Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

“Seriously, Shirl. If Donovan’s not the tin-hat he’s made us think he is, then this isn’t just a hand-holding operation. Because once he’s got what he’s after, he won’t want to leave witnesses.”

“Lamb’s not about to reinstate us just for looking keen.”

“Maybe not. But what else are we gonna do? You expected home? Because like I said, I’m not.”

Shirley gazed at her thumb for a while, as if contemplating biting it off. Without looking up, she mumbled something.

“Say what?”

“Say fuck it,” said Shirley, more audibly. “Fuck it, then. Let’s go.”

Walking outof the sunlight into the shadow of the crumbling office block was like stepping from a live oven into a dead one: the heat was dirtier, wrapped in all the stink of a derelict building—rot and mildew, beer and piss, overlaid by something sweet and sickly, which River suspected might be a dead animal. Random bits of brick and lead piping suggested local turf wars. The two men were waiting by a pillar, and something in the way they held themselves reminded him of Marcus. The bigger of the two, a broad-shouldered man with a grey crew cut and a boxer’s nose, late fifties, stepped forward at their approach.

“Cartwright?”

An Irish note to his voice contained less warmth than the accent usually carries.

River nodded.

“So you’re Guy.”

Louisa simply looked at him.

River said, “And you’re Sean Donovan. Making you Ben Traynor.”

The second man was cut from the same wood as Donovan, but younger, and where Donovan was greying Traynor was mostly bald, his chevron of hair razored to a light stubble. He didn’t respond to River’s identification, seeming more interested in Louisa, who had come to a halt shoulder to shoulder with River.

“You know what we’re after,” Donovan said.

Before River could reply, Louisa said, “We know what you say you’re after.”

“Let’s not get complicated. It’s a straightforward collection job.”

Neither he nor Louisa had weapons, it occurred to River. Earlier, this had seemed a detail: the job wouldn’t, shouldn’t, require them to be armed. But in the face of the two Black Arrow operatives, the wouldn’t/shouldn’t aspect of the job lost ground to the might-just-possibly element. Because if these two weren’t armed, he thought, they were breaking an ingrained habit.

Though calling them Black Arrow operatives was pushing it, he conceded. Killing the boss was definitely grounds for dismissal. Lamb reminded the slow horses of that on a weekly basis.

“How did you know about this place?”

Donovan regarded him without emotion. “Same way I know about Slough House. I do my homework, Cartwright. How about you? Or do you make a habit of setting off half-cocked?”

Since an honest response to that would be “Yes,” River left it unanswered.

Louisa said, “Where’s Catherine?”

“She’ll be released unharmed once the Grey Books are ours.”

“And we have your word for that,” she said flatly.

“Our word’s good.” This was Traynor, speaking up at last.

“That what you told Sylvester Monteith?”

Donovan said, “Monteith signed up for it. He should have known the risks. Catherine’s a non-combatant. She’ll be released unharmed when we get what we want.”

“She’d better be.”

River said, “So how’s this going to work?”

“You go in, make sure it’s all as advertised. Once it’s secure, you open the doors and we follow.”

“Sounds simple,” Louisa said.

“I gather you’re the special needs crew. Anything more complicated than opening a door, I’d probably have looked elsewhere.”

River was getting tired of having the horses’ lowly status underlined. “But maybe kidnapping an unarmed woman seemed the easiest option. Was it just the two of you, or did you have help?”

Donovan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Feeling sparky now? There’s a good lad. Time to chat up the doorman, right?”

It was on the tip of River’s tongue to say he hoped they’d have a chance to continue this later, but it struck him he’d had this conversation once today already. So he just glanced at Louisa, nodded, and the pair of them walked back out into the sunlight, towards the old factory building.

Nick Duffywatched their progress from the third floor of the other derelict block. Tailing them from the Barbican, he’d thought they’d spotted him, despite his car being an anonymous silver hatchback like every second set of wheels on the road; there’d been a definite phase when Louisa Guy had exhibited paranoid tendencies: slowing excessively for one amber light, pedal to the metal for another. When that happened, Duffy knew, you kept your cool; assumed that the usual traffic inhibitors would do their job, and a regular, even speed would bring the target back into focus at the next crowded junction. Failing that, you always had back-up.

Except, like now, when you didn’t.

What he did have was the next best thing in the circumstances, which was knowing where they were headed, because Dame Ingrid Tearney had told him.

“They’re aiding and abetting an ex-convict in the commission of a crime involving a breach of national security.”

This with her usual, unflappable delivery. Duffy suspected that if Tearney were ever to break news of imminent nuclear catastrophe, it would be in the same style, though in those circumstances she would no doubt resort to calling him “dear boy,” her invariable way of sweetening a pill.

“And you want me to stop them?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

They were in Dame Ingrid’s office, with its view that had once been green, but was now mostly brown: since the hosepipe ban, the plant life in the park opposite had been dying. This had happened before, but this time it was hard to believe that things would revert to normal. It was as if a tipping point had been reached, and the city, maybe the planet, was sliding into irreversible decline.

But since there was nothing he or anyone else could do about this, Duffy shrugged it off, and listened to Dame Ingrid’s story of Sylvester Monteith’s tiger team, and how it had turned on him and bitten his head off.

Since speaking to Lamb, Dame Ingrid had conducted a little research of her own, following the exact same path River had taken. One Sean Patrick Donovan, she explained to Duffy, was the chief suspect.

“Dumping the body in Central London,” he said. “Sounds like he was trying to make a point.”

And it explained what River Cartwright thought he’d been doing this morning. But the fact that Cartwright had walked away unaided indicated that whatever was happening now, it wasn’t going to be written up on official notepaper.

That was fine by him. Duffy had been Head Dog long enough to know which end did the wagging. If Dame Ingrid needed something done under the bridge, then under the bridge he’d go.

“The files are of no consequence,” Tearney said. “Archived material of a rather lurid nature. I suspect that Mr. Donovan’s wide range of experience, either in the military or in its house of correction, has left him somewhat paranoid. It’s always a shame when a career goes so spectacularly awry.”

“But you’re happy to let him get away with it?”

“When you get to my age, dear boy, you’ll understand that nobody really gets away with anything. But in this very specific instance, yes, I’m happy for him to appear to have got away with this.”

The word appear swam between them for a moment or two, then vanished in its own slippery coils.

“I want you to track him to his lair, Mr. Duffy. To run him to earth. And ensure that his paranoia doesn’t lead him into more serious misadventures.”