Dead Lions

by Mick Herron

“So—”

  “The kind where I had all the ideas. You did a lot of running around, I remember.”

  River bit back his first response. “We all play to our strengths,” he said. “My point is, for a while there, Slough House worked. Know what I mean? We played as a team, and it worked.”

  “So now we do it again,” Ho said.

  “That would be good, yes.”

  “Only this time, instead of running around, you just sit there. While I do all the work again.” He turned to Catherine. “And then Lamb finds out and kills me.”

  River said, “Okay, how about this. You don’t tell us anything, but we find out anyway, and tell him you told us. Then he kills you.”

  Catherine said, “River—”

  “No, seriously. Lamb never locks his computer, and we all know what his password is.”

  Lamb’s password was “Password.”

  Ho said, “If you were gunna do that, you’d have done it. You wouldn’t be bothering me.”

  “No, well, it hadn’t occurred to me till now.” He looked at Catherine. “What’s the opposite of teamwork?”

  She said, “It’s not going to happen, Roddy. He’s kidding.”

  “It doesn’t sound like he’s kidding.”

  “Well he is.” She looked at River. “Isn’t that right?”

  He surrendered. “Whatever.”

  She said to Ho, “You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to.”

  As an interrogation technique, thought River, this lacked bite.

  Ho chewed his lip and looked at his monitor. This was angled so River couldn’t see it, but reflected in Ho’s glasses he could make out a thin tracery of lines cobwebbing the screen, and green lights blinking on a black background. Ho could be navigating his way through an MoD firewall, or playing Battleship with himself, but either way, he seemed to be contemplating something else altogether at the moment.

  “All right,” he said at last.

  “There,” River said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you. I’ll tell her.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Ho, she’ll tell me herself soon as—”

  “And who’s ‘she’?” Catherine asked. “The cat’s mother?”

  The two men shared an unlikely moment of mystified brotherhood.

  “Never mind,” she said. She pointed at River. “Out. No arguments.”

  There were arguments, and he made a few of them, but only in his head.

  Back upstairs, he looked in on Harper and Guy’s office, but they weren’t back. “Meeting,” Harper had said when River asked, which might have meant a meeting, or might have meant they were taking advantage of Lamb’s absence to do whatever they did these days: a walk in the park, a movie, sex in Louisa’s car. Park, though … They couldn’t have gone to Regent’s Park, could they? The thought stilled him, but only for a moment. It didn’t sound likely.

  In his own room, he spent five minutes reacquainting himself with the database of the dead and another ten staring out from behind the window’s worn gilt lettering: WW Henderson, Solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths. There were three people at the bus stop opposite, and as River watched a bus arrived and took them all away. Immediately someone else arrived, and began waiting for the next bus. River wondered how she’d react if she knew she was being watched by a member of the Intelligence Service. Wondered, too, what she’d make of the notion that she almost certainly had a more exciting job than his.

  He wandered back to his computer, where he entered a fictitious name and dates on the database, thought for a bit, then deleted them.

  Catherine knocked and entered. “You busy?” she said. “This can wait.”

  “Ha bloody ha.”

  She sat. “Lamb wanted a Service personnel file.”

  “Ho doesn’t have access to those.”

  “Very funny. File was on an occasional from the eighties. A man called Dickie Bow.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Real name Bough, but his parents were stupid enough to call him Richard. I take it you’ve never heard of him.”

  River said, “Give me a moment.”

  He leaned back, mentally refocusing on an image of the O.B.—Old Bastard, an epithet bestowed by River’s mother. He’d been largely raised by the O.B., whose long life had been dedicated to the Intelligence Service, and much of whose long retirement was spent doling out its highlights to his only grandson. River Cartwright was a spook because that’s what his grandfather was. Not had been: was. Some professions you never gave up, long after they were over. David Cartwright was a Service legend, but the way he told it, the same held true for the lowliest bagman: you could change sides, sell your secrets, offer your memoirs to the highest bidder, but once a spook you were always a spook, and everything else was just cover. So the friendly old man trowelling his flowerbeds with a silly hat on remained the strategist who’d helped plot the Service’s course through the Cold War, and River had grown up learning the details.

