Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

“I see.”

“I very much hoped you would. You’re happy to undertake this without support?”

“Without back-up? Yes, Dame Ingrid. I’m happy to do that.”

Because acting without back-up broke every rule in the Service’s code of practice, which meant she’d be putting a very big tick on his side of the ledger. And given his earlier run-in with Lady Di, Nick Duffy was feeling the need for a friend in high places.

Besides, this was what he was born for. Leaning on agents who stepped out of line was one thing. Squashing potential enemies of the state was entirely another.

When Cartwright and Guy disappeared through a side door into the abandoned factory, Duffy lowered his binoculars and wiped the sweat from his eyebrows. It wasn’t dark yet, though shadows were lengthening on the wasteground below. Whatever played out here in the next short while, there was no danger he’d miss anything.

Nick Duffy, in fact, prided himself on missing very little.

“Where’s yourcar?” said Lamb.

“. . . Why?”

“Because I thought it might need a wax and polish. Jesus, answer the question.”

Ho pointed through the window, in the direction of the nearby estate. He had a local resident’s parking permit in the name of an actual local resident, though as the resident in question was ninety-three and homebound, she was never likely to discover this. Come to think of it, she might be dead by now. Either way, there was probably a law said your boss couldn’t make you lend him your car.

On the other hand, if such a law existed, it almost certainly didn’t apply to Lamb.

“Good. I’ll have a dump while I’m waiting.”

“. . . Waiting?”

“For you to fetch the car. Are you awake? Because sleeping on company time’s a sackable offence.”

A glint in his eye suggested Lamb had acquired a taste for firing his staff.

Ho’s reluctance to reach the obvious conclusion was being worn away by the inevitable. “You want to go to High Wycombe.”

“And to think your annual appraisal says you’re slow on the uptake.” Lamb’s melancholy headshake might have been more convincing if he wasn’t responsible for the said appraisal.

“. . . And you want me to drive you?”

“Christ, no. But there’s nobody else around.”

“Well, if you hadn’t sacked . . . ”

Ho’s voice tailed off in the face of Lamb’s benign expression. “You go right ahead, son. I’ve always prided myself on being able to take criticism.”

“I just don’t think I’ll be much help.”

“Neither do I. So you’ll have to prove us both wrong, won’t you?” Lamb plucked a can of Red Bull from Ho’s desk, and shook it to gauge its contents. There were none. He sighed, and dropped it. “Look. If you were kidnapped, would Standish help?”

Ho broke with his usual habit, and gave this question some thought. Standish called him Roddy, which nobody else did; she would occasionally praise him for his computer skills without immediately following this up with a request that he perform some digital task; and one lunchtime had presented him with a homemade salad in a Tupperware box because he “ate too much pizza,” whatever that meant. When his resentment had worn off, Ho found he was quite touched; so much so that he had disposed of it where she might not find it. And he thought, too, how of all the slow horses, she was the one most likely to be pleased when she found out about him and Louisa. Of course, there were fewer slow horses than there used to be, but that altered the percentages, not the facts.

Having thought all this, he muttered, “. . . I guess.”

“You’d better hope so. Because no other bugger round here will, I promise you that. Now go get your car. Chop chop.”

Ho was halfway down the stairs when Lamb called out, “Oh, and when I say ‘chop chop’? I hope you don’t think I’m being racially insensitive.”

“. . . No.”

“Only you Chinkies can be pretty thin-skinned.”

It was going to be a long drive to High Wycombe.

The detailsof the off-Park storage site were on the Service intranet, if you knew where to look; passwords were available to agents in good standing, which didn’t include the slow horses, but applied to Jackson Lamb. Neither Louisa nor River had seen fit to pass comment on this back at Slough House while Ho had retrieved the relevant code. From the summary this accessed, they had learned that the facility was below the semi-derelict industrial estate; an underground complex that had started life as a bomb shelter in the thirties, and been refitted two decades later. At this time, it was hugely expanded to allow living room for a hundred and twenty local government officials, these being deemed, for reasons perhaps not unconnected with their having been involved in the planning, necessary to the survival of civilisation in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange. The subterranean network now stretched for more than a mile westwards from its originating point, its connecting corridors carved into abrupt dips and bends to avoid the underground line—the work had been passed off as maintenance. Here in this system of caves and caverns, the important work of means-testing and rates-assessment would carry on even as the world outside shivered through nuclear winter.

That had been the plan, anyway, but in the late seventies the site was repurposed and moved into Service hands. Given that armageddon was still on the cards then, council officials had evidently been downgraded to expendable, but little fuss was made. Natural wastage, generous early-retirement packages and the notoriously abbreviated attention span of local government officers had combined to allow the facility’s existence to pass into the status of myth; and it was deep enough, and its walls thick enough, to pass undetected while the work of the industrial estate lumbered on overhead. And when that fell victim to the economic miracle that had transformed Britain into a service industry, the facility continued on its quiet course, upgraded by now to cope with more contemporary threats than a nuclear exchange: viral outbreaks, extreme weather events, and the righteous indignation of a pissed-off electorate.

It was hard not to think in terms of James Bond–type shit.

“You think there’ll be crews wearing silver tracksuits?” River said as they made their way into the abandoned factory.

“You mean blondes,” Louisa said.

“Well, obviously blondes. But, you know. Redheads too.”

“And a secret railway?”

“And a control panel with a countdown window and a big red button.”

Louisa’s mouth twitched and she seemed about to say more, and then, exactly as if some big red button or other had actually been pressed, the moment was erased and her lips flatlined. “You realise the place is now basically a warehouse.”

“I hadn’t forgotten.”

“Minimally staffed.”

“Yeah, I read that bit too.” It was on the tip of River’s tongue to tell her to lighten up, and then he wondered if James Bond–type shit was the kind of thing she’d used to laugh about with Min, so didn’t. “The south-west corner. Which one’s that?”

Louisa was already pointing, phone in hand, compass-app working.

“I’m hoping for a nicely oiled trapdoor.”

What they got was a drain cover, its handle packed tight with dirt.

“Oh great,” said River, looking round for a stick or something to scrape it clean.

“Maybe we should try the main entrance.”

This was at the southernmost point of the complex, and doubled as an access tunnel to the city’s Victorian sewage system. As such, it was something of a tourist attraction. It had closed for the day by this hour, but remained more likely to be populated than the old factory; besides, it was a long hike from there to the complex’s nerve centre, directly below them. Unless there really was a secret railway.