Spook Street

by Mick Herron

  Anger Fucking Management. Twice a week, in Shoreditch.

  (“Don’t set off any new trends,” Marcus warned her when he found out. “I took an idiot round Shoreditch once. That’s how hipsters started.”)

  “And I’m assuming River and Louisa are fuck-ups,” he said now.

  “Well, duh.”

  “Catherine was an issue. Min was a fuck-up.”

  “And Ho’s a dickhead, but you always get outliers. So what’s Jasper Konrad, that’s what I want to know. And what is it with the air piano?” She mimicked his action, trilling up and down a non-existent instrument. “Who’s he think he is, Elton John?”

  “You want to know what he’s hearing in his head, go ask him. But don’t blame me if the voices tell him to carve you up.”

  “Yeah, ’cause he looks like he could be dangerous. Probably takes two of him to scramble an egg.” She stopped pretending to play the piano. “Tell you what, though,” she said. “If I was River, I’d be worried.”

  “How so?”

  “Youngish white guy, fucked up and seething. We’ve already got one of those. It’s like River’s being replaced.”

  Marcus said, “You have a weird way of looking at things.”

  “You wait and see. Then tell me I’m wrong.”

  She started banging at her keyboard again, her actual one, and Marcus couldn’t tell if she was working out aggression, or writing an email.

  Suppressing a sigh, he returned to work.

  When he emerged from the footpath a car was heading down the lane, and it slowed at the sight of him, seemed about to halt, then sped up. He resolutely did not turn to watch it—they wanted him to react. Best keep his powder dry. And he was not quite defenceless, as they would discover to their cost.

  No, he would make straight for the shop; in/out, back to camp. It might not be a simple exfiltration—the woman behind the counter was a chatty one; you could barely prise yourself loose with a crowbar—but lately, it occurred to him, she had been chatting less, listening more; coaxing out details it might have been wiser to preserve. He’d been explaining to her how history was never a closed book. Look at Russia: complete basket case. That hadn’t been the plan, but that was the thing about history: push it down in one place, it springs up in another, like ill-laid lino.

  He’d said, “And there’s always a price to pay. You make decisions, and people die, and that’s what you live with, day and night, ever after. But I wouldn’t have done things any differently.”

  She’d said, “David, you worked at the Ministry of Transport. I’m sure people were inconvenienced, but I don’t suppose many of them died.”

  Of course he had. The Ministry of Transport was his cover story; the alibi that papered over forty-something years of working life. So in the village, that’s what he’d been: a pen-pusher with a brief for trains or roads or airports—you couldn’t expect him to remember. It was hard enough keeping track of what he’d actually done, without recalling everything he’d merely pretended to do.

  So he’d laughed it off, “Figure of speech, dear lady,” but she’d have been on the phone as soon as he’d left, letting them know his cover was springing leaks. These were the lengths to which they were going. They were replacing members of his community, so that those he’d lived among for years were no longer to be trusted.

  (“The best of us are thieves and scoundrels,” he’d told River more than once. “As for the worst . . . ”

  “Slough House,” River would say. “Jackson Lamb. Remember?”)

  And River was his most obvious asset, his most trusted fellow human. What if they replaced him too? He could open the door to his only grandson and find a viper slithering inside.

  If that happened, measures would have to be taken. Because he was not quite defenceless, as they would discover to their cost.

  He crossed the lane, glad of his wellingtons, and entered the shop, setting the bell above the door jangling. What was it he’d wanted? Basic supplies: bread and bacon, milk and teabags. But already there was the sense of entering enemy territory, of having wandered into the path of stoats, because the lady of the shop was staring at him in something like horror, something like pity; was coming round the counter with one hand washing the other, her mouth stretching ever wider.

  “Oh, David,” she said. “David, your trousers . . . ”

  And when the O.B. looked down it took him a moment to understand what she was getting at, because he was certainly wearing trousers, tucked into his wellingtons, and the lady of the shop had reached him and taken his hand before it dawned on him that what he was looking at was not the thick dark tweed of everyday use, but the dark-red paisley-patterned cotton of his pyjamas.

  And morning gives way to afternoon, and evening falls, as it usually does. In Kent, daylight slinks away across the fields as streetlights wink on one by one, each casting a tight umbrella over its own little stage, while in the heart of London darkness loiters in corners, and peeps from behind curtains. In Slough House, the heating has died with as much effort as it took to come to life, the death rattle of its pipes sounding a knell over the afternoon’s activities, such as they were. In the end, Lamb has shown neither his face nor any other part of his anatomy, but the expectation of a dismal event can be as draining as its occurrence, and the atmosphere retains an edge of disquiet, despite the horses’ departure. First to go was Roderick Ho, followed closely by Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander. JK Coe may have been next—he was simply there one moment and then not, like the shine on an apple—but what’s certain is that Louisa Guy and River Cartwright left together, their destination the nearest pub in which they might expect to encounter no one they know. Moira Tregorian is last to leave, but before doing so yields to the temptation of entering Lamb’s office, which has overcome its top-floor location to assert a natural inclination towards cellardom. Dankness is its signature odour, with notes of stale flatulence and mouldy bread. A suspicious mind might even conjecture that smoking has taken place here. The blinds, as ever, are drawn, and the overhead bulbs have blown, so for illumination Moira is forced to rely on the lamp atop a pile of telephone directories to one side of the desk. The light this casts is yellow and sickly, and mostly serves to rearrange shadows. On Lamb’s desk, the piles of paper have an unread look and are curling at the edges; on his shelves, the clutter is a challenge to the tidy-minded intruder. Tidy-minded Moira Tregorian certainly is, but simple-minded she isn’t, quite, and she overcomes the urge to begin instilling order. Instead, she hovers a moment, wondering about this man into whose orbit she has been cast, whom she has yet to encounter, and who seems to collect empty bottles. It is clear that her predecessor has let things slide to the extent that bringing Mr. Lamb to heel might prove a wearisome business. Moira Tregorian sighs to punctuate this thought, then turns the lamp off and makes her way down the stairs and into the damp and gloomy air of Aldersgate Street.

