by Mick Herron
“With Cartwright.”
“Why would I be?”
“’Cause he didn’t tell you he’s alive.”
“I’m not his keeper. He wants to go haring off on a wild goose chase, that’s his look-out.”
“You’d have had his back, though. If he’d asked.”
“We have a drink once in a while. We’re not Batman and Robin. We’re not even you and Shirley. You’re more of a team than me and Cartwright.”
Marcus shrugged. “Shirley’s my bro. But she can be hard work.”
“I didn’t want to be the one to say it,” Louisa said.
“River, though, he could have picked up a phone.”
“He’s in joe country,” she said. “Not on a city break.”
Marcus was about to reply, but his earpiece squawked in time to stop him.
Back in Slough House, Roderick Ho was sandwiched between monitors, a pair angled inwards so his face was washed in their glow. Some people—cowards—thought it was dangerous, getting too close to your screens. But they were the kind getting left behind by history, unless they were being abandoned by the future: Ho didn’t care which, those fools were fucked either way.
On one of his screens was a satellite map of South London, on a scale that made it look like a circuitry diagram. On the other was a magnified portion of the same map, its focus an unremarkable alleyway half a mile south of the Thames. If Ho hovered his cursor over it, the legend Elite Enquiries would appear, along with its post code and a link to “further information.” The amount of data broadband delivered, half a spook’s job was done for him, right there.
Course, if you wanted the rest sorted out, you looked to your Bonds, your Solos, your Hos.
Earlier, he’d jacked into the Park’s tracking system and put the finger on Sam Chapman’s mobile, “putting the finger” being, he had decided, a cool way of describing tagging. Kim—his girlfriend—liked hearing about this stuff, how Roddy slipped in and out of systems like a cyber-ghost. The only problem was, Chapman’s mobile wasn’t showing up, which might mean he’d deliberately gone dark, and removed his phone’s battery, or just that he was out of reach: in one of the capital’s grey areas, where the signal fizzled to a damp wick.
“Tag him, find him, bring him in,” had been Lamb’s instructions.
Sometimes, Ho wished he was like the rest of the Slough House crew. Dumb muscle got the easy jobs.
And if he said as much to Kim, she’d laugh, pointing out that the Rodster was a lot of things, but dumb wasn’t ever going to be one of them. Except he couldn’t say that to Kim, because he hadn’t actually told her he was a spook—that was one of the first things they taught you, that it was the secret service. So he’d made it sound like he was private sector, working out of Canary Wharf, those huge glass canyons reeking of money and power: plenty of scope for a dude like the Rod-man, and really, was it such a bad idea? The crew here got called the slow horses, and Roddy Ho felt tainted by association. It’d break Lamb’s heart if he upped sticks, obviously, but sometimes a man had to—
A red dot pulsed into life.
Behind him, Shirley said, “What’s that? Is that Bad Sam?”
Patrice spotted the target the moment he emerged onto the pavement. The key to tailing someone was knowing where they’d end up: for two hours, he’d been sitting by a window in the public library, nursing an Americano from the coffee concession, and blending with the computer users, the students, the people with nowhere to go. It was a handy spot, shielded by scaffolding, passing traffic and a general air of gloom, but all he had to do was step outside for Chapman to see him and take flight. To bring a pigeon down, first you set it on the wing. He’d learned to shoot in the fields round Les Arbres, and appreciated a moving target.
Thinking these thoughts he was already on his feet, skirting the coffee booth, trotting down the risers to the exit ramp—
“Watch where you’re going!”
He tried to step past, but the newcomer, a burly man in a mobile fug of stale beer, caught his jacket.
“I said watch where you’re going—”
Patrice put him on the floor relatively gently, and it only took half a second, but he was in full view of the issue desk behind him.
“Hey! Hey! You can’t do that!”
