Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

“I can handle him.”

“Sure?”

“I said I can handle him.”

He sneered at that, but let go of the folder anyway. Diana all but snatched it from his grip.

Lamb stood, and this time the pigeons took fright: with one thought between them they clambered clumsily into the air, where they wheeled about in confusion for a while, and were forgotten about.

Taverner said, “Seriously, Catherine Standish. She’s okay?”

“Apparently she quit.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“It evens out,” Lamb said. “I thought I sacked a pair yesterday. But it looks like they’ve changed their minds.”

He walked away down the path, a bulky silhouette against the silvery white heat of the day.

Diana Taverner watched until he’d disappeared from view, a trick he achieved surprisingly quickly for a man his size. Then she undid the folder’s ribbon, pulling it loose so that it ran through her fingers for a long silky moment, and opened its cover. The topsheet was blank, save for a V-for-Virgil scrawled in marker pen, and a catalogue number stamped in red ink. She removed it.

Underneath lay a copy of the Angling Times , and nothing more.

“Oh, Jackson,” she said. “You stupid, stupid man.”

She looked for the pigeons, which were gone, looked up at the sky, which was still there, then looked in her bag for her phone.

Peter Judd answered on the first ring.

“That worst-case outcome we discussed?” Diana said. “It just happened.”

The weatheris breaking on Aldersgate Street. It is breaking in other places too, keen to wash the smells of hot tar from London’s roads, but it is over Aldersgate Street that it appears angriest, and here the violet hour has given way to early darkness. Thunder rumbles, so near it might be just over the page. As yet there is no rain, but residents in the Barbican towers hover by their windows, hoping for dramatic skyscapes, while on the pavements pedestrians—still dressed for that morning’s dry heat—hurry towards shelter, wherever it might be found. In the alley that leads to Slough House’s back door a freak wind stirs hot dust, and beneath the sound of clouds crashing together (which, as every child knows, is the true cause of thunder) might be heard that of a door scraping open; a door which jams in all weathers, even weather so close to breaking as this . . . But if someone has entered Slough House, there would be noises on the staircase, which there are not. And only a ghost, surely, could climb Slough House’s notoriously squeaky stairs without the slightest whisper.

If a ghost it is, it’s a peculiarly inquisitive one, and pauses at the first landing to test the air. Here, as always, the doors hang open, and while the rooms are empty, even a spectre would have no trouble spotting which was Roderick Ho’s room; which Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander’s. The latter is tainted with conflicting emotions tonight, as if the recent male occupant has been reflecting that for all his combat experience, he basically had his nuts pulled from the fire twice yesterday, both times by people he regards as lightweight. So much for taking control . . . And as for the female, there’s a suggestion that her recent physical exertions, satisfying as they were, are perhaps no long-term substitute for intimacy—and as a short-term measure, postpone, rather than obliterate, the need for any other kind of high. But there is a tangible sense of relief here too, that yesterday’s sackings appear to have been reversed; or, at any rate, were not referred to during the lengthy post-mortem of last night’s events. A strange quirk, perhaps, to be relieved by the prospect of remaining among the slow horses, but as every ghost knows, there are few more complicated creatures than the living.

In the former office, meanwhile, a particularly perceptive shade might catch a trace of a fragment of conversation; the words A bus? Okay, that’s old school —words spoken by Marcus and lapped up by Roderick Ho; words Ho repeated silently to himself over and over, until they gave way to another mantra, equally silent: So, babes, fancy a drink? , this too practised over and over, mimed to a window in lieu of a mirror, and mimed long after their intended recipient had appeared on the street below, leaving Slough House, and Roddy Ho, equally unthought-of behind her.

More stairs now. Onward and upward. On the next landing two more vacant rooms, again heavy with the late presence of their incumbents, one of these being the just-now alluded to Louisa Guy, who is currently sitting on a barstool, and, as usual, is being approached by the usual man with the usual line, though tonight finds herself saying, Sorry, not interested , recalling as she does so a snapshot memory from yesterday evening: not the men she shot, not poor dead Douglas, nor even brave, doomed Donovan, but River Cartwright pulling her to her feet when she fell, a brief moment of contact that somehow overrules the possibility of going home with anyone tonight, a feeling which might outlast her third vodka, but then again might not. As for River himself, that lunchtime, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, he made the hop across town to Spider Webb’s bedside once more, only to find the room vacant, its bed remade, its eternally beeping machines removed; a discovery that prompted the queasy suspicion that yesterday’s trip to Regent’s Park, and his alibi-forming lie to Diana Taverner, if he ever wound up plugged into a wall-socket, if that was all that was keeping him alive, he’d want to be switched off , has produced an unintended consequence, a thought so bowel-shrinking he prefers not to entertain it, so has instead opted to visit his grandfather, the O.B., and hear familiar tales of Service myth and Spook Street legend, and lock all self-examination away.

Again, the thunder sounds, so near it might be crashing off the roof, and this time is accompanied by, yes, a flash of lightning; a sudden electric burst that fills the uncurtained rooms, and if there were anyone here they would surely be seen now, captured in that flash as by a photograph . . . But there is nothing. Nothing, unless that shadow in the corner is darker, thicker, more substantial, than it should be . . . Unless it moves like a ghost, soundlessly flitting up one last staircase to the uppermost floor, where the rooms are smaller, and closer to heaven . . .

The first of these, though just as empty as the others, seems somehow emptier tonight, as if its condition has acquired permanence; as if Catherine Standish’s absence is the latest in a long series of absences that Slough House thrives upon; as if the building will only be satisfied once it has driven each of its inhabitants away. As if it fattens on loss. A ghost, surely, would speak this language. A ghost would choose this threshold to hover on, savouring the desolate air, the abandoned umbrella on the hatstand, the dust already gathering on desk and windowframe. But the ghost—if there is a ghost, and if it’s there—doesn’t seem interested in the last of Catherine Standish. The ghost, instead, hovers on the landing, outside the only door in the building that’s currently closed, and from behind which rumbles something reminiscent of a barnyard presence; the snoring, perhaps, of a discontented pig. Thunder rumbles once more overhead, and has its echo in this upper room, but the thunder is alert and purposeful, while the pig sounds deep in slumber.

Rain at last begins to fall, perhaps summoned by mention of an umbrella. A thick pattering on the windows at first, and then faster, and then everywhere; drumming off the roof, battering the walls. Aldersgate Street, like the rest of London, has long been waiting for this moment. If city streets could sigh, that’s what this one would be doing. And of course they can, and they do, and it is. This is the noise rain always masks; the grateful sighing of the pavements.