Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

After a while, she produced her mobile from her bag.

Nick Duffy answered on the first ring.

“There’s been a change of plan,” she said.

R iver didn’t drop morethan a foot or so, landing on the cement floor with enough of a bump to remind every last bone of the debt he owed Nick Duffy. A thought filed away for later.

He called up to Louisa. “Okay.”

She followed, landed with more grace, and immediately played her torchbeam around the chamber. Up and down the walls blue and red cables ran in banded clumps, disappearing at floor and ceiling. In the middle, a wheel-shaped handle set horizontally on a concrete block looked like it would open a sewer.

“What’s that?” River asked.

“Some kind of drain?”

“No, what you’re holding.”

“A torch.”

“I can see that. Why’s it shaped like a pig?”

“. . . It just is.”

“Okay.”

“It’s the torch I keep in my glove compartment, all right? If I’d known we’d be exploring, I’d have packed more appropriately.”

“Fair enough,” said River. “Point it over here a moment.”

He’d found what looked like a fuse box on the wall, held shut by a metal clasp.

Louisa held the beam steady while River tugged at the clasp, which looked at first like it was going to defeat him. But when it gave, the box’s door swung open to reveal a remarkably pristine-looking rotary-dial phone.

“You or me?” he asked.

“You do it.”

He reached for the receiver, but before his hand got there, the phone rang.

She’d heardonce of a long-distance hiker, way before the days of e-readers, who’d carried a novel over the Alps, tearing out and discarding each page as he read it, to lighten his load. There was a lot to be said for that. For a baggage-free existence, each moment of your story jettisoned as soon as done; your future pristine, undiluted by all that’s gone before. You’d always be on the first page. Never have to turn back, relive your mistakes.

Here in the hot room, Catherine had grown mildly delirious, but not so much that she couldn’t appreciate this for what it was. It was ever so slightly like being what people called “drunk.” Amateurs, that is; those who’d never really been drunk a day in their lives—and anyone who’d only been drunk a day hadn’t come close to being drunk.

The bottle still sat on its tray, barely camouflaged by the sandwich, the apple, the flapjack, the water. These, she had mentally discarded. The colour of the sky through the window told her it had been a full day since she’d stepped onto the street to hear a ghost’s whisper: Catherine? Like most things, this whole episode could have been avoided by minute adjustment. If she’d turned, like any good spook should have done, and headed back into Slough House the moment Sean Donovan appeared, this wouldn’t be happening. One word from her to Charles Partner, and the wheels of the Service would have ground into action. That was the advantage of being close to the man at the top. When there was trust between you, a simple word got things done.

Except Charles Partner was dead, having emptied his head in a bathtub. Her boss now was Jackson Lamb, and stirring him into action required more than trust.

She had mentally discarded the water, the flapjack, the apple, the sandwich, because this was not their fight. In the struggle for control of the room, there was only herself and the bottle of wine. And for some reason this was no longer on the tray, but had managed to spirit itself across the space between them, like a spooky puppet in a horror film, and now nestled in her hand.

Well, that was fine. If there was to be a struggle, it made sense that she kept a tight grip on herself; and keeping a tight grip on the bottle too underlined the symbiotic nature of their relationship. The bottle held the key to her past; all those pages she’d tried to throw away, she could re-read every last one simply by unscrewing its cap and draining its contents. Of course, in allowing her to do that the bottle would be giving up its own future—becoming nothing more than an empty vessel—but that was the nature of co-dependency: one of you had to die. Look at Charles Partner.

She was upright on the bed, her back against the wall. The bottle felt comfortable in her hand, its contours moulded to fit, and the seal on its cap was such a flimsy thing, so very ripe for twisting . . .

All those evenings in Jackson Lamb’s office, watching him punish much larger bottles: that should have been the sterner test. Instead, here she was, on her own, and in danger of falling. Which was starting to feel not so much like falling, but simply relaxing; subsiding into who she’d always been, despite her efforts to convince herself otherwise.

It wasn’t such a very grave betrayal, was it?

She cocked her head and listened, as if expecting the voices to return and whisper the answer in her ear. But nothing happened. A far-off car changed gear somewhere, and that was all. The room seemed to grow a shade darker. But this always happened to rooms, this time of evening. There was nothing to be read in that. It was simply another moment to tear off and throw away.

Almost involuntarily, Catherine twisted the cap and broke the seal.

The voicewas electronically treated, and sounded the way a dustbin might.

“Hold your service card up in front of you.”

“I can’t see a camera,” River said.

“You don’t need to see a camera. The camera sees you.”

Behind him, Louisa rolled her eyes.

Fishing his card out, River held it up at eye-level. Despite the receiver tucked to his ear, this felt like having a conversation with a ghost.

In the same electric monotone, the voice recited his Service number.

“Okay,” River said. “I believe you. There’s a camera.”

“Your card’s not biometric.”

“Yeah, they didn’t get around to renewing ours yet.”

Or ever.

“River Cartwright,” the voice said. “Now the woman.”

River moved aside, still holding the receiver, and Louisa showed her card to the empty space above the phone.

In River’s ear, the voice recited numbers again, then said, “Louisa Guy. But her hair has changed colour.”

“Your hair’s changed colour,” River told her.

“Yeah, that happens.”

The voice said, “Where is Slough House?”

“. . . Is this a quiz?”

“Where is Slough House?”

“Aldersgate Street.”

“You’re not from the Park.”

“No,” he said patiently. “We’re from Aldersgate Street. We need to consult the records that were moved here last month.”

Silence.

“You know which records I’m talking about?”

“I wasn’t told this was happening.”

“Yeah, but you were probably told it might,” River said. “At an unspecified time in the future.”

Silence.

“This is that unspecified time,” River said.

“You have authorisation?”

“Verbal.”

“I can’t let you in without seeing written authorisation.”

Louisa, leaning in close so she could hear, said, “You’ve seen our cards. They check out with what’s on your screen, right?”

“Except I’ve never heard of Slough House.”

“No, well, you wouldn’t. You’re hired help.”

River gave her a warning nudge, and said, “Slough House is need-to-know. I can’t say any more over an open line.”

“This isn’t an open line.”

“Yeah, okay. But you’re familiar with the protocol.”

“. . . I did a course,” the voice said.

“He did a course,” Louisa murmured.

“If our cards were fakes, you’d already have sounded the alarm. We all know you haven’t done that. So let us in, okay?”