  Which mattered. This, the O.B. had drummed into him before he was ten. Details mattered. River blinked once, then again, but came back with nothing: Dickie Bow? A ridiculous name, but not one River had heard before.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It means nothing.”

  “He was found dead last week,” she said.

  “In suspicious circumstances?”

  “On a bus.”

  He clasped his hands behind his head. “The floor’s yours.”

  “Bow was on a train to Worcester, but it was cancelled at Reading because of signalling problems. The bus was taking passengers from there to Oxford, where the trains were okay. At Oxford everyone got off, except Bow. This was because he’d died en route.”

  “Natural causes?”

  “So the report says. And Bow’s not been on the books for a while. So not what you’d call an obvious candidate for assassination, even if he’d ever done anything important.”

  “Which you’re sure he hadn’t.”

  “You know what personnel records are like. Secure stuff’s redacted, and anything more sensitive than a routine drop-and-poke is secure. But Bow’s file’s an open book barring some drink-related incident near the end. He did a lot of toad work. Cash for info, mostly gossip. He worked in a nightclub, so he picked up a lot.”

  “Which would have been used for blackmail purposes.”

  “Of course.”

  “So revenge isn’t out of the question.”

  “But it was all a long time ago. And like I say, natural causes.”

  “So why’s Lamb interested?” River mused.

  “No idea. Maybe they worked together.” She paused. “A note says he was a talented streetwalker. That doesn’t mean what it sounds like, does it?”

  “Happily, no. It means he was good at shadowing people. Following them.”

  “Well, then. Maybe Lamb just heard he’d died, and got sentimental.”

  “Yes, but seriously.”

  Catherine said, “Bow didn’t have a ticket for his journey. And he was supposed to be at work. I wonder where was he going?”

  “I’d never heard of him until two minutes ago. I doubt my speculations are worth much.”

  “Mine either. But it’s got Lamb off his arse, so there must be something to it.” She fell silent. To River, her gaze seemed to turn inward, as if she were looking for something she’d left at the back of her mind. And he noticed for the first time that her hair wasn’t entirely grey; that in the right light, might even look blonde. But her nose was long and pinched, and she wore hats, and it all added up to a kind of greyness, so that was how you saw her when she wasn’t there, and after a while became the way you saw her even when she was. A sort of witchiness that might even be sexy in the right circumstances.

  To break the spell, he spoke. “Wonder what kind of something.”

  “Assume the worst,” Catherine said.

  “Maybe we should ask him.”

  Catherine said, “
I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  It wasn’t such a good idea.

  A few hours later, River heard Lamb whomping up the stairs like an out-of-breath bear. He waited a while, staring at his monitor without seeing it. “Maybe we should ask him.” Simple enough while Lamb was elsewhere; a different proposition with him on the premises. But the alternative was to sit looking at reams of indigestible information, and besides, if River backed down, Catherine would think him chicken.

  She was waiting on the landing, eyebrow raised. Sure about this?

  Well, no.

  Lamb’s door was open. Catherine tapped, and they went in. Lamb was trying to turn his computer on: he still wore his coat and an unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth. He eyed them as if they were Mormons. “What’s this, an intervention?”

  River said, “We were wondering what’s going on.”

  Puzzled, Lamb stared at River, then plucked the cigarette from his lips and stared at that instead. Then returned it to his mouth and stared at River again. “Eh?”

  “We were—”

  “Yeah, I got that. I was having a what-the-fuck moment.” He looked at Catherine. “You’re a drunk, so wondering what’s happening’s a daily experience. What’s his excuse?”

