a local sandwich or a full-on takeaway. Unless Marcus came back with something pretty soon, she was going to faint with hunger.

Okay, so they’d been out earlier. But ice cream didn’t count.

Bloody Marcus. He was supposed to be doing this: she was supposed to be watching.

Find out where the Grey Books are , Lamb had said, waving a pudgy hand, as if evaporating the difficulty involved.

Like she had the inside track on where the Service kept its crap.

Shirley scrabbled around her desk drawer for a while, unearthing the used envelope she scribbled her passwords on from a snowdrift of credit card receipts and flyers for DJ nights. The Service intranet was a bland blue screen with a royal seal in the centre: she clicked on this, supplied her ID number and password (“inyourFACE”) then navigated to a staff list with direct email and extension numbers.

So far so good.

The Queens of the Database were her first bet: they knew everything, and more besides. Shirley didn’t know for a fact they spent their downtime trawling through personnel folders for dirt, but you had to figure. Unfortunately they took most other aspects of having signed the Official Secrets Act to heart, which meant even the one she thought she’d had a good relationship with, back when they worked in the same building—the one with the cheekbones, and eyebrows so fine they disappeared in a good light—wasn’t prepared to let her know something as basic as information storage facilities.

“More than my—”

“Jobsworth. Yeah, I know.”

“—Sweet thing. Are you having a torrid time over there? I hear Slough House positively reeks of disappointment.”

Shirley’s password drifted into mind as she broke the connection.

She went to the kitchen in the hope of finding something loose in the fridge, but River Cartwright was there, so theft wasn’t on the agenda. He was holding himself in a painful fashion, but then he’d been given a seeing to by the Dogs—never a happy experience, Shirley gathered.

“How far did you get?” she asked him, genuinely interested.

“Archive level,” he told her. He was drinking a glass of water, maybe checking for leaks.

“That’s whatsername, right? The old bat with the wheels?”

“Molly Doran.”

Shirley remembered the name, though had never encountered the lady. Another of those Service legends dimly whispered about; the subject of semi-thrilled speculation. She stalked back to her PC still hungry, an imp dripping mischief in her ear—she had a wrap of coke in her bag, so tightly tied it resembled a scrap of paper. Nothing like a snort to drive away hunger pangs. Plus, it would sharpen her up nicely; give her an edge . . .

But Jesus, no. No. She’d turned up at work slightly glassy once or twice: who hadn’t? But she wasn’t going to turn a teatime break into a launch pad, for God’s sake. She sipped water from the unsmeared side of the glass on her desk, and felt it all the way down. That would do for now. It would have to. She found Molly Doran’s number on the staff-list, and called it.

Heading backfrom the kitchen, River paused at Louisa’s open door to watch her gazing intently at her PC, head unmoving. In the rare moments he saw her—actually saw her, as opposed to being aware of her presence—he was struck by how much she’d changed her appearance since Min’s death: different hair, different clothes, as if she were systematically erasing the person she’d been. If he knew her better, he’d have talked to her about that. But this was Slough House.

He was about to move on when she spoke, her eyes still fixed on her screen.

“Was it true what Lamb said?”

“Sounds unlikely. Which bit?”

“About you visiting Webb. In hospital.”

River said, “Not sure you could call it visiting. Wouldn’t he have to be aware of it to count as that?”

“But you go.”

“. . . Yeah.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer.

She said, “He’s the reason you wound up in Slough House. More to the point, he’s the reason for that mess last year. What happened to Min. And you’re taking him flowers?”

Her voice cracked on the closing word.

River said, “I know all that. You think I don’t? He’s a backstabbing bastard, no question. I sometimes wonder if I’m only there to see if he’s dead yet.”

“That’s a punchline, not a reason.”

Now was the moment to leave, he thought; back to the safety of his room. He could ease into his chair, dose himself with aspirin, and hope they’d iron out his wrinkles before he was called upon to do anything energetic. But he couldn’t, not while she was refusing to look at him. He’d always thought her borderline difficult, by which he meant she didn’t take crap. Which in turn, he realised, meant he shouldn’t offer her any.

“No . . . Yes, okay. It’s not a reason.”

“So why do you do it?”

“I talk to him. About this.” This being Slough House. They both knew that. “About what it’s like, day after day . . . About the gap between where we were and where we’ve ended up.” He let that hover for a while. She didn’t reply. He said, “I doubt he hears me. But if he does, he’ll get it. I mean, Christ. You think this is bad? He can’t even see out the window.”

She redirected her gaze at last, and subjected him to a full quarter-minute’s silence.

“So anyway,” he said at last. “It’s not like I cheer him up. Other way round, if anything.”

He wasn’t entirely sure that was the whole truth of it, but it felt as near as he could get.

After a while, Louisa said, “Got any painkillers?”

“I’ve got some aspirin. Want some?”

She shook her head, reached into her drawer, and tossed a packet at him. “Try those. They’re stronger.”

He caught it. “Thanks.”

She looked back at her screen.

River returned to his office.

Marcus leftthe Boris Bike at the baths and caught the underground back, and even the tube stalling at Farringdon—signalling problems: these were often caused by heat, when they weren’t caused by cold, or by things being wet, or dry—couldn’t ruin his mood. He circled Smithfield, popped into an Italian deli for a chicken baguette, then headed up to Slough House, ringing home to tell Cassie he’d be late, he had a work thing on—an established code.

“You haven’t had one of those for a while.”

She didn’t know about Slough House. She knew he’d been transferred, but not what that meant. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell her.

“Yeah, well. It’s not the kind of thing you schedule far in advance.”

“Be careful.”

“Always. Kiss the kids for me.”

He felt coordinated—one up on the world. This morning’s blues were someone else’s soundtrack.

Sometimes, sitting at his desk, Shirley grumbling at her keyboard next to him, Marcus would zone out, reliving former glories with the crash squad. “Kicking doors down” was how Shirley referred to it. Which was accurate, up to a point, but left out how you never knew what was going to be on the other side, pointing a gun or strapped in a Semtex vest. In fairy tales, when you were offered a choice of doors, there was generally a tiger behind one of them. That was why it was best to kick them down. Even the thought of it made his muscles tense, and his grip on the baguette tightened— Way to go , he thought. Turn up with a peace offering that he’d mangled into paste. But with luck, Shirley would be too hungry to care.