Slow Horses: Slough House Thriller 1

11

DOWN A QUIET street in Islington – its front doors perched atop flights of stone steps; some with pillars standing sentry; some with Tiffany windows above – Robert Hobden walked, raincoat flapping in the night wind. It was after midnight. Some of the houses were dressed in darkness; from others, light peeped from behind thick curtains; and Hobden could imagine the chink of cutlery, and of glasses meeting together in toasts. Halfway down the street, he found the house he was after.

There were lights on. Again, he caught an imaginary murmur from a successful dinner party: by now, they’d be on to the brandy. But that didn’t matter: lights or not, he’d still be ringing the bell – leaning on it, in fact, until the door opened. This took less than a minute.

‘Yes?’

It was a sleek man speaking, dark hair brushed back from a high forehead. He had piercing brown eyes which were focused on Hobden. Dark suit, white shirt. Butler? Perhaps. It didn’t matter.

‘Is Mr Judd in?’

‘It’s very late, sir.’

‘Funnily enough,’ Hobden said, ‘I knew that. Is he in?’

‘Who shall I say, sir?’

‘Hobden. Robert Hobden.’

The door closed.

Hobden turned and faced the street. The houses opposite seemed to tilt towards his gaze; the effect of their height, and the overhead clouds scudding against a velvet backdrop. His heartbeat was curiously steady. Not long ago he’d come as close to death as he’d ever been, and yet a calm had settled upon him. Or maybe he was calm because he’d come close to death, and so was unlikely to do so again tonight. A matter of statistics.

He didn’t know for sure the intruder had meant to kill him. It had been confused – one moment he’d been pacing the room, waiting for a phone call that wouldn’t come; the next there’d been a black-masked stranger demanding his laptop in an urgent whisper. He must have picked his way through the door. It was all noise and fear, the man waving a gun, and then another intrusion, another stranger, and then somehow they were all outside and there was blood on the pavement and …

Hobden had run. He didn’t know who’d been shot, and didn’t care. He’d run. How long since he’d done that? Back when he’d had urgent places to be, he’d have taken a taxi. So before long his lungs felt fit to burst, but still he’d pounded away, feet slapping pavement like wide flat fish, the juddering shock reverberating up to his teeth. Round one corner, then another. He’d been living in London’s armpit for longer than he cared to think about: still, he was lost within minutes. Didn’t dare look back. Couldn’t tell where his own footfalls stopped and another’s might start; two loops of sound interlocking like Olympic circles.

At last, heaving, he’d come to a crumpled halt in a shop doorway where the usual city smells lurked: dirt and spoilt fat and cigarette ends, and always, always, the smell of winos’ piss. Only then had he established that nobody was following. There were only the late-night London ghosts, who came out when the citizens were tucked up in bed, and anyone still on the streets was fair game.

‘Got a light, mate?’

He’d surprised himself with the ferocity of his reply: ‘Just fuck off, all right? Just fuck off!’

You could say this for the mad, at night; they recognised the madder. The man had slunk away, and Hobden had recovered his breath – filled his lungs with that obnoxious stew of smells – and moved on.

He couldn’t go back to his flat. Not now; maybe never. This was an oddly cheering thought. Wherever he went, he wasn’t going back there.

And in fact, there weren’t many places he could go. Everyone needs somewhere where the doors will always open. Hobden didn’t have one – the doors in his life had slammed shut when his name appeared on that list; when, for the first time ever, he’d shuddered to see his name in the papers, no longer the smoothly provocative but the rawly unacceptable – but still, still, there were letterboxes he could whisper through. Favours people owed him. Back then, when the storm was raging, Hobden had kept his mouth shut. There were some who thought this meant he valued their survival over his own. None had made the simple connection: that if they’d been made to suffer the same ostracism he endured, their cause would have been set back years.

Nothing to do with racism, whatever the liberal elite pretended. Nothing to do with hate, or repulsion at the sight of difference. Everything to do with character, and the need for national identity to assert itself. Instead of lying down and accepting this unworkable multiculturalism; this recipe for disaster …

But he hadn’t had time to rehearse unanswerable arguments. He’d needed sanctuary. He’d also needed to get his message across: and if Peter Judd wasn’t going to answer his phone calls, then Peter Judd was going to have to answer his door.

Though Peter Judd, of course, didn’t answer his own door. Certainly not at this time of night, and probably not at any other.

The door opened, and the sleek character reappeared. ‘Mr Judd is not available.’

The absence of sir carried its own echo.

But Hobden had no qualms about blocking the door with his foot. ‘In that case, tell Mr Judd he might have to make himself available first thing in the morning. The red-tops like their front pages laid out by lunchtime. Gives them time to organise the important stuff. You know, girly shots. Gossip columns.’

His foot withdrew, and the door closed.

He thought: who do these people think I am? Do they think I’ll lie on my back, waggle all four legs in the air, while they pretend I’m some stray they never invited home?

Maybe two minutes; maybe three. He didn’t count. Again, he studied the clouds whipping elsewhere, and the looming roofs opposite threatening to come crashing down.

