Slow Horses

Chapter 9

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 cityroad 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. 56 deaths on the tube, its argument ran, = 56 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’s having told his nurse he was an orphan. In fact, the only thing that galvanized 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 balked at that. The O.B. was as adept at destroying true identities as he was at creating false ones.

But 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 recognized 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 recognized 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 Christine’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 on to 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 realizing 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 recognized, 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 recognize 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 recognize 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. ‘Ho 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 recognized 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.’

Chapter 10

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 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 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 recognized 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 organize 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 coffinsized 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 GBP, 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 tax-man 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 on to 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 organized 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 organization 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 authorized 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 realized 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 apologizing 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 papertrail. 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 papertrail, 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 toybox, 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 he 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, neutralize 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.’

Chapter 11

Jed Moody’s body was still on the landing, bleakly lit by a naked bulb. Lamb paid little attention to it on his way up to his office, where he lifted the corkboard from the floor and rehung it on the wall. Then he unlocked a desk drawer and drew out a shoebox. Inside, swaddled in cloth, was a Heckler & Koch. After examining it briefly by the light of the Anglepoise, he slipped it into his overcoat pocket, causing the coat to hang awkwardly. Leaving the shoebox on the desk, and the low lamp burning, he returned downstairs.

‘What happened to the gun?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got it,’ River told him.

Lamb held out a meaty hand, and River surrendered the weapon, which promptly disappeared inside Lamb’s pocket. Curiously, to River’s eye, it seemed to even him up a little.

Lamb glanced down at Moody. ‘Keep an eye on the place, eh?’

The dead man didn’t answer.

Lamb led the way down, lighting a cigarette before they’d reached the street. Outside, its plume of smoke was almost white. ‘Anyone else got a car here?’

Louisa Guy did.

‘Either of you in a state to drive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then follow me.’

‘Where to?’ River asked.

‘You’re with me.’ To the other two, Lamb said, ‘Roupell Street. Know it?’

‘South of the river.’

‘This time of night?’

Lamb said, ‘That supposed to be funny?’

‘What do we do when we get there?’ River asked.

‘We rescue Hassan Ahmed,’ Lamb said. ‘And we all get to be heroes.’

River, Min and Louisa shared a glance.

Lamb said, ‘Is that all right with you? Or did you have other plans?’

They had no other plans.

Larry, Moe and Curly.

Curly, Larry and Moe.

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

You think we give a toss who you are?

For long stretches at a time, Hassan believed that he had stopped thinking. That he was all feeling, no thought. But that was wrong: it was more that his thoughts had become feelings, and were now tumbling round his head like butterflies. His thoughts were fluttering things, impossible to pin down. They led to one thing, then to another, and then to a third, which might be the first thing over again, though it was hard to be sure, as by then he’d forgotten what the first thing had been. Whether the root cause of this was fear or hunger or loneliness, he didn’t know. What was interesting—and this interested him in the same way he might once have been interested in the activities of an ant—was that he had discovered a talent for time travel. For fractions of a second, he was able to cast himself out of this cellar and into a past in which none of this would ever happen.

For instance, he remembered the first time he’d asked his mother about the man in the photo on her bedside table; this obvious soldier, with fine firm features, and a look in his eye suggesting that he too knew the secret of time travel, and was seeing through the camera and into the future itself; a future in which children yet unborn would gaze at his photograph, and wonder who he was.

‘That is your uncle Mahmud,’ he was told.

Hassan had been five or so at the time.

‘Where is he?’ he’d asked.

‘He’s back home. In Pakistan.’

But home didn’t mean Pakistan to Hassan. Home meant where he lived; it meant the house in which he woke up every day with his parents and brothers and sisters, and also the street on which that house was set, and the town that street was part of, and so on. It confused him that for his mother, the word might mean something else. If words meant different things to different people, how could they be trusted?

And if this man was his uncle, why had Hassan never met him?

‘Why doesn’t he visit us?’

Because his uncle was a very busy and important man, who had duties that kept him on the other side of the world.

Information supplied early enough becomes hardwired into the brain, and this nugget had not only satisfied Hassan, but seemed to be the only thing worth saying on the subject. When, years later, he had glimpsed what looked like the same man on the BBC news, a figure in a line of men being introduced to the US President, who’d been on one of his welcome-to-my-world tours, it was simply confirmation of what his mother had told him: that his uncle was a very busy and important man.

And then the flicker of history was gone, and Hassan was back in his cellar.

His uncle was a very busy and important man. Too busy and important ever to visit England; that was the story his younger self had been told. The truth, as his father had told him much later, cast a somewhat different light: his uncle had never visited because he did not approve of his sister’s marriage; did not approve of their secular life. Though the matter of his busyness and importance remained true: his uncle was a high-ranking officer in the Pakistan military.

Was that busy and important enough, he wondered now? Was that important enough for Larry, Curly and Moe?

You think we give a toss who you are?

That was what they had said, but perhaps they had lied. After all, they had assaulted, drugged and kidnapped him; imprisoned him in a damp cellar; coldly informed him they were going to cut his head off. They had given him a bottle of water and a banana, and nothing else. They were bad people. That they were liars was not beyond possibility. And since busyness and importance easily equated with wealth, maybe this was in reality a kidnapping of the garden variety; that for all their threats and bluster, Moe, Curly and Larry’s aim was to screw money from his busy, important uncle, no more. Which made more sense than that they might demand a ransom from his parents, who were busy but not important; comfortable, but not rich. Hassan was almost certain, then, that this must be the case.

You fucking Paki.

Yeah, sure, they said that, but only to keep him scared.

We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web.

But what they meant was: unless your uncle pays the ransom.

Hassan had seen enough movies to know what this meant; the opportunities the police would have to follow the money; the helicopter surveillance. The low-key tracking, followed by a burst of action: shouting and flashing lights. And then the cellar door would open, and a torch-beam light the way down the stairs …

He thought: No. Give up. That’s not going to happen.

And then thought: But what’s the harm in thinking it? How else should he pass the time while waiting for the axe to fall?

And even as these thoughts fought like butterflies in his crowded head, something thumped on the ceiling above him, and voices cried out in anger or surprise—was that violence he heard? He thought it was violence. A brief outburst ending with another thump, while in his head new pictures painted themselves—

A SWAT team had come crashing in

Armed police had stormed the house

His uncle, the soldier, had tracked him down

Any of the above …

And Hassan allowed himself to hope.

Traffic was light, mostly taxis and night-buses. London was a twenty-four-hour city, but only if you counted the things nobody wanted to do, like find a way home in the middle of the night, or head out for a cleaning job in the pitch-dark cold of the morning. Watching through the window, River was trying to get his head round what Lamb had told them before they’d piled into separate cars: that there were three kidnappers. That one was a friendly, but it was anybody’s guess which, or how he’d react.

‘Are they armed?’

‘I’m guessing they’ve got an edged weapon of some sort. They’d look bloody stupid trying to take the kid’s head off with a gherkin.’

‘So why us?’ River asked. ‘Why not a SWAT team? Why not the achievers?’

Lamb didn’t answer.

Through the passenger window River saw a figure curled in a shop doorway under a pyramid of cardboard, but it was gone already; not even a memory. River refocused on his own reflection. His hair was shaggy, and a day’s worth of beard graced his chin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a barber’s. He supposed they’d have shaved Sid’s head first thing. Her head must seem tiny without her hair. She’d look like a Hollywood alien.

His reflection dissolved, and came back when he blinked.

It was all part of the same thing. Hobden, Moody, Hassan Ahmed, Sid being shot—it was all part of somebody else’s game, whose pieces seemed to have fallen into place for Lamb. It had been Lady Di he’d gone out to meet. He hadn’t said so, but who else could it have been? River himself hadn’t laid eyes on Diana Taverner since spending two days tailing her, all those months ago. But Lamb, slow horse or not, had middle-of-the-night parleys with her …

They passed a stationer’s, its familiar logo lit in blue and white, and a connection he’d fumbled for earlier was made.

‘It’s money, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘What is?’

‘In that envelope. The one Moody took from your office. It’s money. It’s your flight fund.’

Lamb raised an eyebrow. ‘Flight fund? Haven’t heard that in a while.’

‘But that’s what it is.’

Lamb said, ‘Oh, right. Your grandfather. That’s where you got it from.’

He nodded to himself, as if that were a problem solved.

And he was right, of course; that’s where River had heard it. Every joe needs a flight fund, the O.B. had said. Couple of grand, couple of hundred, however much it takes. In the straight world, they’d call it fuck-you money. Dammit, I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t tell your grandmother.

River could still remember the thrill that had gone through a twelve-year-old boy, hearing that. Not because of the f-word, but because his grandfather could say Don’t tell your grandmother, and trust him not to do so. It gave them a secret. It made them joes together.

A flight fund was what you needed when you lived on the edge, and might slip off any moment. Something to feather your fall. To give you the means to walk away.

‘Yes,’ Lamb said, surprising River. ‘It’s a flight fund.’

‘Right.’

‘Not a fortune, if you’re thinking your ship’s come in.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘Fifteen hundred, a passport, and a key to a box.’

‘Switzerland?’

‘Fuck you Switzerland. A bank in a two-donkey French town, four hours’ drive from Paris.’

‘Four hours,’ River repeated.

‘Why am I telling you this?’

‘So you’ll have an excuse to kill me?’

‘That’s probably it.’

Lamb didn’t look any different, was still a soft fat rude bastard, still dressed like he’d been thrown through a charity shop window, but Jesus, River thought—Lamb was a joe. He kept a flight fund pinned behind his noticeboard, which he plastered with money-off coupons and out-of-date special offer ads nobody ever saw beyond. Mis-direction. It was what a joe did, or so the O.B. had always told River: There’s always someone watching. Make sure they’re not seeing what they think they are.

Crossing the Thames, River saw a world of tall glass buildings. They were mostly in darkness, towers of unilluminated windows casting back pinpricks of light they’d found on the streets below or the skies above, but here and there a pane would be starkly lit, and through some there were figures visible, crouched over desks or just standing in rooms, their attention owned by the unknowable. There was always something going on. And it wasn’t always possible, from the outside, to understand what it was.

Of course, hope is what gets you in the end.

Worse than the noise had been the silence that followed.

Hassan was holding his breath, as if he were hiding, rather than being hidden. It half-occurred to him that if these bastards knew how English he was, how wary of drawing attention to himself, they’d forget the colour of his skin and embrace him as one of their own … But no, these bastards, they’d never forget his skin. Hassan Ahmed hoped that the SWAT team, the armed police, his uncle the soldier, showed these bastards no mercy, now they’d tracked them down.

Larry, Moe and Curly.

Curly, Larry and Moe.

Hassan didn’t give a toss who they were either, all right?

But it wasn’t his uncle who burst into the cellar a minute later.

‘You.’

They meant him.

‘On your fucking feet.’

But Hassan couldn’t get up. Gravity had sealed him to the chair. So they had to help him—grab him. Drag him. Rough-handle him on to shaky legs and pull him through the door and up the stairs. Hassan wasn’t sure how much noise he made during this. Perhaps he was praying. Because you always found your gods again. For however long he’d been in that cellar, he’d been begging Allah for release; making all the bargains always made in this situation. Perhaps if Hassan had believed in Him, He wouldn’t have abandoned Hassan to the fate of dying for being one of His believers. But Hassan wasn’t allowed much time to meditate upon this. Mostly he was being manhandled up a narrow flight of stairs, at the top of which waited whatever was going to happen to him next.

He had thought the execution would happen down in that cellar.

But it happened in the kitchen.

The house was on a terrace that had seen better days, most of them pre-war. The upstairs windows were boarded over and those at ground level thickly curtained, with no light showing. A water stain spattered its façade.

Lamb said, in a harsh whisper, ‘Hands up who hasn’t been drinking tonight?’

Min and Louisa exchanged a look.

‘Here.’ Lamb handed River Moody’s gun, the .22. ‘Point it anywhere near me and I’ll take it off you.’

It was the first time River had been on a public street with a weapon. It should have weighed more.

He said, ‘You think they’re in there?’

Because the house didn’t simply look asleep. It looked dead.

‘Act as if they are,’ Lamb said. They’d driven straight past the house; had parked twenty yards down. Min and Louisa had been right behind them; now all four were crouched beside Lamb’s vehicle. River glanced at his watch. If Lamb’s estimate had been right, they had five minutes before the achievers turned up. Seven, if you wanted to be strictly accurate.

‘We’re going in?’ he asked.

‘We’re going in,’ Lamb said. ‘You and me. You can do the door.’ This last to Louisa. ‘There’s a jemmy in the boot. And you watch the back.’ Min. ‘Anyone comes out, don’t let them see you. But don’t lose them. All clear?’

All was clear. Months of waiting for a real job to do: they weren’t about to pass it up.

‘Okay. Don’t anyone get shot or anything. It goes on my record.’

Louisa fetched the jemmy, and they approached the house in a line; Min walking straight on by, heading round the corner to watch the back. At the door, Louisa slipped the jemmy in at latch height like a born housebreaker. She leant on it hard, and the door splintered open. And then Lamb was moving faster than a fat man should, wielding an H&K in a double-fisted grip. He snapped to the right two steps in, kicked open a door that led to an empty room. ‘Armed police!’ he shouted. River took the stairs in three bounds. It was dark; no tell-tale strips of yellow painting the doors’ outlines. He entered the first room fast and low; spun 360, gun outstretched. ‘Armed police!’ Nothing. Just a pair of mattresses on the floor, and an unzipped sleeping bag curled like a sloughed skin. There was a shout from downstairs. He backed out, kicked open the second door: same story. Another shout: Lamb calling his name. The last door was a bathroom. He pulled the light-cord. A green stain blossomed beneath one of the bath taps, and a shirt hung from the shower rail. It was damp. Lamb shouted his name again. River ran downstairs.

Lamb was silhouetted at the end of the hallway, looking at something on the kitchen floor. His gun was in his hand, but his arm hung by his side.

River said, ‘Upstairs is clear.’

Lamb said, ‘We need to go.’

His voice was ghoulish. Warped.

Louisa Guy approached River from behind. She was holding the jemmy in a two-handed grip. ‘What is it?’

‘We need to go. Now.’

River moved closer and stepped through the kitchen doorway.

The body sprawled across the kitchen floor had once been taller. Now it lay in a pool of gore, around which a fat bluebottle hummed busily.

Behind him, Louisa said, ‘Oh sweet Jesus.’

On the kitchen table sat a head, raggedly removed from its owner.

River turned and pushed past Louisa. He barely made it out before throwing up into the gutter.

They crossed the black river in a blue car, red memories staining their minds. Enough blood staining their cuffs and their shoes to render them bang to rights at a glance, let alone after forensic study.

The one driving said, ‘Did you have to …’

‘Yes.’

‘He was …’

‘He was what?’

‘I just …’

‘You just what?’

‘I just wasn’t ready for it.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘No, well, he wasn’t either, was he? But guess what? Makes no fucking difference. He’s just as fucking dead.’

He was. He was dead. They’d left his head on the kitchen table.

How much deader could he get?

Chapter 12

‘Phones. Now.’

Dumbly, they fumbled for their mobiles.

‘Where’s Harper?’

He was arriving at a trot. ‘What happened?’

‘Your phone,’ Lamb said.

‘My phone?’

‘Now, damn it!’

Min Harper fished out his mobile phone; added it to the three Lamb was holding; watched in horror as Lamb dropped all four down the storm drain at his feet.

‘Okay, go. Fetch Ho, Loy and White. I’ll get Standish.’

All of this, to River, like a dream sequence; voices booming in and out of focus; the nearest streetlight swimmy. He felt empty-legged, like a wind might knock him over, and didn’t want to look back at the house with its still-open door, with its kitchen, with its table on which sat a severed head. If a head could sit. If a head could sit.

‘For fuck’s sake, Cartwright, don’t do this now.’

River said, ‘I’ve seen him before.’

‘We’ve all seen him before,’ Lamb said.

Louisa Guy ran a trembling hand through her hair. Min Harper touched her elbow, and she shook him off.

‘He was one of us, Cartwright. He was a slow horse. Now get moving. Get the others. Don’t go home.’

River glanced at Min and Louisa, and read their expressions accurately. ‘We don’t know where they live.’

‘Give me strength.’ He rattled off addresses: Balham, Brixton, Tower Hamlets.

‘Then where?’

‘Blake’s grave. Soon.’

They left in separate cars.

A bare minute later, two black vans arrived, and figures piled out.

‘A spook.’

‘But …’

‘But fuck all. He was a spook. End of.’

He made a chopping motion with one hand.

In both their minds, a head fell to the floor.

‘I’m …’

‘You’re what?’

‘I’m just …’

‘You’re scared.’

‘You killed him.’

‘We killed him.’

‘I didn’t even know you were gunna do that.’

‘Did you think this was a game?’

‘But it changes everything.’

‘You’re a nancy. Nothing’s changed.’

‘Nothing’s changed? We killed a copper—’

‘Spy.’

‘Spy, copper, what’s the difference? You think they’ll let this lie? You think they’ll—what?’

Because Curly had thrown his head back and screamed in mirthless laughter.

Diana Taverner was in her office. It was shortly after three, and the hub was mostly empty; only a couple of the kids hunched over a console, coordinating surveillance of an animal rights group. She’d just put the phone down. The tactical ops squad—‘the achievers’—had gone into the house near Waterloo; it was empty, save for a body. They’d cut his head off. The good part, if you could call it that, was that he’d been dead before that happened.

A fingerprint scan was on its way, but she already knew whose the body was. It wasn’t Hassan Ahmed’s, so it had to be Alan Black’s. Her agent. Jackson Lamb and his crew were nowhere. Her earlier worst thoughts, about things going even more wrong, had come to pass. It was as well she’d set a back-up plan in motion.

Echoing that thought, the phone rang. Ingrid Tearney, her boss. They’d spoken earlier; Taverner had called her from the canal. She was somewhere over the Atlantic, nearer New York than London.

‘Ingrid,’ she said.

‘I’m hearing rumours. What’s going on, Diana?’

‘Like I said earlier. It’s Jackson Lamb.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘It looks like it.’ She leant forward; rested her forehead on her palm. Commit to the action, and the voice follows. ‘The body at Waterloo? It’s Alan Black’s. He used to be one of Lamb’s. Quit last year, but maybe he didn’t after all. It looks like Lamb’s been playing him all along.’

‘Jesus wept. This cannot be happening.’

‘Best I can tell, Lamb was running the kidnapping to make a personal score. Or else, God knows, to make the Service look good. Either way, it’s shot to hell. His agent’s murdered, and the others are gone, Hassan Ahmed with them. And there’s no reason on earth they should stick to their deadline now.’

‘Christ, Diana, this is your watch—’

‘Mine? Slough House hardly falls under my jurisdiction, does it? Before we start the recriminations game, let’s get that on the record. And face facts. The body’s one of Lamb’s people. Lamb knew where to go, for Christ’s sake.’

Ingrid Tearney said, ‘He was there, then. At Waterloo.’

‘Yes. I don’t know where he is now. But we’ll trace him.’

‘In time?’

‘Ingrid, at this stage he knows as much about Hassan Ahmed’s whereabouts as we do. His op’s blown. We’re looking at damage limitation. I know you’re shocked. But he’s always been a loose cannon. And ever since the Partner business—’

‘Careful.’

‘I don’t officially know what happened then, but I’ve a shrewd idea. And anyone who can do what Lamb did probably thinks he’s above scrutiny. I’ve been worried about him for some time. That’s why I put Sid Baker in there.’

‘And what did she report?’

‘That Lamb runs the place like a mad hermit. Sits in his top-floor lair with the blinds drawn. It’s not a big surprise he’s tipped over the edge, Ingrid.’

She was using her name too often. She’d have to watch that.

‘What’s Baker said about tonight?’

‘She’s in no position to say anything. She was one of tonight’s casualties.’

‘Hell’s teeth. Did I miss the meeting where war was declared?’

‘We’re mopping up. I’ve one of Lamb’s people downstairs. It won’t take long to get cast-iron proof. All we need is something that puts Lamb with Black since Black quit the Service. Let’s face it, Jackson Lamb’s not the Friends Reunited type.’

‘You’re very keen on playing the judge.’

‘Well, it’s a fucking mess! We’ve got the body of a rogue agent, in a house where Hassan Ahmed was held. How’s that going to play with the boy’s uncle? We can swear we’ve clean hands till the cows come home, he’s still going to smell Service involvement. And this is a man HMG hopes is going to come down on the side of the moderates. We’ve got to clean it up.’

‘There’s a crew there now?’

‘Yes. But they’re not investigators, and they don’t do forensics. If anything’s marked clue, they’ll pick it up. But otherwise …’

‘But otherwise they might miss something that would help the cops find Hassan,’ Tearney finished.

Both fell silent. A blinking light on Taverner’s phone told her she had another call. She ignored it. The receiver felt hot, but she gripped it so tight her hand trembled.

‘Okay. Bring him in.’

‘Lamb?’

‘Lamb. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.’

‘What about Hassan Ahmed?’

‘I thought you’d covered that.’

London rules, she thought. London rules. ‘I’m going to need to hear you say it, Ingrid.’

Some decisions, she wanted other people’s fingerprints on from the start.

‘Oh, Christ. Having Mahmud Gul’s nephew killed on our soil is one thing. Having him killed with our connivance is another. Leave him to the cops, and pray they get to him in time. Either way, I don’t want Five appearing in their write-ups.’

‘Lamb’s not likely to come quietly.’

‘He’s not an idiot. Get Duffy on to it. And bring the rest of them in too.’

‘The rest of them?’

‘The Slough House crew. The slow horses. Get them off the streets and find out who knew what before any more damage is done. I don’t want mud sticking to Five over this. We get enough flak as it is.’