  “Dickie Bow,” Catherine said. Lamb’s crack didn’t visibly affect her, but she’d been in the business a while. She’d been Charles Partner’s PA while Partner had run the Service; had filled that role until finding him dead in his bathtub, though her career had been interrupted by, yes, being a drunk. Along the way, she’d picked up clues about hiding emotions. “He was in Berlin same time as you. And died last week on a bus outside Oxford. That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it? Tracing his journey.”

  Lamb shook his head in disbelief. “What happened? Someone come round and sew your balls back on? I told you not to answer the door to strangers.”

  “We don’t like being out of the loop.”

  “You’re always out of the loop. The loop’s miles away. Nearest you’ll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel. I thought you were aware of that. Oh god, here’s another one.”

  Marcus Longridge had appeared behind them, carrying a manila folder. “I’m supposed to give this to—”

  Lamb said, “I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Longridge,” said Marcus.

  “I don’t want to know. I was making a point.” Lamb plucked a stained mug from the litter on his desk, and threw it at Catherine. River caught it before it reached her head. Lamb said, “Well, I’m glad we’ve had this chat. Now fuck off. Cartwright, give that to Standish. Standish, fill it with tea. And you, I’ve forgotten your name again, go next door and get my lunch. Tell Sam I want my usual Tuesday.”

  “It’s Monday.”

  “I know it’s Monday. If I wanted my usual Monday, I wouldn’t have to specify, would I?” He blinked. “Still here?”

  Catherine held his stare a little longer. It had become a matter between the two of them, River realised. He might as well not be here. And for a moment he thought Lamb might look away first, but it didn’t happen; Catherine gave a shrug instead, one in which something seemed to leave her body, then turned away. She took the folder Longridge was holding, and went into her office. The other pair trooped downstairs.

  So, that went well, he thought.

  But before River had been at his desk twenty minutes came a godawful noise from upstairs; the kind you’d get if you tipped a monitor off a high-enough desk that the screen shattered when it hit the deck. It was followed by the scattering rattle of plastic-and-glass shards spreading across the available space. River wasn’t the only one who jumped. And everyone in the building heard the oath that followed:

  “Fucking hell!”

  After that, Slough House went quiet for a while.

  The film was grainy, jerky, black-and-white, and showed a train at a platform late in the evening. It was raining: the platform was roofed, but water trickled down from misaligned guttering. Seconds passed while nothing happened. Then came a sudden onrush, as if a gate had been opened offscreen releasing a swarm of anxious passengers. Their jerky motion was due to the film skipping frames. Movements gave it away: the sudden appearance of hands from pockets; umbrellas folding without warning. Mostly, the expressions on offer betrayed irritation, anxiety, the desire to be elsewhere. River, who was good at faces, recognised no one.

  They were in Ho’s office, because Ho had the best equipment. After Lamb had tipped his computer over while trying to insert a CD—a piece of slapstick River would have given a month’s salary to have witnessed—he’d boiled in his room half an hour, then stalked downstairs as if this had been the plan all along. Catherine Standish followed a moment later. It might have been residual embarrassment which prevented Lamb from protesting when the other slow horses assembled in his wake, though River doubted it. Jackson Lamb couldn’t have defined embarrassment without breaking into a sweat. And once he’d given Ho the CD, and it was up and running, it was clear he expected them all to watch. Questions would follow.

  There was no sound; nothing to indicate where this was happening. When the platform cleared the train began to move, and there were no clues there, either: it simply jerked into motion and pulled out of view. What was left was an empty platform and a railway track, onto which heavy rain fell. After four or five seconds of this, which might have been fifteen or twenty in real time, the screen went black. The entire sequence had lasted no more than three minutes.

  “And again,” Lamb said.

  Ho tapped keys, and they watched it again.

  This time, when it stopped, Lamb said, “Well?”

  Min Harper said, “CCTV footage.”

  “Brilliant. Anyone got anything intelligent to add?”

