Slow Horses: Slough House Thriller 1

10

NOW THAT HE knew he was going to die, a sense of calm had settled upon Hassan. It was almost surreal, though surreal wasn’t quite the word. Transcendental, that was it. He had achieved an inner peace, the like of which he’d never known. When you got down to it, life was a rollercoaster. The details of the excitement escaped him now, but there must have been plenty of it, or this feeling of release wouldn’t be so welcome. He wouldn’t have to go through any of it again, whatever it had been. Dying seemed a small price to pay.

And if he could have remained in that state he might have cruised through his remaining hours, but every time he reached this point in the argument, when dying and price made their ugly meanings felt, his mind emptied of peace and calm and swarmed instead with panic. He was nineteen years old. He’d never been on an actual rollercoaster, let alone known life to be one. He’d had little of anything he had a right to expect. Had never stood in a spotlight, unreeling one-liners for an adoring crowd.

Larry, Moe and Curly.

Curly, Larry and Moe.

Who were these people, and why had they chosen him?

Here was the story: Hassan was a student who wanted to be a comedian. But the fact was, he’d probably end up doing something totally usual; utterly office-based. Business Studies, that was Hassan’s course. Business fucking Studies. It wasn’t entirely true to say that his father had chosen it for him, but it was true that his father had been a lot more supportive of this than he would have been of, say, drama. Hassan would have liked to study drama. But he’d have had to fund it himself, so where had the harm been in going with the flow? That way, he’d had the flat, and the car, and, well, something to fall back on. That was Business Studies: something to fall back on if the career in stand-up crashed and burned.

He wondered now how many people there were, including those not under threat of execution in a damp cellar, who were living their back-up plan; who were office drones or office cleaners, teachers, plumbers, shop assistants, IT mavens, priests and accountants only because rock and roll, football, movies and authordom hadn’t panned out. And decided that the answer was everyone. Everyone wanted a life less ordinary. And only a tiny minority ever got it, and even they probably didn’t appreciate it much.

So in a way, Hassan was sitting pretty. A life less ordinary was what he now had. Fame was waiting in the wings. Though it was true that he wasn’t appreciating it much, except during those transcendental moments of inner peace, when it was clear that the rollercoaster ride was over, and he could let go, let go, let go …

Larry, Moe and Curly.

Curly, Larry and Moe.

Who were these people, and why had they chosen him?

The horrible thing was, Hassan thought he knew.

He thought he knew.

In the pub near Slough House, at the same table River and Sid had shared earlier that day, Min Harper and Louisa Guy were drinking: tequila for him, vodka and bull for her. They were both on their third. The first two had been drunk in silence, or what passed for silence in a city pub. In a far corner a TV buzzed, though neither glanced its way for fear of seeing a boy in a cellar; the day’s sole subject, which forced its way to the surface at last, like a bubble of air escaping from under a rock in a pond.

‘That poor kid.’

‘You think they’ll really do it?’

‘Off him?’

Off with his head, both thought, and winced at the unhappy phrasing.

‘Sorry.’

‘But do you think?’

‘Yes. Yes, I think they will.’

‘Me too.’

‘Because they haven’t—’

‘—made any demands. They’ve just said—’

‘—they’re going to kill him.’

Both set their glasses down, the dual ringing sending a brief halo into the air.

The Voice of Albion had gone public that evening, with an announcement on their website that Hassan Ahmed would be executed within thirty hours. 52 deaths on the Tube, its argument ran, = 52 deaths in return. And there was more: the usual drivel about national identity and a war on the streets. The site was a single page, offering no proof of its claims, and there were thirteen other groups currently streaming the Hassan video, claiming responsibility, but the words Voice of Albion had been snatched by Ho from a Regent’s Park memo, so it seemed pretty clear who Five thought were responsible. But what was strange, said Ho, was that the website had first appeared only two weeks ago. And there were few other references to the group on the web.

But a name meant progress.

‘Now they know who he is, they’ll know where to look.’

‘They’ve probably known who he is for ages.’

‘They probably know a hell of a lot more than they’ve said.’

‘Not that they’d tell us, anyway.’

‘Slough House. For the simple things in life.’

Like combing Twitter for coded messages. Like compiling lists of overseas students who missed more than six lectures a term.

