by Mick Herron
“The Needle,” he said. “That’s what the building’s called, yes?”
“Yes, the Needle.”
“On account of its mast,” Marcus said.
Pashkin looked at him politely, but Marcus had nothing to add. He returned his gaze to Louisa. “I want to see the room. To walk the floor.” He touched the top button of his shirt with his right index finger. “Before we get down to business. I want to feel comfortable there.”
Louisa said. “Give me five minutes. I need to make a phone call.”
When he’d finished speaking to River, Lamb sat for a while wearing what Catherine Standish called his dangerous expression: the one where he was considering something other than what to eat or drink next. Then he checked his watch, sighed, and with a heavy grunt rose and picked up a shirt from the floor. Scrunching it in a fist, he crossed the landing to Catherine’s room.
“Got a carrier bag?”
Looking up from her desk, she blinked.
He waggled the shirt. “Anyone home?”
“In there,” she said, pointing at a canvas bag slung from her coatstand.
Thrusting a hand into it, Lamb withdrew half a dozen plastic carriers. He shovelled his shirt into one. The others fell to the floor. He turned to go.
“Leaving early?” she asked.
Lamb hoisted the bag above his head without turning round. “Laundry day,” he said, and disappeared down the stairs.
She stared for a while, then shook her head and returned to work.
In front of her were fragments of lives, fillets of biography, snatched from online sources and official records: HMRC, DMLV, the ONS; the usual crowd. It was like eating alphabet soup with a fork.
Raymond Hadley, 62, had been a BA pilot for eighteen years, and now busied himself with local politics and environmental issues, his commitment to which didn’t prevent him owning a small aeroplane.
Duncan Tropper, 63, was a solicitor; formerly with a high-powered West End interest, he currently put in a couple of days a week at a firm in Burford.
Anne Salmon, 60, was an economics don at the University of Warwick.
Stephen Butterfield, 67, had been sole owner of Lighthouse Publishing, a small concern specialising in left-leaning history, until one of the industry monoliths had gobbled it up, leaving a smoking pile of money in its place.
His wife Meg, 59, part-owned a clothes store.
Andrew Barnett, 66, was Civil Service (retired); something in the Ministry of Transport, which—a first in Catherine’s experience—actually meant he’d been something in the Ministry of Transport.
And the rest, and the rest, and the rest. Someone from the Financial Services Authority; two TV producers (one Beeb; one independent); a chemist who’d worked at Porton Down; graphic designers; teachers; doctors; a journalist; business refugees (construction, tobacco, advertising, soft drinks): it added up to a bunch of successful professionals who’d managed to combine busy careers with a quiet life in the Cotswold village of Upshott; the kind of quiet life, Catherine guessed, you’d need a busy career to fund. Many had taken early retirement. Most had children. All drove.
And, Catherine reminded herself, none of it was her business, let alone her job; and in her job, minding her business was paramount. But she was missing River Cartwright, sort of. And hoped he’d return safely, not dead.
The Cotswolds, Standish. Not bleeding Helmand Province.
Which was true, as was the fact that Lamb had staked River out like a sacrificial, well, lamb, to see what would happen next. And given that what had happened first was a murder, there were no guarantees River’s country exile would prove idyllic.
She looked at Stephen Butterfield’s brief profile again. A left-leaning publishing house. Too obvious? Or just the right amount?
Without more background it was impossible to say, and while Upshott had a small population, running a solo check on every villager was an uphill task. But of this, Catherine was convinced: that if every current inhabitant lined up in front of her, Mr. B would not be among them. Because if Lamb was right, and poor Dickie Bow had been killed in a drag hunt, then Mr. B’s role had come to an end once he’d finished laying his trail. The question was, why did that trail lead to Upshott?
The clue was that word, cicadas. Part of the Popov legend, intended to have the Service tying itself in knots, looking for a network that didn’t exist. But in the spooks’ hall of mirrors, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be real … The Cold War was history, but its shrapnel was everywhere. Maybe, all these years later, Upshott harboured a cicada, who was getting ready to sing.
Though the biggest damn mystery of all, Catherine thought, was why had their attention been brought to it in the first place?