  Behind her Slough House creaks and bangs, and surrenders to the chill.

  There was a pub near the church where they’d filmed Shakespeare in Love, and Louisa bagged a table under a diamond-patterned window while River fetched drinks. It still seemed odd, this—even a casual drink after work felt like two-timing Min’s memory. But nothing stayed still. It was like moving from one room to another: you’d been there, and now you were here. Sooner or later, you closed the door between.

  Three months back, Louisa had shifted the fridge in her studio flat and chiselled a lump of plaster from the wall. Nestled there was the uncut diamond, a fingernail-sized chunk of light, she’d acquired when the heist at the Needle came unstuck, shortly after Min’s death. In a pub near Hatton Garden, she approached a man she’d been staking out for weeks: an appraiser at one of the smaller local jewellers, someone she knew would pay cash for an unprovenanced stone; not a fortune—daylight robbery, even—but that was an irony she could appreciate, and he could presumably guess
at. Lumped together with her scraps of savings, it was enough for a deposit on an apartment some way out of town. “Apartment” was an estate agent’s word, making the property sound bigger than it was, but she was no longer sleeping in her kitchen, and her living-room window had a view of a park, and she was paying a mortgage, not rent. Sometimes at night she’d sit with the curtains open, a glass of wine in her hand, looking down on trees waving in the wind; not thinking about Min exactly, or about anything much, but being glad she was there and no longer in her poky studio with its constant cooking odours, and heavy bass noises thrumming from passing cars. Glad, too, she was no longer on bar stools every other evening, hooking up with strangers. She wasn’t drinking so much, and was sleeping better. She woke early, but was mostly untroubled by dreams.

  And this, having a drink with River, this was okay too. When you’d been through a war together—even a small one—it lent you a connection you weren’t going to find in a hook-up. They’d both shot people. This didn’t get aired much, but it was always there on the table.

  He returned with the drinks: a vodka-lime for her for old times’ sake, and a pint of bitter for him for £4.80. Prices in London were getting out of hand.

  Because she wasn’t yet ready for conversation, she hit the burning question of the day before he was seated:

  “Why’d you think Lamb’s invited the Moira to lunch?”

  “The Moira” was what they’d taken to calling her; one of those unplanned habits that foster relationships.

  River said, “He might have been pulling her leg.”

  “Cruel, even for Lamb.”

  “I dunno. Actually taking her to lunch would be crueller. Besides, taking her—paying for it? How likely is that?”

  Lamb had a distinctly droit de seigneur approach to mealtimes.

  Louisa sipped her vodka and felt it hit the right buttons: suddenly the bar’s edges were less harsh, and the noise from the other patrons subsided to a background murmur, waves collapsing on a beach. River looked better in this light too: the light of the evening’s first drink. He was fair-haired, pale skinned, grey eyed, and while these things were always true, they were usually run-of-the-mill details, swamped by the particularities of the moment: that he looked knackered, hungover, or pissed off, all of which were routine for a slow horse. His nose was a little sharp, true, and the mole on his upper lip grew larger when you noticed it, but basically he was fit enough, which was a good reason to go slow on the vodka-limes. Been there, done that. Her next phase of life involved domestic tranquillity, and avoiding unwise shagging choices.

  So: conversation.

  “Moira, anyway,” she said. “That’s an oldies’ name. Your aunt’s called Moira.”

  “I don’t have any aunts.”

  “You know what I mean, though.”

  “Unless I do,” River continued. “I might have, come to think of it.”

  “Yeah, ’cause who’s got time to go around remembering whether they’ve got aunts?”

  He said, “Well, I never knew my father.”

  “Oh.”

  “Or if he had sisters. Or what they were called.”

  “Oh, right, yeah, did I know that? I think I knew that. Sorry.”

  “It’s what happened,” said River. “That’s all.”

  “Your mother never told you who he was? No hints, no clues?”

  “She’s a stubborn woman, my mother. She decided before I was born that he wasn’t part of her life any more. And that’s one path she’s never deviated from.”

  This being an unusual circumstance, Louisa surmised.