They finished their drinks and got another round in.

‘Ho’s probably up to speed.’

‘Ho knows everything.’

‘Thinks he does.’

‘Did you see his expression when he caught the loop?’

‘Like he’d cracked the Enigma code.’

‘Like that was the important thing, that the film was on a loop.’

‘And the kid was just pixels.’

Then, for the first time, they looked at each other without pretending not to. Drinking had done neither any favours. Louisa had a tendency to flush, which might have been okay if it had meant an even pinkness; but instead she grew mottled and patchy, her skin acquiring the topography of a badly folded map. As for Min, his face had sagged, flaps of skin developing along his jawline, and his ears glowed red to match his irises. All over the city – all over the world – this happened; co-workers ruined their chances in the pub, and forged ahead anyway.

‘Lamb must know more.’

‘More what?’

‘More than we do.’

‘You think he’s in the loop?’

‘More than the rest of us.’

‘Not saying much.’

‘I know his password.’

‘… Really?’

‘Think so. I think he never—’

‘Don’t tell me!’

‘… reset it from the default.’

‘Classic!’

‘His password is “Password”!’

‘You sure?’

‘It’s what Ho reckons.’

‘And he told you?’

‘He needed to tell someone. To prove how clever he is.’

For a moment, both examined their glasses. Then their eyes met again.

‘Another round?’

‘Yeah. Maybe. Or …’

‘Or?’

‘Or maybe back to the office?’

‘It’s late. There’ll be nobody there.’

‘My point exactly.’

‘You think we should …’

‘Check Ho’s info?’

‘If Lamb knows anything, it’ll be on his e-mail.’

Both considered this for flaws, and found plenty. Both decided not to raise them.

‘If we get caught looking at Lamb’s e-mail …’

‘We won’t.’

If there was anyone there, there’d be lights in the windows, visible from the road. It wasn’t like Slough House was high security.

‘You sure there’s a point to this?’

‘More point than sitting here getting pissed. That’s not helping anyone.’

‘True.’

Each waited for the other to make the first move.

In the end, though, they had another drink first.

There had been hospitals before, but not since childhood. One bad year had seen River incarcerated twice; first for a tonsillectomy, then for a broken arm, sustained in a fall from a large oak two fields from his grandparents’ house. It hadn’t been the first time he’d scaled it, though he’d had trouble getting down on the previous occasions. This time there’d been no trouble. Only gravity. Back home he’d tried not to mention the injury, on account of having promised not to damage himself climbing trees, but at length had been forced to admit that yes, he was struggling to hold his fork. The O.B. told him later that it was only after having made the admission that River had turned white, then whiter, then dropped to the floor.

Lying in the dark now, what he remembered that occasion for was that his mother had come as he lay in hospital. It had been the first time he’d seen her in two years, and she claimed to have arrived back on English soil only that afternoon. ‘Perhaps at the same moment you had your fall, darling. Don’t you think that’s what happened? That you sensed my arrival, all those miles away?’ Even at nine River had difficulty with this scenario, and hadn’t been especially surprised when he later learned that Isobel had been in the country for several months. Be that as it may, she was with him now, unaccompanied by his ‘new father’, and unfazed by River having told his nurse he was an orphan. In fact, the only thing that galvanised her was her parents’ negligence.

‘Climbing trees? How could they let you do such a thing?’

But evasion of blame was so ingrained to her character, even those around her colluded. River himself wasn’t immune. Of the injuries she’d bestowed upon him few had caused as much grief as his name, but even at nine he knew a narrow escape when he saw one. Isobel Cartwright’s hippy phase had been superseded by an equally short-lived Teutonic one, and had River been a year younger, he might have been a Wolfgang. He suspected that his grandfather would have baulked at that. The O.B. was as adept at destroying true identities as he was at creating false ones.