‘Consider it done. Safe flight.’

For a moment, Diana Taverner sat perfectly still, looking through her wall at the kids on the hub. At all the empty spaces which would be filled in a few short hours by more kids, doing more thankless tasks. They’d have been warned about that as soon as they signed up, of course, and would have pretended to believe it, but nobody ever really did, not at first. Each and every one of them secretly expected to be appreciated. It wasn’t going to happen. She’d wanted to drop a spectacular victory in their laps. That wasn’t going to happen either. But at least she could make sure the crash happened as far off as possible, and only damaged the dead wood.

Then she rang the crew at the Waterloo house. It was a brief, one-sided conversation: ‘Disappear the body. Clean the house.’

Cleaning houses, when you cleaned them properly, required strong agents. Fire was the safest bet.

Then she returned Nick Duffy’s call. He was back in Regent’s Park, though well below where she sat now. ‘Which one? … Okay. Five minutes.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Black. Alan Black.’

River had never met him. He’d quit Slough House months before River’s arrival; one of those in whom the fire that had driven him into the Service had been quenched by quotidian drudgery. River had no idea what failure had landed Black in their company. Asking would have been like dredging up ancestral sins; enquiring which wicked uncle interfered with which parlour maid. More than that, it would have required River to care, and he didn’t.

So why had Black’s face been familiar?

He sat in the back, with Louisa at the wheel; Min Harper next to her. When the streetlights washed across them, their faces became doughy and unloved, but were, at least, attached to their bodies. The acrid taste of vomit stung River’s throat. Streets away, the head on the kitchen table leered at him, and probably always would.

Because River had seen that face before. Last time, it too had been attached to its body. For the moment, he couldn’t put the parts together again: the head on the man; the man in his memory. It would come, though. River’s recall was good. Already it was churning through possibilities, plucking them like balls from the bubbling air in a lottery machine. No winners yet, but give it time.

‘You’re sure?’

‘That it was Black?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes. I’m sure. Why did that bastard trash our phones?’

‘So no one can trace us.’

‘Thanks again. I knew that. I meant why’s he worried about anyone tracing us?’

River worked it out as he spoke. ‘We’re being set up. We were supposed to be rescuing Hassan Ahmed. We find a former agent, dead. This whole Hassan thing, it must be an op. And it’s every which way screwed up.’

‘How did Lamb know where to go?’

‘It was Lady Di he went out to meet earlier, yes?’

‘And you’re saying she told him?’

River said, ‘I’m saying that’s what he’s saying.’

‘Lamb’s running an op?’

‘I don’t know,’ River said. ‘Maybe. But then again, if he was …’

‘If he was, what?’

River stared out of the window. ‘If he was, I don’t think he’d have screwed up like this.’

There was silence from the front seats. Min Harper and Louisa Guy were not big fans of Jackson Lamb.

‘He’s carrying a flight fund,’ he told them. ‘If things had gone belly up, he’s got the wherewithal to fade away. He’d not be sending us to collect the others …’

He was slower than his companions on this particular uptake.

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Which is why we don’t have any phones.’

‘And are running our arses all over London. While he’s where?’

River said, ‘He didn’t have to fetch me. From the hospital.’

‘He did if he wanted to know what was going on.’

‘Which he would. If he was running an op.’

‘So what do we do?’ River asked. ‘What he said? Or head to Regent’s Park and start spilling beans?’

This was met with silence; the sound of two bodies still fizzing with alcohol, but shocked out of actual drunkenness.

A blue and yellow blur spun by, siren screaming. Maybe heading for the house they’d just left. But River guessed not. River guessed the tidying up of that particular mess would happen quietly.

Then he heard: ‘I guess, if he’s not at Blake’s grave, we’ll know we’ve been screwed.’

‘And if we’re gunna be screwed, we might as well all be screwed at once.’

‘It’ll save time.’

River felt grateful, though wasn’t entirely sure why.

‘Okay. So did either of you get those addresses?’

Without taking her eyes from the road, Louisa Guy recited them, note perfect.

‘Nice one,’ said River, impressed.

‘Well, if they turn out wrong, that’ll be a clue, won’t it?’

‘We’d better split,’ he said. ‘You do Loy and Ho. Drop me here. I’ll head back for White.’

‘You’ll manage for transport?’

‘Please,’ River said. The car slowed; stopped. He got out.

‘See you later.’

In a different car, Curly screamed in mirthless laughter.

‘What? What’s funny?’

‘You think they’d have let it lie otherwise? When we chop the Paki’s head off?’

‘The plan was never to do it.’

‘Your plan was never to do it,’ Curly said. ‘Your plan.’

Hassan was in the boot. They’d pulled the hood over his head, and tied his wrists. If you shout or make a noise, I’ll cut your fucking tongue out.

‘How did you know?’

‘Know what?’ Curly asked.

‘That he was a … spook.’

Curly tapped the breast pocket of his denim jacket, where his mobile nestled. ‘Got a call, didn’t I?’

‘You weren’t supposed to have a phone.’

‘Good job I did. Else we’d still be back there with that fucking traitor. Waiting for the SAS.’

He wasn’t supposed to have a phone, it was true. Mobile phones could be traced: Larry’s rule. But before they could trace you via your phone, they had to know it was yours. Otherwise it was only a mobile signal, and everyone had one of those. So he’d bought a pre-pay, and had used it to call Gregory Simmonds, the Voice of Albion, every couple of hours. Because any time Simmonds stopped answering his phone, that meant the cops were on to them.

Curly had encountered Simmonds through the British Patriotic Party’s website, where he’d posted messages as Excalibur88, the 88 meaning HH, Heil Hitler. This was just after the Lockerbie bomber had been sent home. There’d been scenes on TV of him meeting a hero’s welcome: happy flag-waving crowds. Meanwhile the BNP was being taken to court, because it was against the law to have a party only for true Englishmen, and believers’ names were being plastered on the internet, an invitation to left-wing thugs to throw bricks through windows, and threaten wives and families.

The issue, Curly posted, was simple. White man dies in a bomb attack? String up a Muslim from a lamppost. Right here, right now. Didn’t matter who. It wasn’t like the tube bombers had checked out their victims in advance, making sure there weren’t kids or nurses on the trains. You string one up and then another, to show them who they were dealing with. Kick me once, I kick you twice. And then jump on your head. That’s how you win a war, and this was a war.

So then he’d been contacted by Gregory Simmonds, the Voice of Albion. A short man with tall opinions, Simmonds had made his money in long-haul logistics, what used to be called removals. He’d founded the Voice because he was sick of seeing this once-proud country dragged downhill by scumbag politicians in the pockets of foreign interests—conversation with him was like listening to a party broadcast, but he wasn’t all talk. Voice of Albion was about action. There were a couple of other guys Simmonds knew, a plan coming together. Was Curly interested in action?

Curly was. Curly would have liked to be a soldier. Never worked out, so he was mostly unemployed, but he did a weekly off-the-books stint as an exit-coordinator at a club, what used to be called bouncing. This was in Bolton. There were more exciting cities, more exciting lives.

So anyway. Officers stayed behind the lines, but Simmonds was putting the plan together, with help from these other guys, Moe and Larry.

What they had in mind was an internet execution.

Most people would have chickened out hearing that. Most people would have thought Simmonds was out of his mind. But Curly, because he knew Simmonds was expecting him to say something, and he hated doing what he was expected to do, just drank the lager Simmonds had been buying all evening, and waited.

Until Simmonds said: Thing was, they didn’t actually have to cut anyone’s head off. They just had to make it look like they were going to. Show the world it could be done. That was the point. Show they could do it if they wanted. That if there was a war, it would be fought on both sides. Was Curly in?

Curly thought about it, but not for long. He was in.

The only part he’d had trouble with was the bit about not actually doing it.

And because he didn’t know Larry or Moe, which meant he didn’t trust them, he’d played stupid in their company and kept in touch with Simmonds behind their back. Which was how he’d got the call forty minutes earlier, the Voice of Albion ringing him for a change, breathy and terrified. Compromised was the word he used. It had filtered down through a contact in the BPP. The mission was compromised. They should get out. They should disappear.

Simmonds didn’t use Larry’s name. Didn’t have to. If one of them was a spy, it had to be Larry, who’d managed to make every decision sound like his own.

‘Which way?’

Rising panic in his voice. Curly kept his own flat: ‘Just keep driving.’ They were still south of the river. But not turning back was the main thing.

He could have run when Simmonds’ call came through. He could have been down the stairs and out the front. The others didn’t know his real name. He could have been part of the nightlife in minutes, miles away.

Instead he’d stood and run a finger along the grimy bedroom wall. Adapted himself to the moment; let these new circumstances sink in. And then he’d left the room and walked downstairs and along the hallway into the kitchen.

The axe leant against the wall like a household tool. Wooden handle, red-and-grey blade, like in a cartoon. Curly had plucked it with his left hand in passing; tossed it into his right without breaking stride. Nice weight. Smooth in the hand. Soldiers felt like this, shouldering rifles.

In the kitchen Moe, at the table, half-turned at his approach. Larry was against the sink, can of Coke in hand. Both were same as always: Moe with a black tee-shirt, and that stupid goatee tickling his chin; Larry with his busy eyes and mildly fuzzed head, his rolled-up sleeves, smart jeans, new trainers. Looked like he was playing a role. As if this was a game, not like we’re actually going to cut his head off: Larry’s superior in-charge smile stuck to his jaw. The smile slipped when he saw Curly. Words were spoken:

What

Why

For fuck’s sake

They slipped past Curly; unimportant moments, swallowed by the business at hand.

He’d swung the axe in a sweeping motion that almost caught the ceiling, but instead carved a graceful slice from the air before slamming to a halt in his target’s back.

The force of the blow sent a shockwave up his arm.

Moe coughed blood and slammed facedown on to the table.

Larry had always done the talking. But Moe had been the thinker.

Now Curly said to Larry, ‘Not too slowly. Don’t draw attention.’

Larry, on whose face a superior in-charge smile wasn’t likely to reappear soon, upped their speed.

Curly could still feel it in the muscles in his arm. Not the swing of the axe, but the abrupt stop it had come to. He rubbed his elbow, which seemed to give off heat, like a newly extinguished lightbulb.

In the boot of the car, bound and gagged, Hassan clenched his body tight, as if this might hold his life in place.

‘Downstairs’ at Regent’s Park meant different things, depending on the context. Downstairs was where records were kept; downstairs was where the car park was. But there was another downstairs, much lower, and downstairs, in this context, took you lower than the building was high. This downstairs wasn’t anywhere you wanted to be.

In Central London, there’s almost as much city beneath the streets as above. Some of this is publicly available: the underground itself, of course, and certain sites of special interest, the War Rooms and various bomb shelters among them. And then there’s everywhere else. Sometimes, names leak into the public domain—Bastion, Rampart, Citadel, Pindar—but they remain off-limits; part of Fortress London, the complex of subterranean passages and tunnels—the ‘crisis management facilities’—that exist less to defend the capital itself than to protect its systems of government. If the worst happens, whether toxic, nuclear, natural or civil, these are the redoubts from which control will be reasserted. They are fundamental to London’s geography, and appear on no A—Z.

And then there are the other, less acknowledged hidden places, like those under Regent’s Park.

The elevator ran slowly, and this was deliberate. A long slow descent had a weakening effect on anyone here involuntarily, inducing in those who were conscious a nervous, vulnerable state. Diana Taverner passed the while checking her reflection. For a woman who’d had less than four hours’ sleep in the past thirty, she thought she looked pretty good. But then, she thrived on the dangerous edge. Even when life was on a smoother track, she took corners on two wheels: office/gym/office/wine bar/office/home was a typical day, and sleep was never high on her agenda. Sleep was ceding control. While you slept, anything might happen.

It might while you were awake, too. Her agent, Alan Black, was dead; killed by the Voice of Albion thugs. Any other operation, and that would be it: the whole house of cards would have folded. There’d be an inquiry. When an agent died, there was a ripple effect. Sometimes the splash was so big, careers were washed away.

But this had been run under Moscow rules, like a deep-cover op on foreign ground. As far as Black’s record showed, he’d quit the Service last year, and Taverner had had only one face-to-face with him since he’d gone under. The Voice of Albion was a below-the-radar bunch of Toytown fascists, consisting, until Black had stirred them up, of one man and his dog. None of the op details—the safe-house address, Black’s co-conspirators, the vehicles they’d used—existed anywhere on paper or, God forbid, the ether. And yesterday’s report to Limitations had kept the details scanty; a ‘watching brief’ fell far short of surveillance, and Taverner couldn’t be blamed if Albion had slipped the leash … It was patchy, but Taverner had sealed leakier ops. One watertight report was worth any amount of tradecraft.

The elevator eased to a halt. Diana Taverner stepped into a corridor markedly different from those above ground level; here was exposed brickwork and bare concrete floor, pitted and puddled like a temporary pavement. Water dripped. It was an atmosphere that required careful maintenance. To Taverner’s mind, it reeked of cliché, but tests had proved its effectiveness.

Nick Duffy waited, leaning against a door. The door had a peephole, but the cover had been slapped across it.

‘Any problems?’

His look answered that, but he said it anyway. ‘None at all.’

‘Good. Now fetch the rest.’

‘The rest?’

‘The slow horses. All of them.’

He said, ‘Fine,’ but didn’t move. Instead he said, ‘I know it’s not my place to ask. But what’s going on?’

‘You’re right. It’s not your place.’

‘Right. I’m on it.’

He headed for the lift now, but turned when she called. ‘Nick. I’m sorry. Things have gone arse over tit. You’ve probably noticed.’ The vulgarity startled Taverner almost as much as it did Duffy. ‘This kidnapping business—it’s not what it seemed.’

‘And Slough House is involved?’

She didn’t answer.

He said, ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Bring them in. Separately. And Nick—I’m sorry. He was a friend, wasn’t he? Jed Moody.’

‘We worked together.’

‘Lamb’s story is he tripped over his own feet, broke his neck. But …’

‘But what?’

Taverner said, ‘It’s too soon to say. But take Lamb yourself. And watch him, Nick. He’s trickier than he looks.’

‘I know all about Jackson Lamb,’ Duffy assured her. ‘He put one of my men down earlier.’

‘Then know this too.’ She hesitated. ‘If he’s involved in this kidnapping, he’ll disappear sooner than be brought in. And he’s a streetfighter.’

Duffy waited.

‘I can’t give an instruction, Nick. But if people are going to get hurt, I’d rather it was them than us.’

‘Them and us?’

‘Nobody was expecting this. Go. The Queens’ll give you their mobile locations. Call in soon.’

Duffy caught the lift.

As Diana Taverner tapped the fingerpad to unlock the door he’d been leaning on, she thought briefly of Hassan Ahmed, who had ceased to be a priority. One of two things was going to happen to Hassan. He’d turn up on a street corner, unharmed, or his body would be dumped in a ditch. The latter was more likely. Having killed Black, the Albion crew weren’t likely to let Hassan live. In their shoes, Taverner wouldn’t wait. But maybe that was just her. She set a high priority on watching her own back.

The fingerpad buzzed. The door unlocked.

She stepped inside, prepared to break a slow horse.

There was silence from the boot. They’d have drugged the kid again, but it was Moe who’d had the chloroform, and if he’d had more, they’d not found it. Moe had been responsible for most things: choosing the target, finding the house, all the website stuff. Larry had thought he was in charge, but it was Moe all the time. Fucking spook.

‘We could dump him,’ Larry said suddenly.

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. We could park and walk away.’

‘And then what?’

‘… Disappear.’

Right. But nobody ever disappeared. They just went somewhere else. ‘Keep driving,’ Curly told him.

It still powered through his arm, the force of that blow. The blade had half-disappeared in Moe’s back—it looked like he’d sprouted an extra limb—and then there was blood everywhere, some of it pounding through Curly’s ears. Larry’s mouth flapped, and maybe he’d shouted and maybe he hadn’t. It was hard to tell. It probably only lasted seconds. Moe coughed what remained of his life on to the kitchen table, and all through Curly’s arm the power sang.

But cutting his head off, leaving it there … Why had he done that?

Because it was legend.

Outside, rows of shops dawdled past. Even when their names weren’t familiar, they were knock-offs of ones that were: Kansas Fried Chicken, JJL Sports. Everywhere was like everywhere else, and this was the world he’d grown up in. Things used to be different. Gregory Simmonds, the Voice of Albion, was very clear on that point. Things used to be different, and if the natural children of these islands were to enjoy their birthright, they had to be that way again.

He checked behind him. There they were on the back seat: the digicam and its tripod; the laptop and all its cables. He wasn’t sure how that worked, but it didn’t matter. Getting it on film was the main thing. He’d work out how to post it to the web later.

The axe was there too, wrapped in a blanket. In videos he’d seen, they’d used swords; whacking great blades that sliced through bone like butter. Curly had an English axe. Different strokes for different folks.

A giggle escaped him.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Keep your eyes on the road.’

Legend. In the pubs and on the estates, on the internet, in all the places where people still said what they thought and weren’t afraid of being locked up for saying it, they’d be heroes. It would be a life lived in the shadows, one step ahead of the cops. He’d be the conquering hero, Robin Hood, famous for dealing this mighty blow; showing the foreign fanatics that they weren’t the only ones who could draw blood, that not all Englishmen were too frightened to fight back. That there was a resistance. That resistance would win.

He looked sideways and recognized the fear Larry was trying to hide. That was okay. All Larry had to do was what he was told, and he’d do that because he wasn’t currently capable of independent thought.

If he was, it would have occurred to him that they’d stand a better chance of getting away if there was only one of them doing it.

But Larry kept driving.

Chapter 13

This darkness was smaller than the last. Hassan was hooded again, with a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, his knees tucked up to his chest, and his hands bound.

When he flexed them, the cord dug into his wrists. But even if it snapped, what would he do? He was in the boot of a moving car. His captors still had him. Two captors, because one was dead. His head had been left on the table in that house.

They’d brought him up from the cellar, into the kitchen, and there it had been, on the table. A human head. It sat in a pool of blood. What else could he say about it? It had been a head, and Hassan had seen films in which severed heads had been displayed, and had laughed at how ‘unrealistic’ they were, without it ever occurring to him that he had no frame of reference for the level of realism achieved. And now he did. And all he could think was that a real severed head was little different from a movie severed head, with one critical difference: it was real. The blood was real. The hair and teeth were real. The whole thing was real. Which meant that what he’d been told, We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web, was also real. Fucking Paki.

He had wet himself, and the jumpsuit clung to his legs. He wished he could remove it, and dry himself off. Wished he could have a shower, and change, and go to sleep, somewhere which wasn’t the boot of a moving car. If he were going to make wishes, perhaps that was the end he should start at. He should wish he were free and safe, and could worry about changing his trousers in his own sweet time.

The comedy voice in his head had fallen silent. There were issues that were not suitable for comedy. This argument had weekly been shot down in flames at the student stand-up society; try putting forward that point of view, and you’d be accused of fascism. Freedom of speech mattered more than notions of taste and propriety. Hassan Ahmed had agreed with that. How could he not? When the moment came, and he took his stand at the mic, it was all going to come out. Daring, edgy stuff. Nothing off-limits. That was the contract between stand-up and audience: they had to know you were baring your soul. Except now Hassan had encountered a severed head on a kitchen table, and had immediately understood that this was not something that could ever be the subject of a joke. And even if it could, it was not a joke that Hassan could make. Because it proved that the people holding him were capable of cutting off heads.

The thumps and jolts and crashings would not stop. The cord binding his wrists would not fray. Hassan would not find himself unleashed, but would lie suffering until the car reached its destination, and then he too would reach his destination. This was his last journey.

So even if he could. Even if he could make the best joke ever. Even if he could make the best joke ever, with its subject the decapitation of unwilling humans, this was not a joke Hassan could ever make, because Hassan was never going to make jokes again. Not that he had made that many to begin with. Because if he were to be uncompromisingly harsh on himself—if he were to tell the truth, observing the contract between stand-up and audience—Hassan would have to admit this too: that he had never been particularly funny. He could make jokes, yes. He could ride riffs. He could unreel a comedy thread and wrap it round the usual observation posts: quips about old people shopping, and teenagers texting, and how nobody smiles on buses. But only in his head. He had never been himself in public. And now never would be. Doing so would remain forever on the list of things Hassan had intended to do in his twenties; a list which would never grow longer and never grow shorter, for Hassan’s twenties were not going to happen.

Because these people were never going to let him go. Not without killing him first. We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web. Fucking Paki.

The car bounced and bashed him, and Hassan Ahmed tried to make himself smaller. In his mind, he escaped in seventy different ways, but his body remained in the boot.

The common wisdom was that car-theft gave you a buzz, but that probably only held true if your evening hadn’t already involved blood, firearms and a severed head. The car was a beat-up Austin, taken from a sidestreet, and River guessed its owner’s reaction on finding it gone would be a sigh of relief. There were no spare keys in the glove compartment or behind the rearview mirror, but there was a mobile phone in the former; a chunky grey thing that looked like River’s own phone’s distant ancestor. Hotwiring took him seven minutes, which was probably six minutes fifty over the record. He’d driven back the way they’d come, crossed the river at Blackfriars, then tried to use the phone to call the hospital again, only to find it was pre-pay, and out of credit.

This, at least, gave him a buzz, but not a welcome one. Throwing the phone through the window would have relieved his feelings, but he settled for swearing heavily. Swearing was good. Swearing helped. It kept his mind off the possibility that Sid was dead; kept it, too, from flashing back to the head on the kitchen table, raggedly sawn from its owner.

But why had it been familiar?