He could, and had, but he didn’t want to hang around to discuss his abilities. Stepping over one nuisance, ignoring the other, he moved towards the doors, which obligingly parted, but not before someone had appeared between them, coming in from the street. He was wide and black and uniformed, and his face clouded suspiciously when he saw the man on the floor, and heard the growing commotion.
There was, thought Patrice, always something.
Shirley said, “Is that Bad Sam?”
“It’s his mobile,” Ho said.
“So it’s Bad Sam.”
“Unless someone else has his mobile.”
“So it’s Bad Sam.”
Ho snorted, but yeah, it was Bad Sam. Who let somebody else have their mobile?
Shirley said into her own phone, “He’s heading down the High Street. If he’s going to his office, he’ll take the one, two, third on his left. It’s an alleyway.”
“One, two, third?” Marcus said.
“I was counting. Can you see him?”
“Wait a sec.”
A muffled voice was Louisa, talking to Marcus.
Marcus said, “Yeah, we have him. Over the road.”
“There, that was easy, wasn’t it?” Shirley said. “Pick him up and bring him in.”
“You’re the boss all of a sudden?”
“You’re gunna let him go just ’cause I said to pick him up?”
Marcus had a brilliant answer for that, but before he could deliver it Louisa was tapping his arm.
“He’s turning off,” she told him, at the exact moment Roderick Ho said the same to Shirley.
Crossing the junction Bad Sam heard a crash, something heavy going through glass, and changed plans on the instant: there were always noises somewhere, and not all of them had to do with him, but he’d be an idiot to ignore the possibility, with those itchy feelings still scratching at his spine. So he slipped off the High Street before his turning, and headed down a narrow alley, where the ground was mushy with fag ends and the air smokily visible. Some of this was pumping from a vent set in the wall next to an open door, against which an olive-skinned man in a kitchen-worker’s smock was smoking a joint.
“Yo, Sam,” he said. “Sammity Sam.”
He always said that, and it always wasn’t funny. But Bad Sam always laughed, because you never knew when you might need a favour.
“Hey, Miguel,” he said. “You didn’t see me, and I wasn’t here, right?”
“Never here,” Miguel agreed as Bad Sam slipped past him, and through the kitchen, and out of the café’s front door onto another street entirely.
Here’s a thing about men in uniform: they go through a window as easily as any other kind.
Turned out it was only a traffic warden, but that wasn’t Patrice’s fault. And it made no difference to the way the glass rained down around him, the fingernail-sized nuggets of it used in bus-stops and windscreens. Libraries, too, were prepared for sudden impact. Probably wise, given the cuts.
But there was no time to dwell on that, because people would have phones out soon, and then there’d be more uniforms coming, the serious kind. In the two-second grace that follows unexpected violence, Patrice turned his collar up and strode through the obliging doors to see, on the other side of the road, the target turning down an alleyway not his own.
Louisa was gone in a flash, sprinting for the road, hoping to get into that alleyway before Sam Chapman disappeared out the other end. Marcus was slower, pausing to click the car locked: it was his vehicle, damn it, and they were south of the river, and th
e family was already one set of wheels down. Dying at his desk would look the softer option if anything happened to this one. So by the time he reached the road Louisa was just barely leaping to safety on the other side, a bus-horn blaring her home. The surface was slick with rain, and hurling yourself out into traffic, assuming it would stop, worked fine in the movies, but Marcus had seen people hit by cars, and didn’t fancy pissing sitting down for the rest of his life. Louisa was weaving in and out of people wielding umbrellas, and Marcus, running parallel with her, nearly crashed into a crowd gathered in a passage to his right: it was clustered round a large man lying in a puddle of glass and books. Noting the uniform, Marcus thought, Well you won’t be handing out tickets, but his follow-up was more to the point: Who put you through a window, mate? Someone more aggravated than a ticketed driver; he must weigh eighteen stone. And nobody tossed eighteen stone through a window without practice, or a trebuchet.
He looked across the road. Louisa was gone. He grabbed the nearest onlooker. “Who did this?”
“Are you police?”