But a long time ago. Water under a bridge. River was a name for water that passed under a bridge. Lying in another hospital, River wondered who he’d have been if born to a different mother; one who hadn’t rebelled so thoroughly, if ineffectively, against her middle-class upbringing. He wouldn’t have been brought up by his grandparents. Wouldn’t have fallen out of a tree, or not that tree. And wouldn’t have fallen under the spell of an idea of service; of a life lived outside the humdrum … But his mother had drifted in and out of his life like a song. During her longer absences, he forgot the words; when she was around, there was always a new one to add to the list. She was beautiful, vague, solipsistic, childish. Lately, he’d recognised how brittle she’d become. She often imagined she’d raised him herself, and would bristle convincingly when reminded otherwise. Her hell-raising years were not only behind her, they belonged to someone else. Isobel Dunstable – her late marriage had been a satisfactory one, bestowing respectability, wealth and widowhood in quick succession – might never have looked at a hash pipe in anything other than puzzlement. It wasn’t only her father who was adept at destroying true identities.

Thinking these familiar thoughts was better than the alternative, which was thinking about other things altogether.

There came a scraping from beyond the locked door; as if somebody was balancing on a chair, steadying themselves with their feet against the opposite wall.

As a boy with a broken arm, River had recognised his surroundings for what they were: hospitals were where light gathered in corners, and curtains performed the functions of walls. Where privacy was rarely granted, and unwanted visitors far more common than the other kind.

He heard footsteps heading down the corridor, towards him.

Slough House too was in darkness. At Regent’s Park, even when nothing was happening, there’d be enough people about for a midnight football match: eleven a side, plus linesmen. Here there was only emptiness, and the reek of disappointment. Min Harper, climbing the forlorn staircase, decided that the place resembled nothing more than a front for a mail-order porn empire, and with the thought came the dispiriting sense of being part of an enterprise nobody cared about, where tasks that didn’t matter were performed by people who didn’t care. For the last two months, Min had been examining congestion charge anomalies: cars clocked entering the zone whose owners had never paid; whose owners, in fact, denied being in the zone on the day in question. And time after time, it broke down to the same boring facts: that those who’d been caught were guilty of everyday life. They were playing away from home, or shifting bootlegged DVDs, or delivering their daughters to abortion clinics well out of their husbands’ sight … There were prison camps whose inmates spent their days carrying rocks from one end of the yard to the other, and then back. That might be a more fulfilling occupation.

Something shifted further up the stairwell.

‘Did you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. A noise.’

They halted on the landing. Whatever had made the sound didn’t make it again.

Louisa leant closer to Min, and he became aware of the smell of her hair.

‘A mouse?’

‘Do we have mice?’

‘We’ve probably got rats.’

Alcohol thickened the syllables, and slurred the sibilants.

Whatever they’d thought they’d heard didn’t happen again. The smell of Louisa’s hair, though, continued. Min cleared his throat.

‘Shall we?’

‘Um …?’

‘Go up, I mean?’

‘Sure. Going down’s not an option. I mean—’

Good job it was dark.

But as they set off up the next flight of stairs their hands brushed in the darkness, and their drunk fingers entangled themselves, and then they were kissing, and more than kissing; were clutching at each other in the darkness; each pushing at the other as if anxious to occupy the same space, which turned out to be against the wall in Loy’s room, the first they’d come to.

Three minutes passed.

Coming up for breath, their first words were:

‘Jesus, I never—’

‘Shut up.’

They shut up.

Two floors above them, a black-clad figure paused inside Lamb’s office.

Outside the door, one of Nick Duffy’s crew occupied a plastic chair, tilting it so its back was resting against the wall. Dan Hobbs had been two minutes short of going off-roster when he was dispatched here instead. When an agent got shot, there was no such thing as downtime. Even when it was a slow horse. Even when it was their own stupid fault.

Though short on detail, Hobbs was prepared to accept that it had been their own stupid fault.

Service officers were red-flagged, so as soon as the name was entered on the hospital records, it was pinging its way to Regent’s Park. Hobbs had picked it up: since then he’d put out an officer-down alert; broken a few limits getting to the hospital; established the agent’s injuries; and taken instruction from Duffy: Secure whoever’s still standing and wait there. So Hobbs had, in the only available room: a store cupboard down here among the ghosts.

That had been half an hour ago, and not a peep since, and even as that thought occurred to Hobbs he squinted at his phone once more, and an awkward truth hit him.

He had no signal.

Damn.

A quick trip upstairs. It would take less than a minute. And the sooner he was back in touch with the Park, the less chance anyone would know he’d lost contact to start with.

Then he heard the rubbery squeaks that meant someone was coming down the stairs.