He didn’t want to dwell on it, but knew he had to … The answer was buried within his subconscious and ought to be within his grasp. He stopped swearing. Remembered he was on a mission, and came to a halt at a junction, reestablishing his bearings. He was on Commercial Road; heading for Tower Hamlets, where he’d collect Kay White. Stationary, he was hooted by a car behind, which swung out to pass him. He swore again. Sometimes it was good to have a visible enemy.

Because God knows, River thought bitterly, he was weary of the invisible kind.

Pushing thoughts of severed heads aside, he resumed his journey. Another two minutes, and he found his turning: on the left-hand side was a three-storey brick-built block, its matching window frames and guttering marking it out as association housing. Maybe twenty yards ahead, double-parked outside what could easily be Kay’s address, was the car that had hooted him three minutes ago: lights on, engine running. A figure hulked behind the wheel. River reversed into a space, and disconnected the ignition wires. Got out and walked back to the main road. Turned the corner, dropped to one knee and peered back round, just as a man brought Kay White out of her home and loaded her into the waiting car.

She was neither cuffed nor roughly handled. The man was guiding her by the elbow, but it could have been taken as support if you didn’t know what you were watching. He settled her into the back seat, and got in after her. The car moved off. The moments during which River could have done anything to stop any of this had been over before he got here, and he wasn’t sure what use he’d have made of them anyway. The last time he’d tried an intervention, Sid had wound up lying in the street.

The car reached the next junction, turned, and was gone.

River returned to the Austin, and stole it all over again.

Struan Loy’s night had started promisingly. He’d had a date, his first in three years, and had planned it like an attempt at Everest, the base camps being wine bar, Italian restaurant and her place. Base one had proved a tremendous success, inasmuch as she had turned up; base two less impressive, as she’d left halfway through, and base three remained whereabouts unknown. Loy had returned home to an unmade bed and three hours’ sleep, interrupted by the arrival of Nick Duffy.

Now he sat blinking in harsh underground light. The room was padded, its walls covered with a black synthetic material which smelled of bleach. A table dead centre had a straight-backed chair on either side, one of them bolted to the floor. This was the one on which Loy had been told to sit.

‘So,’ he said to Diana Taverner. ‘What’s up?’

He was aiming for a carefree delivery, with about as much success as Gordon Brown.

‘Why should anything be up, Struan?’

‘Because I’ve been brought here in the middle of the night.’

And certainly looked like he’d dressed in the dark, thought Taverner.

‘Nick Duffy brought you here because I asked him to,’ she said. ‘We’re downstairs because I don’t want anyone to know you’re here. And we’re not having this chat because you’ve done anything wrong. We’re having it because I’m reasonably sure you haven’t.’

She leant just enough on reasonably for him to pick it up.

He said, ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Taverner said nothing.

‘Because I’m pretty sure I haven’t done anything.’

‘Pretty sure?’

‘A turn of phrase.’

She said nothing.

‘I mean, I know I haven’t done anything.’

She said nothing.

‘Or not since, you know.’

‘Not since that e-mail suggesting that your boss and mine, Ingrid Tearney, was an Al Qaeda plant.’

He said, ‘It was the outfit she wore on Question Time, you know, that desert-gown thing …’

She said nothing.

‘It was a joke.’

‘And we have a sense of humour. Otherwise you’d not have seen the light of day since.’

Loy blinked.

She said, ‘Only kidding.’

He nodded uncertainly, as if receiving his first glimpse of how unfunny jokes could be.

Diana Taverner glanced at her watch, not caring he knew it. He only had one chance to climb on board. This wasn’t a decision he could mull over, and get back to her in the morning.

‘So now you’re in Slough House,’ she said. ‘How’s that working out?’

‘Well, you know …’

‘How’s that working out?’

‘Not so great.’

‘But you haven’t quit.’

‘No. Well …’

She waited.

‘Not sure what I’d do otherwise, to be honest.’

‘And you’re still wondering whether you’ll ever be let back upstairs.’

‘Upstairs?’

‘The Park. Do you want to hear something really funny, Struan? Do you want to hear how many people have made the journey back from Slough House to Regent’s Park?’

He blinked. He already knew the answer to that. Everyone knew the answer to that.

She told him anyway. ‘None. It’s never happened.’

He blinked again.

She said, ‘Of course, that doesn’t mean it never will.

Nothing’s impossible.’

This time he didn’t blink. In his eyes, she saw wheels starting to turn; possibilities sliding into place like tabs into slots.

He didn’t speak, but he shifted in his chair. Leant forward, as if this was a conversation he was sharing, rather than an interrogation he was subject to.

She said, ‘Have you noticed anything unusual at Slough House lately?’

‘No,’ he said, with absolute certainty.

She said nothing.

‘I don’t think so,’ he added.

She checked her watch again.

‘What sort of unusual thing?’

‘Activity. Activity above and beyond the normal course of events.’

He thought about it. While he was doing so, Diana Taverner reached for her bag, which she’d hung on the back of her chair. From it she produced a black-and-white photograph, three inches by five, which she placed on the table between them. Turned it so it was facing Loy. ‘Recognize him?’

‘It’s Alan Black.’

‘Your former colleague.’

‘Yes.’

‘Seen him recently?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t seen him lately in Jackson Lamb’s company?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that presents us with a problem.’

She sat back and waited.

‘A problem,’ he said at last.

‘Yes. A problem,’ she agreed. ‘Tell me, Struan. How would you like to be part of the solution?’

In Struan Loy’s eyes, wheels turned again.

‘Should we go round the back?’

‘Can we get round the back?’

‘There might be an alley.’

Min Harper and Louisa Guy were at Ho’s place; had pulled into the last available space moments before another car had arrived, slowed, then headed on down the street and parked. The pair watched without speaking while a man emerged.

They were in Balham, a stone’s throw from the railway line. Brixton, where they’d stopped for Struan Loy, had been a washout: he was either not at home or had died in his sleep. Like all the slow horses, Loy lived alone. That seemed a stark statistic, and it was odd that it hadn’t occurred to Min Harper before. He didn’t know whether Loy was single from choice or circumstance; divorced, separated or what. It seemed unsatisfactory, this ignorance about his colleagues, and he’d thought about raising the subject with Louisa, but she was driving. All the alcohol they’d put away earlier, it seemed a good idea to let her concentrate on that. Come to think of it, there was other stuff they should be discussing, but that too had better wait. From out of nowhere, they were on an op. How had that happened?

‘So …’

The man they’d been watching slipped out of sight.

‘Okay. Let’s try it.’

Crossing the road, Min felt his jacket bang against his hip. The paperweight. He was still carting the paperweight he’d used earlier, when confronting the masked intruder who turned out to be Jed Moody. He rubbed his thumb along its surface without taking it from his pocket. He hadn’t hit Moody with it. Hadn’t needed to. They’d taken a tumble, and only Min had got to his feet. He supposed that should go in the account book somewhere, in the opposite column to the one where he’d stepped off a tube train without a disk, and his career had gone whistling away down the dark tunnel.

He hadn’t liked Jed Moody, but didn’t enjoy knowing he’d been the instrument of his death. He suspected he hadn’t got to the bottom of that feeling yet. Everything had happened so swiftly since that he hadn’t yet taken it on board.

Leave it for now, he thought. You could coast for a while on that mantra. Leave it for now.

‘What do you reckon?’

‘Looks doable.’

They’d found a thin strip of unpaved passage between the backs of one row of houses and those on the next road. It was unlit, overgrown, and neither had a torch, but Ho lived only four houses along. Louisa led the way. The bushes were wet, and hung with cobweb. Underfoot was slick with mud, and they were walking close enough that if either went down, both would. Any other night, it would make for a comedy moment.

‘This one?’

‘That’s what I make it.’

Light showed from an upper storey. Ho seemed to have an upstairs conservatory. They climbed the fence, a flimsy wooden construction, and as Min dropped into the paved-over garden, a plank snapped cleanly behind him with a noise like a bullet. He froze, expecting alarms or sirens, but the noise simply disappeared into the dark. No curtains twitched; no voices were raised. Louisa Guy dropped next to him.

For another moment they waited. Min’s hand dropped to his pocket again, and his thumb stroked the paperweight’s smooth surface. Then the pair advanced on the back door.

As they got closer, Min thought he could hear music.

Audible music strained from an upstairs room, and light bled skywards from a skylight. It was what—after four? And Dan Hobbs could hear the music out here in the street.

He thought: I was a neighbour, I’d break the runt’s neck. Toss a wheelie bin through his window to grab his attention, and then take him by the neck and squeeze until his eyes pop like grapes.

Dan Hobbs wasn’t having the best night of his life.

He leant on the bell.

After his encounter with Jackson Lamb at the hospital, he’d come to on the floor; no obvious bruising, but he felt like he’d been trampled underfoot. The storeroom door hung open. River Cartwright was gone. Hobbs had got to his feet and made his way upstairs, where the first person he’d encountered was the newly arrived Nick Duffy.

And Hobbs learned the hard way that shit travels downwards.

‘He was just this fat guy. How was I to know—’

‘Remember Sam Chapman? Bad Sam?’

Hobbs did.

‘Bad Sam once said he wasn’t frightened of anyone except overweight guys with bad breath and ill-fitting shirts. You know why?’

Hobbs didn’t.

‘Because once in a nun’s nightmare, one of them would turn out to be Jackson Lamb. And by the time you’d realized that, you’d lost your lunch, your boots and most of your teeth. Now fuck off back to the Park.’

A couple of hours’ fuming, and he had new instructions; another slow horse to collect.

‘Name’s Roderick Ho.’ Duffy read out the address. ‘Slough House geek. Think you can handle him on your own?’

Hobbs took a breath. The Service was hierarchical, to put it mildly, but you didn’t get to be one of the Dogs by meekly observing the protocols. ‘In my fucking sleep,’ he told his boss. ‘You said yourself, even Sam Chapman couldn’t take Lamb, and I didn’t know it was him. So give me a break, all right?’

A twelve-second silence followed. Then Duffy said, ‘You’re as much use as an elastic anchor, you know that? But my four-year-old niece could take down Ho, so I’m going to trust you.’

Carefully keeping relief from his voice, Hobbs asked, ‘How hard do I bring him in?’

‘C&C.’

Dogs’ slang for collect-and-comfort. Which meant without worrying onlookers.

‘And Dan? Screw this up, and I’ll sack your whole family.’

He wouldn’t. This wouldn’t wipe the slate, but would show he was still in the game. And intended to remain there.

And the next time he encountered Jackson Lamb—But he shook that thought free too. Nothing screwed you up faster than keeping score.

And now he was at Ho’s place. He’d have gone in through the back, but the music changed the rules. Ho was awake. Possibly had company. Geeks had social lives. Who knew?

Company or not, nobody was opening the door. He leant on the bell again, and stayed there.

Having been caught once this evening, he’d done his research, or had the Queens of the Database do it for him. Roderick Ho’s records had been on his BlackBerry long before he’d got here, and it was clear from the physicals that if Ho hadn’t been geek-supreme, he’d have been invalided out to spare everyone’s embarrassment. He looked the type to wear a smog-mask on the tube. And if it turned out the records lied, and Ho was Bruce Lee’s forgotten cousin, that was fine too. Hobbs knew some moves himself.

Did the music stutter? Something had happened. Without taking his hand from the bell, Hobbs peered through the marbled window. A fuzzy shape was coming to the door.

Roderick Ho hadn’t been to bed. Roderick Ho didn’t sleep much anyway, but tonight he had business. Tonight, he was paying off a debt.

On his way home he’d picked up two economy-sized bags of tortilla chips, and had dropped both when a twat in a Lexus honked him on a zebra … His glasses had slipped off when he’d bent to retrieve them, and the twat in the Lexus honked again, and it was obvious he’d been enjoying this, was simply livening up those dead moments when he’d been forced to wait at a crossing for a pedestrian, for fuck’s sake. Because the road belonged to car-users. Belonged to SI 123, as his plate had it. Ho retrieved his glasses, gathered up his bags of chips. He’d barely cleared the Lexus’s wheelbase when it roared past, and he knew he wasn’t even a memory by this point. At best, he was a punchline. Should have seen the chinky jump.

That had been then. This was now:

SI 123 was Simon Dean of Colliers Wood, and Ho wasn’t up at four because it had taken him that long to discover this, he was up at four because he was taking Simon Dean’s life apart piece by piece. Simon Dean was a tele-salesman for a life-assurance company, or that’s what he probably still thought he was, though one of his last acts before leaving work, according to the rigorously backed-up e-mail system his company maintained, had been to send a resignation note to his boss, accompanied by a detailed account of Simon’s intentions regarding the boss’s teenage daughter. Since then, Simon had maxed out his credit cards, cancelled his standing orders, transferred his mortgage to a new lender at a distressingly poor rate, changed his phone number, and sent everyone in his address book a wedding-sized bouquet of flowers accompanied by a coming-out note. He’d donated his savings to the Green Party and embraced Scientology; had sold his Lexus on eBay; and within forty-eight hours would become aware of his status as a registered sex offender, as would everyone else in his postcode. All in all, Simon Dean was not in for the happiest time of his life; but, looking on the bright side, Roderick Ho felt chirpier than he’d done in ages. And his tortilla chips, it turned out, hadn’t been much damaged by their fall.

It wasn’t surprising that he’d lost track of the time; allowing his CD changer to keep on pumping music. What was surprising was that his online reverie shimmered at all, and that he noticed something vying for his attention. There was someone at the door. They’d possibly been there for a while.

Jesus, thought Ho. Wasn’t a man allowed any peace? He hated it when others failed to show consideration. Shutting the music off, he went down to find out who was disturbing him.

Louisa Guy had a headache coming on, maybe caused by her proximity to the dead. Two deaths tonight. Both colleagues, even if Alan Black had lost that role long before he’d lost his head. She’d smelt the blood before stepping into the kitchen; had known she was about to see something disgusting. But she’d assumed it would be the hostage, Hassan. And instead there he was, there was his head, Alan Black. A man she’d not given a thought to since she’d last laid eyes on him. Hadn’t given him a thought before then, to be frank.

Seeing him, the air had gone out of her. Everything became slow. But she’d kept her grip—kept her head—hadn’t thrown up like Cartwright. She almost wished she had. She wondered what it said about her, that she could see something like that and not throw up … Cartwright’s unexpected vulnerability made her readjust her opinion of him. Fact was, she’d avoided most of her colleagues, except, lately, Min Harper. Fact was, the same held true for all of them. They’d been thrown together by fate and poor judgement, and had never operated as a team before. It was somewhat ironic that they were just starting to do so now the team was significantly smaller.

And now she was in the dark again, this time in Ho’s back garden. She wondered how come Ho had a garden when everyone she knew lived in shoeboxes. But there was no point wondering why bastards prosper. Min at her side, she advanced towards Ho’s back door, forcing herself not to grind her teeth as she did so. There were lights on, and she could hear music. Funny how Ho could be careful in some ways and damn stupid in others. The lengths he’d gone to to keep his head below the parapet, and here he was winding the neighbours up with unnecessary noise after dark.

She and Min looked at each other, and shrugged at the same time.

Louisa reached out and banged on Ho’s door.

‘What?’

Surly guy, scrawnily built, early twenties, wearing a Che tee-shirt and a pair of Hawaiian shorts.

Any of the above was enough to earn him Dan Hobbs’s lasting enmity, but worst of all was the fact that he wasn’t Roderick Ho.

‘I’m looking for Ho,’ Hobbs said.

‘You’re looking for what?’

‘Roderick Ho.’

‘Your ho’s not here, man. It’s like four in the morning. You out your fucking mind, ringing people’s bells?’

The door swung shut, or would have done, if Hobbs’s foot hadn’t been in the way. Hobbs was mentally verifying information, and affirming what he knew: that he hadn’t screwed up; that this was the address Duffy had given him, confirmed by the Queens of the Database. The surly guy opened the door wide again, his expression suggesting that he was about to remonstrate. It was a cheque he never got to cash. Hobbs punched him once, a short jab in the throat. With a civilian you could phone first, tell them you were about to hit them, and it wouldn’t help them any. Hobbs closed the door, stepped over the man, and went looking for Ho.

What felt like a long time ago, back when he was first feeling his way round the Service systems, Roderick Ho had gone into his personnel records and changed his address. If he’d been asked why, he wouldn’t have understood the question. He did it for the same reason he never gave his real name when taking out a loyalty card: because you never gave a stranger the inside track. Look at Simon Dean. Bloody vanity plate. He might as well be handing out cards with the word Tosser printed above his bank details. To be fair, any number plate would have worked as well, but why make life easy for the other side? And as far as Roderick Ho was concerned, everybody was the other side until proved otherwise.

So how come Min Harper and Louisa Guy were in his back yard?

‘… What?’

‘Do you always play your music this time of night?’

‘Neighbours are students. Who cares?’ Ho scratched his head. He wore the same clothes he’d worn when he’d left Slough House ten hours previously, though his sweater was now dusted with tortilla crumbs. As for these two, he couldn’t remember what they’d been wearing then, but they didn’t look like they’d slept since. Ho didn’t do well with people, on account of not liking them, but even he could tell this pair were different tonight. For a start, they were a pair. He’d have asked what was up, but he had a more important question first.

‘How did you find me?’

‘Why? Were you hiding?’

He said it again. ‘How?’

‘Lamb told us.’

‘Fucking Lamb,’ said Ho.

‘I don’t like him.’

‘I’m not sure he likes you. But he sent us to get you.’

‘So here we are.’

Ho shook his head. He was wondering how Lamb had known he’d altered his records, let alone knew where he lived. And with that thought came another, even more disturbing. What Lamb knew about the digital world could be wrapped inside a pixel. There was no way he’d unpeeled Ho’s secrets the honourable way: using a computer. Which suggested the horrible possibility that there were other ways of dismantling a life, and that maybe being a digital warrior didn’t bestow invulnerability.

But Ho didn’t want to live in a world where that was possible. Didn’t want to believe it could happen. So he shook his head again, to dislodge the notion and send it fluttering into the night air, which was rapidly becoming the early morning air.

Then said, ‘I’ll get my laptop.’

Duffy said, ‘What?’

‘He’s not here.’

‘So where is he?’

Hobbs said, ‘I don’t know.’

There was a moment’s silence, during which Dan Hobbs could hear the remains of his career blowing like a tumble-weed down the corridors of Regent’s Park.

Then Duffy hung up on him.

Chapter 14

He had never visited her flat, nor wasted time wondering what it might be like, so was neither surprised nor reassured by its appearance: an art deco block in St John’s Wood, its edges rounded off, its windows metal-framed. Orwell had lived nearby, and had probably stolen local details when constructing his fascist future, but this particular block seemed ordinary enough in the early morning, with its shared entrance and its buzzer system that blinked continuously. Only the sign promising CCTV coverage hinted at Big Brother’s world, but signs were cheaper than the actual thing. The UK might be the most surveilled society in the world, but that was on the public purse, and building management companies generally preferred the cheaper option of hanging a fake camera. It took Jackson Lamb a minute to get through the lock, which was of more recent vintage than the building, but not by a huge amount. His feet would have clicked on the tiled surface of the lobby if he’d let them. Only one of the doors he passed on the ground floor showed a light underneath.

Lamb took the stairs: quieter, more reliable, than a lift. Such caution was second nature. It was like pulling on an old coat. Moscow rules, he’d decided when meeting Diana Taverner by the canal. She was nominally on his side—nominally his boss—but she’d been playing a dirty game, so Moscow rules it was. And now her game was all over the place, scattered like a Scrabble board, so it was London rules instead.

If Moscow rules meant watch your back, London rules meant cover your arse. Moscow rules had been written on the streets, but London rules were devised in the corridors of Westminster, and the short version read: someone always pays. Make sure it isn’t you. Nobody knew that better than Jackson Lamb. And nobody played it better than Di Taverner.

On Catherine Standish’s floor he paused. There was no sound save a steady electric hum from the lighting. Catherine’s was a corner apartment; her door the first he reached. When he pressed his eye to the peephole, no light showed. He took out the metal pick again. He wasn’t surprised to find she’d double-locked the door; nor that it was also on its chain. He was about to deal with this third obstacle when, from behind the now inch-open door, she spoke.

‘Whoever you are, back off. I’m armed.’

He was certain he’d made no noise, but still: Catherine Standish was wound pretty tight. She probably woke when pigeons passed overhead.

‘You’re not armed,’ he told her.

There was silence for a moment. Then: ‘Lamb?’

‘Let me in.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Now.’

She had never liked him, and he couldn’t blame her, but she at least knew when to jump. Sliding the chain back, she let him in, then shut the door, snapping the hall light on in the same movement. She was holding a bottle. Only mineral water, but she could feasibly have done damage with it if he’d been an actual intruder.

Judging by her expression, perhaps he was. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Get dressed.’

‘I live here. You can’t—’

‘Just get dressed.’

She looked old in this unexpected light; her greying hair loose over her shoulders. Her nightdress might have come from an illustration in a book of fairy tales. It fell to her ankles, and was buttoned down the front.

Something in his voice changed the context for her. It was still her home, but she was still Service, he was still her boss. If he was here in the middle of the night, things were happening that shouldn’t be. She said, ‘Wait in there,’ pointing Lamb at an open doorway, and disappeared into her bedroom.

Before discovering it was Lamb chiselling through her front door, Catherine Standish’s thoughts had been the obvious ones: that she was being burgled, or targeted for rape. Grabbing the bottle on her bedside table had been an automatic response. And God help her, when she’d seen who it was, she’d wondered if he’d come to proposition her. She’d assumed he was drunk; had wondered if he were mad. Now, hurriedly dressing, she wondered why she hadn’t gone for her telephone instead of the bottle; why her first response to this latest scary moment had not been solely fear. The adrenalin that had pumped through her had felt more like a release of tension than panic. As if she’d been waiting for years, and the all-but-silent scrabbling at her lock was simply the second shoe dropping.

