Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

“All of them,” Tearney had said. And then, just to be clear, “The Slough House crew too.”

So be it.

Phone stowed in his pocket, Duffy continued his appraisal of the ground below, while light crept away, and shadows spilled out from their corners.

Fourteen minutesby the clock on the dash, and Marcus was still on the pavement, arguing with the policeman. It would have been quicker to take the points, pay the fine, do a short jail sentence, but any of that would have involved admitting culpability: not something that came easily to a man who used to kick down doors, and would probably do so again, if aggravated enough. Which could happen, if the fourteen minutes stretched out much longer.

Standard procedure, Shirley thought—watching from the passenger seat of the SUV—should have had her out there with him, because arguments with uniforms were one of the things she did best, even—especially—when her side didn’t have a leg to stand on. But cops have a sixth sense for naughtiness, and she didn’t want to face a drugs test: not for a couple of hours, or maybe a fortnight. Besides, Marcus could handle himself. Worse came to worst, he probably knew fifteen ways of killing an unarmed opponent. More, if he was allowed to use both hands.

Such talents had been wasted in Slough House, of course. And even that was history now. Awareness of this was starting to penetrate: tomorrow, Shirley would wake up, groan at the thought of what the day held, then realise it didn’t any more. That what she’d become was worse than a slow horse: she was an ex–slow horse, with neither plans nor prospects.

And if Marcus decked the policeman, he’d find out the hard way what being cut loose from the Service meant.

The road was still busy, because other people still had occupations. Pedestrians slowed as they passed, lit by schadenfreude, and Marcus had folded his arms, which made Shirley want to adopt the crash position. If he blew his top, if he got arrested, they weren’t going anywhere, and if they weren’t going anywhere . . . It was a sentence that didn’t require completion.

No, what they needed was for something bad to be going down, for River and Louisa to be in dire peril. What Shirley and Marcus needed was to turn up just in time to rescue them, or failing that, only very slightly too late—casualties would be acceptable, but only if Shirley and Marcus bagged the villains at the scene. Because any blood would be on Lamb’s hands: his operation, his disaster. And nothing would give Shirley greater pleasure than to rise like a phoenix from one of that bastard’s mattress fires; to stage the greatest comeback since Lazarus, and be welcomed home to Regent’s Park for averting a national security disaster. First thing she’d do would be send Lamb a postcard. Wish you were here? Ha-de-fucking-ha.

But before any of that could happen, Marcus had to not blow his top.

While she was waiting for him not to do that, Shirley bent to her smartphone and accessed the Service intranet. It was a damp-squib moment of relief to find her password hadn’t been cancelled, but that was Lamb all over: without Catherine Standish to keep him organised, it wouldn’t occur to him to follow through on his drive-by management decisions. Thanks for nothing, Shirley thought, navigating her way onto Citizens Records, the database the Service maintained on those it existed to protect, and who at the same time represented the greatest threat to national security: the people. This was one of those ironies you were encouraged to get over early in your spook career. One Snowden per generation was reckoned one too many.

Trying to focus, trying not to feel the fizzy moments still coursing through her bloodstream—Jesus, one little taste: it’s not like Lamb didn’t hobble round on a nicotine crutch—she pulled up the file on Sean Donovan, and found everything just as River Cartwright had summarised: the military career, the MoD secondment, the UN posting. And then the night it went to hell, when he crashed a jeep on his way home from delivering a lecture to a bunch of cadets. His passenger, one Captain Alison Dunn, had died when the car rolled into a ditch; Donovan was reckoned lucky not to have written himself off too, though there’d doubtless been times since when he’d wished he had been. From international postings to a brick cage. That ever happened to Shirley, she’d find a way of offing herself. Or at any rate of hurting herself badly enough to be put on a morphine drip while her sentence played out.

The files were cross-referenced, hyperlinked, so it was a moment’s work to run down Donovan’s connections.

And this, Shirley discovered, was a moment Cartwright obviously hadn’t taken, because if he had, the information he’d have found would have been upfront and centre when he laid out Donovan’s CV.

Marcus was still arguing with the cop. The cop was still visibly wondering whether, if he Tasered Marcus, the paperwork would take all week. Shirley watched them for a moment, glanced down at the smartphone again, and decided enough was enough.

She leaned on the horn.

Obedient tohis satnav’s demands, Roderick Ho left the motorway at the next exit, and immediately the world became darker, quieter, the ambient hum of the mindless traffic fading to a mosquito buzz. The exit inclined towards a roundabout from which Ho peeled off onto a minor road, its edges potholed and broken, and over which trees dangled foliage like fishermen hoping for a bite. Theoretically trees were a good thing, lungs of the planet, and Ho didn’t mind them in parks, but out here they loomed too large, the way unleashed dogs acquired extra menace. They cast their shadows as if it were only by their permission that traffic was allowed to pass beneath, and Roddy Ho felt what he’d have called a threat to his sense of self, were such terms available to him. Instead, he simply noted that they were fucking creepy, and constituted a hazard. He made a mental note to do something about them, saved it in the folder When I’m King , and checked satnav again. Their target location was half a mile ahead.

“Slow down,” Lamb said.

“I am slowing down.”

“Well slow down faster.”

Ho came to a stop in what passed for a lay-by.

“Kill the engine.”

Silence followed, though it was only silence if you were used to city noise. The car ticked, and nature rustled. Through Ho’s open window, warm sticky air trickled in.

He couldn’t see the farmhouse they were heading for. Half a mile: Ho didn’t really have a sense of what half a mile meant. The trees lining one side of the road were just that, a line of trees. On the other, they were a wood; trees hiding behind other trees, so all he could see was darkness getting darker. He glanced in the mirror. Lamb’s face was immobile; his eyes somehow absent. Ho wanted to ask what they did next, but didn’t dare, so just sat gazing at the empty road, which turned a bend a short distance ahead, leaving him looking at even more trees.

Do something , Marcus Longridge had said.

Well, here he was, doing something. It was just that he didn’t precisely know what. But if Catherine Standish was being held prisoner in the house up ahead, however far away it was, then the something was going to involve getting out of the car, and Ho wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.

Lamb was foraging about in the footwell, and when he straightened was holding the polystyrene cup. He’d been using it as an ashtray, which at least meant some of his filth had been contained, but even as Ho watched he dumped its contents onto the seat next to him.

“Got any change?” he asked.

“. . . Change?”

“Loose coins. Any kind’ll do.”

Ho found some silver in his wallet.