Righting the chair, Hobbs planted his feet on the floor.

This time, there was no doubting it. There’d been a noise, loud enough to distract Louisa and Min from what they were doing. Three minutes later it wouldn’t have done, but those were the edges on which outcomes balanced.

‘Hear that?’

‘I heard it.’

‘Came from upstairs.’

‘Lamb’s office?’

‘Or Catherine’s.’

They waited, but heard nothing further.

‘You think it’s Lamb?’

‘If it was, there’d be a light on.’

They eased apart, zipping up, and moved for the door without noise. Anyone watching might think they’d rehearsed movements like these: stealthy progress through dark territory, with an unknown third party lurking near.

‘Weapon?’

‘Desk.’

It yielded a glass paperweight, which fitted neatly into a fist, and a stapler which would serve as a knuckleduster.

‘You sure we want to do this?’

‘I’d rather be doing what we just nearly did.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘But now we’ve got to do this instead.’

Or first, perhaps. Whatever.

And anyone watching wouldn’t have guessed either had recently succumbed to drink or lust, because both looked like sober joes as they slipped onto the landing again; Min taking the lead and Louisa watching his hands as she followed, alert for any signals he might drop into the silence that drifted behind him.

The approaching man was overweight and trod heavily, and perhaps had wandered downstairs by mistake; was actually here to get his heart sorted, or have a gastric band fitted. Hobbs ran seven miles daily, rain or shine, and thought being out-of-shape was slow suicide. It meant you’d always come off second best in a physical encounter, which wasn’t something that had happened to Hobbs yet.

He prepared himself for a brush with the public at whose service he technically served.

But the man turned out not to be public. He didn’t even ask who Hobbs was. It was as if he already knew, and already didn’t care.

‘Here’s a tip,’ he said. ‘Mobiles? RaspBerries? Gizmos like that? Not at their best underground.’

Hobbs retreated into bland civil-servantese: ‘Can I help you?’

‘Well.’ The fat man pointed to the locked door. ‘You could open that.’

‘You must be lost, sir,’ Hobbs said. ‘They’ll help you up at reception. With whatever you’re after.’

The man tilted his head to one side. ‘Do you know who I am?’

Jesus wept. Hobbs licked his teeth and prepared to unfold himself from his chair. ‘Don’t have that pleasure, sir.’

The man bent low and spoke directly into Dan’s ear.

‘Good.’

His hands moved.

The stairs seemed steeper after lights out, or maybe they were steeper after an evening in the pub and a knee-trembler in a dark office. But that thought was broadcast from a different set of experiences. The Louisa who’d come from the pub, the Min who’d just been fumbled with, those skins had been sloughed when they’d heard the intruder. Now they were real people again; the people they’d been before calamity had struck, and exiled them to this damp building on the edge of nowhere important.

No more noises yet. Maybe it had been an unattended accident: a picture dropping off a wall. When the Tube rattled past, not many yards away, unanchored objects felt gravity’s pull. Min and Louisa might be creeping upstairs, armed with stapler and paperweight, to launch an attack on a moment’s slippage.

On the other hand, whoever was up there might have frozen on realising they weren’t alone.

Silent messages passed between the pair:

You okay?

Of course …

We trained for this.

So let’s go …

Up they went.

Whatever had just happened ended with the sound of something being lowered to the floor. This had been preceded by voices, one of which River recognised, so he wasn’t surprised when the door opened and a familiar shape appeared. ‘Jesus on a skateboard.’ Jackson Lamb was loud as a train. He flicked the light switch. ‘Get on your feet, man.’

Because River was lying on the floor. Cardboard boxes were piled against the walls, their labels indicating that they held rubber gloves; fitted sheets; plastic cups; disposable cutlery; other stuff: he’d lost interest and turned the light out. It was clear, though, that Hobbs had locked him in a store cupboard.

‘How long have you been in here?’

River shook his head. Ten minutes? Twenty? Three? Time had happened differently once the key had turned in the lock.

He’d put up no resistance. Getting here had left him drained; had been a nightmare ride through zombiestrewn streets, following a racing ambulance. There was blood all over him. Head wounds bleed. Head wounds bleed bad. This was a factoid he’d clung to. Head wounds bleed bad. That Sid Baker was bleeding bad from the head didn’t necessarily mean anything critical had happened. Could be a graze. So why had she looked so dead?