Next time the door opened, no words were spoken. Mr Sleek simply stepped to one side, his demeanour suggesting he’d drawn the word grudging in a post-dinner game of charades.

Hobden was shown downstairs, past the drawing room, from behind whose closed door came the soft murmur of happiness. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d attended a dinner party, though he’d probably been discussed at a few since.

Downstairs was the kitchen, which was about the size of Hobden’s flat, and more carefully outfitted: wood and gleaming enamel, with a marble block forming a coffin-sized island in its centre. Pitiless overhead lighting would have shown up streaks of grease or splashes of sauce, but there were none, even now: the dishwasher hummed, and glasses were assembled along one surface, but it all looked like a tidy representation of a party’s aftermath in a catalogue dedicated to polite living. From stainless steel hooks on a rail hung shiny pans, each with their sole purpose; one for boiling eggs, another for scrambling them, and so on. A row of olive oil bottles, ordered by region, occupied a shelf. He still had a journalist’s eye, Robert Hobden. Depending on who he was profiling, he’d take these things as evidence of middle-class certainty, or mail-ordered props intended to buffer up just such an image. On the other hand, he wasn’t writing profiles any more. And if he was, no one would print them.

Sleek stood by the door, pointedly not leaving Hobden alone.

Hobden drifted to the far side of the room; leant against the sink.

He wasn’t writing profiles any more, but if he were, and if his current host were his target, he’d be bound to start with the name. Peter Judd. PJ to his friends, and everyone else. Fluffy-haired and youthful at forty-eight, and with a vocabulary peppered with archaic expostulations – Balderdash! Tommy-rot!! Oh my giddy aunt!!! – Peter Judd had long established himself as the unthreatening face of the old-school right, popular enough with the Great British Public, which thought him an amiable idiot, to make a second living outside Parliament as a rent-a-quote-media-whore-cum-quiz-show-panel-favourite, and to get away with minor peccadilloes like dicking his kids’ nanny, robbing the taxman blind, and giving his party leader conniptions with off-script flourishes. (‘Damn fine city,’ he’d remarked on a trip to Paris. ‘Probably worth defending next time.’) Not everyone who’d worked with him thought him a total buffoon, and some who’d witnessed him lose his temper suspected him of political savvy, but by and large PJ seemed happy with the image he’d either fostered or been born with: a loose cannon with a floppy haircut and a bicycle. And here he was now, bursting through the kitchen door with an alacrity that had Mr Sleek making a sharp sideways step to avoid being flattened.

‘Robert Hobden!’ he cried.

‘PJ.’

‘Robert. Rob – Rob! How are you?’

‘I’m not so bad, PJ. Yourself?’

‘Oh, of course. Seb, take Robert’s coat, would you?’

‘I won’t stay long—’

‘But long enough to remove your coat! That’s just dandy, that’s just fine.’ This to Seb, if that was Sleek’s name. ‘You can leave us now.’ The kitchen door swung closed. PJ’s tone didn’t alter. ‘What the fuck are you doing here, you stupid fucking cunt?’

It reminded him of darker days; of missions you might not come back from. He’d always come back from them, obviously, but there were others who hadn’t. Whether the difference lay in the mission or the men, there was no way of knowing.

Tonight, he expected to come back. But he already had one body on the floor and another in a hospital bed, a pretty high casualty rate when he wasn’t even running an op.

The meet was by the canal, near where the towpath came to an end and the water disappeared inside a long tunnel. Lamb had chosen it because it cut down on directions of approach, and he didn’t trust Diana Taverner. For the same reason, he got there first. It was approaching two. A quarter moon was blotted now and then by passing clouds. A house across the water was lit, all three storeys, and he could hear chatter and occasional laughter from smokers in the garden. Some people threw parties midweek. Jackson Lamb kept tabs on his department’s body count.

She came from the Angel end, her approach signalled by the tapping of her heels on the path.

‘Are you alone?’ she asked.

He spread his arms as if to measure the stupidity of her question. As he did so his shirt came untucked, and night air scratched his belly.

She looked beyond him, at the treed slope leading up to the road. Then back at him. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’

‘I lent you an agent,’ he said. ‘She’s in hospital.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Lloyd Webber-grade, you said. One step up from sharpening pencils. But now she’s got a bullet in her head.’

‘Lamb,’ she said. ‘The job was the other day. Whatever’s happened to her since, that’s hardly—’

‘Don’t even bother. She was shot outside Hobden’s place. By Jed Moody, intentionally or otherwise. When you’re not co-opting my team, you’re subverting them. You gave Moody a mobile phone. What else did you give him? An earful of promises? A ticket to his future?’

Taverner said, ‘Check the rulebook, Lamb. You run Slough House, and God knows, nobody’s looking to take that away. But I’m head of ops, which means directing personnel. All personnel. Yours or anyone else’s.’

Jackson Lamb farted.

‘God, you’re a vile specimen.’

‘So I’m told,’ he said. ‘Okay, say you’re right, and this is none of my business. What do I do about the body on my staircase? Call in the Dogs?’

If he hadn’t had it before, he had her attention now.

‘Moody?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘He’s dead?’

‘The proverbial dodo.’