  Marcus Longridge said, “That’s a west-bound train. They run out of Paddington into Wales and Somerset. The Cotswolds. Where was that, Oxford?”

  “Yes. But I still can’t remember your name.”

  River said, “I’ll make him a badge. Meanwhile, what about the bald guy?”

  “Which bald guy?”

  “About a minute and a half in. Most of the others pile onto the train, but he walks up the platform, past the camera. Presumably he gets on board further up.”

  “Why him?” Lamb asked.

  “Because it’s pouring. If everyone else is getting on the train within view of the camera, that suggests the rest of the platform’s not covered. They’re all trying to stay out of the rain. But he’s not. And it’s not like he’s carrying an umbrella.”

  “Or wearing a hat,” Lamb said.

  “Like the one you brought in.”

  Lamb paused a beat, then said, “Like that, yes.”

  “If that’s Oxford,” Catherine said, “then that’s the crowd just got off the bus Dickie Bow died on. Right?”

  Looking at Ho, Lamb said, “You have been a busy bee. Anything else you’ve made public I should know about? My dental records? Bank account?”

  Ho was still smarting from being reduced to entertainments officer. “That’d be like asking a plastic surgeon to do your ingrown toenails.”

  “I hope you don’t think I’m insulting you,” Lamb said kindly.

  “I …”

  “Because when that happens you’ll know all about it, you slanty-eyed twat.” He turned to the others. “Okay,” he said. “Cartwright wasn’t wrong. And it’s not often I get to say that. Our bald friend, let’s call him Mr. B, got on a train at Oxford last Tuesday evening. The train was headed for Worcester, but stopped several times along the way. Where’d Mr. B get off?”

  “Are we supposed to guess?” Min asked.

  “Yes. Because I’m really interested in pointless speculation.”

  River said, “You got this footage from Oxford?”

  “Well done.”

  “Presumably other stations will have coverage too.”

  “And aren’t there cameras on train
s these days?” Louisa put in.

  Lamb clapped. “This is fantastic,” he said. “It’s like having little elves to do my thinking for me. So, now you’ve established those facts, which would have taken an idiot half the time, let’s move on to the more important business of me telling one of you to go check out such coverage and bring me an answer.”

  “I can do that,” River said.

  Lamb ignored him. “Harper,” he said. “This could be up your street. It doesn’t involve carrying anything, so you don’t need worry about losing it.”

  Min glanced at Louisa.

  “Whoah,” said Lamb. He looked at Ho. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “Harper just shared a little glance with his girlfriend. I wonder what that means.” He leaned back in Ho’s chair and steepled his fingers under his chin. “You’re going to tell me you can’t.”

  “We’ve been given an assignment,” Harper said.

  “ ‘We’?”

  “Louisa and—”

  “Call her Guy. It’s not a disco.”

  The thing to do here, they all decided independently, was not waste a whole lot of time asking why that might make it a disco.

  “And also,” Lamb went on, “ ‘Assignment’?”

  Min said, “We’ve been seconded. Webb said you’d know about it by now.”

  “Webb? That would be the famous Spider? Isn’t he in charge of counting paperclips?”

  “He does other stuff too,” Louisa said.

  “Like, ah, second my staff? For an ‘assignment’? Which is what, precisely? And please say you’re not allowed to give me details.”

  “Babysitting a visiting Russian.”

  “I thought they had professionals for that sort of thing,” Lamb said. “You know, people who know what they’re doing. Except, don’t tell me, this is Sir Len’s legacy, right? What a circus. If we’re that worried about him fiddling the books, why didn’t we stop him years ago?”

  “Because we didn’t know?” Catherine suggested.

  “We’re supposed to be the fucking Intelligence Service,” Lamb pointed out. “Okay, you’re seconded. I don’t get a say in the matter, do I?” The wolfish grin which accompanied this carried a promise of happier days, when he would have a say in the matter, and would say it loud and clear. “Which leaves me with this crew.”