He’d watched her strapped to a gurney and rushed along a corridor by medical staff, and hadn’t even attempted to come up with a fake identity. A bullet wound meant police, of course, but say what you like about the Service Dogs, their response time was sharp. Hobbs had got here first, and had secured River, pending debriefing.

River suspected that any debriefing that followed the shooting of an agent would be a lengthy and unpleasant process.

‘Well, how long were you planning on staying?’ Lamb asked. ‘Get a move on.’

Maybe this would be lengthy and unpleasant too.

River got to his feet and followed his boss into the light.

At the top of the stairs, nobody lurked. The paperweight felt comfortable in Min’s hand by now; a round smooth heavy presence, not entirely dissimilar to – but he thrust that thought away; stepped into Jackson Lamb’s office. The blinds were down. Pinpricks of light poked in from London’s night sky; the neon glow that settled on the city like a bubble.

Shapes took on slow substance. Desk, coatstand, filing cabinet, bookshelf. No human form. No waiting stranger.

Behind him, Louisa checked out the cubicle-sized kitchen. Unless whoever had made the noise could fit in a fridge, it was danger-free.

‘Catherine’s room.’

Similar story: desk, shelves, cabinets. But there was a skylight, and a ghostly grey light hovered over Catherine’s absence. She’d left her keyboard balanced on top of her monitor, and aligned her folders with the edge of the desk. There were shadows here too, but most of them seemed empty.

‘I’m going to turn the light on.’

‘Okay.’

It hurt both their eyes for a second, as their drunkenness re-bloomed.

‘There’s nobody here.’

‘Doesn’t seem to be.’

Doeshn’t sheem to be.

In the light, both looked washed out.

They turned back to the other office, where they could now see something leaning against the wall. It was Lamb’s corkboard, the one on which he pinned his money-off tokens.

‘Do you think—’

Did they think it had fallen off the wall?

Movement behind them broadcast itself a moment before Min was struck.

Only a moment, but long enough for him to move, so the punch scraped his ear only, throwing him off balance but not to the floor – their assailant was clad in black; wore a balaclava; carried a small gun he wasn’t using. He’d sprung from the shadows in Catherine’s room; must have been hiding in her cupboard. His second blow caught Louisa in the chest and she gasped in pain.

Min launched himself at the stranger’s legs, and the pair of them went crashing down the stairs.

Hobbs was asleep in the plastic chair, or looked asleep. A faint smear of dribble glistened on his chin. River paused to retrieve Service card and car keys from his pocket, then followed.

Upstairs, two policemen were talking to the charge nurse, who was examining a clipboard. Lamb led River past them without a sideways glance as the nurse shook his head and pointed the cops towards the reception desk.

Outside it was dark, and starting to rain again. River’s car, which he’d left slantwise in an ambulance space, was gone. He wondered if Sid was gone too. There’d been urgency about the way those doctors, those nurses, had trolleyed her off. Perhaps they’d not heard the same factoid he had. They certainly hadn’t said Nah, head wound. They always look bad.

‘Stay with the programme, Cartwright.’

‘Where now?’

The words were cotton wool, sucking moisture from his mouth and leaving him tired and sick.

‘Anywhere but here.’

‘My car’s gone.’

‘Shut up.’

So now he was tracking Lamb across the short-stay car park; all those vehicles that hadn’t expected to be here tonight, and whose owners were inside the building behind him. He shut out the possible injuries that had brought them here, knife fights, random muggings, dicks stuck in vacuum hoses; blanked out too the picture of Sid on an operating table, her head invaded by a bullet. Or had it only plucked at her on its way past? He hadn’t been able to tell. There’d been so much blood.

‘For fuck’s sake, Cartwright.’

Two police cars were parked nearby. Neither was occupied.

Lamb drove a boxy-looking Japanese car. River didn’t care. He got in, sat back, waited for Lamb to start up. That didn’t happen.

River closed his eyes. Then opened them to a rain-flecked windscreen, each drop of water holding a tiny bulb of orange light.

Lamb said, ‘So you got locked up.’

‘Pending,’ River said. ‘Pending … whatever.’