  Sundry details of their lives had been exchanged, but had frequently fallen into that abyss where facts of no relevance or interest were stored. This was because for most of that time, they’d been locked in separate miseries, exile to Slough House being a shared condition only in the way that long-term imprisonment was—you might knock about together in the yard, but when the cell doors slammed shut, you were alone. Sharing had been killing time, that was all. Later, with Min, her interest in other people had been dimmed for the inverse reason: the natural selfishness happiness carries with it. So Louisa might have absorbed any amount of information about River’s life, but basically, what she knew about him was he’d stood next to her once while bullets flew. She supposed most office relationships progressed along similar lines. Well, except for the bit about bullets.

  So it was with the sense that she was covering territory she might have been expected to be familiar with that she said, “She’s not a big part of your life, then.”

  “Not a big presence, anyway. My grandparents brought me up.”

  “David Cartwright.”

  “The one and only. Rose, my nan—she died a while ago.”

  “And now you’re worried about him.”

  “Yes,” River said. “I’m worried about him.”

  “Getting forgetful?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is that so bad? I mean, yeah, okay, it’s bad, but . . . How old is he, anyway?”

  “Eighties,” River said, “Eighty . . . four? Yeah, four.”

  Louisa said, “Not so very old. Not these days.”

  “Kind of is, though,” River said.

  She didn’t reply, because he was right. Eighty-four kind of was old.

  Her glass was nearly empty, but because River was still working on his pint she didn’t make a move towards a fresh round. Besides, it wasn’t the moment to break off talking. River had the absorbed air of one getting something off his chest, but with a way to go before he’d mined down to the real stuff.

  She said, “How forgetful are we talking? Days of the week or his own name?”

  “Somewhere in between, I guess.”

  “Is he on meds?”

  “Statins. Nothing else I know of. And I would, because . . . ”

  “Because you’ve been through his bathroom cabinet. Have you talked to him about it?”

  He gave her a look.

  “Okay, not easy. But is there anyone you can talk to? Neighbours, anyone?”

  “His neighbours think he’s a retired civil servant.”

  “Well, he sort of is.”

  “But not the kind they think. And the last thing I want is to discover he’s been sharing his life’s story with the postman.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “I don’t know, Louisa. Every time I see him, a bit more of him has slipped away. It’s like the light gets dimmer. He’s always been the anchor in my life. Now, I sometimes catch a look in his eye like he doesn’t know where he is, and it frightens me. I don’t know what to do about it.”

  She let her hand lie on his for a moment. He nodded at the contact, then broke it to pick up his beer glass, which he drained. Then he said, “Fancy another?”

  “Yes. But it’s my round.”

  At the bar, she briefly locked looks with a man down the far end. Six months ago, that would have been enough to trigger an evening’s descent into carnal oblivion; six months from now, who knew, it might be enough to kickstart conversation. For the moment, there were other priorities. She looked away, paid for her drinks, and carried them back to the table thinking about the O.B., a term she’d heard River use—Old Bastard: a term of affection in this case. There were all sorts of legends in the Service—she worked for one of them, for God’s sake—but David Cartwright’s was the kind that withstood scrutiny. Never actually First Desk, but the power behind several incumbents of that throne. Of all the secrets he’d been privy to, a good number could still be radioactive. If he began to leak, there’d be concerned faces at Regent’s Park and elsewhere.

  Seated again, she said, “Would they—I mean, the Park. Do they get involved, situations like this?”

  “No. I doubt it, anyway. Well, I wouldn’t have put much past Ingrid Tearney, and Diana Taverner probably
has men killed just to keep in practice, but Tearney’s out the door, and from what I hear, Lady Di’s using both hands to keep a grip on her desk. She’s probably not authorising clandestine wet work on the old brigade, just to make sure they don’t talk out of turn.”

  Louisa said, “Yeah, I wasn’t actually suggesting they’d have him murdered, though I can see you’ve put some thought into that. I was more wondering about a home or something. A home for distressed former spooks. Didn’t there used to be something like that?”

  “Sorry. Must be getting paranoid.”

  “Goes with the territory.”

  He said, “There was a place, but it was closed down a few years ago. Austerity measure.”

  “Christ.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, it’s not a fate he’d take to lightly. You’d need a crash squad to prise him from his house if he thought you were trying that on.”

  “So he’s aware of what’s happening?”

  “No. I don’t know. I just meant generally . . . It’s not like he’s forgotten who he is. It’s more like he’s forgotten that that’s not who he is any more. Some days, I think he’s still fighting the Cold War.”

  “A lot of old people live in the past.”

  “But not many of them have his past to live in. He keeps a gun in the house, Louisa. He’s supposed to keep it in a gun safe—I mean, technically, he’s not supposed to have it at all, but given that he does, he’s supposed to keep it in a safe. But last week I found it on the kitchen table. He said something about keeping the stoats away.”

  “Stoats?”

  “What they used to call watchers. When you were under surveillance.” River paused to take a drink, then said, “God, I don’t know. After the last few days, the bomb at Westacres, maybe the fate of one old man isn’t something to get worked up about.”

  “He’s your grandfather. Of course you’re upset.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at his watch. “And I ought to make a move.”

  “You’re going to see him now?”