The first had been finding Charles Partner’s body.

She pulled on the dress she’d laid out for the morning. Tied her hair back, and checked her reflection. My name is Catherine and I am an alcoholic. It was rare that she could look at herself without those words uncurling in her mind. My name is Catherine and I am an alcoholic. For a long while she’d thought herself a coward. It had taken some time to understand that becoming dry involved bravery, not the least part of which was making that assertion in public. Reaching for a weapon rather than a phone was that same bravery making itself felt. It had taken great effort to rebuild her life, after so many props had been taken away, and if most days it didn’t feel like much of a life, it was the only one she had, and she wouldn’t surrender it without a fight. The fact that the only weapon in reach had been a bottle could be labelled one of life’s little ironies.

My name is Catherine and I am an alcoholic. There was this to say for the AA mantra: you were in no immediate danger of forgetting who or what you were.

Ready to face her monstrous boss, she joined him in the other room. ‘What’s going on?’

He’d been standing by her bookshelf, gathering data. ‘Later. Come on.’ He was already heading for the door, not looking back. Expecting her to be on his heels.

Maybe clocking him with the bottle would have been the way to go. ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ she said. ‘I’m going nowhere until you tell me what’s happening.’

‘You got dressed, didn’t you?’

‘I what?’

‘You got dressed. So you’re ready to leave.’ He had that look she was used to, of expecting her to do stuff simply because he said so. ‘Can we move?’

‘I got dressed because I’ve no intention of standing in my dressing gown while you invade my space. If you want me to go anywhere, start talking.’

‘Jesus, you think I was hoping to catch you in your underwear?’ He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. ‘Shit has hit fan. Big time. Leave now with me, or soon with less friendly people.’

‘You’re not lighting that in here.’

‘No, I’m lighting it as soon as I get outside, in less than one minute. Stay or come. Your choice.’

Catherine stepped aside to let him leave.

She was always aware of Lamb’s physical presence. He took up more than his share of space. Sometimes she’d be in the kitchen at Slough House and he’d decide he needed to be there too: before she knew what was happening, she’d be pressed against the wall, trying to stay free of his orbit while he rooted in the fridge for somebody else’s food. She didn’t think he did this deliberately. He simply didn’t care. Or was so used to living in exile inside his own skin that he assumed others would give him room.

Tonight, she was more aware than ever. Partly because Lamb was in her home, smelling of cigarettes, and yesterday’s alcohol, and last night’s takeaway; wearing clothes that looked like they were melting; taking her measure with his eyes. But there was more to it. Tonight, he gave the impression that someone was riding his coat-tails. He was always secretive, but she’d never seen him look worried before. As if his paranoia was paying off. As if it had found an enemy that wasn’t only his past, lurking in a shadow his own bulk threw.

Scooping her keys from a bowl, unhooking her coat from its peg, she grabbed her bag, which was heavier than expected, double-locked the door behind her, and headed downstairs.

He was in the lobby, unlit cigarette in his mouth.

She said, ‘What sort of trouble? And how come I’m in it?’

‘Because you’re Slough House. And Slough House is officially in the shit, as of tonight.’

Catherine cast her mind briefly through the last few days’ activity; found nothing in her memory but the usual list-assembly, the data-sift. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘Cartwright’s blown a fuse, and we all get to burn down with him.’

‘Not a million miles off,’ Lamb admitted. He pushed open the door, and went through it first, scanning the parking area. ‘These the usual cars?’

‘Like I notice?’ she said. Then said, ‘Yes. They’re the usual cars.’

This earned her a swift glance. He said, ‘Baker’s been hurt. Moody’s dead. There’s probably a C&C out on all of us, and I’d rather not spend the next couple of days answering stupid questions underneath Regent’s Park.’

‘Sid’s hurt?’

‘And Moody’s dead.’

‘How badly hurt?’

‘Not as badly hurt as he’s dead. Did you hear that bit?’

‘Jed Moody was always going to end badly. But I like Sid.’

Lamb said, ‘You’re full of surprises, you know that?’ and led her out of the building forecourt, with its resident parking and low wall surround and tall green anonymous bushes, and saw the SUV parked on the pavement opposite.

Nick Duffy, noting Lamb’s reaction, said, ‘I hope he’s not going to take this the hard way.’

‘How hard could that be?’ asked Webb. James ‘Spider’ Webb: and there was something as inevitable about his comment as there was about the nickname he’d been saddled with. Webb was under thirty, and married to the notion that anyone twenty years older was lucky to have made it through the flood.

Duffy suppressed a sigh. He’d been scratching the bottom of the barrel all night; had been forced to send Dan Hobbs to collect the Slough House geek solo. That had ended well, with Hobbs lamping a citizen. So Ho was missing, and the other slow horses had either dumped their mobiles or were congregating in a sewer under Roupell Street. Meanwhile, Duffy was forced to commandeer non-Dogs like Spider Webb, to make up the numbers.

On the upside, Lady Di had been right. Here was Lamb, come to collect Standish himself. So provided he didn’t do anything remarkable, Duffy would chalk at least one success on his side of the ledger.

Answering Webb, he said, ‘You’d be surprised.’

They got out of the SUV, and crossed the road.

Lamb and the woman watched them come. Not a lot of options, Duffy knew: they could have gone back inside, which wouldn’t have helped, or they could have made a run for it. But if Lamb had skills underneath his slobbish exterior, speed wasn’t among them. Duffy doubted he’d be running anywhere.

Two yards short of the waiting pair, Duffy said, ‘Busy night.’

‘Angling for overtime?’ Lamb said. ‘You’re talking to the wrong man.’

Spider Webb said, ‘I need to know if either of you are carrying a weapon.’

‘No,’ Lamb said, without bothering to look at him.

‘I need to check that for myself.’

Lamb, still not looking at Webb, said, ‘Nick, I’m not holding. Not a gun, not a knife, not even an exploding toothbrush. But if your lapdog fancies frisking me, he’d better frisk my colleague first. Because he’s not gunna be able to do her with two broken wrists.’

‘Jesus,’ Duffy said. ‘Nobody’s frisking anyone. Webb, get in the car. Ms Standish, you’re in the front. Jackson, we’re in the back.’

‘And supposing we object?’

‘If you were going to object, you’d not have asked the question. Come on. We’ve all been doing this far too long. Let’s get to the Park, shall we?’

It occurred to him later that Lamb had been playing him. Calling him Nick? They’d met, sure, but were hardly buddies. And Duffy was Head Dog, and not easily flattered. But Lamb, unlike Duffy, had seen undercover service, and it was impossible to ignore that. Kids like Webb might see only a burn-out; an older generation remembered what it was that caused the burn-out … Jesus Christ, Duffy thought. He must have found it as tricky as winding his watch. But those thoughts came later, back in Regent’s Park, by which time Lamb and Standish were long gone.

The four of them got in, and Webb started the car.

Lamb sneezed twice, then sniffed, and—Catherine didn’t see; she was looking straight ahead—made a noise like he was wiping his nose on his sleeve. She was glad she wasn’t sitting next to him.

Approaching her was a sporadic trickle of traffic; nothing like the stream, then the flood, these streets would see in an hour or two. The city was still dark, but dawn’s first whispers could be heard, and the streetlights were losing their grip on the air. She’d spent many mornings, this sort of time, waiting for light to creep into her room. The first few hundred, she’d been trying not to think about drinking. She didn’t do that so much any more, and sometimes even slept through till the alarm, but still: the early morning was not unfamiliar to her. It’s just that she wasn’t usually in a car; not usually under arrest. However it had been phrased, that’s what was happening here. She and Lamb were under arrest. Though really, it ought to have been just her, and Lamb should have been somewhere else. Why had he come for her?

Behind her, he said, ‘Loy, was it?’

Duffy didn’t answer.

‘I’m guessing Loy. He’d be easiest to turn. It would take Taverner about three minutes.’

From the front, next to Webb, Catherine said, ‘Three minutes to what?’

‘To get him to agree to whatever she said. She’s rewriting the timeline. She’s putting Slough House in the frame.’

Duffy said, ‘This journey’s going to pass a lot quicker if we postpone the conversation till we get there.’

Catherine said, ‘Frame for what?’

‘For the execution of Hassan Ahmed.’ Lamb sneezed again. Then said: ‘Taverner’s scorching the earth, but it won’t work. It’s the cover-up that gets you in the end, Nick. She knows that, but she thinks she’s the exception. That’s what everybody thinks. And everybody’s always wrong.’

‘Last time I was at the Park, Diana Taverner was in charge. Until that changes, I do what she says.’

‘That’ll sound good before Limitations. Christ, I thought you were Boss Dog. Isn’t it your job to make sure nobody goes off reservation?’

Catherine glanced sideways. Webb, Duffy had called the driver. He looked the same age, same type, as River Cartwright, but quicker to ask how high when told to jump. He caught her looking: just a flicker from his eyes, which were mostly on the road ahead. A faint smile curled his lip.

She had barely a glimmer of what was happening here, but there was a certain comfort in knowing whose side she was on.

‘Look,’ Duffy said at last. ‘All I know is, you’re wanted at the Park. That’s it. So you’re wasting your time trying to find out what’s going on.’

‘I already know what’s going on. Taverner’s covering her arse. Thing is, she’s too busy doing that to worry about Hassan Ahmed. Remember Hassan, Nick?’ Duffy didn’t reply. ‘Taverner would sooner he had his head cut off than admit it was her fault. Which is why she wanted Loy, who’s no doubt signed off on her version of events by now. And Moody being dead, well, she can paint him any colour she likes. Not as if he’s about to contradict her.’

Up front, Catherine decided that the streets were starting to look themselves again; places where business was done and people moved freely, instead of skipping from shadow to shadow. Moved as if they belonged here.

Lamb said, ‘But it’s all going to unravel, Nick. The sensible thing to do would be forget about Lady Di’s London rules and concentrate on finding the kid before he gets whacked too. If that’s not already happened.’ He sneezed again. ‘Jesus, you keep a cat in here or what? Standish, you got tissues in that bag?’

Hoisting the bag in question on to her knees, Catherine unzipped it and took out Lamb’s gun, which he’d placed there while she was dressing. The safety catch was clearly marked, and she snicked it off before pointing the gun at her chosen target.

‘We all know I’m not going to shoot you dead,’ she told Webb. ‘But I’ll put a bullet through your foot if I need to. And that’ll wipe the smirk off your face, won’t it?’

‘You two can walk home from here,’ said Lamb. ‘If that’s all right.’

Chapter 15

Blake’s grave lies half a mile or so from Slough House, in Bunhill Fields cemetery. It’s marked by a small headstone, also dedicated to his wife Catherine, and is out in the open, at one end of a paved area lined with benches and sheltered by low trees. The stone doesn’t mark the couple’s exact resting place, but indicates that their remains are not far off. Next to it is a memorial to Defoe; Bunyan’s tomb is yards away. Nonconformists all. Whether that was why Lamb chose it as a meeting place, nobody was prepared to guess, but that was where they gathered all the same.

Having failed to collect Kay White, River arrived alone. He climbed the gates, which were padlocked, and sat on a bench under a tree. Traffic was building up in the background. The city never really slept; it endured white nights and fitful slumbers. Its breakfast was cigarettes, black coffee and aspirin, and it would feel like death warmed up for hours.

A rattling at the gates meant that others were arriving.

Min, Louisa and Roderick Ho strode into view, Ho clutching a laptop. Min and Louisa looked as pale as River felt, but were walking tall. Things were happening. They weren’t on the sidelines any more.

Ho said, ‘Moody really dead?’

River nodded.

Ho said, ‘Right,’ and sat on the bench opposite. He opened his machine, booted up and attached a dongle. Nobody asked what he was doing. If he’d sat and listened, or tried to kickstart a conversation, they’d have asked, but Ho diving into the web was business as usual.

‘White?’

River shook his head. ‘Too late.’

‘Not—’

‘No. Christ, no. She was just being driven away. What about Loy?’

‘No sign.’

Louisa sat next to River. Min stood. He stretched suddenly; went on to tiptoe, and extended his arms as if crucified.

‘It’s the Dogs, isn’t it?’

‘Guess so.’

‘They think we killed Jed?’

River said, ‘I think they think we killed Alan Black. How well did you two know him?’

Both shrugged.

‘He was around. But not much of a talker.’

‘Let’s face it, there are no big talkers at Slough House.’

‘He ever say why he quit?’

‘Not in my hearing. You never knew him?’

‘He was before my time,’ River said.

‘Why would they think we killed him?’

‘Because we’re being set up,’ River said. ‘Is that a car?’

It was. It slowed, parked and the engine died; all of this out of sight, behind the trees lining the cemetery’s western edge. River and Louisa got to their feet. Ho, absorbed in his screen, paid no attention. At the far end of the path, there came a clinking sound, and the noise of a bolt being shot.

‘It’s Lamb,’ said River.

‘He has a key?’

‘Well, that would explain why he wanted to meet here.’

A moment later Lamb and Catherine Standish appeared.

This was what it had come to: Curly was in a foreign country, undercover, in time of war. His own country, and he was the stranger.

They were driving past a mosque—a fucking mosque. Here in the capital of England. You couldn’t make it up.

For years, there’d been warning voices raised, but what good had it done? Sweet FA. Anyone who wants can wander in and take the country: we’ve given them the jobs, the houses, the money, and if they don’t want jobs, we give them money anyway. Welfare state? Don’t make us laugh. Whole country’s a charity case.

Plus, they were lost. Had no idea where they were. Follow the signs: North. How hard could it be?

But Larry was flaking. Coward was what it was. We were only supposed to give him a scare. Yeah, because that’s how you fight a war, right? The 7/7 killers didn’t open their rucksacks and show their bombs, say See what we could’ve done if we felt like it? They just did it. Because give them this much: they knew they were fighting a war. And you couldn’t fight a war without both sides taking part.

He hadn’t realized it was a mosque until they were right next to it, but now he could see it properly, it couldn’t ever have been anything else. It bulbed into foreign shapes. As if they’d driven off the map, and wound up the last place they wanted to be. Panic clutched him: the thought that the kid would know where they were—would pick up on the smells and sounds—and start kicking at the boot. Curly had a vision of a crowd surrounding the car; rocking it side to side. Pulling the kid free, and then what? Setting fire to them. Dragging them on to the street and stoning them. Fucking medieval, the lot of them. The reason he was doing this in the first place: give them a taste of their own medicine.

He swallowed the panic. The Paki was in the boot. No way could he know where they were.

None of them knew where they were.

‘You got any clue where you’re trying to get to?’

‘You said to get some distance, right? I’ve been—’

‘I didn’t mean bring us into bloody India.’

The mosque was behind them. The buildings everywhere were concrete, with barred windows. The only hint of green was a Poundshop’s metal shutter.

‘We need to get out of the city.’

Lamb perched on the rail around Bunyan’s tomb, eating a bacon sandwich. In his other hand he held a second sandwich, wrapped in greaseproof paper. The slow horses were gathered round him.

He said, ‘Black was recruited by Taverner. The kidnapping was a set-up. Only now it’s real, so Taverner’s looking for scapegoats.’ He paused to swallow. ‘That would be us.’

‘Why?’ Min asked.

Catherine said, ‘Well, it’s not like anyone’ll miss us.’

‘And she already had Black signed up,’ Louisa put in. ‘That’s one slow horse in the frame already.’

‘And he won’t be contradicting anyone soon,’ Lamb agreed. ‘For all we know, Taverner has a papertrail in place. Saying Black was working for Slough House, not her. Not the Park.’

‘She’s going to a hell of a lot of trouble,’ River said. ‘Okay, so there’s two dead, and it doesn’t look rosy for the kid, but ops have gone haywire before. Why’s she running scared?’

Lamb said, ‘The name Mahmud Gul mean anything?’

‘He’s a General,’ River said automatically. ‘In the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. The Pakistani secret service.’

That earned him a look. ‘I bet you used to play Top Trumps with grandad. With spooks instead of racing cars.’

Ho’s laptop was cradled in front of him like an ice-cream seller’s tray. ‘Gul’s Joint Intelligence Department,’ he read. ‘Equivalent to our Second Desk.’

River was racking his memory for more details. Nothing came to mind that wasn’t painted with a broad brush. ‘He’s a bit of a hardliner.’

‘Aren’t they all?’

Ho said, ‘Back at the turn of the war, it was thought there were elements inside Inter-Services who were alerting Taliban militants to missile strikes. Gul was one of the likely suspects. Nobody was ever charged, but a Park analyst wrote him up as likely to go either way.’

‘On the other hand, he’s always supported the government in public,’ River said. ‘And he’s usually mentioned when the next Director’s being discussed.’ Which used up all he knew about Gul. ‘What’s he got to do with this?’ But before Lamb could answer, he said, ‘No. Wait. Don’t tell me.’

‘Oh great,’ Catherine said. ‘Twenty questions.’

Louisa gave her a glance. That comment didn’t sound like Catherine. But then, she didn’t much look like Catherine. Her nose was red-tipped in the chill, sure, and her cheekbones were tinted the same, but the spark in her eyes was out of the ordinary. Perhaps she was enjoying this adventure. Then Catherine’s eyes met hers, and Louisa quickly looked away.

Lamb finished his sandwich, and belched appreciatively. ‘That was bloody excellent,’ he said. ‘Five stars.’

‘Where’s open this time of morning?’ Louisa asked.

He waved vaguely in the direction of Old Street. ‘Twenty-four-hour place. It wasn’t far out of the way. Didn’t think you’d mind waiting.’

‘I hate to interrupt,’ River said. ‘Hassan Ahmed. He’s one of Gul’s?’

‘He’s not an agent.’

‘Sure?’

Lamb let his breath out slowly.

‘Okay, so—oh, Christ.’ The truth hit River with a thrill. ‘He’s family?’

‘His sister’s son.’

‘We’ve—Taverner’s had Mahmud Gul’s nephew kidnapped by fascist thugs? What the hell does she think she’s doing?’

‘She thinks she’s boxing clever. “Think of it as bringing communities together”,’ Lamb quoted. ‘Her words. “When we rescue Hassan, we make a friend.”’

Min Harper asked, ‘Are they close?’

Ho was still scrolling through Regent’s Park’s file on Gul. ‘Hassan’s mother and father met in Karachi, but he was already living here. She came back to England as his bride. She’s not been back since, and there’s no record of Gul visiting.’

Min said, ‘But he’s a spook. You can’t rule it out.’

Lamb said, ‘Either way, we can assume he’d object to the kid having his head chopped off on camera.’ He unwrapped his second sandwich. A smell of warm sausage wafted round.

Trying to ignore it, River said, ‘So that was the plan? To romance Mahmud Gul by rescuing his nephew from a bunch of fanatics?’

‘Our fanatics,’ Lamb said. ‘That was the important part.’

Louisa said, ‘So he’s in our debt. And so, when he gets to be the next Director of Inter-Services Intelligence, more likely to fall our way.’

‘Brilliant,’ River said. ‘But what happens when we don’t rescue Hassan? Did that factor into her thinking at all?’

‘Apparently not,’ Lamb said. ‘And the way it’s looking now, in twenty-four hours or so, the British secret service assassinates the nephew of a more-or-less friendly power’s secret service Second Desk.’

‘Only if they stick to their timetable,’ Catherine said. ‘And why should they? As far as they know, they’re blown.’

‘So they kill the kid,’ Min said. ‘Jesus. Wars have been started for less.’

Lamb said, ‘Which is why Lady Di’s going to any lengths necessary to screw the blame on us. If Hassan dies, that’s one thing. If Hassan dies, and it gets public that Five was responsible, it goes beyond being a black mark on her CV.’ A small piece of meat fell, leaving a mayonnaise smear on his trouser leg. ‘Damn. I hate it when that happens.’ He stared angrily at the yellow streak for a moment, which wasn’t noticeably larger than any other stain on that leg, then looked back up. ‘Taverner won’t be joining us at Slough House. She’ll be looking at the inside of a cell. Unless she’s black-bagged first.’

‘Black-bag a Second Desk? How likely is that?’

Jackson Lamb said, ‘There’s probably a precedent. Why not ask grandad? Meanwhile, nobody’s looking for Hassan. Taverner’s known from the start where he is, and it’s not been in her interests that anyone else does, so the cops have been working without Service input. And until Black infiltrated them, the Voice of Albion weren’t making waves on anyone’s radar.’

Ho said, ‘You don’t make wa—’

‘Shut up.’

‘If they’re such amateurs, what are their chances?’ Catherine asked. ‘Maybe they’ll trip over their own …’

‘Dicks?’

Louisa said, ‘She has a point.’

‘Not really. Being a bunch of bottom feeders has played to their advantage. Nobody noticed them before, so nobody knows where they came from now.’

‘But Alan Black found them.’

‘Yeah,’ Lamb said. ‘He did, didn’t he?’

River was listening and not listening; his brain churning through newly learned facts, adding them to what he already knew, or thought he already knew, or had forgotten he knew. And also, he was starving. Lamb, the bastard, could have brought sandwiches for everyone: any boss, anywhere, would have done that when heading for a pre-breakfast meeting. Always supposing any boss, anywhere, would have called a pre-breakfast meeting in a graveyard … River could barely remember when he’d last eaten, last drunk. It had probably been outside Hobden’s with Sid, back when she was still upright, instead of laid out on a hospital bed or operating table, or with a sheet drawn over her head. He still didn’t know how she was. Hadn’t come to terms with what had happened to her, let alone the information that she’d been put in Slough House to keep an eye on him. By Taverner, presumably. So what was that all about?

Lamb was saying something about headless chickens, and River felt a sudden drop in energy; a need for sugar. For something hot.