‘And your ID’s flashing lights and blowing whistles from here to Regent’s Park. Have you any clue what you’re doing?’

‘I had to get her here.’

‘You called the ambulance. It was necessary to follow it?’

‘She might have died. Might be dead now, for all I know.’

Lamb said, ‘She’s still on the table. Bullet took a chunk out of her head.’

River couldn’t look at him.

‘They say she might live.’

Thank Christ for that. He thought about the tussle on the pavement; that sudden sound. Phut. And then there’d been blood, and Sid was down, and the blood had been black on the pavement. Robert Hobden was nowhere to be seen. As for the man in black, he was halfway down the road before River had got to his knees, frightened to touch Sid, frightened to move her, unable to assess the damage. It had taken him three goes to ring for an ambulance. His fingers felt like thumbs, his thumbs like bananas.

‘On the other hand, she might not. And even if she does, she might end up with the life choices of a carrot. So on the whole, not a great night’s work.’ He reached out and clicked his fingers an inch from River’s face. ‘Wake up. This is important.’

River turned to face him. In the dim light, Jackson Lamb resembled something pegged on top of a bonfire. His eyes were madly red, as if already tortured by smoke. His jowls were whiskery. He’d been drinking.

‘Who was it?’

They tumbled in a noisy mess of arms and legs to the next landing. Louisa followed in a rush; two bounds bringing her level. Min was on the floor, the man in black draped over him like a duvet. Louisa grabbed, twisted, and encountered less resistance than she might have expected.

Like a beanbag. Like a broken scarecrow.

‘Jesus, are you—’

‘Where did the gun go? Where did it go?’

The gun was in the corner.

While Min scrambled to his feet, the man in black flopped like a beached pike, like a burst binbag.

‘Is he dead?’

He looked dead. He looked like he’d landed on his head, and bent his neck to a stupid angle.

‘I hope he’s fucking dead.’

Min collected the gun, bones clicking as he bent. He’d be aches and pains in the morning. He hadn’t taken a dive down a flight of stairs since, well, ever. And it wasn’t an experience he planned to repeat soon, except …

Except it felt good, for a moment, standing here. A vanquished intruder at his feet, a gun in his hand. Louisa gazing at him, unfeigned admiration in her eyes.

Well, that was stretching it. Louisa was looking at the stranger, not at him.

‘… Is he dead?’

They both hoped he was dead, though neither knew what he was doing here. This was Slough House, and anyone who knew about it knew it wasn’t worth raiding. But this guy had turned up armed, in a balaclava.

Armed, but he’d hidden from them.

‘No pulse.’

‘Looks like a broken neck.’

Why would a man with a gun hide from a couple armed with a paperweight and a stapler?

‘Let’s see who the bastard is.’

‘Who was it?’ Lamb asked.

‘He was kitted out. Combat gear, balac—’

‘Yeah, I guessed. But did you recognise him?’

River said, ‘I was meant to think he was one of ours. One of the achievers. But there was something not right. Even apart from him being on his own.’

‘What sort of something?’

‘Something—I don’t know …’

‘For fuck’s sake, Cartwright—’

‘Shut up!’ River closed his eyes again, relived those frantic moments. The guy who’d shot Sid was halfway down the road before River had got to his knees … It had taken him three goes to ring for an ambulance. No, that wasn’t it, it was before then, the something, whatever it was. What was it?

He said, ‘He never said a word.’

Neither did Lamb.

River said, ‘All the way through it. Not one squeak.’

‘So?’

River said, ‘He was worried I’d recognise his voice.’

Lamb waited.

River said, ‘I think it was Jed Moody.’

Louisa peeled the balaclava from the man’s head.

From Min’s vantage point the uncovered face was upside down, but he knew who he was looking at.

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah …’

They weren’t even supposed to be here.

They were going to have to get their stories straight.

The rain was stopping when Lamb pulled out of the car park. River stared straight ahead, through the m-shape the wipers’ last sweep had left, and didn’t need to ask where they were headed. They were going to Slough House. Where else?

There was blood on his shirt. There was blood on his mind.

Lamb said, ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’

Any debriefing that followed the shooting of an agent would be a lengthy and unpleasant process …

He said, ‘Watching Hobden.’

‘I got that much. Why?’