“Who?”
The onlooker, scrawny, dandruffed, damp, said, “He was just a bloke, know what I mean? Didn’t look like he could throw a dart, let alone—”
A pro, thought Marcus. “Where’d he go?”
“Didn’t see, know what I mean?”
Marcus could just about work it out.
He scanned the area, but raining like this, most people hurrying, nobody stood out.
There was a gap in the traffic, though, so he took the chance and ran across the road.
When you flushed a bird, all you needed to know was which direction the sky was. Men were trickier, more devious.
But Patrice had studied maps, and knew that the alleyway the target had gone down led nowhere.
Which might mean the target was unlucky, and that was like finding money in the street. Hunting someone unlucky, you could just pick your spot and wait. But the target was a former spook, and while spooks made mistakes like everybody else, they didn’t run down blind alleys two hundred yards from home. Patrice moved past the entrance without pausing; just another Londoner caught in the rain. A little further on he took the next left, and looked back to see a woman following the target’s route.
There was hardly anyone on this street. The pavement was narrow, the kerbs flooded; parked cars lined the opposite side. To his left, a chain-link fence sealed off a space where a house had stood. From behind him came the growing wail of a siren, but this didn’t worry him. Add ten minutes for witness statements, and Patrice could be on the other side of London. Meanwhile, the target appeared from a doorway ahead and hurried up the road without looking round. Good tradecraft, thought Patrice, but in this case a mistake. He quickened his pace, and consulted the map in his head. Chapman would weave his way in and out of this tapestry of backstreets, trying to zigzag himself invisible, a common ambition when you knew you were prey. And in the attempt he’d pass through somewhere dark and lonely, maybe underneath one of the railway bridges which spanned the roads in this area. All Patrice would need was a second or two. He ran a hand through his hair. The rain was getting harder.
Ho watched the screen, lips moving. Behind him, Shirley said, “What happened there? Is he going through a building? He’s going through a building!”
She said into her phone, “He’s going through a building,” though Marcus had already gathered as much, twice.
Louisa emerged from the alleyway as he reached it. “Dead end.”
“He’s gone through a—”
“Building, yeah, I worked that out.”
“You got that map?” Marcus said, not to Louisa.
Into his earpiece, Shirley said, “Left, then left again.”
Bad Sam knew he’d been flushed by the breaking glass; that he’d fallen for the automatic escape principle, the one that said Fly. Now. But knew, too, that he’d bought himself a tiny advantage, one he could keep hold of provided he didn’t look behind.
He doesn’t know you know he’s there.
That in his mind, Bad Sam headed further into the maze of streets that looped round Corporation housing, dog-legged past schools, and threaded under bridges. In the rain he heard no following footsteps; just a steady patter on the pavements and, distantly, a police car’s plaintive wail. Don’t look round.
Louisa would have been off already, but Marcus caught her by the arm. Anyone else and she’d have broken his elbow—she was in the mood. But Marcus didn’t break easily, and had a message to impart.
“There’s someone else. After Chapman.”
“Who?”
“A pro.”
He released her.
And now she was away, faster than Marcus, who was getting a little heavy, frankly. A police car was coming; as she turned the corner it pulled up by the library, its blue light throwing ghosts onto wet surfaces. This new street was narrower, and right-angled a few hundred yards on; a figure was disappearing round the corner. Could be Chapman. Back at Slough House Ho was tracking his movements, relaying them to Marcus, but Louisa was offline.
She glanced behind. Marcus was following, his features set in a grimace.
At the corner, she turned left. The road ahead forked, one tine winding under a railway bridge where a pair of youngsters were sheltering, hand in hand. A woman was approaching, dragging a basket on wheels; beyond her, heading away, a figure in a raincoat was hustling along. On the opposite pavement a younger man, leather jacket, shoulders hunched, was moving fast.
Marcus caught her, one finger holding his earpiece in place. “He’s ahead of us. Two hundred yards?”