Across the water, the smokers fell upon a joke of unusual hilarity. The canal’s surface was ruffled by the wind.

Lamb said, ‘You wanted to subcontract, you could have chosen more carefully. Jesus, I mean, Jed Moody? Even when he was any good he wasn’t any good. And it’s a long time since he was any good.’

‘Who killed him?’

‘You want to hear something funny? He tripped over his own feet.’

‘That’ll sound good before Limitations. Though you might want to leave out the bit about it being funny.’

Lamb threw back his head and laughed a silent laugh, while leaves’ shadows flickered across his wobbling face. He looked like someone Goya might have painted. ‘Good. Very good. Limitations, yes. So we call in the Dogs? Hell, it’s a death. Why don’t I call the plod? As it happens, I’ve a mobile with me.’ He grinned at her. His teeth, mostly different shapes, shone wet.

‘Okay.’

‘The coroner. His turf, right?’

‘You’ve made your point, Lamb.’

He went fumbling in his pockets, and for a horrified moment she thought he was unzipping himself, but he produced a packet of Marlboro instead. He drew one with his teeth, and as an afterthought waved the pack in her direction.

Taverner took one. Always accept hospitality. It forms a bond. Makes you allies.

Of course, whoever had taught her that hadn’t been thinking of Jackson Lamb.

He said, ‘Talk.’

‘It’s good to see you too, PJ.’

‘Have you lost your cocking mind?’

‘You’ve not been taking my calls.’

‘Of course I haven’t, you’re fucking toxic. Did anyone see you arrive?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What kind of prick answer is that?’

‘The only prick answer I’ve got!’ Hobden shouted.

The pitch of his voice caused something metallic to ring.

It gave PJ pause, or caused him to appear that it did. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. Well. Crikey. I suppose you’ve got a reason.’

‘Someone tried to kill me,’ Hobden said.

‘To kill you? Yes, well. Lots of fanatics about. I mean, you’re not the most popular—’

‘This wasn’t a fanatic, PJ. It was a spook.’

‘A spook.’

‘We’re talking assassination.’

Judd’s lapse into his public persona didn’t survive the word. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. What was it, a close encounter on a zebra crossing? I’ve got guests, Hobden. The fucking Minister for Culture’s upstairs, and he’s got the attention span of a gnat, so I need to—’

‘He was a spook. They’ve been following me. He broke into my flat and waved a gun around and—somebody got shot. If you don’t believe me, turn the news on. Or on second thoughts, don’t – there’ll be a D. But call the Home Secretary, he’ll know. Blood on the pavement. Outside my flat.’

PJ weighed it up: the likelihood of any of this having happened, as against Hobden’s appearance in his kitchen. ‘Okay,’ he said at length. ‘But you live at the arse end of nowhere, Robert. I mean, home invasions, they must be weekly events. What makes this different?’

Hobden shook his head. ‘You’re not listening.’ Then shook his head again: he hadn’t laid out the whole story. That business at Max’s the other morning; the spilt coffee. Nothing to it at the time, but since the gunman’s appearance Hobden had replayed recent history, and concluded that this evening had been a culmination, not a one-off. When he’d picked up his keys to leave the café, his memory stick had fallen loose and bounced onto the table. It had never done that before. Why hadn’t a warning bell rung?

‘They tried to take my files. They want to see how much I know.’

And now PJ took on a new seriousness; a side the public never got to see. ‘Your files?’

‘They didn’t get them. They copied my memory stick, but—’

‘What the fuck do your files contain, Hobden?’

‘—it’s a dummy. Just numbers. With any luck they’ll think it’s a code, waste their time trying to—’

‘What. Exactly. Do your files contain?’

Hobden raised his hands to eye-level; examined them a moment or two. They shook. ‘See that? I could have died. They could have killed me.’

‘Give me strength.’ And now Peter Judd started ransacking his kitchen, morally certain there’d be alcohol somewhere, or what was the point of it? A bottle of vodka appeared. Cooking vodka, would that be? Did people cook with vodka? Was PJ muttering any of this aloud, or did his body language shout it while he located a glass and splashed out a generous measure?

‘So.’ Handing the glass to Hobden. ‘What do your files contain? Names?’ He barked the sudden laugh TV audiences liked. ‘My name wouldn’t be there anywhere.’ Underneath the bark, the hint of bite. ‘Would it?’

‘No names. Nothing like that.’

This was good news, but prompted a follow-up. ‘So what are you on about?’

Hobden said, ‘Five’s running an op. I’ve known about it for a while. Or not known about it, exactly – known something was going to happen, but not precisely what.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Start making sense.’

‘I was at the Frontline. One night last year.’

‘They still let you in?’

A flash of anger. ‘I’ve paid my subs.’ He finished his vodka, held the glass out for more. ‘Diana Taverner was there, with one of her leftie journalist pals.’

‘I’ve never been sure what disturbs me more,’ Peter Judd said, filling Hobden’s glass. ‘The fact that MI5 is run by women, or the fact that everybody seems to know this. I mean, didn’t it used to be called the secret service?’

Pretty sure he’d heard this riff already, probably on a panel show, Hobden ignored it. ‘It was the night of the Euro elections, and there’d been BNP gains. Remember that?’