God, he’d commit murder for a cup of coffee …

In the back of his mind, tumblers clicked.

Lamb took a healthy bite from his sausage sandwich. Chewing, he said, ‘Thing is, Black was a highly trained secret agent the same way you lot are, which means he was a fuck-up. So he’ll have made mistakes.’

‘Thanks,’ Louisa said.

Min Harper said, ‘What difference does it make? He’s dead. The others’ll off Hassan first chance they get, then crawl back wherever they came from.’

‘If they were going to … off Hassan first chance they get,’ Catherine said, ‘you’d have found his body next to Black’s.’

Min looked thoughtful, then nodded.

Ho said, ‘Fuck-up or not, Black got them out of Leeds the night they took him. The traffic CCTV was down for hours.’

Lamb said, ‘Probably Lady Di. But nobody’s pulling strings for them now, and they haven’t got Black making their decisions. They’ll be headless chickens, clinging to whatever’s left of the original plan. Which, we can assume, will have been to his blueprint. So.’ He stared at each of them in turn. All but River Cartwright looked back: River was gazing skyward, as if expecting a helicopter. ‘You’re Alan Black. What would you have done?’

Min said, ‘Well, for a start …’

‘Yes?’

‘I wouldn’t have got involved in such a godawful mess.’

‘Any other useful input?’

‘I never liked him,’ Ho said.

‘Who?’

‘Black.’

‘He had his head cut off a few hours ago,’ Lamb said.

‘And left on a table.’

‘I was only saying.’

‘Jesus. This the best you can manage?’

River said, ‘I’ve just remembered where I saw him.’

In every horror film, sooner or later, the corridor scene occurs. The long corridor, with overhead lighting which shuts down section by section—boom boom boom. And then you’re in the dark.

Which was where Hassan was now. In the dark.

The last colour he’d known had been the bright red hell of the kitchen, in the centre of which, on the table, Moe’s head had sat like a Hallowe’en pumpkin. One in which no light would ever shine. Take more than a candle to put a gleam in those eyes. Boom boom. The floor had been a crimson lake; the walls spattered with gore. We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web. It had happened before. It would happen to him next.

The lights in his mind were shutting down.

Even without the handkerchief in his mouth, Hassan wouldn’t have been able to shout. He had no words left. His body was bones and liquid.

Boom.

Different things made different noises. He’d been underneath the kitchen when they were doing what they did to Moe, but all he’d heard was a confusion of sound, which might have been anything. It was not the noise Hassan would have expected from such an action. The expected noise would have been a thump, followed by a slow rolling.

But these dark thoughts were escaping him now, as the lights in his mind shut down, boom boom boom. And then he was Hassan only in the sense that everyone has to be someone, and that was who he was stuck with until the last of his lights went out, boom boom.

And then he was luggage.

Boom.

When River had finished, they stood silent for a while. Not far off, a bird chirped. It must have had inside information of the dawn. There was a vari-coloured glow from City Road, and a more subdued glimmer from the other side, all of it strained through branches.

Lamb said, ‘You’re sure?’

River nodded.

‘Okay.’ He looked thoughtful.

Min Harper said, ‘Doesn’t help us with finding Hassan.’

‘Well, you’re the ray of sunshine, aren’t you?’

‘I’m only saying.’

Ho said, ‘Is anywhere open round here yet? With wi-fi?’

‘And breakfast?’ Louisa added.

‘God,’ Lamb said. ‘Can you not think of anything but your stomach?’ He swallowed his last chunk of sandwich, and tossed a scrunched-up greaseproof ball at the nearby bin. ‘There’s a kid out there’ll die today. A little focus?’ He pulled his cigarettes out.

River said, ‘Taverner can’t get away with this.’

‘Nice to know where your priorities lie,’ Lamb said.

‘I’m not talking about what she did to me. She’s behind all this. If we’re to save Hassan, we need to squeeze her.’

‘We?’

‘Nobody else is going to do it.’

‘Kid’s dead meat then.’

Catherine Standish said, ‘You could have let the Dogs round us up. You didn’t. What was that about?’

‘You think I have a sneaking regard for your talents?’

‘I think you do nothing without a reason.’

‘The day I let Regent’s Park screw me around’s the day I take the pledge,’ Lamb said. ‘If the Dogs tried to steal my pencil sharpener, I’d hide it. And I don’t have a pencil sharpener.’

Ho said, ‘What’s a pencil sharpener?’

‘Very funny.’

Ho looked puzzled.

‘So what’s the point?’ Louisa asked. ‘Why are we here?’

Lamb lit his cigarette. For a moment, his face wreathed in smoke, he might have materialized from the tomb he leant against. ‘Let’s not kid ourselves. Dogs’ll pick you up before you get your breakfast. But at least you know what’s happening. Taverner’s got Loy and White, and she’ll have turned both of them by now. They’ll swear blind whatever story she feeds them is true. And that’ll be that this whole mess was planned at Slough House. Meaning me.’

‘Nice to know where your priorities lie,’ River said.

‘Yeah, well, the difference between us is I’ve a career to look back on. And I’m not having Taverner piss all over it.’

‘And that’s it?’ Min Harper said. ‘We just hang about for the Dogs to catch up?’

‘You have a better plan?’

Louisa said, ‘Hassan’s still out there somewhere. Maybe not far away. We can’t sit on our hands and wait for his body to be found.’

‘I thought you were dying for your breakfast.’

‘You’re trying to wind us up, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. So you discover the heroes inside yourselves.’ He paused. ‘Look. I don’t normally say this stuff, but I want to tell you something.’ He took a drag on his cigarette. ‘You’re fucking useless, the lot of you.’

They waited for a ‘but’.

‘No, I’m serious. If you weren’t fuck-ups, you’d still be at Regent’s Park. If you’re all Hassan Ahmed’s got to rely on, I hope the kid’s got religion.’ He dropped his cigarette and ground it into the damp leaves underfoot. ‘Now, given that Cartwright’s the only one with anything useful to offer, he’d better come with me.’

‘Where to?’ River asked.

‘To let the air out of Taverner’s tyres,’ Lamb said. ‘The rest of you can do what you like.’

As they headed towards the gates, Lamb half a pace ahead, River said: ‘You were trying to wind them up, weren’t you?’

‘No,’ Lamb told him. ‘I meant every word.’

‘Might have the effect of winding them up, though.’

‘I don’t suppose that’ll do much harm,’ Lamb said. ‘But it’s not likely to do a hell of a lot of good.’ Producing a key, he tossed it to River, who unlocked the gates, let Lamb through, then followed him on to the pavement.

Lamb was already striding over the road, where a large black SUV was parked half on the opposite pavement.

River said, ‘Where’d you get the car?’

‘Official issue,’ Lamb told him. ‘You been near Slough House?’

‘Not since we all left together.’

‘So we don’t know whether the cleaners have been in.’

For a moment, River thought he meant just that: the cleaners. He hadn’t been aware Slough House was ever cleaned. Then he remembered Moody. ‘It’s been a few hours. They might have been and gone.’

‘Or it might still be there.’ It, meaning Jed Moody’s body. Lamb started the engine. ‘Let’s find out.’

The others watched Lamb and Cartwright disappear between the trees.

Louisa said, ‘Bastard.’

Catherine Standish said, ‘He told us we’re useless because he wants us to prove him wrong.’

‘No he didn’t. He’s covering his arse, that’s all.’

‘But supposing he wasn’t?’ said Catherine.

‘What difference would that make?’

‘It would mean he wants us to prove him wrong.’

‘I’m not desperate for his approval.’

‘Hassan Ahmed might appreciate it, though.’

Min said, ‘Everyone in the country’s been looking for Hassan Ahmed for two days. How are we supposed to find him?’

‘We know where he was not long ago. Anyway, we’re not looking for him,’ Catherine said. ‘We’re looking for the people who took him.’

‘There’s a difference?’

‘You’re Alan Black,’ she said. ‘That’s what he was saying before Cartwright interrupted. So, we’re Alan Black. What would we have done?’

Louisa said, ‘You’re right. It gives us an edge.’

Ho said, ‘You think?’

‘Why not?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember ever having a conversation with him.’

‘So how come you didn’t like him?’

‘He used to open windows.’

Catherine said drily, ‘I can see how upsetting that must have been for you.’

Ho removed the dongle from his laptop and powered down. ‘Anyway, we can’t stay here. It’s cold and damp. Where’s that caff?’

‘Old Street.’

‘Come on, then.’

‘All of us?’

‘Someone has to come. I didn’t bring any money. They have wi-fi, you notice?’

Louisa looked at Min, then back at Ho. ‘You want to try looking for Hassan?’

Ho shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

‘Don’t tell me you want Lamb’s approval.’

‘Approval?’ Ho said. ‘Fuck, no. I just want to prove the prick wrong.’

The car came to a halt, and Hassan’s body was bounced against the boot lid. He barely noticed. Further bruising seemed immaterial.

There was, after all, worse to come.

Chapter 16

Lamb pulled up by the bus stop opposite Slough House. One of Moody’s checkpoints, River recalled; constantly monitored for loiterers. He said, ‘So. What we doing?’

‘See any lights?’

‘Third floor.’

‘Did you leave that on?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Think.’

River thought. It didn’t help. ‘I don’t remember. You were there too. Why is it my fault the light was left on?’

‘Because I’ve better things to worry about.’

At the windows no shapes appeared; no other lights went on. The cleaners might be inside, removing Jed Moody. Or might have been and gone, and left the light on; or might not have been there at all.

And might turn up in the next few minutes.

Reading River’s thoughts, Lamb said, ‘Only one way to find out.’

‘We’re going in?’

‘You are,’ Lamb told him. ‘No point us both running the risk.’

‘And supposing I don’t get caught? What am I supposed to do?’

Lamb told him.

‘So we what, try to work out what we’d do in their position?’

‘We work out what Black’s back-up plan would have been. If the safe house was blown.’

‘But Black was the one planning to blow the safe house.’

‘Yes,’ said Catherine patiently. ‘But given that he probably didn’t tell them that in advance, they might have wanted to know if there was a back-up plan.’

‘They killed Black because they discovered he was a spook,’ Louisa said. ‘They’re hardly likely to trust his plans now.’

‘True,’ Min Harper put in. ‘But on the other hand, they’re a bunch of morons.’

‘How do we know that?’

‘Well, they joined a group called Voice of Albion. You want a definition of moron …’

‘They sussed out Black.’

‘Yeah, well, he wasn’t James Bond.’

‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Catherine said.

They were in a café on Old Street: long and narrow with a counter along the window, and tables against a mirrored wall. Coffee had arrived, and breakfasts been ordered. Ho’s laptop was open, and that familiar expression was capturing him; the one where the world on his screen became more real, less irritating, than the one around him.

He said, ‘They might have offed him already. Why stick to the deadline now?’

‘For the sake of the exercise,’ Catherine said, ‘let’s pretend there’s a chance of saving his life. Otherwise we might as well go back to bed.’

Louisa said, ‘What about CCTV? I thought the UK had blanket coverage. Especially on the roads.’

Ho offered her a pained look. ‘All other objections aside, we don’t know what they’re driving.’

‘So how do we find out?’

They fell silent.

‘He’s not likely to have used his credit card,’ Min said at last.

‘But there’ll be a papertrail.’

‘A footprint.’

‘In a black op?’

‘Black ops cost. Unless Taverner’s funded it out of her own pocket, there’ll be—’

‘A footprint,’ Ho repeated. ‘Not a papertrail.’

‘Whatever.’

‘This isn’t a black op,’ Catherine said. ‘It’s off the books. Different animal entirely.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘A black op’s officially deniable. One that’s off the books never happened.’

‘So how’s the funding work when it’s off the books?’

Catherine thought for a moment. ‘I once heard about an op where a safe house was kitted out. In Walsall, I think. All the utilities, council tax, everything was on standing order. But the house didn’t exist. The money went from Budgeting into a property account, which then funded the op.’

‘Tracking that,’ Ho said, ‘would take forever.’

‘No, but,’ Louisa said. She turned to Catherine. ‘That safe house never existed. But we know one that does, don’t we?’

‘Roupell Street,’ Min said.

They looked at Ho.

‘I’m on it.’

Curly said, ‘We need to get out of the city.’

‘We should dump the car. Walk away,’ Larry said.

He’d been bottling this up, Curly could tell. Until the words felt like a winning argument: This is what we should do, because I just said it was.

‘We killed a spook,’ he said.

‘You killed him.’

‘He’s dead, you were there. You want to argue details?’

‘In a court of law—’

‘You what? You fucking what?’

‘Because—’

‘You think we’ll end up in court, you’re more of a twat than those jeans make you look.’

Larry said, ‘What’s wrong with them?’

‘We killed a spook. You think they’ll arrest us?’

‘What you saying?’

‘They will shoot. Us. Dead. End of. No arrest, no trial, no weaselly words about how you only watched while I cut his head off.’ Saying the words, he could feel the blood pulse through his cutting arm. It was like having an erection, right to his fingertips. ‘A pair of bullets each. Bam bam. Double tap.’

Larry was shaking.

‘So don’t even think about court. We’re not going to court. Get it?’

Larry gave no response.

‘Get it?’

‘I get it.’

‘Good.’ And now he let Larry off the hook: ‘But it’s not gunna happen anyway. We’re not getting caught.’

‘We had a spy with us. You think—’

‘I know he was a spy. That doesn’t mean we’re gunna get caught. You think we’re alone in this? We’re not. The people are on our side. You think they’re gunna turn their backs on us?’

Larry said, ‘Maybe not.’

‘Maybe not. Maybe not. If that’s all you believe, you should’ve just sat in the pub, complaining about the country being taken away from us. Another fucking whiner with no balls.’

‘I’m here. I’m not all noise. You know that.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Curly wanted to say more, to explain to Larry what the future held: that they’d be heroes, outlaws, Robin Hoods. Symbols of the struggle against Islam. And when the war started, leaders of the people. But he didn’t, because Larry didn’t have it in him. Larry thought he was a soldier, but he was just another coward; happy to talk, scared to walk. No point talking to him about a future that was Curly’s alone.

Which Larry didn’t know yet, but he’d find out soon.

But the Roupell Street house led nowhere.

‘Civil Service property since the fifties,’ Ho said, scanning records he’d pulled onscreen. ‘Treasury first, then something called “collateral purposes”.’

‘Safe house,’ Catherine said.

‘And now it’s listed under Sales.’

‘Which means exactly what it sounds like.’ Catherine shook her head. ‘There’ll be no papertrail. Footprint, sorry. All Taverner had to do was check the sales portfolio for an empty property, and use that.’

‘So they were squatting,’ Min said.

‘Basically.’

‘They’d have had a shock if a potential buyer turned up.’

‘In this climate?’

‘Okay, that takes us nowhere. So where are we?’ Louisa said.

‘Twiddling thumbs,’ Ho said. ‘The kid’s toast.’

‘Shut up,’ Catherine snapped.

Ho eyed her warily.

‘Get this through your head. Until we know he’s dead, we keep looking. We’ve no idea what their plan is. They might want to keep to the original timetable because it’s, I don’t know, Hitler’s birthday or something. It might matter to them. We might still have time.’

Ho opened his mouth as if to reveal when Hitler’s birthday was, but thought better of it.

Louisa said, ‘None of us are giving up.’

Their breakfasts arrived: three platefuls of the full English; one mushroom omelette. Ho shifted his laptop on to his knees, then scooped a forkful of beans into his mouth.

‘Were you taught to eat?’ Louisa said. ‘Or is it still a learning process?’

Chewing rapidly Ho nodded at her, as if to indicate that a smart reply was but minutes away.

Min said, ‘Okay, they got the house for free. They’d still need money. For transport if nothing else.’

‘They might have stolen it.’

‘With a kidnap victim? Too risky.’

‘They might have used their own wheels.’

‘Black was a pro. He’d have wanted fresh.’

Catherine agreed.

‘And paid with cash,’ said Min.

‘Most likely,’ agreed Louisa.

‘And if they used cash, it’s history.’

Catherine cut her omelette into uniform slices. The others watched, fascinated.

When she’d finished, she ate two pieces in silence, then took a sip of coffee. She said, ‘Not necessarily. Black was using a fake name. When you’re establishing a cover, one of the first things you go for is a credit card. It’s easy to do. And once you’ve got it, why not use it? It adds verisimilitude.’

‘Adds what?’ Ho said.

Catherine gave him a look

Min said, ‘Sounds good, but where does it take us? We don’t know what name he was using.’

‘Didn’t Lamb check his pockets? For a wallet?’

‘I think he’d have said if he had. On account of it being, you know. A clue.’

‘Let’s step back,’ Louisa suggested. ‘You’re running an op. What do you need?’

‘A legend,’ Ho said.

‘With at least three back-ups.’

‘Back-ups?’

Catherine said: ‘Like a reference on a CV. At least two contact numbers, or addresses, where if anyone comes checking, they’ll find confirmation you’re who you say you are.’

‘And how’s that work when you’re off the books?’

‘You go freelance.’

They thought about it.

‘It’s getting expensive.’

‘Slush fund,’ Louisa said.

‘That’s all tight as hell since the Miro Weiss business.’

Which was when a quarter of a billion pounds, slated for reconstruction work in Iraq, had gone walkabout.

‘Okay, how’d you do it on the cheap?’

‘Friends.’

‘Nobody’s got friends that good,’ Ho objected.

‘Not in your world,’ Louisa agreed. ‘But there must be people owe Taverner a favour. And I mean, what are we talking? You get a phone call from some little England nut, asking if you can vouch for whatever Black was calling himself? Takes two minutes to say yes.’

Catherine said, ‘No. You need a dedicated phone line, and you need to be in character when it rings, 24/7. On the books, this stuff is handled via the Queens. The system tells them, when they get a caller, who they’re supposed to be.’

Min reminded himself that Catherine Standish had been Charles Partner’s Girl Friday. Partner had been before Min’s time, but he was pretty much a legend himself.

He said, ‘Well—’ but got no further.

‘Oh fuck,’ Catherine said.

The first time any of them had heard her say that.

‘I think I know what they did.’

Curly said, ‘Thought we were heading out of the city.’

‘I’m trying.’

He didn’t seem to be. They’d passed another mosque, unless they were going in circles, and it was the same one.

‘How big’s this fucking place anyway?’

‘London?’ Larry said. ‘Pretty big.’

Curly glanced across, but he wasn’t taking the piss. He looked like he was hanging on by his fingernails, frankly.

Like someone a policeman would stop, to check he wasn’t going to stroke out at the wheel.

‘Thought you were following the signs.’

‘I thought you were pointing them out to me.’

‘Is there a map anywhere?’ Then answered his own question, pulling open the glovebox, finding nothing but hire-agreement papers and a couple of manuals.

‘There’s that,’ Larry said.

‘What?’

‘That.’ He pointed.

The penny dropped.

Curly said, ‘Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.’

Letting himself through the door, River paused. A dim glow from the third floor reached him like a ghostly presence, but he heard nothing. Which might mean he was alone. Or that anyone else in the building was being very quiet.

Well, he could hang by the back door wondering. Or go up and find out.

He took the first set of stairs slowly, part wary, part weary. His body was feeling the hours it had put in: surges of adrenalin; shocking sights. It took it out of you. It’s not whether you can cope with the things that happen. The O.B.’s words. It’s whether you cope afterwards, once they’ve happened. Once they’re over.

But this wasn’t over. And he experienced another rush at the thought of what Taverner had done to him.

The second flight came easier; by the time he was on the third he was almost hoping there’d be someone here—one of the cleaners; one of the Dogs. A few hours ago, he’d gone quietly. This time he wouldn’t.

But there was nobody there but Jed Moody, cold and dead on the landing.

Passing him, River went up to Lamb’s office. A shoebox sat on the desk, as Lamb had promised. River did as instructed, then carried the box downstairs.

Back on Moody’s landing, he knelt by the body. He supposed he ought to care that the man was dead, but what he mostly felt was the strangeness of it; that Moody, like River, had been a counter in a boardgame played by other people. Only for Moody, the game was over. Snakes and ladders were one thing. A staircase was deadlier.

He’d had a gun, though, and needn’t have been the one removed from the board. If he’d been prepared to use it, maybe River would be crouching next to a dead Min Harper or Louisa Guy, and Moody would have been in the wind, Lamb’s flight fund in his pocket.

But Moody hadn’t wanted to shoot them, so maybe there was loyalty between slow horses after all. They weren’t friends, or hadn’t been friendly, before this long night started. But Moody hadn’t been able to bring himself to shoot them.

Shoot another one, anyway. Though shooting Sid had been an accident.

For one reason or the other, River allowed Moody another second’s peace.

Then he stripped the corpse.

‘Legends never die,’ Catherine said. ‘They wouldn’t be legends otherwise. When a joe’s deep cover, long-term, they get the works. Passport, birth certificate, everything. Credit cards, library cards, all the stuff you fill your wallet with.’

‘Sure.’

‘We know that.’

‘And it costs.’

Ho rolled his eyes. He’d been involved in more conversation this morning than the past two months, and it was already sounding familiar. ‘We established that. Your point?’

‘They do it on the cheap.’

‘Thank you, superbrain. So they what, picked up some knock-off ID down the market? Maybe Oxfam—’

‘Shut up, Ho.’

‘Yeah, shut up, Ho. How do you mean on the cheap, Catherine?’

She said, ‘They use one that already exists. Did Black ever go undercover?’

This was more like it. Now they had guidance.

‘Turn left in one hundred yards.’

Larry said, ‘She’s that posh bird.’

‘They’re all posh birds.’

‘You know the one I mean.’

‘You know something? I don’t. I really don’t. And I really don’t care.’