“Wearing a raincoat,” she said. “And there’s the pro. Leather jacket.”
“He see you?”
She wasn’t sure. She didn’t think so.
Marcus said, “Loop round at this next junction. If you’re fast enough, you’ll overtake him before he hits the main road.”
Making it sound like a challenge, which was probably deliberate.
She nodded and took off, breaking into a run once she’d rounded the corner.
Two of them, thought Patrice. The target was ahead, walking briskly, and there were two behind him: a suspicion confirmed by a reflection in a ground-floor window, cracked open to release a veil of blue smoke. If they knew what they were doing they would separate soon, though if they knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t have let him spot them so easily.
They might come to regret that.
His hands were bunched inside his pockets. Rain slid down his neck. But the rain was his friend, keeping the backstreets clear, and people’s attention elsewhere. The target had turned another corner, but that was fine. There were only so many corners left.
Have to lose some weight.
That wasn’t so much Marcus’s own mind forming thoughts as a small version of Cassie, his wife, making a guest appearance in his head.
Then Shirley’s voice was in his ear, completing the duet: “He’s ahead of you. Why aren’t you running?”
“. . . Sort of am,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Why aren’t you running faster?”
He was tempted to toss the earpiece, but going dark was frowned upon, midway through an op.
The man in the leather jacket had turned the corner after Chapman, and any doubt he was following had dispersed now. True, there were only so many routes, and everyone looked furtive in the rain, but still: there was something about the way the man moved. He didn’t break stride to avoid puddles, but didn’t splash through them either. Handy gift to have. Marcus bet his feet were grateful.
Shirley said, “Chapman’s stopping.”
“Where?”
“Next left, then right. Taking shelter?”
“Taking guard, more like,” Marcus said, and felt something tighten in his chest; the same feeling he got playi
ng blackjack, watching the dealer deal. Knowing, always, that he couldn’t lose, whatever experience might suggest to the contrary.
The extra pound or two didn’t fall away, but still: Marcus felt lighter as he picked up his pace, following the spook on Chapman’s tail.
Another bridge over the road, this one with a train crossing. Its thunder filled the world for a moment, and then it was gone, and the rain was heavier, pounding the pavements ahead.
It seemed to Bad Sam Chapman that everything had grown darker.
His breathing was rough, and his thigh muscles aching: this without breaking into a trot. What age did to you, and late-night drinking. But age was inevitable, up to a point; as for late-night drinking, this was not easily avoided either. All political lives end in failure, someone once said. Spooks’ lives, too, held more to regret than to cherish, a conclusion it was hard to ignore once the light drained from the day. You could stay up late brooding, or you could stay up late brooding drunk. There weren’t many other options.
Bad Sam hoped like hell he’d find Chelsea Barker. He hated to leave things unfinished.
He crossed the road into a sidestreet and passed a pair of wooden gates, chained closed, but loosely enough to allow for a gap. For the first time, he looked behind. His follower wasn’t in sight; was leaving enough space between them to give Chapman the illusion of safety. Here it was, then. He took hold of one gate, pushed at the other, and ducked under the chain. He was in a garage forecourt: two black cabs parked against one wall; a workshop with its doors concertinaed open, a naked bulb glowing, but nobody in evidence. There’d be a hammer, a monkey wrench, something. Just give me a minute, Sam thought. Give me two. Time to catch my breath. He didn’t even know why this was happening, but that hardly mattered: this, or something like it, had always been on the cards. He wasn’t the only one who hated unfinished business. It went with the territory.
Patrice almost walked straight past, but there was that odd hint of movement; the suggestion that the gates were trembling in the rain. Chapman must be past the point of pretence—when you found yourself hiding in back yards, you were beyond caution and into the fear. Now was as good a time as any. His own pursuers had yet to show themselves; if he moved quickly, he and Chapman might finish their mission without interruption. Because it was a joint mission. Chapman had a significant role to play in its fulfillment. A murder is nothing without a victim.