‘Well, of course I do.’

‘And that was the subject of discussion. This hack, Spencer his name is, got rolling drunk, started spewing off the usual nonsense about how the fascists were taking over, and when were Taverner’s lot going to start doing something about it. And she said …’

Here Hobden screwed his eyes shut while summoning up history.

‘Something like yes, that’s under control. Or on the agenda. Christ, I don’t remember the exact words, but she gave him to understand it was happening. That she was setting something up not just against the BNP, but against what she’d call the extreme right. And we all know who that includes.’

‘She said this in your hearing?’

‘They didn’t know I was there.’

‘Second Desk at MI5 announced her intention to sting the BNP, to sting the right, and this happened in a bar?’

‘They were drunk, okay? Look, it happened. Is happening. Haven’t you seen the news?’ PJ eyed him coldly. ‘The kid in the cellar?’

‘I know what you’re referring to. You’re saying that’s it? That’s a Service op?’

‘Well, it’s a big bloody coincidence, don’t you think? That I’m being hassled the same week it happens, that somebody tries to kill me the same day—’

‘If it is,’ PJ said, ‘it’s the single most cack-handed intelligence operation I’ve ever heard of, and that includes the Bay of fucking Pigs.’ He glanced down at the bottle in his hands, then hunted around for a second glass. The nearest candidate was an unrinsed stem, waiting by the sink. He poured a slug into it, and put the bottle down. ‘Is this why you were calling?’

‘What do you think?’

PJ slapped him hard, the noise ricocheting round the kitchen. ‘Don’t talk back to me, you little creep. Remember who’s who. You’re a one-time journalist whose name stinks from here to Timbuktu. And I’m a member of Her Majesty’s loyal cabinet.’ He examined his wet shirt cuff. ‘And now you’ve made me spill my drink.’

Hobden, his voice as shaky as a pea in a whistle, said, ‘You hit me!’

‘Yes, well. Tempers running high. Oh, for God’s sake.’ He poured more vodka into Hobden’s glass. Hobden was a toad, but not an ignorant toad. It had been a mistake to forget that. Still, though: PJ was furious. ‘You were calling me because you think this–this–this piece of theatre has been organised by MI5 to discredit the right – you’ve barely finished explaining that you’re under surveillance, and you’re calling me? Have you lost your fucking mind?’

‘Somebody had to know. Who was I supposed to call?’

‘Not me.’

‘We’ve known each other for years—’

‘We are not friends, Robert. Don’t make that mistake. You always treated me fairly in print, and I respect that, but let’s face it, you’re a fucking has-been, and it’s no longer appropriate to be associated with you. So take it somewhere else.’

‘Where do you suggest?’

‘Well, your chums in the British Patriotic Party spring to mind.’

The red weal PJ’s hand had left on Hobden’s cheek darkened. ‘Chums? My chums? When that list appeared on the net, who do you think they blamed? Half the death threats I get come from people I supported! As far as they were concerned, if it weren’t for me, they’d have been left alone. Because we all know who was responsible for posting that list. The same bunch of leftish criminals who’re hassling me now!’

‘Maybe so. But I’m still not sure why that means you have to turn up on my doorstep in the middle of the night …’

‘Because this has got to be stopped,’ Hobden said.

Lamb said, ‘Talk.’ Then flicked a lighter in front of Taverner’s face like a threat.

She leant forward for the flame. Her seventh of the day: drawing smoke into her lungs was growing familiar. She breathed out. Said, ‘Do you ever wonder why we do what we do?’

‘Taverner, it’s after two, and my team’s smaller than it was yesterday. Let’s get on with it, all right?’

‘There’ve been fifteen failed terrorist plots since 7/7, Jackson. That must be true. I read it in the paper.’

‘Good for us.’

‘It was on page eleven, below the fold.’

Lamb said, ‘If you wanted to be famous, maybe the secret service wasn’t the right path.’

‘This isn’t about me.’

Jackson Lamb suspected it was very much about her.

‘Our failures get more press than our successes. You of all people should know that. The dodgy dossier? Weapons of mass destruction? Okay, that was Six, but you think anyone cares?’ Her words were coming faster now, each leaving its tobacco trace in the air between them. ‘There was a poll lately. Forty-something per cent of the public think Five had a hand in the death of David Kelly. Forty-something per cent. How do you think that makes me feel?’

Lamb said, ‘It makes you feel like doing something about it. Let me take a wild guess. You’ve set up some half-arsed scheme involving a neo-fascist group kidnapping a Muslim kid and threatening to chop his head off on YouTube. Except it’s not gunna happen because one of the group is one of your guys. So when Five step in for a last-moment rescue, you’ll have all the airplay in the world underlining what a ruthlessly efficient organisation it is.’ He blew smoke. ‘Close?’

‘Half-arsed?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. We’ve got one dead and one in intensive care, and that’s with you trying to keep this whole thing out of the papers. And in case you hadn’t forgotten, they’re both mine. Or were.’

‘I’m sorry about Sid Baker.’

‘Great.’