‘Because he’s got something to do with the kid. The one who’s—’

‘I know which kid you mean. What makes you think that? Because he hangs out with wannabe Nazis?’

River felt his certainties washing away before Lamb’s belligerence. He said, ‘How did you find me?’

A pedestrian crossing brought them to a halt. A hooded troupe of youth dragged itself across the road in front of them. Lamb said, ‘Like I said, lights and whistles. A Service name pops into the system, cops, hospital, whatever, and you’ve got morris dancers and fucking whatnot blowing gaskets. That your idea of undercover? You’re called River, for Christ’s sake. There’s probably about four of you in the whole of Great Britain.’

River said, ‘And the Park let you know about it?’

‘Well, of course not. Do I look like I’m in the loop?’

‘So?’

‘Slough House may be a backwater, but there’s a couple of things we do have.’ The lights changed. Lamb drove on. ‘He has the people skills of a natterjack toad, but he knows his way round the ether.’

The people skills of a natterjack toad. It was like there was a whole other world somewhere, in which Jackson Lamb didn’t think that sentence might be used of him.

‘I’m having difficulty imagining Ho doing you a favour.’ Then River added, in fairness, ‘You or anyone else.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t a favour. I had something he wanted.’

‘Which was?’

‘What does Ho always want? Information. The answer to a question that’s driving him buggy.’

‘What’s that?’

‘How come he’s ended up in Slough House?’

River had wondered that himself, on and off. He hadn’t cared much. Still, he’d wondered. ‘And you told him?’

‘No. But I told him the next best thing.’

‘Which was?’

Lamb’s face gave away less than Buster Keaton’s. ‘I told him why I’d ended up there.’

River opened his mouth to ask, then closed it.

Lamb used the hand he wasn’t driving with to find a cigarette. ‘You think Hobden’s the only right-wing fruitcake in the country? Or was he the only one you could think of at closing time?’

‘He’s the only one I know of who’s had two spooks sicced on him in the past forty-eight hours.’

‘So you’re a spook. Congratulations. I thought you’d failed your assessment.’

‘Fuck off, Lamb,’ he said. ‘I was there. I saw her shot. You know what that’s like?’

Lamb turned to study him through half-open eyes, causing River to remember about the hippo being among the world’s most dangerous beasts. It was barrel-shaped and clumsy, but if you wanted to piss one off, do it from a helicopter. Not while sharing a car.

‘You didn’t just see it,’ he said. ‘It was down to you. How clever was that?’

‘You think I let it happen deliberately?’

‘I think you weren’t good enough to stop it. And if you’re not good enough for that, you’re no use to anyone.’ Lamb changed gear like it was a violent assault. ‘If it wasn’t for you, she’d have been tucked up in bed. Hers or somebody else’s. And don’t think I haven’t noticed the looks you’ve been giving her.’ The car growled onwards.

River said, in an unfamiliar voice, ‘She told me she was a plant.’

‘A what?’

‘That she’d been put in Slough House for a purpose. To keep an eye on me.’

‘Was that before or after she got shot in the head?’

‘You bastard—’

‘Don’t even bother, Cartwright. That’s what she told you, is it? That you’re the centre of the universe? Newsflash. Never happened.’

For a dizzy moment, River was aware only of a ringing in his ears; of a throbbing in his palm from yesterday’s burn. All of it had happened, even Sid’s words: I was put there to keep an eye on you, River. You’re not supposed to know about this. That had happened. The words had been said.

But what they meant was anyone’s guess.

The Chinese restaurant, which even when open looked derelict, was definitively shut. Lamb parked opposite, and as they crossed the road River caught a glimmer of light from one of the higher windows.

Probably a reflection from the Barbican towers.

‘Why are we here?’

‘Somewhere you’d rather be?’

River shrugged.

Lamb said, ‘We both know you know nothing, Cartwright. But that doesn’t mean Regent’s Park won’t be looking for you.’ He led the way round the back, to the familiar scarred door. ‘I won’t say this is the absolute last place they’ll look, but it won’t be top of their list.’

Entering, they were met with the sound of newly established silence.

River wasn’t sure how they knew this, but both did. The air trembled like a fork in the darkness. Somebody – some bodies – had recently stopped moving; some bodies were waiting up the stairs.