It was five, which meant they’d been lost for an hour, and there was no noise from the boot. Curly wondered if the Paki had fallen asleep, or died: from a heart attack or something. Like cheating the hangman. He wondered what difference it would make if they had to do it with him already dead, and decided: not so much. Moe had been dead, and taking his head off had been a serious business. The world would sit up and take notice, either way.

He laughed, a sudden sharp bark that startled Larry, who veered and nearly clipped a car on the verge … Little things mattered. Clip a car, trigger an alarm, get stopped by a policeman up the road: step out of the vehicle, sir, and what’s that on the back seat?

And what’s that banging from the boot?

But Larry recovered, and there was no sideswipe, no alarm.

‘What’s so funny?’

Curly had forgotten. But the insight remained; that it only took a moment for things to unravel. One mistake could spoil everything.

So forget the deadline. Find somewhere safe, and just do it.

Do it, film it, fade away.

Ho pulled Black’s personnel files, which had been downgraded since he quit, but remained live—in direct opposition to Black’s current status, though Ho didn’t say this aloud. He hadn’t liked Black, but still: they were all slow horses, which seemed to count for something this morning.

‘Is it really that simple to check our records?’

‘Can you see ours that easily?’

‘No,’ he replied to the first question, and ‘Yes’ to the second. If it was that easy, anyone could do it. But for Ho himself, yes, it was a piece of cake.

‘I thought they switched the settings regularly.’

‘They do.’

But since Ho had hacked the security settings rather than the database itself, and left himself a trapdoor, it didn’t matter how often they changed the codes. It was like they fitted new locks every month, but left the door hanging open.

He said: ‘Alan Black. Here we go. He worked embassy surveillance mostly.’

‘Cushy gig.’

‘Any undercover?’

‘Give me a sec!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Take your time.’

‘It’s just, we got the impression you were hot shit.’

Ho glanced up from his laptop to find three pairs of eyes sharing a joke. He said, ‘Yeah, well. Kind of fuck off, all right?’

But it felt sort of cool, all the same. Almost as if they’d called him Clint.

Catherine said, ‘As long as you’re there. How did he end up in Slough House?’

Ho said, ‘He shagged the Venezuelan ambassador’s wife.’

‘It says that?’

‘It jazzes up the language a bit.’

Catherine thought back to Alan Black, who’d lasted six months at Slough House. She didn’t have too clear a memory of him, beyond his slow-burn frustration at having been dead-ended, but that was true of all of them, except maybe Struan Loy. And herself, of course. He’d been overweight, average height, average looks—average personality, really. She couldn’t picture him as a successful adulterer. On the other hand, he hadn’t actually jacked it in; he’d been recruited by Taverner for her deep-cover op. So he’d obviously had something going for him.

Not that it had worked out happily in the end.

‘Okay, here it is.’ Ho looked up. ‘He was holding paper on the name Dermot Radcliffe. Full-dress cover.’

‘If he was working surveillance, why’d he need false ID?’

‘Surveillance can be up close and personal,’ Catherine said.

‘Yeah, tell that to the Venezuelan ambassador.’

Catherine ignored that. ‘And working the embassy crowd, you’d be expected to have papers. You’re on foreign soil, after all.’

‘Best not to use your own name when you’re on the job.’

‘Are you two going to giggle about this all morning?’

‘Sorry.’

Ho said, ‘Okay, we have plastic. We have an account number.’

‘But are they still live?’

Catherine said, ‘Like I say, legends don’t die. They don’t get wiped off the books. If he had any nous, he’d have kept the plastic and all the rest when he left the Park. As a failsafe.’

‘In case he ever needed to be somebody else, you mean.’

‘Or needed to remember what it was like being him,’ Catherine said.

‘Let’s check out Mr Radcliffe’s credit rating, shall we?’ Ho said, his fingers busy on his keyboard.

Hassan?

The voice sliced through the dark.

Hassan!

He knew whose it was. He just didn’t believe it.

Open your eyes, darling.

He didn’t want to.

Hassan was emptying out. The open mic slot in his head had closed down; its spotlight faded to grey. In its place was darkness, and engine noise, and the vibrations of this metal coffin he’d been folded into.

Hassan—open your eyes!

He wasn’t sure he could. Choices were made by other people. Hassan Ahmed no longer had will or ability, and was growing smaller by the minute. Soon there’d be nothing of him left. It would be a relief.

But like it or not, he was being dragged back into the light.

Hassan! Open your eyes! Now!

He didn’t. He couldn’t. He resisted.

But from deep in his darkness, he wondered: Why is Joanna Lumley talking to me?

Chapter 17

There was something different about Catherine Standish. This was what Louisa Guy decided as she watched Ho swing through the virtual jungle, a Second Life Tarzan. There was something different about all of them, probably, but it was Catherine who’d assumed the leader’s role. She’d been the Slough House ghost; shifting papers, tutting about mess, always there but virtually absent. A recovering alcoholic, because this was somehow common knowledge. Something about her spoke of loss; of an element missing. A blown bulb. But it had never before occurred to Louisa to wonder what Catherine must have been like at full wattage. She’d been Charles Partner’s PA, hadn’t she? Christ, that made her Miss Moneypenny.

Louisa should keep her mind on the job, though. Lamb thought they were useless. If they were, Hassan would die. If they weren’t, he might die anyway. The odds weren’t good.

But watching Ho, Louisa realized that he wasn’t useless, anyway; that he might be a dick, but he knew his way round a keyboard. And as he pilfered information from the ether, then peered up at the three of them through the thick black frames of his glasses, it occurred to Louisa Guy that she wouldn’t want him turning his hacker’s gaze on to the private corners of her own life and career.

Though of course, he probably already had.

Regent’s Park—the building—was lit up: blue spotlights at ground level cast huge ovals across its façade, drawing attention to the fact that important stuff took place inside. Once upon a time, not many people knew what that was. These days, you could download job application forms from a website adorned with its picture.

Jackson Lamb parked the stolen SUV half on the pavement outside, and waited.

It didn’t take long. The vehicle was surrounded inside quarter of a minute.

‘Could you step out of the car, please, sir?’

There were no weapons in evidence. There didn’t need to be.

‘Sir?’

Lamb wound the window down. He was looking at a youngish man who evidently knew his way around a gym: taut muscles under a charcoal grey suit. A white cord coiled from his left ear to the suit’s lapel.

‘Step out of the car, sir,’ he repeated.

‘Fetch your boss, sonny,’ Lamb said pleasantly, and wound the window back up.

‘He hired a car,’ Ho said.

‘You have got to be kidding.’

‘Straight up. Triple-D Car Hire. Leeds address.’

‘He’s in the field? And he hired a car?’

Catherine said, ‘No. It makes sense.’

It was a measure of their changing relationship that they waited for her thoughts.

‘He’s in the field, sure. But let’s not forget, this wasn’t an op with a future. The boy was going to be rescued. Black didn’t have to worry about covering his tracks.’

‘So hiring a car was the simplest thing to do.’

‘Quite.’

‘Anyone got a phone?’ Ho asked.

‘Lamb made us trash them.’

‘There’s a payphone by the loos,’ Catherine said. ‘What’s the number?’

She scribbled it down as he read it off the screen; was heading for the phone a moment later.

‘It’s barely dawn. A car hire place’ll be open?’

‘Triple-D gives twenty-four-hour breakdown relief,’ Ho quoted.

‘A kid with a van and a spanner,’ Min reckoned.

‘Tenner says she blows it.’

‘I’ll take that,’ Louisa said.

‘Me too,’ Min added.

Ho looked alarmed. ‘What happened since yesterday? Everyone’s acting strange.’

‘Slough House went live,’ Min told him. ‘She’ll come back with something we can use.’

‘The lady’s got game,’ Louisa said.

James Webb, whose futile mission in life was to dissuade everyone from calling him Spider, was in his office. After Jackson Lamb had dumped him and Nick Duffy on the pavement—after he’d recovered from the shock of having a middle-aged woman point a gun at him: I’ll put a bullet through your foot. That’ll wipe the smirk off your face—they’d made their way back, Duffy barely speaking. Hey, Webb had wanted to tell him. It wasn’t my fault. But here he was anyway, back in his hutch, Duffy having no further use for him.

But then, Webb wasn’t one of Duffy’s Dogs. He’d come through the graduate channel; done his two years’ rotation; attended the seminars, taken the exams. Spent nights on various godforsaken moors, in with harsh weather, and undergone assessment exercises, staging posts on the fast track: arresting a putative suicide bomber outside Tate Modern, and acting as control when River Cartwright had spectacularly failed an exercise of his own. Along the way, he’d been taken under Taverner’s wing; which was why he, not Cartwright, was still in Regent’s Park.

And unlike River, he’d never wanted to be a field agent. Joes were pieces on the board; Webb’s ambition was to be a player at the table. His current role, interviewing graduates—HR, River had scoffed—was a step on the road to being the keeper of secrets, and if there was less glam to it than the streetwork, there was also less weather, less chance of finding out how well those interrogation-resistance lessons stood up in the field, and, theoretically, fewer opportunities for middle-aged women to point a gun at him. Suits and joes was an age-old opposition, but the game had changed in the last ten years, and intelligence was a business like any other. There would always be battlegrounds where things got bloody, but at boardroom level, today’s intelligence wars were fought the way Coke battled Pepsi. And that was a war Webb felt comfortable waging.

But right now River seemed to be at the centre of events, because it was the slow horses that had everyone uptight tonight. Sid Baker was under the surgeon’s knife; somebody else was dead; and there were rumours that Jackson Lamb had orchestrated the kidnapping of that internet kid. Whatever the truth, there was a general air that shit was about to hit the fan. But it was all internal. There was no ministerial presence. Spider would have noticed: when the Minister was in the building, the ripples spread outwards.

But suit or not, Webb felt sidelined. Taverner didn’t like him showing up on the hub uninvited—this was the flipside of being under her wing: she didn’t want anyone knowing about it—but he couldn’t sit here under the unwavering gaze of files and folders much longer without starting to feel like he, and not River, had failed an important test.

He didn’t think he could, anyway. But after reflecting for a moment on whether he minded pissing Lady Di off, he decided he might manage it a little longer.

‘How did you do?’

Catherine Standish said, ‘Dermot Radcliffe hired a Volvo three weeks ago. Family holiday, he said. He wanted plenty of boot space.’

Taking this detail in, Louisa felt her heart pound her chest.

‘And they just told you that?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? I’m his sister, desperately trying to reach him. Our mother’s in hospital.’ Catherine sat and picked up her coffee cup. It was cold to the touch. She put it down and recited from memory the car’s number plate.

‘Of course, we don’t know they’re using it now.’

‘They left Roupell Street in a hurry,’ Min Harper said. ‘So they either took that car or stole another one. In which case, that car’s still nearby, and their new one’ll be reported missing soon.’

‘Can’t drive anywhere through London without showing up on CCTV.’

‘Which would be great if we were at the Trocadero,’ said Ho. He meant the nerve centre of the city’s surveillance systems, with its massed ranks of monitors covering every inch of the capital. ‘But I’ve only got a laptop.’

‘Still,’ said Catherine. ‘That might do the trick.’

Three pairs of eyes turned her way.

‘Triple-D cars come fitted with sat nav,’ she said.

Joanna Lumley was the saviour of the Gurkhas, who’d been shabbily treated by a succession of British Governments. Joanna Lumley was a formidable woman. The Gurkhas had been denied the right to live in the country they’d served in the war, and Joanna Lumley had deplored this state of affairs. So Joanna Lumley, in one of those quintessentially English turns of event, had turned a Government on its head and bent it to her will. Forcibly charmed, the Government bestowed upon the Gurkhas rights of residence. In return, the Gurkhas worshipped Joanna Lumley as they might a god.

So how was Hassan supposed to ignore her commands?

Hassan. Open your eyes, darling. There’s a good boy.

He didn’t want to open his eyes.

I’m not going to ask you again.

He opened his eyes.

There was nothing to see, of course. But at least this nothing was actually there, as opposed to the huge unexisting blankness through which he’d been falling a short while ago.

Things hadn’t changed. He was still folded into the boot of a car, still hooded, gagged and bound. He was still being thrown about like a pea in a whistle. And he could still hear Joanna Lumley, though she was no longer talking to him; she seemed, rather, to be offering directions to somebody else. Straight ahead for two hundred yards. It came to Hassan that he was hearing a sat nav system, programmed with Joanna Lumley’s voice. More expensive than the regular version, but there were those who found it worth it.

Joanna Lumley hadn’t been talking to Hassan at all.

On the other hand, for the moment at least, Hassan was back in the land of the living.

Nick Duffy said, ‘Is this a joke?’

‘I’m returning your car. I was worried they’d take it out your wages.’

‘You pulled a gun on me.’

‘No, I delegated that. And she didn’t pull it on you, she pulled it on your boy.’ Jackson Lamb, who was still in the driving seat, placed a meaty elbow on the rim of its open window, and mock-whispered: ‘The gun’s in my pocket. Case you thought I was getting excited.’

‘Out of the car.’

‘You’re not having me shot, are you?’

‘Not out here, no.’

‘Good. Only I was wanting a word with Lady Di.’

He sat back, and pressed the button that closed the window.

Duffy opened the door, and held a hand out.

Panting with the effort—a piece of drama Duffy wasn’t falling for—Lamb levered himself on to the pavement, then produced the weapon from his coat pocket.

For a brief moment, everyone within sight tensed.

Lamb put the gun in Duffy’s outstretched hand, then farted loudly. ‘Sausage sandwich,’ he said. ‘I’ll be doing that all morning.’

Behind him, the taut young man in the charcoal suit slipped behind the wheel of the SUV. So smoothly it might have been choreographed, he swung the car back into the road and drove it round the corner, where it would disappear down the ramp and into one small part of the subterranean world of Regent’s Park.

‘So,’ Lamb said, once this was taken care of. ‘I could murder a coffee. Shall we pop inside?’

‘Turn here.’

‘Here?’

‘Am I talking to myself?’

Larry took the exit road. Joanna Lumley objected.

‘Change of plan, darling,’ Curly said, and switched the sat nav off.

‘To what?’ Larry said.

The turn-off took them on to one of the minor roads skirting Epping Forest. If they’d headed directly north they’d not be within miles of here, but getting lost had its advantages. Curly had never been here, but he knew the name. Everyone knew the name. It was a place of shallow graves; regularly name-checked on true-crime programmes. This was where your gangsters buried their enemies. Or sometimes didn’t even bother: just set fire to the car they’d shot them in, then whistled their way home to the concrete jungle. Place had probably seen more deaths than picnics. Plenty of room for another. Two, if necessary.

This road was thickly lined by trees, and the sky disappeared behind a canopy of branches. An approaching car dipped its headlights. Flashing past, its noise reached Curly’s ears like something happening under water.

‘We’re gunna cut to the chase,’ he said.

A bubble welled inside him, and escaped as a brief giggle.

Larry cast him a sideways glance, but didn’t dare open his mouth.

Pissing off Lady Di was not a good career move, and Spider Webb’s choices were largely dictated by such demands. But he didn’t have to go on to the hub. He could wander downstairs instead. Regent’s Park was like any other office block: the guys on the desk were the first to know what was up. So like any suit with an eye to the edge, Spider made a point of being friendly to the guys on the desk.

Leaving his office, he walked down the corridor, through the fire door, and into the stairwell. Here he paused a moment, distracted by movement through the window. Two storeys below, a black SUV was coming down the concrete ramp into the car park beneath the building. One SUV was much like the next, but still: Webb wondered if this was the same one Lamb had hijacked earlier. If it was, Lamb had either been picked up again, or turned himself in. Spider hoped the former, and hoped it had happened roughly. The woman, too. I’ll put a bullet through your foot. He wasn’t forgetting that in a hurry. Mostly for the absolute sincerity of the woman’s tone.

The car was gone. No way of seeing from here who’d been driving, which left open the possibility that it had been Lamb himself. Without Park clearance, Lamb shouldn’t have made it through the barriers, but Webb had heard myths about Jackson Lamb. Clearance might be something required by other people. In which case, Lamb might be loose in the belly of the building.

It wasn’t likely, but it gave Webb all the excuse he needed to go and find out what was happening.

As Catherine Standish watched Roderick Ho perform more virtual acrobatics, another shock of excitement fired through her body. Nothing to do with Ho. Catherine didn’t especially admire technological ability; it was useful when other people had it, because this rendered it unnecessary to have any herself, but she no more regarded it as an aspect of character than she would ownership of a particular make of car.

No: the excitement had been born earlier that morning, when she’d lifted Lamb’s gun from her bag, and pointed it at the young man next to her. I’ll put a bullet through your foot if I need to. That’ll wipe the smirk off your face. Sometimes the scary moments happened to other people.

Min Harper had spoken, unless it had been Louisa Guy. She said, ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

Harper said, ‘You think we’ll trace him in time?’

This was new too. They were looking to her, as if she had answers, or opinions worth listening to. Below the tabletop her right hand curled, as if it were once more wrapped around the handle of a gun. ‘I think we act as if we’re saving his life, not finding his body,’ she said.

He shared a look with Louisa that she couldn’t interpret.

It was growing lighter, and traffic was building outside. There was a flow of custom inside, too; people collecting takeaway coffee and breakfast rolls, or grabbing supper on their way home from the nightshift. Catherine was an early riser, a poor sleeper; none of this was unfamiliar to her. But she was seeing through new eyes this morning. She unclenched her hand. Fighting her addictions had taught her about their power, and she knew she was clinging to an unhealthy memory. But right now it felt good, and she could only hope those shocks of excitement weren’t visible to the others.

Ho said, ‘Now we wait.’

Louisa said, ‘You’ve got the sat nav system?’

‘Sure. They use RoadWise. It’s just a matter of hacking the system.’

‘And how does waiting help?’

‘Because I’ve reached out for someone who’s done it already. Quicker than doing it myself.’ He bent to his laptop again, until his colleagues’ silence broke through his self-absorption. ‘What?’

‘Care to elaborate?’

He sighed, but overdid it. ‘Hacking, there’s a community, you know?’

‘Like stamp collectors.’

‘Or trainspotters.’

‘Or poets.’

‘A bit,’ Ho agreed, to general surprise. ‘Only way more cool. Hackers hack systems for one reason only. They’re there. Some people do crosswords or sudoku.’ His expression made it clear what he thought of that. ‘We hack. And we share.’

‘So someone will have hacked, what did you call it? RoadWise?’

‘RoadWise. Yeah, sure, if it’s there, it’s been hacked. And anyone cool enough to hack it’ll be in the community.’ He nodded at his laptop, as if it held global masses. ‘And they’ll be getting back to me any moment.’ Perhaps he saw doubt in their expressions. ‘We never sleep,’ he said.

Catherine said, ‘There’s something I don’t get.’

Ho waited.

‘You’re telling us you’ve got friends?’

‘The best kind,’ Ho said. ‘The ones you never meet.’

His laptop bleeped.

‘My ride’s here.’

Catherine watched as he bent to work. We act as if we’re saving Hassan’s life, not finding his body. It was the only approach they could take.

It would be good, though, if they could hurry up a little.

Time was not on Hassan’s side.

The car stopped, and the engine cut out.

For a moment, the silence and stillness were worse than the noise and the motion. Hassan’s heart pounded, struggling for release. He wasn’t ready, he thought—wasn’t ready to put an escape plan into operation, because he didn’t have one. And wasn’t ready because, well, he wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready to be poured out of the boot and told he was going to die. He wasn’t ready.

Eyes clamped shut, he tried to summon up Joanna Lumley, but she wouldn’t appear. He was on his own.

And then he wasn’t, because the boot was opening, and rough hands were hauling him out, dropping him like a sack of vegetables on to cold ground.

Instinctively, the first thing he did he was pull the hood from his head; a clumsy operation with his hands bound, but he managed it. With his head free, Hassan saw the world for what felt like the first time. He was in a forest. The car had come to a halt on a dirt track, and all around stretched trees, with mossed-over stumps lurking like goblins in the hollows. The ground was hard-packed mud, with a covering of dead leaves and twigs. The air tasted like early morning. Light was starting to make its presence felt; etching a fine tracery of bare branches overhead.

His two remaining kidnappers stood over him, so his first view was of their boots. That seemed appropriate. He guessed their boots saw more action than their brains ever did. And this thought liberated Hassan a little. He was cold and bruised and filthy and stank, but he was not in a cellar. And he was not these bastards’ dog, ready to roll over on their word. In every way that mattered, he was better than the pair of them.

Then one of the boots was on his shoulder, pressing him down on to the earth. It belonged to the one Hassan called Curly. Way up above his boot, Curly was showing him a thin, cruel smile.

‘End of the line,’ he said.

Taverner said, ‘I’m glad you’ve seen sense.’

Lamb ignored her, surveying her team instead, who were at their own or each other’s workstations, and engrossed in their current tasks, and studying every move he made. Soft light rained on them, and there was a slight buzzing in the air, white noise, which seemed to act as an aural curtain. Even without the glass wall, he doubted whether anyone could have heard their conversation.

Nick Duffy was a different matter, of course. Nick Duffy was with them in Taverner’s office. Nick Duffy could hear every word.

If there’d ever been any doubt that Diana Taverner could read minds, she put it to rest then and there. She said, ‘It’s okay, Nick. You can leave us.’

He didn’t like it, but he went.

‘Three sugars, there’s a love,’ Lamb said to his departing back.

Taverner said: ‘You want the bottom line?’

‘Oh, I’m gagging for it, darling.’

‘Black’s body’s been found. He used to be one of yours. It’s clear he was involved in the kidnapping of Hassan Ahmed. You were seen meeting with him in the early summer, long after he’d quit Slough House. Two of your crew have signed statements to that effect. You want me to continue?’

‘It’s the only thing keeping me going,’ Lamb assured her. ‘These statements. Loy and White, right?’