‘It sounds like Moody tripped on his dick, and I’m not taking responsibility for that. But I’m sorry about Baker.’

‘I’ll have that marked on her chart. You know, the one clipped to her bed, which shows when her catheter’s changed. Jesus. Did you really think this would work?’

‘It still can.’

‘Crap. The wheels started coming off before you screwed them on. Tell me about Hobden. What makes him a danger?’

‘I don’t know for sure he is.’

‘I didn’t come here to fence. You had his files swiped and his rubbish collected. Why?’

Briefly, she touched her forehead with the palm of her hand. When she looked back at Lamb, he felt he could almost see through her skin. Veins stretched tight over gleaming bone. Tap her with a fingernail, she’d shatter. She said: ‘Do you know Dave Spencer?’

‘Guardian hack?’

‘Used to be. Got his cards. But anyway, yes. He and I, we’re friends. Does that sound odd? Me, friends with a pinko journalist?’

Nothing sounded odd to Lamb; except, perhaps, that people had friends.

‘We were in the Frontline Club the night of the Euro elections. The night the BNP won two seats, remember?’

Lamb nodded.

‘We watched the results coming in, and Dave went predictably mental. He’s a drinker. Another reason they sacked him. Anyway, he started railing on, as if it was my fault. What about your lot, he kept saying. Isn’t it time you took these pipsqueak fascists out of the game?’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Lamb said.

‘I don’t know what I told him. Anything to get him to pipe down. But I said stuff, yes. That they were on the agenda. Something like that. Non-specific. Not for attribution.’

‘And all in Hobden’s hearing.’

‘Well, it’s not like I knew he was there! He was lurking. He was low profile.’

‘Of course he bloody was. He’s a fucking pariah.’ Lamb shook his head. ‘So you’ve got a journo with far-right sympathies on the earie for an op against the far right. Who’s already riled by having his extremist leanings exposed, and the Service had a hand in that, right? No wonder you wanted to find out how much he knew before kicking your ball into touch. What did his files show?’

‘Sod all. Pi, to about half a million places. And you thought we were paranoid.’

Lamb just thought he was careful. What Hobden had done, he’d have done too, the way a tourist carries a dummy wallet: a couple of bucks for the local hoods, with the plastic and the travellers’ cheques folded into a sock. ‘So you sent Moody to what, double check? Lift his hard drive?’ He paused a beat. ‘He was carrying a gun.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Lamb, you think I authorised that?’

‘At this point, I’m beyond surprising.’

She said, ‘He was supposed to take the laptop. He was supposed to make it look like a junkie theft.’

‘We’ll add that to Moody’s list of career successes, then.’ Without warning, he spat noisily. Then said, ‘So now Sid Baker’s on a table, having a bullet removed from her head. As for Moody, even he must have realised things were beyond screwed. So he tried to tidy up, which involved removing the bug he’d planted in my office. And trod on his dick in the dark, like you said.’

‘Was he alone at the time?’

‘We’re all alone in the end, don’t you think? Those final moments?’ Jackson Lamb flicked the dying stub of his cigarette into the dark canal. ‘Either way, it’s over. For him and for you. For this whole operation.’

‘It can still work.’

‘No it can’t. If Hobden was clueless earlier, he isn’t now. Oh, and he’s on the loose. Did I mention that? Pulling the plug is your only choice.’

‘Hobden’s a joker. The only rags that’ll print him have names like UK Watch, and their circulation’s limited to those already frothing at the mouth.’

‘I’m not talking about after the event, I’m talking about tonight. These splinter groups, the BPP, the UK Nazis, the other fuckers, they may hate each other’s guts, but not half as much as they hate everyone else. Hobden’ll get the word out, if he hasn’t already. Pull your agent in. Now. Or Moody and Baker won’t be tonight’s only casualties.’

She turned away.

‘Taverner?’

‘They’re a sealed group. There’s no input from anywhere else.’

‘You wish. But look at how you’ve managed so far. This thing couldn’t have fallen apart faster if you’d bought it at Ikea, and you’re the professional. You think the jokers your agent’s entrapped in this farce have kept their mouths shut? Any minute now, one of them’s going to get a call from someone who knows someone who knows Hobden, telling them they’ve been set up, which means two people are in extreme danger right now. Your agent and this kid.’ Lamb blinked. ‘Who’s just some unlucky bastard who’s the wrong colour, right?’

She didn’t reply.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Lamb said. ‘How could this get worse?’

‘Because it’s got to be stopped,’ Hobden said. ‘Don’t you see?’

‘If it’s a Service op, obviously it’ll be stopped,’ Peter Judd pointed out. ‘Five are hardly going to let anyone be beheaded on the internet. The whole point—’

‘I know what the whole point is. It’s for everyone to forget about bombs on the Tube, and all those dawn raids that finish in acquittals. No, we’ll have action footage of our brave spooks rescuing some poor brown-skinned boy, and coincidentally painting the right as a bunch of mad murdering bastards into the bargain. That’s what I want stopped. What about you? Do you want to let them get away with it?’

‘Given their track record, I rather doubt they will. But you still haven’t explained why you’re coming to me with this.’

