Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

Thinking all this, she didn’t pay as much attention as she should have done to a figure in the corner; a smooth man—sleek even—with dark hair brushed back from a high forehead, and brown eyes. He had a newspaper spread in front of him, and appeared to be studying it, but what he was mostly doing was watching Diana Taverner.

“I toldyou I could hot-wire a car.”

“Buses weren’t mentioned,” Lamb said.

Ho had made tinder of the porch, and punched a sizable hole where the front door used to be, which, given the speed he’d been going at, said much for the durability of the good old London bus, and not much for whoever had put the house up. The hallway was littered with chunks of masonry, shattered glass, and splinters of wood. Part of the door frame was lying across Bailey’s back. If the bus had intruded much further, it would have flattened him like a bug.

“I thought you might be in trouble.”

“Yeah. Because crashing a bus would have been a big fucking help if I had been.”

“He was doing his best,” Catherine said. “Thanks, Roddy. That was a good plan. Now go and fetch some water, would you?”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“No, well, it’s not for you. The kitchen’s back there somewhere.”

“Try not to level it to the ground,” Lamb said.

Ho moved sulkily off, just in time for a dinnerplate-sized chunk of plaster to drop from the ceiling and hit him on the head.

Lamb tilted his chin heavenwards. “Owe you one.”

Catherine bent over Bailey and brushed debris away. “Leave him alone. If you’d driven a bus through a wall, we’d never hear the end of it. What are the others doing?”

“Cartwright and Guy are helping your pal Donovan out.”

“Helping?”

“Seems the Grey Books are in some off-site storage place near Hayes. Donovan needed Service help to get in.” Lamb was fiddling in his pocket while he spoke, and when his hand emerged, it was clutching the unwrapped flapjack. He bit it in half then said, “Well, that or he didn’t fancy Hayes on his tod.”

“What about Marcus and Shirley?”

“I incentivised them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lamb gave a long-suffering sigh. “Am I the only one who understands man-management round here?” He crammed the rest of the flapjack into his mouth, and a moment or so later said, “And when I say ‘man,’ I’m most definitely including Dander.”

“She’s big-boned, that’s all. How, precisely, did you—”

“I fired them.”

Catherine pondered this for a moment. Marcus and Shirley, more prone than River even to banging their heads against walls while waiting for something—anything—to happen. “That might work,” she allowed.

“Yeah, and the beauty of it is, if it doesn’t? They’re already fired.”

“But on the other hand, you could have just given them instructions.”

“They haven’t fucking learned to follow instructions.”

Ho returned from the kitchen with a glass of water. He looked at Lamb, then at Catherine, then at Lamb again.

“It’s a glass of water,” Lamb said. “Take a wild guess.”

Ho handed the water to Catherine.

“Thank you,” she said.

She was on her knees now, cradling the still-unconscious Bailey’s head in her lap. Opening his mouth with one hand, she poured water from the glass into it.

“You’re going to drown him?” said Lamb. “Seems a bit harsh.”

“I’m not the one who broke his face.”

“I think I’ve got one of his teeth in my knee.”

“He’s just a kid.”

“Shouldn’t be playing with grown-ups then.” Bending low, Lamb went through Bailey’s pockets. Finding a wallet, he sat back on his haunches and flipped through it: some small change, a pair of ten- pound notes, a credit card and a driving licence.

The notes disappeared in Lamb’s meaty fist.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Petrol money,” said Lamb. He glanced at the licence. “Well well well. Craig Dunn.”

“He’s waking up,” Ho said.

The young man’s eyes were moving under their lids. Catherine tapped his cheek gently with the flat of her hand.

“Is that actual first aid?” Lamb asked suspiciously. “It looks like what you’d do with a puppy.”

“Why don’t you do something useful and call an ambulance?”

“I’ve already been useful,” Lamb said. He looked at Ho. “What’s the matter now?”

“I paid for the petrol.”

“You’ll need to file an expenses claim,” Lamb said. “Louisa’ll show you how.”

Craig Dunn groaned and opened his eyes.

At firstsight, the wasteground was empty of people. The Black Arrow van was parked near a car which looked like Louisa’s, and there was a skip, various heaps of masonry, and a pile of tumbled-over fencing, but the crew they’d seen drive in had melted away.

“Where did they go?”

“Don’t look for people. Look for movement.”

It was like one of those children’s puzzles: you stare at a picture of a tree until you can make out the squirrels.

They were in shadow themselves, more tree than squirrel, and speaking in whispers. Shirley had buttoned her jacket up, to prevent white T-shirt showing; Marcus had pulled his cap low. They were huddled by the entrance to the mis-shaped quadrilateral formed by the buildings; a pole designed to block ingress had been fixed in an upright position, and a wooden sentry box where a car park attendant once lurked was empty, save for a heavy stink of piss. There were lights beyond the furthest building, signals for passing trains, but the sky overhead had given way to a thoughtful deep blue, and nothing shone in the foreground.

Then something shifted across the far side, between the pillars on ground level of the furthest building, and Shirley realised she was looking at a pair of Black Arrows.

“I see two.”

“I’ve got seven,” Marcus said.

“Show-off.”

“They’re not much good,” he said. “This kind of terrain, this much cover, I’d be invisible.”

“I can see you,” Shirley muttered. Then: “What are they? Are they klieg lights?”

There were two sets of them, scaffolding towers that loomed a few metres tall with searchlights affixed to the top: one by the Black Arrow van, and the other a few metres away, neither lit, but both aimed at a hole in the factory wall. They looked like outsized anglepoise lamps. They also looked like you could tip them over with a broomstick.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what—oh, Christ.”

“It’s a killing ground,” said Shirley.

“Looks like.”

“They’re gonna flush River and the others out of the facility. They come up, the lights go on—blam blam blam.”

“Hush.”

A figure emerged from the back of the van. A balaclava obscured his face, though he was too far away for that to make much difference. After a brief survey of the area, he trotted towards the block to their right.

“Eight,” said Marcus.

“Are you just gonna count, or do you have a plan?”

“Well, in situations like this I ask myself, ‘What would Nelson Mandela do?’”

“. . . Seriously?”

“Dude survived twenty-seven years in a maximum security prison,” Marcus said. “I’m pretty sure he could take care of himself.”

“Yeah, that’s not what most people think of when—oh, forget it. What would Nelson do?”

“He’d take those towers out before the lights came on. You up to that?”

Shirley was, and would have said so, but a figure appeared behind Marcus wielding a truncheon. The alarm in her eyes gave Marcus half a moment’s grace, and he moved just enough that the stick, instead of swinging into the side of his head, caught him on the neck. He bounced full body off the wall and hit the ground with a thud. Shirley had time to note that his baseball cap remained fixed in place; almost time to step forward and launch a chin-bound kick at his assailant; no time at all to do anything but fall flat on her face when her legs were taken out from under her by a second man. Roll , she thought, and took a mouthful of gravel as his kick came in to take her head off.