‘They make credible witnesses, and they put Black and you together. That, plus Moody’s homicidal outing last night, puts Slough House in a very messy frame. If you want it to go away, we can manage that. But you’re going to have to cooperate.’

Lamb said, ‘Homicidal?’

For the briefest of moments, a shadow crossed Taverner’s face. She said, ‘I’m sorry. You hadn’t heard.’

He smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile; just a tightening of the flesh across the face. ‘Well. That’s another loose end clipped off, isn’t it?’

‘That’s how you see your team? “Loose ends”?’

‘But Baker was never on my team, was she? You assigned her to Slough House, but not because she’d slept with the wrong boss. She was a plant. She was watching River Cartwright.’

‘Your evidence being?’

‘Her own words.’

‘Which she won’t be repeating any time soon.’ Taverner’s gaze was steady. She said, ‘I’ll make you an offer, Jackson. Something clean we can all walk away from. Co-sign Loy and White’s statements, and that’ll be the end of it.’

‘I don’t do subtle. You’re going to have to explain why I’d want to do that.’

‘You’re old school, Jackson, and not in a good way. You’re out of the loop. I go to Limitations with a sacrificial victim, and outcomes will matter more than proofs. That’s how things are done now. If there’s a quiet out available, Limitations will sign off on it. They’ll even call it a retirement. It’s not like you’ll lose your pension fund.’

Jackson Lamb reached inside his coat, and had the satisfaction of seeing her flinch. Her expression turned to distaste as he scratched his armpit. ‘Think I might have been bitten at the canal.’

She didn’t reply.

He withdrew his hand and sniffed his fingers. Then put his hand in his pocket. ‘So your plan is, I cough to your sins? Or else what?’

‘It gets messy.’

‘It’s already messy.

She said, ‘I’m trying to find a way out that causes the least damage for all of us. Like it or not, Slough House is in the firing line, Jackson. Appearances count. You’ll all come under scrutiny. All of you.’

He said, ‘This about Standish again?’

‘Did you think I’d forgotten?’

‘You know me. Always hoping for the best.’

‘Charles Partner implicated her in everything. He left an itemized statement of his treachery in which he named her as an accomplice. She was lucky not to be arrested.’

Lamb said, ‘She’s a drunk.’

‘That’s not an excuse for treason.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be. It’s what made Partner think he could get away with it. Why he kept her on after her breakdown. A dried-out drunk is still a drunk. She was loyal to him so he used her, tried to make out she helped him sell secrets. But no one who saw his, what did you call it?—itemized statement, believed it for a second. That was his last-ditch attempt to spread the blame, and it was pure fiction.’

‘And swiftly covered up.’

‘Of course it bloody was. Service had enough problems. Partner’s crimes were black-ribboned from the off, and half the chinless idiots on Limitations still don’t know about them. Drag all that up now, and things’ll get messy all right. You sure that’s a road you want to go down?’

‘Covering up treachery’s a crime in itself. This time round, they’ll do a full audit.’ Of the two Diana Taverner was in better shape, and knew it. But then, Jackson Lamb could climb out of a sauna, wrap himself in brand-new threads, and still come off second best to her on her worst day. ‘You found her a safe berth once, else she’d have drunk herself to death in a bedsit by now. But you can’t save her twice. I’m offering to do that for you.’ Her eyes shifted from Lamb to the hub behind him. Her team were making little pretence of not studying events in her glass-walled office. She deepened her voice slightly. It’s the tone she’d have used if she were trying, God help her, to seduce him. A tone that rarely failed. ‘Put your hands up to this. It was an honourable attempt to get a good result, and not your fault it went wrong. The public at large will never know. And between these walls, you’ll be a hero.’

She stopped. She was good at reading people. Lamb was a tricky subject—had taught himself to be illegible—but still, Diana Taverner could see him weighing her words. His eyes suggested he was immersed in calculation; the consequences of a scorched-earth policy, as against the walk-away compromise on the table. And seeing this, she felt as a whaler must feel, watching the first harpoon strike flesh: a single wound, and far from mortal, but enough to guarantee the outcome. All that was left was the waiting. And she continued believing this until Jackson Lamb bent, scooped the metal waste-paper basket from beside her desk, and in a surprisingly graceful near-pirouette, hurled it at the glass wall behind him.

‘Got it.’

‘Got what?’

‘What are we looking for?’ A flash of the familiar Roderick Ho; an expression of lofty contempt for the analog mind. ‘The car. Dermot Radcliffe’s Volvo.’

Min Harper scraped his chair round the table, so he could see the laptop’s screen. For a moment he thought Ho was about to block his view; hook an arm around it like the class swot hiding his homework. But he restrained himself, even shifting the laptop slightly so Min could see it.

If he’d been expecting a blinking red light on a stylized streetmap—which he partly was—Min was disappointed. Instead, he was looking at a slightly out-of-focus but recognizable photograph of the tops of a whole bunch of trees. ‘It’s under there?’

‘Yes,’ Ho said. Then said, ‘Probably.’

Catherine Standish said, ‘Care to elaborate on that?’

‘That’s where the sat nav system registered to the car Dermot Radcliffe hired from Triple-D Cars three weeks ago was, roughly fifty seconds ago.’ He looked across the table at Catherine. ‘There’s a slight time lag.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And they might have dumped the sat nav, of course. Might have tossed it out of the window hours ago.’

Louisa said, ‘Assuming Black was the brains, they probably wouldn’t have thought of that.’

‘Let’s not underestimate them,’ Catherine said. ‘Black’s dead. They’re not. Where’s the sat nav now, Roddy?’

Ho coloured slightly, and his finger stroked the keyboard’s touchpad. An OS map sprouted on to the screen. Two more taps, and it had magnified twice over.

‘Epping Forest,’ he said.

Curly moved his boot away. Hassan pulled the handkerchief from his mouth, and tossed it as far as he was able. Then lay on the ground, sucking mouthfuls of cold damp air. He hadn’t realized how empty his lungs were. How foul it had been in that boot, with only his own stink to survive on.

He sat up, every part of his body protesting. Behind Curly stood Larry: taller than Curly, broader too, but somehow less substantial. He was holding what looked like a bundle of sticks. Hassan blinked. The world turned swimmy, then washed back into line. It was a tripod. And that matchbox in his other hand: that would be a camera.

Curly was holding something altogether different.

Hassan drew his knees up, leant forward, and pressed his hands to the cold earth. It felt reassuringly solid, and at the same time coldly alien. What did he know about the outdoors? He knew about city streets and supermarkets. He pushed himself unsteadily on to his feet. I wobble, he thought. I wobble. Here among these trees, which are so very big, I am small, and I hurt, and I wobble. But I’m alive.

He looked at Curly, and said, ‘This it, is it?’ His voice sounded strange, as if he were being played by an actor. Someone who’d never actually heard Hassan speak, but had worked out what he might sound like from a faded photograph.

‘Yeah,’ Curly told him. ‘This is it.’

The axe he was holding looked to Hassan like something from the Middle Ages. But then, it was something from the Middle Ages—a smoothly curved length of wood with a dull-grey metal head, sharpened to a killing edge. Used down the centuries, because it rarely went wrong. Sometimes the handle wore thin, and was replaced. Sometimes the blade grew blunt.

Joanna Lumley was long gone. Hassan’s inner comedian had not returned to the stage. But when he spoke again his own voice had returned to him, and for the first time in an age, he uttered the precise words he was feeling.

‘You fucking coward.’

Did Curly flinch? Was he not expecting that?

Curly said, ‘I’m a soldier.’

‘You? A soldier? You call this a battlefield? You’ve tied my hands, dragged me into a forest, and now you’re what? Gunna cut my head off? Some fucking soldier.’

‘It’s a holy war,’ Curly said. ‘And your lot started it.’

‘My lot? My lot sell soft furnishings.’ A wind stirred the woods, making a noise like an appreciative audience. Hassan felt blood run through his veins; felt fear build into a bubble in his chest. It might burst at any moment. Or might just float him away. He looked at Larry. ‘And you, right? You’re just gunna stand there and let him do what he wants? Another fucking soldier, right?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Yeah, right. Or what? You’ll cut my head off? Fuck the pair of you. You want to film this? Film me now, saying this. You’re both cowards and the BN fucking P are a bunch of fucking losers.’

‘We’re not BNP,’ Curly said.

Hassan threw his head back and laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

He said, ‘You think I care? You think I care who you are? BNP or English Defence League or any other kind of stupid fucking Nazi, you think I care? You’re nothing. You’re nobodies. You’ll spend the rest of your lives in prison, and you know what? You’ll still be nobodies.’

Larry said, ‘Right. That’s it.’

Duffy arrived full-tilt, of course. He’d never been far away. He found a waste-paper basket rolling harmlessly across the carpet, and a glass wall showing no sign that violence had been offered. But Taverner was white-faced, and judging by Jackson Lamb’s expression, that counted as a result.

Lamb said, ‘A handler never burns his own joe. It’s the worst treachery of all. That’s what Partner was doing, using Standish as a shield. That’s what you’re doing now. Maybe I am old school. But I’m not watching that happen twice.’

Nick Duffy said, ‘Partner?’

‘Enough,’ Taverner said. Then: ‘He’s been running Slough House like a private army. He’s been running ops, for Christ’s sake. Take him downstairs.’

While she was speaking Lamb had found a loose cigarette in his overcoat pocket, and was now trying to straighten it. His expression suggested this was currently his major problem.

Duffy wasn’t armed. Didn’t need to be. He said, ‘Okay, Lamb. Put that down, and drop your coat on the floor.’

‘Okay.’

Duffy couldn’t help it: he glanced at Taverner. She was glancing right back.

‘Something you should know first, mind.’

And now they both looked at Lamb.

‘The SUV your guy just drove under the building? There’s a bomb on the back seat. A big one.’

A second passed.

Duffy said, ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Might not be.’ Lamb shrugged, then stared at Taverner. ‘I told you. I don’t do subtle.’

The desk guys weren’t as fond of Spider Webb as he thought, but everyone likes having information. Somebody had parked a Service car on the forecourt, and received the inevitable response: the security drones and a couple of Duffy’s boys, not long back from various errands. They’d surrounded the car until Duffy himself appeared.

‘Who was it?’

‘Jackson Lamb,’ the older desk guy said.

‘You sure?’

‘I’ve worked here twenty years. You get to know Jackson Lamb.’

The word sonny was all the more eloquent for remaining unspoken.

Lamb had come in under Duffy’s steam; was up on the hub. The desk guys’ monitors didn’t cover what happened there, but he hadn’t reappeared.

Spider chewed his lip. Whatever Lamb was up to, it didn’t involve the madwoman with the gun; or River, either. He mumbled his thanks to the desk guys, and didn’t see the look they shared as he headed back upstairs. On the landing he stopped by the window. Nothing was happening on the street. He blinked. Something was happening on the street. A black van screeched to a halt, and almost before it had stopped moving the back was open, allowing three, four, five black-clad shadows to pour like smoke into the morning. Then they were gone, headed into the underground car park.

The achievers, everyone called them. Spider Webb had always thought it a ridiculous name; a piece of jargon that shouldn’t have stuck, but had. They were the SWAT guys, who mostly did extractions and removals; he’d seen them in action, but only on drills. This hadn’t struck him as a drill.

He wondered if the building were under attack. But if so, there’d be alarms, and a lot more activity.

Through the window, the same nothing was happening again. Small disturbances only. A wind rearranged the trees over the road; a taxi passed. Nothing.

Webb shook his head; an unnecessarily dramatic gesture, given there was nobody to witness it. Story of his life. The joke was, last time he’d been close to anyone, it had been River Cartwright. Some of the courses they’d been on, you couldn’t get through without forming alliances; what people called friendships. More than once, he’d assumed that their futures would run on parallel lines, but something had prevented that, which was Spider’s slow-dawning realization that River was better than him at most things; so much so, he didn’t have to make a big show of it. Which was the sort of moment on which alliances foundered.

He carried on upstairs. Next flight up, he opened the door to his corridor, and one of the achievers stuck a gun to his temple.

Larry said, ‘That’s it. I’m done. You want to do this, you’re on your own.’

‘You’re going?’

‘It’s all fucked up. You can’t see that? We were only meant to scare him. Film it. Show them we meant business.’

‘Scaring them’s not business.’

‘It’s enough for me. You killed a spook, man. I’m leaving. Get back to Leeds, maybe just …’

Maybe hide under the bed. Maybe get home, and hope it would all go away. Close his eyes tight enough, and none of this would have happened.

‘No way,’ Curly said. ‘No fucking way are you going anywhere.’

Larry dropped the tripod and tossed him the digicam. It landed by Curly’s feet. ‘Still want to film it? Film it yourself.’

‘And how am I supposed to—’

‘I don’t care.’

Larry turned and started to pick his way along the track.

‘Get back here!’

He didn’t reply.

‘Larry! Get fucking back!’

Hassan said, ‘Soldiers, right. You’re soldiers.’

‘Shut up!’

‘Soldiers get shot for deserting, don’t they?’

‘Shut your fucking hole!’

‘Or what?’ Hassan asked. Inside him, the bubble burst. He’d soiled himself, wet himself, sweated and wept through days of fear. But now he’d come out the other side. He’d done the worst of dying: the knowing it was going to happen, the absolute shame of knowing he’d do anything to avoid it. And now he was watching his murderer’s plans crumble. ‘Show this on the internet, you fucking Nazi. Oh, right, you can’t, can you? You’ve only got one pair of hands.’

In pure blind rage, Curly hit him with the axe.

The four sat around the table, their plates now cleared away. Since Catherine had got back from the phone, and the other three had confirmed, in the way of small groups of people everywhere, what they all knew already—that she had called the police, explained who she was, what she knew, and how she knew what she knew—no one had spoken. But Ho had folded his laptop away, and Louisa was leaning forward, her hands cradling her chin, her teeth grinding. Min’s lips were pursed in a way that suggested deep thought. And every sudden noise attracted Catherine’s attention, as if every rattle of every cup, every dropped spoon, threatened disaster.

Out on Old Street, cars whistled past in bursts dictated by the nearby traffic lights.

Min cleared his throat as if about to speak, but thought better of it.

Ho said, ‘You know something?’

They didn’t.

‘I’ve got my mobile in my pocket.’ He took it out and placed it on the table, so they could see it for themselves. ‘All this time, Catherine’s trotting off to the callphone in the corner. And I’ve got my mobile in my pocket.’

Catherine looked at Louisa. Louisa looked at Min. Min looked at Catherine. They all looked at Ho.

Min said, ‘For a communications genius, that was kind of rubbish, wasn’t it?’

Then they waited some more.

A man in black—an achiever—appeared on the hub. Under his arm was a cardboard box, which he carried into Diana Taverner’s office and placed on her desk. It was ticking loudly.

‘I assume that’s not a bomb,’ Taverner said.

He shook his head, removed the box’s lid, and put Lamb’s office clock on Taverner’s blotter. Wooden, friendly-faced, it was out of place in these hi-tech surroundings.

Taverner said, ‘I didn’t think so.’

Duffy and Lamb were still there. Out on the hub, the same crews were doing the same things they’d been doing before Lamb’s announcement had brought the achievers into play; or at least, were still pretending to do them, though with less plausibility. What was happening behind the glass wall was occupying all of their attention.

Lamb said, ‘Technically—and I might be wrong about this, but I get a lot of e-mail crap from HR—technically, you should still have evacuated the building.’

‘Which is what you wanted.’

‘I mean, if that was an actual bomb, you’d be in a shitload of grief.’

Duffy said to Taverner, ‘If that thing had been ticking on the back seat when my guy drove into the car park, he’d have heard it.’

The achiever was already leaving, talking into his throatmic as he went.

Taverner pointed at Lamb. ‘You didn’t want us out of the building at all. You brought somebody in.’

Lamb said, ‘You still think a cover-up’s a possibility? Or is it all falling apart?’

Spider Webb stumbled backwards into his office, tripped on the rug, and sprawled on the floor. River pulled Moody’s balaclava from his head and stuffed Moody’s gun into the back of his waistband. He thought about punching Spider in the head, but only for a moment. Climbing out of the SUV’s boot, putting Lamb’s fake bomb on the back seat and making his way up the stairs hadn’t taken long, but he didn’t have much time to play with. If Lamb had done his bit, the real achievers would be swarming the building soon.

He said, ‘My assessment report.’

Spider said, ‘Cartwright?’

‘You kept a copy. Where is it?’

‘That’s what this is about?’

‘Where is it?’

‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’

River bent and grabbed Spider by his shirt collar. ‘This is not a game.’ He was armed, he was in Regent’s Park, more or less dressed as an achiever. If the real thing arrived, he’d be shot on sight. Thoughts that carried a certain amount of heft. He pulled out Moody’s gun again. ‘Let me put it this way. My assessment report. Where is it?’

Spider said, ‘You’re not going to shoot me.’

River slammed the handle of the gun into Spider’s jaw, and Spider yelped as a fragment of tooth flew free. ‘You sure?’

‘You bastard—’

‘Spider. I’ll keep hitting you till you give me what I want. Get it?’

‘I haven’t got your assessment report, why the hell would I?’

‘London rules, remember?’ River said. ‘You said it yourself, the other day. You play London rules. You cover your arse.’

Spider spat a mouthful of blood on the fawn-coloured carpet. ‘How long do you think you’ve got? Before your brains join my tooth on the floor there?’

River hit him again. ‘You crashed King’s Cross, and we both know it. Blue shirt, white tee, whichever way round it was. It was Taverner put you up to that, because she wanted rid of me. You didn’t know why, did you? And didn’t care, so long as you got the nice office and meetings with the Minister and a bright shining career. But you knew enough to keep a copy of the report because you’re playing London rules, and the last person you trust is the one you just did a favour. So where is it?’

Spider said, ‘Screw you.’

‘I won’t ask again.’

‘Shoot me and you’ll be dead one minute later. Then you’ll never find it, will you?’

‘So we agree you’ve got it.’

Footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Spider opened his bloodied mouth to shout. But River clubbed him again, and guaranteed his silence.

Hassan must have blacked out. Who wouldn’t have done, struck with an axe? But it had been the blunt end Curly hit him with; a swift vicious jab with the handle, bang in the forehead. Perhaps half a minute ago. Long enough, anyway, for the scene to have shifted: Larry had stalked off down the track, and Curly had chased after him, caught him up; was shouting at him—words floated back on the cold, moss-flavoured air: stupid chicken bastard …

The axe hung limply in Curly’s hand. The pair of them, arguing—well, they were no longer the Three Stooges, obviously. They were Laurel and Hardy. Stan and Ollie. In another fine mess again.

And here was a funny thing. Sometimes a blow to the head can clear away the cobwebs.

This wasn’t true, but for a moment Hassan pretended it was, and wondered what he’d do if it were. He would stand up, he decided. So that’s what he did.

There. That was better.

Wobbly on his legs, he became aware of the enormous space everywhere. Space hemmed in by trees, but without walls, and with a sky overhead. He could see it now. Branches were growing into focus. Somewhere, there’d be a sun. Hassan couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the sun.

He started walking.

The ground was spongy and unfamiliar. Partly this was due to his condition, but mostly it was because he was in a wood. But still, Hassan could walk, he could shuffle; he could almost break into a run. The trick was to look down. To watch where he placed his feet. This sudden view of the ground gave him the illusion that he was moving much faster than he really was.

If he looked back, he would see Curly and Larry breaking off their argument; come lolloping after him, Curly with axe in hand. So he remained focused on the ground instead, on how much space he was covering. He had no idea where he was going. Whether he was moving deeper into the forest, or would break into open land any moment … Which didn’t seem probable. Everything was too thick, too woody, to surrender itself so swiftly. But those were things Hassan had no control over, while he did, at last, control his own movements. So thinking, he tripped; thrust his hands out before hitting the ground, and couldn’t prevent a cry escaping him as a sharp pain seared outwards from his wrists. Which mattered much less than the noise he’d made.

So now he did look round. He’d travelled much less further than he’d thought; maybe half what he’d hoped. Curly and Larry were about the distance away that Hassan could have thrown a kitchen chair. Both were staring at him.

Hassan could have sworn he heard the grin break out on Curly’s face.

The footsteps passed Webb’s office in a rush, and River released the breath he’d been holding, along with his grip on Spider’s collar. Spider collapsed on to the carpet, incapable of further conversation.

River waited, but there was no more noise. It occurred to him that if it had been the achievers, he’d not have heard a sound: there was more to them than dressing the part. And with that thought an idea occurred, which he wasted two minutes implementing before turning to his search.

The files and folders took up seven shelves, stretching the length of the far wall. There could easily be a hundred on each, and River had maybe three minutes to find the one he wanted, always supposing it was there rather than, say, locked in a desk drawer. So he tried the drawers first, most of which contained junk, and only one of which was locked. River retrieved the key from Spider’s pocket, but the locked drawer hid only bank statements and a passport in Spider’s name. Dropping the key, River headed for the shelves. A snapshot memory from last year told him he’d submitted his interim exercise report in a black plastic folder, but at least a third of the spines were that same glossy colour, the rest being orange, yellow, green. He pulled a black one at random, to find it labelled in the top right corner: Ennis. Assuming this was a surname, he checked the Cs; found a Cartwright who wasn’t him; then looked under R, but found no Rivers. Tried A for Assessment, and found a bunch of them, all black, but none of them his.

He took a step back and assessed the wall as a whole. ‘Spider Spider Spider,’ he murmured. ‘London rules …’ Webb had said it himself: those were the rules he played by. So if Webb had burned River at King’s Cross, on Taverner’s instructions, he’d have kept evidence of it, to make sure he didn’t end up in the line of fire himself. Given Taverner’s expertise at throwing former allies to the Dogs, this was wise.