‘Because we both know the tide’s turning. The decent people in this country are sick to death of being held hostage by mad liberals in Brussels, and the sooner we take control over our own future, our own borders …’

‘Are you seriously lecturing me?’

‘It’ll happen, and within the lifetime of your government. We both know that. Not this Parliament, but probably the next. By which time we both know where you expect to be living, and it won’t be Islington, will it?’ Hobden had grown alive again. Eyes bright. Breathing normal. ‘It’ll be Downing Street.’

‘Yes. Well.’ The effing and blinding PJ of ten minutes ago – the PJ who’d slapped Hobden – left the room; in his place was the bumbly figure familiar from countless broadcasts and not a few YouTube moments. ‘Obviously, if called upon to serve, I’ll leave my plough.’

‘And you’ll want to take your party further right, but what if that ground’s already staked out? And what if one of the occupying groups is mostly famous for attempting a prime-time execution?’

‘Now you’re being ridiculous. Not even the muckiest rakers of your former profession are going to equate Her Majesty’s Government with—’

‘Well, they might if they learn of your connection with one of those groups.’

And now they’d come to the meat of the matter.

Hobden said, ‘Don’t imagine that the reason I never mentioned it in print was that I thought it a youthful indiscretion. I just never wanted to hear you deny it in public. You’re PM material. With you at the helm, this country can be great again. And those of us who believe in strong government don’t want to hear you apologising for the causes you truly espouse.’

PJ placed his glass very carefully on the counter. ‘I’ve never had any truck with extremism,’ he said levelly. Now he was Peter Judd, the people’s pundit: his tone precisely the one he used on TV when he was about to put someone right while indicating that few people had ever been wronger. ‘As it happens, I did write a report on the activities of some fringe right groups in the early nineties, in the course of researching which I attended one or two meetings.’ He leant closer, so Hobden could feel his breath. ‘And do you really think you have any credibility?’ His voice was velvet. ‘You’ll think the car crash your life has become is a fucking feather bed. Compared to what’ll happen next.’

‘I don’t want to cause a scandal. That’s the last thing I want. But if I did—’

Slowly, carefully, Hobden drained his own glass.

‘But if I did, I don’t need credibility. I have something far more useful.’

He set his empty glass next to PJ’s.

‘I have a photograph.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. How could this get worse?’

Taverner said, ‘It’s not simply about improving Five’s reputation. There’s a war on, Jackson. Even from Slough House you must have noticed. And we need all the allies we can get.’

‘Who is he?’

‘It’s not who he is, it’s who his uncle is.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ Lamb said. ‘Don’t tell me.’

‘His mother’s brother is Mahmud Gul.’

‘Jesus wept.’

‘General Mahmud Gul. Currently Second Desk at Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.’

‘Yes. Thank you. I know who he is. Jesus Christ.’

‘Think of it as bringing communities together,’ Taverner said. ‘When we rescue Hassan, we make a friend. You think we can’t use one? In Pakistan’s secret service?’

‘And have you given the flipside any thought? If this goes wrong, and Christ knows it’s not gone right yet, you’ve assassinated his nephew.’

‘It’s not going to go wrong.’

‘Your faith would be touching if your stupidity didn’t make me retch. Pull the plug. Now.’

Another strain of laughter wafted over the canal, but sounded less than genuine; driven by alcohol rather than wit.

She said, ‘Okay, suppose we do that. Finish it. Tonight.’ Her eyes momentarily focused on something beyond Lamb’s shoulder, then returned to his face. ‘A day early. Doesn’t mean it can’t still work.’

‘When I hear anyone say that,’ Lamb began, but she spoke over him.

‘In fact, it’ll work better. Not a last-minute rescue. We get to the kid twenty-four hours before he’s due for the chop, and why’s that? Because we’re good. Because we know what we’re doing. Because you know what you’re doing.’

Lamb appeared to choke. ‘You’re out of your mind,’ he said, once he could talk.

‘It works. Why wouldn’t it?’

‘Well, for a start, there’s no paper trail. No investigation. How’m I supposed to have found him, divine inspiration? He was taken in bloody Leeds.’

‘They brought him here. They’re not far away.’

‘They’re in London?’

‘They’re not far away,’ she repeated. ‘As for the paper trail, we’ll work up a legend. Hell, we’re halfway there already. Hobden’s our point of entry. It was your team burned him, took his files.’

‘Which were a pile of cack,’ he reminded her.

‘Not necessarily. Not once we’ve decided what they really say.’

Enough light fell on Taverner’s face for Lamb to see she meant every word. She was probably mad. It wouldn’t be the first time the job had done that, and being a woman couldn’t help. If she was thinking straight, she’d have noticed the flaw in her reasoning, which was that he, Jackson Lamb, couldn’t give a flying fart for whatever she was offering.

Or maybe she had. ‘Think a minute. About what it could mean.’

‘I’m thinking there’s a body on my staircase.’

‘He fell on the stairs. An empty bottle’s the only prop you’ll need.’ Her whispers were urgent now; they were talking of death, of other people’s death. They were also talking of career-ending moments, and maybe of something else. ‘Redemption.’

‘Excuse the fuck out of me?’