‘Stay,’ was Lamb’s harsh whisper.

And then he was heading up, light as a whisper. How did he do that? It was like watching a tree change shape.

River followed.

Two flights later he caught up, and here was what they’d missed: Jed Moody, a balaclava peeled from his face, dead as a bucket on the landing.

Sitting three and five steps up respectively, Min Harper and Louisa Guy.

Lamb said, ‘If you had issues with him, I could have spoken to HR. Arranged an intervention.’ He tapped Moody’s shoulder with his foot. ‘Breaking his neck without going through your line manager, that shit stays on your record.’

‘We didn’t know it was him.’

‘Not sure that counts as a defence,’ Lamb said.

‘He had a gun.’

‘Better,’ Lamb said. He regarded the pair of them. ‘He used it earlier, if it helps. Shot Sid Baker with it.’

‘Sid?’

‘Christ, is she—’

River found his voice. ‘She’s alive.’

‘Or was twenty minutes ago,’ Lamb corrected. Bending his knees, he went through Moody’s pockets. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Ten minutes ago.’

‘Maybe fifteen.’

‘And you were planning on what, waiting for it all to go away? What were you doing here anyway?’

‘We’d been over the road.’

‘In the pub.’

‘Can’t afford a room?’ Lamb produced a mobile phone from Moody’s pocket. ‘Where’s the gun?’

Harper gestured behind him.

‘He look like using it?’

Harper and Guy exchanged glances.

‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ Lamb said. ‘This isn’t a court of law. Did he look like using it?’

‘He was carrying it.’

‘He didn’t point it exactly.’

‘You might want to reconsider your position on that,’ Lamb said, fishing a faded brown envelope from inside Moody’s jacket. ‘Son of a bitch!’

‘He was in your office.’

‘We figured he was on a raid.’

Watching the pair of them in contrapuntal gear, River recognised something new going on; a shared conspiracy that hadn’t been apparent before. Love or death, he figured. Love in its most banal guise – a quick fumble in the stairwell, or a drunken snog – and death in its usual weeds. One of the two had fused this pair together. And he flashed again on that moment on the pavement outside Hobden’s, when whatever had been starting to grow between himself and Sid Baker ended.

Her blood was on his shirt still. Possibly in his hair.

‘He had a balaclava on.’

‘Didn’t look like a junkie thief.’

‘We didn’t mean to kill him, though.’

‘Yeah,’ said Lamb. ‘It’s all very well being sorry now, isn’t it?’

‘What’s in the envelope?’ River asked.

‘You still here?’

‘He took that from your office, didn’t he? What’s in it?’

‘The blueprints,’ Lamb said.

‘The what?’

‘The secret plans.’ Lamb shrugged. ‘The microfilm. Whatever.’ He’d found something else: Moody’s black-wrapped form hid more pockets than a magician’s. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said again, only this time with less venom; almost with admiration.

‘What’s that?’

For a moment, it seemed Lamb was about to secrete what he’d found in the folds of his overcoat. But he held it up to the light instead: a brief strand of black wire, the length of a straightened paperclip, with a split-lentil head.

‘A bug?’

‘He bugged your office?’

‘Or maybe,’ River said, ‘he was on his way to bug your office.’

‘After the evening he’d had, I doubt tapping my office was top of his list,’ Lamb said. ‘No, he was cleaning up. Prior to getting out.’ He hadn’t finished his body-search yet. ‘Two mobiles? Jed Jed Jed. I’m surprised you had enough friends to carry one.’

‘Who’s he been talking to?’

‘Thank God you’re here. Would I have thought of that?’ A mobile in each hand, Lamb pressed buttons with each thumb; surprisingly dextrous for a self-proclaimed Luddite. ‘Now that’s strange,’ he said, in a tone indicating that it wasn’t. ‘This one’s barely used. Just one incoming call.’

River wanted to say ‘Ring back,’ and only the cast-iron knowledge that Lamb wanted him to say it too kept his tongue in harness.

Still sitting, Min and Louisa kept their own counsel.

After a moment’s thought, Lamb pressed a few more buttons, and raised the mobile to his ear.

It was answered almost immediately.

Lamb said, ‘I’m afraid he can’t come to the phone right now.’

And then he said, ‘We need to talk.’