In sudden irritation, she dropped her pen and stood. There were always displacement tasks; tiny mindless things to distract her from the larger, equally mindless tasks Lamb imposed. A smear on her window, for example. Attempting to wipe it clean, she found it was on the outside, but as she stood there Catherine saw a curl of smoke above distant rooftops. Fingers poked her heart, but before they could take a grip she remembered that a crematorium lay that way, and that the smoke funnelling from its chimney marked a private tragedy, not a public cataclysm. But still. You couldn’t see smoke on the city skyline without a shiver of fear that it, or something like it, was happening again. This was so much a reflex that it could remain undefined.
Then she yelped in sudden shock when someone spoke.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t—”
“No. I was miles away, that’s all.”
“Okay. Sorry,” Shirley Dander said again. And then, “You might want to see this.”
“You found him?”
“Yes,” Shirley said.
Webb said, “Sure. Give him the tour.”
“He’s calling the shots?”
“He’s a rich man. They like to take control.”
Because Webb was oh-so-used to rich men’s foibles. The corridors of power were where he left his shoes out overnight.
Louisa said, “Okay. Just thought I’d check.”
“No, that’s good. That was a good thing.” He hung up.
Her vision blurred then cleared. She’d been patted on the head by Spider Webb. But that, too, was part of the deal: to take whatever shit came her way. Just so long as she remained on the job.
Through the lobby’s glass doors, she watched three buses trundle past; the third an open-topped double-decker, from which tourists peered raptly, admiring buildings, the park, other traffic. There was always a temptation to imagine tourists had no life other than the one you saw them leading; that they were constantly wowing at landmarks and wearing inappropriate shirts. Which was something Min had said, that she would remember every time she saw a tour bus.
She turned to Marcus. “It’s not a problem.”
Marcus rang upstairs. “We’ll see you outside.” He disconnected. “They’re coming now.”
Waiting on the pavement was a lesson in rich man’s timekeeping: now meant when Pashkin got round to it. Louisa dulled her mind counting black cars: seven, eight, nine. Twenty-one.
Marcus said, “Oil deal. Right.”
“What?”
He said, “Come on.”
Cars passed uncounted.
“He’s negotiating an energy deal with the British Government? Off his own bat?”
“He owns an oil company.”
“And Securicor own armoured vehicles, but you don’t see them parading down the Mall on Remembrance Day.”
“I assume you’re making a point.”
“That there’s a world of difference between private ownership and national interest. You think the Kremlin’s enthusiasm for private enterprise extends this far? Dream on.”
Louisa hadn’t wanted Marcus Longridge, but that too was part of the deal. But she’d hoped he’d glide through it silently: keep his mouth shut; carry bags. Not feel the need to speculate, or not do so out loud.
“Did you read th
at profile? This isn’t someone who’s gunna buy a football team and marry some pop stars. He’s got an eye on the big chair.”
To carry on not answering would look deliberate. She said: “So why’s he want to meet with Spider Webb?”
“Other way round. Why wouldn’t Webb want to meet with him? Guy with a shot at the Kremlin, Spider’s got to be creaming his pants at the thought of being in the same room.”
Now Louisa couldn’t help herself. “Webb wants to recruit him?”
“Be my guess.”
She said, “Because that’s the first step to political office, isn’t it? Sell yourself to another country’s intelligence service.”
“It’s not about state secrets,” Marcus said. “Agent of influence, that’d be his role. And what’s in it for him is Western support when he makes his move.”
“Right. A profile in the Telegraph’s just the start. Wait till Webb gets his picture in OK.”
“Twenty-first century, Louisa. You want to strut on the world stage, you’ve got to be taken seriously.” He scratched the tip of his nose with his little finger. “Webb can get Pashkin in the room with people. The PM. A royal. Peter Judd. Trust me, that’d count with Pashkin. He’ll need all the international coverage he can get if he wants to make waves back home.”
“Twenty-first century, Marcus,” Louisa agreed. “But still the middle ages here and there. Pashkin starts bigging himself up at Putin the Great’s expense, he’ll find his head on a stick.”
“You get nowhere if you don’t take risks.”
The lift doors opened, and Pashkin appeared, Piotr and Kyril at his heels like wolfhounds.
