Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

“We’re here now,” River said. He’d found a foot-long length of metal siding, and used it to prise up the drain cover, releasing various stinks into the already fetid air. “Jesus.”

Louisa said, “You thought it would be all shiny metal? It’s a secret entrance.”

He pushed the cover aside, feeling at the base of his spine the noise it made scraping the floor. “Want to go first?”

“I think I’ll let you do that.”

She produced a torch and aimed it down the hole. With this to guide him, River dropped into darkness.

Dame Ingridwas signing off the minutes of that afternoon’s Limitations Committee meeting, each set of initials at the foot of each column a work of art; her pen never leaving the paper as she bestowed approval upon a series of opinions that the act of transcription had somehow rendered gnomic . . . Each member invariably left a session convinced that his or her criticisms had been taken on board, and a window opened on a grubby corner of the covert world that would henceforth gleam untarnished. Only with the passage of time would it become apparent that the window remained closed, its curtain securely drawn. And were this state of affairs ever drawn to Dame Ingrid’s attention, she would express surprise that anyone might think otherwise, and produce the minutes to prove that it had never been intended so.

An ability to think round corners was often cited as a prerequisite for Service work. Perhaps more critical was the ability to bend other people’s thoughts through 180-degree angles. Come to think of it, that was why Peter Judd represented such a threat: he knew how to play a meeting as well as she did. Luckily for Ingrid Tearney, his attempt to short-circuit the process had left him vulnerable.

Though even as she framed the thought, it struck her that luck was not an element she usually relied on.

Capping her pen, she reached for her glass of water and sipped from it, considering. As things stood, the upper hand was hers. Judd’s tiger team, intended to demonstrate the shaky grasp Dame Ingrid had on the Service, was now an object lesson in how ministerial arrogance could leave blood on the streets: a career-ending fiasco, even for the so-far impermeable PJ. Mopping up was under way, with Nick Duffy primed to trace Donovan to his lair once the Grey Books were in his possession. It was one thing to allow the ex-soldier to waltz off with his fool’s treasure—that was another nail in Judd’s coffin: look what your hare-brained scheme let happen —but to allow things to go further was to licence anarchy. So Duffy was the stopgap: Donovan would die a soldier’s death; the files would be returned to their subterranean cabinet; the slow horses, ridiculous name, could go back to their humdrum existence; and Dame Ingrid herself would resume the even tenor of her way, comfortable in the knowledge that the ministerial hand apparently on her tiller was in fact responding to her instructions. And as for the future, Judd’s ambitions need not necessarily be thwarted; if having a whipped Home Secretary rendered her position bulletproof, having a PM in her pocket guaranteed beatification. So all in all, a good day.

But still, there was that idiot whisper loose in the room now, the one that kept reminding her that luck was the grease in the wheel. If Donovan hadn’t proved a wild card, everything would have gone Judd’s way.

Ingrid Tearney realised that she was uncapping, recapping, uncapping her pen in a way that in a lesser mortal might reveal uncertainty. She placed it firmly on her desk. Time for a walkabout.

By dintof a brief, illegal shortcut up a one-way alley, Marcus had changed direction and was heading west, manoeuvring his black tank through the city streets like he was piloting an image on a PC, and the worst that could happen was game over. Twice, as he strayed into oncoming traffic, Shirley stopped breathing, and her grip on the door handle was tight enough it would take a monkey wrench to loosen.

Her voice squeakier than she’d have liked, she said, “We going fast enough yet?”

“Sooner we get there, sooner I’ll slow down.”

Shirley was hoping this would come to pass without any pedestrians smeared across the tarmac; or, worse, her own sweet self propelled through the windscreen.

She looked across at her partner. Was that still the word, now they’d been sacked? Or was he just another semi-stranger; one of the increasing number in her life who buggered off when things got tricky? Except he hadn’t, had he? Things officially turned tricky about an hour ago, and here he still was, skyrocketing her through the city streets; heading full-tilt for what might turn out to be just another windmill.

Maybe he could read her mind.

“Back in the crash squad, we had a joke,” he said. “When is a door not a door?”

“. . . When it’s ajar?”

“When it’s a pile of fucking matchsticks,” Marcus said. “We weren’t especially subtle.”

“No, I get that.”

“If there’s a chance something bad is happening, we want to be there before it starts. Otherwise we’re already on the defensive, and that’s not anywhere you want to be when the bad shit’s going down.”

He was slipping into the macho rhythms of his Service career, Shirley realised, and in a rare moment of tact decided not to call him on it.

An amber light turned red maybe two seconds before they cruised past, leaving an angry squall of honking in their tracks.

“Hence the need for speed.”

“So we can arrive before the bad thing starts,” Shirley said.

“Yep.”

“And maybe get our jobs back.”

“Maybe.”

“And keep Cartwright and Guy from getting toasted.”

“. . . Yeah. That too.”

“I still think you should slow down,” Shirley said.

“Why?”

“Because that’s a cop car you just passed,” she told him; information immediately rendered old news as the car in question flashed its bar-lights, and the familiar two-tone lament began its upward spiral, demanding everyone’s attention, but specifically theirs.

Roderick Howas proud of his car. Some other horses he could mention (he was thinking of Cartwright) didn’t even own a set of wheels, let alone a Ford Kia, electric blue with cream flashing, and seriously punishing sound system—Ho favoured music that came with health warnings, in Gothic lettering. The seats were cream too, with reciprocal electric-blue seaming, and the windscreen ever so slightly tinted, to keep onlookers guessing. Online, where Ho mutated into Roddy Hunt, DJ superstar, he referred to it as the chick-magnet, and in real life kept it immaculate, regularly treating it to squishes from a spraycan of new-car smell. In return for which it had obstinately refused to live up to its nickname, but then that was the problem with pre-owned wheels: the previous owner had used up its luck.

Still a great ride, though. Probably every bit as good as the other kind, he thought, coming to a halt at the kerb where Jackson Lamb stood waiting.

Waiting, holding a polystyrene coffee cup, and shaking his head: “Jesus wept.”

Ho wound down his window. “What?”

“If you have to ask,” Lamb told him, “you wouldn’t understand the answer. Would it make you feel like a lackey if I sat in the back?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.” Lamb squeezed into the rear, spilling not very much coffee as he did so. “Why does it smell of cheese?”

The evening was darkening at last; one or two streetlights had popped on; others remained dormant, either on a different schedule or broken. The home-goers on the pavements had given way to pleasure seekers, heading into the Barbican for an event, or drifting towards bars on Old Street. Roderick Ho checked his rearview and caught Lamb on one of his fishing expeditions, hands emerging from both pockets; one clutching a cigarette, the other applying his lighter.