‘Rehabilitation.’

‘I don’t need rehab. I’m happy where I am.’

‘Then you’re the only one. Christ, Jed Moody would have given his left bollock to be let back inside.’

‘And look where that got him.’

‘So he proved he was a slow horse. Are the others as bad?’

Lamb pretended to think about it. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Probably.’

‘It doesn’t have to be that way. Do this, and you get to be a hero. Again. So do the boys and girls. Just think, the slow horses back among the thoroughbreds. You don’t want to give them that chance?’

‘Not especially.’

‘Okay, so what about the downside? Was Moody really on his lonesome when he broke his neck?’ She put her head on one side. ‘Or did he have company?’

Lamb showed his teeth. ‘We’ve covered this. Call in the Dogs. When they’ve finished tearing you apart, they’ll maybe have strength to pick at the rest of us.’ He yawned a cavernous yawn he didn’t bother to conceal. ‘I’m not bothered either way.’

‘No matter who gets swatted.’

‘You said it.’

‘What if it’s Standish?’

Lamb shook his head. ‘You’re tossing darts, seeing what you might hit. Standish isn’t involved. She’s at home, asleep. I guarantee it.’

‘I’m not talking about tonight.’ And this time she had the sense that a dart had landed close. She could tell by Lamb’s body language; a relaxation of the muscles around his mouth, a signal designed to indicate absence of care. ‘Catherine Standish? She came this close to a treason charge. You think that went away?’

His eyes were black in the moonlight. ‘That’s not a can of worms you want to open.’

‘Do I look like I’m keen? You’re right, this evening’s out of control. I want it over, quickly and quietly. With someone I trust at the reins. And like it or not, Slough House is part of this now. You’ll all get turned over. And poor Catherine … Well, she doesn’t even know the trouble she was nearly in, does she?’

Lamb surveyed the canal. Lights swayed on its surface, reflections from stray sources. A few houseboats were shrouded in darkness, their cabin roofs home to potted plants, some trailing green fingers as far as the water, and carefully stacked piles of bicycles. Evidence of an alternative lifestyle, or a hidey-hole for alternative weekends. Who cared?

He said, ‘It was before your time. But you know why I’m at Slough House.’

It wasn’t a question.

Diana Taverner said, ‘I’ve heard three versions.’

‘The bad one? That’s the truth.’

‘I guessed as much.’

He leant forward. ‘You’ve been using Slough House as your personal toy box, and that pisses me off. Are we clear on that?’

She gave the dart another push. ‘You care about them, don’t you?’

‘No, I think they’re a bunch of fucking losers.’ He came closer. ‘But they’re my losers. Not yours. So I’ll do this thing, but with conditions attached. Moody disappears. Baker was a street victim. Anyone who’s with me tonight is fireproof. Oh, and you’re everlastingly in my debt. Which, you’d better believe, will be reflected in expense sheets evermore.’

‘We can all come out of this covered in glory,’ she said, unwisely.

But Lamb rejected the seven or eight probable rejoinders; simply shook his head in mute disbelief, and looked again at the canal’s surface where broken shards of light bobbed in quiet disarray.

‘I have a photograph,’ Hobden said. ‘It shows you throwing a Nazi salute, with your arm round Nicholas Frost. He’s forgotten now, of course, but he was a leading light in the National Front at the time. Stabbed to death at a rally a few years later, which is just as well. He was the sort who gave the right a bad name.’

A long moment later, PJ said, ‘That photograph was destroyed.’

‘I can believe it.’

‘So destroyed it might be said never to have existed.’

‘In which case, you have nothing to worry about.’

The various PJs who’d so far been present – the urbane, the bumbly, the vicious, the cruel – melded into one, and for a moment the real Peter Judd peered out from the overgrown schoolboy, and what he was doing was what he was always doing: weighing up who he was talking to in terms of the threat they posed, and assessing how that threat might cleanly be dealt with. ‘Cleanly’ meant without repercussion. If the photograph still existed, and was in Hobden’s possession, the consequences would be potentially catastrophic. Hobden might be bluffing. But that he even knew of the photo meant PJ’s needle had edged into the red.

First, neutralise the consequences.

Deal with the threat later.

He said, ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to get the word out.’

‘The word?’

‘That this whole set-up, this supposed execution, is a fake. That the Voice of Albion, who’ve never been more than a bunch of streetfighters, have been infiltrated by the intelligence services. That they’ve been made the vehicle for a PR exercise, and they’re not going to come out of it well.’ Hobden paused. ‘I don’t care what happens to the idiots. But the damage they’re doing to our cause is incalculable.’

PJ let that our slide past. Our cause. ‘And I’m to, what? Announce this in the House?’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t got contacts. The right word from you, in the right ear, will get a lot further than mine will.’ His voice became urgent. ‘I wouldn’t involve you if I could deal with this myself. But like I said. They’re not my chums.’

‘It’s probably too late already,’ PJ said.

‘We have to try.’ Exhausted suddenly, Hobden wiped a hand across his face. ‘They can say it was a joke that got out of hand. That they never had any intention of spilling blood.’