‘Spider Spider Spider …’

London rules he’d said, but he’d also said something else. As River groped in his memory the door opened, and into the office slipped one of the achievers, a real one, his drawn pistol aimed directly at River’s head.

It wasn’t a grin. Curly turned when he heard the yelp, and snarled when he saw the kid was on the move. He barked at Larry—a cross between a threat and a prediction—and took off.

Behind him, he knew, Larry would be rooted to the spot. Glad to be left behind; hoping he could vanish.

I’m not doing this. I’m out of here.

No balls. With soldiers like him, the war was lost. Hell, it wasn’t even fought. It was all hot air and history.

But Curly was at war. If Larry didn’t know which side he was on, that was his lookout. The thing about an axe was, it didn’t need reloading.

The Paki was showing his heels again. He ran like a girl, elbows tucked into his sides. Curly, though, was flying. Days of tension, of built-up excitement, and here was the moment at last.

We’re gunna cut your head off.

Call it a declaration of war.

Then his right foot landed on something slippery and wet, and for half a beat he might have lost his balance and sprawled on his back, while the axe went flying freely through the air—but it didn’t happen, he didn’t fall; his body was finely in synch with the natural world, and his left foot firmly in place on solid ground; his hip twisting just enough that his centre of balance held, and now he was moving even faster, and the distance between himself and his prey was disappearing by the second.

He wished the Paki had been looking back to see that. Get some idea of what he was dealing with.

We’re gunna cut your head off and show it.

But he was still making tracks, running like a girl. Scared as a mouse. Frightened as a rat.

Curly slowed his pace. This was too good. This was too good to hurry. This was what they meant by thrill of the chase.

We’re gunna cut your head off and show it on the web.

Nick Duffy covered his phone with a hand and said, ‘They’ve got him.’

‘Where?’

‘Webb’s office.’

Taverner glanced at Lamb, who shrugged. ‘If my guys were any good, they’d be your guys.’

‘Why Webb?’ she asked. Then: ‘Never mind.’ To Duffy, she said, ‘Tell them to take whoever it is downstairs. And tell Webb to get up here.’

‘He’s on his way.’

‘Thank you. Give me a minute, would you?’

Duffy left, talking into his phone.

Taverner said, ‘Whatever just happened, that was your last chance. Hope you enjoyed your morning, Jackson, because it’s the last you’ll see for a week. And by the time you’re back upstairs, you’ll have signed a confession, and anything else I tell you to.’

Lamb, sitting facing her, nodded thoughtfully. He seemed to be about to say something important, but all he could manage was, ‘Mind, your lad Spider doesn’t half like a colourful tie.’

Behind her, the door opened.

‘Of course, my lad River can’t do a knot to save his life.’

The minutes spent swapping shirts with the unconscious Spider hadn’t been wasted after all. River Cartwright, wearing Webb’s jacket and tie, closed the door behind him, a black folder tucked under his arm.

Hassan couldn’t look back. Could barely look forward. Had to look at the ground, scan it for roots and stones and unsuspected dips; for anything that might grab his ankle and bring him to a sudden end. For dangers at head-height, he trusted his luck.

‘Having fun yet, Paki?’

Curly, gaining on him.

‘Playtime’s nearly over.’

Hassan tried to speed up, but couldn’t. Everything he had to offer, he was already pouring into this one aim: to keep moving. To never stop. To run to the end of the wood, and then beyond; to always be one step ahead of this Nazi thug who wanted to kill him. With an axe.

The thought of the axe should have been a spur, but he had nothing left to give.

A sudden dip in the ground almost threw him, but he survived. A root reached for his ankle, but missed him by an inch. Two escapes in as many seconds, and that was it: his luck ran out. A branch struck him in the face and Hassan staggered from the blow, ran into a tree without enough force to damage himself, but with more than enough to bring him to a halt. His legs didn’t quite buckle, nor his body quite fall, but there was nothing left. He couldn’t start the engine again. He held on to the tree a moment longer, then turned to face his murderer.

Curly stood on the other side of the dip, panting lightly. A doglike smile was painted across his face, colouring every aspect but his eyes, and he was swinging the axe gently, as if to demonstrate his total control over it. There was no sign of Larry. No sign of the digicam, either; no tripod; nothing. Hassan, though, had the feeling that events were moving to a conclusion regardless. Curly’s need to film this horror was paling beside his need to commit it. The axe was all he required now. The axe, and Hassan’s participation.

But even knowing that, Hassan had given all he had. He couldn’t move another step.

Curly shook his head. ‘The trouble with you lot,’ he explained, ‘is you’re just not at home in the woods.’

And the trouble with your lot, thought Hassan … The trouble with your lot … But there was so much wrong with Curly’s lot that there was no smart phrase to do it justice. The trouble with Curly’s lot was that it contained Curly, and others like him. What more needed saying?

Curly stepped forward, into the dip, and up the other side. He swapped the axe from one hand to the other; made a little lunge with it to tease his victim; then was neatly hooked round the ankle by the root Hassan had avoided, and hammered down flat on his face. Hassan watched, fascinated, as Curly took a mouthful of leaf and mud; was so engrossed by the spectacle that it took him a full second to register that the axe had just landed at his feet.

But even with bound hands, it took him less than a full second to pick it up.

Mistake? I prefer to call it a fiasco.

Spider Webb’s words, the other day. They were right up there with London rules as far as River was concerned. I prefer to call it a fiasco. Thank you, Spider. That would be a clue.

The folder he held was neatly labelled Fiasco.

‘And this,’ he said to Taverner, ‘is why you had Spider burn me.’

‘Burn you?’

Lamb said, ‘He’s a kid. He gets carried away with the jargon.’

‘I’m calling Duffy back in.’

‘Be my guest,’ Lamb told her. He was fiddling with his bent cigarette again, and seemed at least as interested in it as in whatever River’s folder held. But still: River waited until Lamb threw him a barely perceptible nod, before he went on.

He said, ‘I did my upgrade assessment last winter.’

‘I remember,’ Taverner said. ‘You crashed King’s Cross.’

‘No, you did that. By getting Webb to feed me misinformation, sending me after a plant. A fake fake. Not the real one.’

‘And why would I do that?’

‘Because an earlier part of the assessment was compiling a profile on a public figure,’ River said. ‘My designated target was a Shadow Cabinet Minister, but he had a stroke the night before, and was hospitalized. So I covered you instead. I thought that showed initiative, but you know what?’ He opened the folder, and removed a pair of photographs he’d taken months ago, the day before the King’s Cross assignment. ‘It showed you in a coffee shop instead. Happy memories?’

He laid them on the desk where they could all see. The pictures had been taken from outside a Starbucks, and showed Diana Taverner at a window seat, drinking from a regular-sized mug. Next to her was a crew-cut man in a dark overcoat. In the first photograph he held a handkerchief to his nose, and could have been anyone. In the second he’d lowered his hand, and was Alan Black.

‘He must have been about to go undercover. Was that your last meet?’

Taverner didn’t reply. Behind her eyes, Lamb and River could see calculations rolling once again; as if even here, in a glass room, she might still find a way out that neither of them had yet noticed.

Lamb said, ‘When you found out what Cartwright had done, you took steps. The King’s Cross business should have meant game over, he should have been on the street. But because he had a legend in the family, the best you could manage was Slough House, and once the op was running, and the Voice of Albion was in play, you had Sid Baker assigned to us too, just to make sure Cartwright wasn’t getting any clever ideas. Which, given grandad, he’d likely be prone to, right?’

On a train of her own, she said, ‘I told Webb to get rid of the file.’

‘He’s a quick learner too.’

‘What do you want, Lamb?’

Lamb said, ‘There’s a reason why handlers are always ex-joes. It’s because they know what they’re doing. You couldn’t have fucked this up worse if you were trying.’

‘You’ve made your point. What do you want?’

River said, ‘You know what I want?’

She turned her gaze on him, and he understood a fundamental difference between suits and joes. When a joe looked at you, if he was any good, you’d never notice. But when a suit turned it on, you could feel their glare scorching holes in your intestinal tract.

But still, he was the O.B.’s grandson. ‘If Hassan Ahmed dies,’ he said, ‘there’s no hiding place. It all comes out. Not just here in the Park, but out there in the real world. If your idiot plan gets that kid killed, I will crucify you. Publicly.’

Taverner made a noise halfway between a snort and a laugh. She said to Lamb, ‘Are you going to tell him the facts of life, or shall I?’

‘You already screwed him,’ Lamb told her. ‘Bit late for a theory lesson, I’d have thought. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’

She waited.

He said, ‘If Hassan Ahmed dies, I’ll watch Cartwright’s back while he does whatever he thinks necessary.’

And River learned something else about suits and joes; that when a joe wants to be noticed, he is.

After a while, Taverner said, ‘What if the boy’s rescued?’

Lamb gave her his shark’s grin. ‘That happens, maybe we’ll keep it between ourselves. There’s bound to be favours we can do each other.’

The grin made it clear in which direction the favours would flow.

‘We don’t know even where he is,’ she said.

‘Well, my crew’s on it, so I’d call it sixty-forty he’s toast.’ He looked at River. ‘What do you reckon?’

River said, ‘I don’t think it’s a joking matter.’

But he was thinking: fifty-fifty. Absolute tops, he’d give Hassan fifty-fifty of seeing lunchtime.

Curly was moaning, a long low keening sound, and his foot was twisted at a peculiar angle. Perhaps, Hassan thought, it was broken. One broken ankle versus two bound hands—that made for a level playing field. Or would have done, except that Hassan now had an axe.

On the whole, that gave him the edge.

Placing one foot heavily on the fallen Curly’s hand, Hassan rested the blade on the fallen Curly’s head.

‘Give me a reason not to kill you,’ he said.

Whatever Curly answered was lost in a mouthful of earth and a whimper of pain.

‘Give me a reason,’ Hassan repeated, lifting the axe an inch.

Curly turned his head aside and spat grit and leaf. ‘Foo’s ur.’

‘I’m supposed to understand that?’

He spat again. ‘My foot’s hurt.’

Hassan lowered the axe once more, so the blade touched Curly’s temple. He pressed down, and watched Curly’s eyes close and his features tighten. He wondered if the fear Curly felt was the same fear he’d felt himself. Since it seemed to have departed him now, he suspected it probably was. And how’s that for a joke, he wondered? How would that work with an audience? That the same fear Curly had set loose in Hassan’s gut was now burying its snout in his own bowels? But maybe not everyone would get it. Maybe you had to be there.

Another push on the axe loosed a trickle of blood down Curly’s face.

‘Did you say something?’

Curly had made a noise.

‘Did you?’

He made another one.

Wrapping his bound hands tightly round the axe handle, Hassan dropped into a crouch. The blade pressed heavily on the side of Curly’s head. He said, ‘Did you have something to say?’, and gave equal weight to each syllable.

Curly said, ‘D—do it.’

Or he might have said, ‘Don’t do it.’

Hassan waited, his eyes six inches from Curly’s. He wished there were some way he could see inside Curly’s head; some way he could allow light into Curly’s brain in a way that didn’t involve brute surgery. But there wasn’t. He was sure there wasn’t. So he leant a little closer.

‘You know what?’ Hassan said. ‘You make me ashamed I’m British.’

Then he stood and walked away.

He walked back to the car and then along the track that led to the distant road. He had no idea how far away it was. He didn’t care. He was thirsty, hungry and tired, which were all bad things; he was cold and filthy, and that was bad too. But his hands were no longer bound, because he had severed the cord with the blade of the axe; and fear was no longer chewing at his innards, because he’d left it behind in the woods. He was alive, and nobody had rescued him. He was alive because of who he was.

And maybe because Joanna Lumley had come through, too.

He saw no sign of Larry, and that didn’t matter. He saw no rabbits, either, nor heard any birds, and his sense of time had long deserted him, but before Hassan reached the road lights bloomed way ahead of him: flashing ovals which painted the trees blue and then blue and then blue. And soon people were rushing towards him in a fever of noise and motion.

‘Hassan Ahmed?’

The axe was taken gently away, and arms were holding him up.

‘You’re Hassan Ahmed?’

It was a simple enough question, and it didn’t take him long to find an answer.

‘Yes,’ he told them. ‘Yes, I am.’

And then he added, ‘I’m alive.’

They were very glad to hear it, he learned, as they carried him back to the world.

Chapter 18

The roadworks have eased on Aldersgate. Traffic flows freely once more. If our inquisitive bus passenger of earlier acquaintance were to gaze at Slough House today on her way past, she might find its passage too swift for concentrated study, though on a London bus there always remains the possibility of inexplicable delay. But that aside, a glimpse is all that the new dispensation permits; one brief view of a young Chinese man with heavy-framed spectacles behind a monitor, and Slough House is in the past. Whatever used to happen there presumably continues to do so. Whatever haunts its fading paintwork doubtless still abides.

But fresh opportunities have arisen since our voyeur’s first journey. She can alight at the bus stop opposite, for instance, and take a seat, and gaze all day at the never-opening front door of Slough House, with no possibility that Jed Moody will emerge to encourage her departure. Such a vigil, though, would offer little in the way of entertainment, and besides, other views await: across the road, up the staircase at Barbican Station, over the pedestrian bridge, a brief sortie along a bricked-walkway, and—weather permitting—she’ll find a dry low wall on which to perch, and perhaps light a cigarette, and feast at her leisure on what she can see through the waiting windows.

Which is more than can be seen from bus-level, certainly. For instance, it is now clear that the wobbling ziggurat to one side of the young Chinese man’s desk is composed of pizza boxes, and the tin pyramid to the other of Coke cans; and clear, too, that he appears to have sole occupation of this office. There is another desk, but its surface is clear; almost antiseptically so. It’s as if a particularly conscientious cleaner has obliterated all traces of the desk’s erstwhile occupant; a sterilization which evidently leaves his former colleague undismayed, occupied as he is by whatever is unreeling on his screen.

This thorough decluttering is in marked contrast to the state of the adjoining office, which looks to have been abandoned at a moment’s notice. The desktops here are still littered with the usual detritus: diaries open to future events, uncapped pens, an alarm clock, a radio, a small gonk. Stuff which, upon a desk-worker’s abrupt departure, would usually find itself swept into the nearest cardboard box and carted home. But here it all remains, suggesting that whichever pair recently shared this office found good reason not to return; being guilty, perhaps, of the kind of offence which has rendered them not only persona non grata but in danger of incurring active hostility from above.

Onwards and upwards, though; onwards and upwards. From the Barbican perch, a view of the second floor is offered, and this is busier, or at any rate, more peopled. In one of the offices—for our watcher, the one to the left—a pair of workers sit at the same desk; or rather, one sits at the desk while her companion perches on its edge, both concentrating on a transistor radio. Meanwhile, in the next room—the one whose windows read W W Henderson, Solicitor and Commissioner For Oaths—a young man sits alone; a freshly barbered young man of average height; fair-haired, pale-skinned, grey-eyed; with a sharpish nose and a small mole on his upper lip. He sits unmoving, his gaze apparently focused on the desk in the other half of his room. This, like its counterpart in the occupied office downstairs, appears to have been swept clean of personal effects, leaving only the ubiquitous computer and keyboard, a telephone, and a battle-scarred blotter belonging to another era entirely. But closer inspection reveals something else on the desk’s surface; an object our watcher recognizes as a hair-slide, or barrette, though whether that word forms part of the young man’s vocabulary is open to question. And yet for the moment at least it demands his full attention: an abandoned barrette on a blotter on an unoccupied desk.

So far, so pleasing, from our watcher’s point of view, but even from her current vantage point the topmost floor remains inaccessible; the blind drawn over its windows ensuring that whoever haunts this floor does so unobserved. That should be an end of it, then. Our watcher should move along, there being nothing more to see. And yet still she remains, as if she were in possession of some sophisticated piece of surveillance kit that allows her not only to study the people through the windows but to unpeel their actual thoughts, and thus learn that Roderick Ho’s constant trawling through the Service’s classified databases is a quest for the secret that ever eludes him, this being the nature of the sin for which he’s been banished to Slough House—for he is certain that he has committed no crimes that anyone is aware of. And he might be right about this, but the fact remains that he’s looking in the wrong place, since the reason for his exile lies not in his doings but simply in his being. For Roderick Ho is disliked by everyone he encounters, a direct result of his own palpable dislike for everyone else, and his expulsion from Regent’s Park was the administrative equivalent of the swatting of a fly. And if this explanation ever does occur to Ho, enlightenment will probably have its roots in that moment in the café on Old Street, when Catherine Standish called him Roddy.

Meanwhile, on the next floor up, Min Harper and Louisa Guy share a desk. If Min retains a tendency to pat his pockets, to make sure he hasn’t lost anything, it’s a habit held in check for the time being; and if Louisa still grinds her teeth at moments of tension, either she is learning to control this, or is currently feeling no stress. And while there remains unfinished business between this pair, what commands their attention right now is the radio, which is informing them of the death of one Robert Hobden in a hit-and-run accident. Hobden, of course, was a fallen star, but that his passing is not un-newsworthy is evidenced by the contribution of Peter Judd, a politician as assuredly in the ascendant as Hobden was in decline. And what Judd has to say is this: that while Hobden’s attitudes and beliefs were, of course, utter hogwash, his career had not been without its highlights, and his tragic—yes, that was the word—Hobden’s tragic arc should serve as a warning of the inherent dangers of extremism, in whatever flag it draped itself. And as for his own ambitions, yes, since the question had been asked, Peter Judd would, actually, be prepared to, ah, leave his plough if so required and take up greater office for the common weal—an underused term, but one with historical and cultural resonance, if he might be pardoned the digression.

Leaving unexamined the question of whether Guy and Harper are in a forgiving mood, our watcher’s attention shifts now to River Cartwright, alone in the office next door. And what River Cartwright is thinking is that rewriting history is the Service’s favourite game; a topic he might illustrate from a hundred of the O.B.’s late-night stories, but which is most immediately realized for him in the fact of Sidonie Baker’s absence—not merely from the office, but from the records of the hospital in which she supposedly died, which have been so thoroughly sanitized as to offer reassurance as to the hygiene standards of the NHS. Just as she is not here now, so she was never there then. Indeed, River’s own memories and those of his colleagues aside, his only absolute proof of her having existed resides in the barrette he found in his car, and which he has placed on her desk. As for proof of her having ceased to exist, he has none. Which allows him to speculate—or perhaps a better word might be pretend—that what he imagined happened to her did not. And he is also thinking that tonight he will catch a train to Tonbridge, and spend time with his grandfather; and perhaps even call his mother. And that tomorrow he will return to Slough House, where daily boredom is perhaps not so absolutely guaranteed as it once was, now that the Second Desk at Regent’s Park is effectively in Jackson Lamb’s pocket.

And as for Lamb himself—as for Lamb, he remains the shape he ever was, and of much the same temper, and his current position is what it is most mornings: he is reclining in his chair to a degree that threatens its stability and studying his noticeboard, to the back of which is once more pinned the flight fund so briefly in the possession of Jed Moody. The flight fund’s existence, of course, is now known to River Cartwright, but Lamb has other secrets, and major among them is this: that all joes go to the well. River would balk at the information, but Lamb knows it to be true: all joes go to the well in the end, slyly whoring themselves for the coin of their choice. Among the late slow horses, for example, Sid Baker wanted to do her duty, Struan Loy and Kay White sought favour, and Jed Moody needed to be back among the action. Lamb has known greater treacheries. After all, Charles Partner—one-time head of Five—sold himself for money.

There is movement behind him, and Catherine Standish enters, bearing a cup of tea. This she deposits on Lamb’s desk before departing again, no word having been spoken during the transaction. But Standish, though she doesn’t know it, occupies a place in what Lamb, when he’s forced to acknowledge it, thinks of as his conscience, for another lesson he has long absorbed, and one hardly limited to the Intelligence sphere, is that actions have consequences which harm and ensnare others. Once, in exchange for a service, Lamb revealed to Roderick Ho the sin that had left him in Slough House, and his story—that he had been responsible for an agent’s death—was, like all the best lies, true, though rendered harmless by the omission of details; that, for instance, it was Charles Partner’s death for which he had been responsible, an execution sanctioned by, among others, River Cartwright’s grandfather. For this act, Lamb’s reward was Slough House. Lamb, then, went to the well for peace and quiet, for a sanctuary in which to indulge his ironic self-disgust, and the killing of his former friend and mentor does not disturb his sleep. But the fact that it was, inevitably, Catherine Standish who found her boss’s body has been known to give him pause. Having found bodies in his time, Lamb is aware that such moments leave a scar. He has no intention of attempting to make amends for this, but if it lies within his power to do so, he will prevent further injury to her.

For the time being, though, he is contemplating immediate options. The status quo is the most obvious of these: Slough House is Lamb’s kingdom, and recent events have done nothing to change that. And should the unexpected arise, he always has his flight fund. But a third way seems to be suggesting itself; and this is that perhaps he is not as weary as he thought of the world of Regent’s Park and its ever-diminishing loyalties. Perhaps he washed his hands of it too soon. Certainly he’s had few moments of late to match that in which he watched Diana Taverner realize that he’d outplayed her, and if he can outplay her, he can surely find more worthy enemies. So far, this is idle fancy; something to fill the space between this cup of tea and the next. But who knows? Who knows.

Enough. Our watcher extinguishes, if she was smoking, her cigarette, and checks her watch, if she’s wearing one. Then stands and retraces her steps: along the bricked-walkway, over the pedestrian bridge, down the staircase at Barbican Station, and on to Aldersgate. It is threatening rain again, which it always seems to do on this corner. And she has no umbrella. Never mind. If she walks fast enough, she can reach her destination without getting wet.

If another one ever turns up, she might even step on to a bus.