There was commotion outside; voices calling down the stairs. PJ? Where have you got to, dammit? And also: Darling? Where are you? This last with more than a hint of tetchiness.

‘I’ll be right up,’ PJ called. And then: ‘You’d better go.’

‘You’ll make the call?’

‘I’ll see to it.’

Something in his glare dissuaded Hobden from taking it further.

Lamb left. Taverner watched until his bulky shape merged with the larger shadows, and then for another two minutes before allowing herself to relax. She checked her watch. Two thirty-five.

A quick mental calculation: the deadline – Hassan’s deadline – had about twenty-six hours to run.

Ideally, Diana Taverner would have played that string out longer; waited until every TV screen in the land was running a clock before she set the rescue wheels turning. But tonight would have to do. And anyway, the bright spin she’d put on it – that this was not a last-minute rescue, but a controlled, panic-free operation – would work fine. Never any danger. That’s what the report would conclude; that Five had everything under wraps from the start. So, come morning, Hassan would be safely home; Taverner’s agent would be out from deep cover; and she herself would be accepting congratulations, watching the Service’s cachet skyrocket. And as a bonus, there was no chance of Ingrid Tearney getting back from DC in time to steal her glory.

But it was no great comfort that matters now lay in the hands of Jackson Lamb. Lamb was worse than a Service screw-up; he was a loose cannon, who’d wilfully slipped his moorings. When he’d asked if she knew why he was at Slough House, he’d been threatening her; asking if she knew what he’d once done. If things went screwy tonight, Lamb wouldn’t leave it to the Dogs to clean things up. He’d wipe the slate himself.

In which case, a contingency plan was advisable.

She fished her mobile out of her pocket; called up a number. It rang five times before being answered. ‘Taverner,’ she said. ‘Sorry to disturb. But I’ve just had a very strange conversation with Jackson Lamb.’

Still talking, she set off down the towpath, and pretty soon was swallowed by the shadows.

It was late, it was late, but the dinner party was still going strong. The odd line of coke was helping. PJ had resolved to let this pass, but would be having words with the guilty parties, strong words, before the week was out. There were jinks you could enjoy in opposition, and higher jinks you could get away with in government, but once inside the cabinet, there were guidelines to be observed. None of the puppies partaking were at PJ’s exalted level, of course, but it showed him deep disrespect to imagine that he hadn’t noticed.

But they could wait. In the half-hour since Hobden’s departure, PJ had been assessing the deeps and shallows of his story, and had decided it was probably true. Even in the webbed-up world, where conspiracy theories spread faster than a blogger’s acne, PJ had no difficulty believing that elements within MI5 might have concocted this piece of Grand Guignol, and it even impressed him, a bit. A little less cloak-and-dagger and a bit more reality TV: that was the way to catch the public imagination. And you couldn’t get more real than spilling blood.

What he hadn’t decided was what his reaction should be. For all Hobden’s doom-mongering, PJ felt that the electorate could distinguish between the establishment version of right-wing and the kind cooked up on sink estates. Besides, follow Hobden’s reasoning and it made no difference whether the plot succeeded or failed: either way, the far-right came out as murderous bastards. And given that PJ didn’t care if one, at best, second-generation citizen lived or died, and that he intended one day to be in a position where the strength of the intelligence services was of immediate personal concern to him, the deck was weighted against his lifting a finger.

But then there was the photo. If it existed. Here in the privacy of PJ’s head, there was little point pretending it had never done so, but whether it could still be described in such terms was a different matter, one which a serious amount of money, a fair few promises, and one act of violence had theoretically resolved. At this distance there was little chance that a copy survived, but allowing for the possibility that it did, there were few more likely candidates for finding it than Robert Hobden. Even leaving aside his far-right connections, Hobden’s career had been as remarkable for its uncovering of political sins as it had been for its smug pomposity, and before his fall from grace, those in power trod round him with care. And the fact that he obviously didn’t know everything made it more likely that he wasn’t bluffing – if he’d had even an inkling that Nicholas Frost’s death at a National Front rally had been other than it seemed, he’d have raised the matter. So assume, PJ thought, that the photo existed; assume Hobden had a copy. Where did that leave matters? Matters meaning PJ?

It left him plastering the cracks. He pushed his chair back, waved an apologetic hand in his wife’s direction; mouthed ‘Telephone’ at her. She’d think this was to do with the hostage situation, and it was, of course. It was.

He found Sebastian on the upstairs landing, where he sat looking out at the quiet street. Factotum was one of the words used to describe Sebastian; PJ had also heard majordomo and even batman. That last one was quite good, in fact. Caped crusader. Dark deeds, in the cause of righteousness. Righteousness also meaning PJ.

If the photo existed: well. There were guidelines to be observed at cabinet level, of course, but one of those was the bottom line itself, which simply stated that you did not allow others to hold a blade at your throat.

Those in power had once trod round Robert Hobden with care. These days, rolling right over him was an option. But first, he’d plaster those cracks; get the word out, as Hobden had wanted. PJ did not maintain personal relations with those who dwelt so far beyond the pale, but then, he didn’t need to. What’s a batman for?

‘Seb,’ he said. ‘I need you to make some calls.’