“End of,” she said, and Marcus shut up.
The first floor office was noisier than Catherine’s. You noticed the traffic more; could see faces on the buses that trundled past in an unbroken stream for minutes at a time, before vanishing for half-hours at a stretch. But those weren’t the faces the two women were studying now.
“It’s him all right.”
It was him. Catherine had no doubt about that.
Shirley’s monitor was frozen on a split screen. One half showed a still from the CCTV coverage she’d stolen from DataLok: Mr. B on his westbound train, his posture indicating a freakish stasis even allowing for it being a photograph. Behind him, a young woman was caught in the act of movement; an incomplete thought working across her features. But Mr. B sat docile and concentrated, like a shop dummy on a daytrip.
The other picture showed the same clothes, same expression, same bald head. And Mr. B was once again the still centre of his world, though this world was blurrier, more active. He was standing in line, while all around him people were caught in a motionless bustle, hauling luggage across shiny floors.
“Gatwick,” Shirley said.
“How very low profile,” Catherine murmured.
But it gave weight to Lamb’s hypothesis. If you were laying a trail, you wanted it followed to the end. Mr. B, or whoever gave him his orders, had wanted his departure registered, and would doubtless be surprised it had taken this long. But then, they couldn’t have known it would be Slough House doing the field-work. Regent’s Park had access to surveillance from all national airports, and could run it through state-of-the-art recognition software. On Aldersgate Street, they had Shirley Dander running stolen tape through an out-of-date program.
“A morning flight,” Shirley said. “To Prague.”
“When?”
“Seven hours after he was dropped off in Upshott. Why go all the way there if he was catching a plane next morning?”
“Good question,” said Catherine, as a way of not answering it. “Okay, we know where he went. Let’s find out who he was.”
That was a good thing.
Webb laid his phone neatly on his desk: he liked things aligned. Then he smoothed his hair. That too.
That was a good thing he’d said to Louisa Guy, and had meant it. Anything that happened before tomorrow he wanted run past him first. If he had one skill—and he had bags of the damn things—but if he had one skill above all, it was averting disaster.
On that bad bad night when Min Harper had died, for example, Spider Webb got the news early. So he’d been on the scene before Jackson Lamb. Averting disaster was about good timing. Then he’d walked to the Embankment and sat facing the dark galleries on the far bank and thought hard for as short a time as possible. Strategy was nine tenths reaction. Study any situation too long, you can think yourself into paralysis.
He’d called Diana Taverner. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Harper,” she said.
“You’ve heard.”
She suppressed a sigh. “Webb? I’m Second Desk. On your best day, you’re a gopher. So yes, I heard about Min Harper getting killed before you did.”
“Getting killed?”
“Being knocked over. It’s a verb.”
“I’ve been monitoring the situation.”
She said, “Excellent. If his condition changes—”
“I meant—”
“—do let me know, because we can put a positive spin on it. ‘MI5 agent comes back to life.’ That would boost recruitment, don’t you think?”
When he was sure she’d finished Webb said, “I meant I’ve talked to Nick Duffy. He’s been on the scene since first thing.”
“That’s his job.”
“And he reckons it’s clean. That it’s what it appears to be. An accident.”
Silence. Then: “His exact words?”
Duffy’s exact words had been, No way of telling until we’ve run all the angles. But he smells like a brewery, and it’s not like it was hit and run. The driver remained on the scene.
Webb said, “Pretty much, yes.”
“So that’s what his report will say.”
“It’s the timing I’m worried about. With the Needle thing coming up—”
“Jesus Christ,” Di Taverner said. “He was a colleague, Webb. You worked with him. Remember?”
“Well, not closely.”
“And don’t you think, before you start worrying what impact his death’ll have on your career prospects, you should consider what impact it might have on mine?”
“I have been. I’m thinking about both of us. Once Duffy’s report pegs this as a traffic thing, we can mourn Harper, obviously, but we can also get on with the job in hand. But if his death comes under scrutiny, his last days will be under the microscope. And if Roger Barrowby gets wind we were running Harper off the books while this audit’s in full swing—”
“ ‘We’?”
Webb said, “I logged our conversation, of course I did. I had to. When it comes off, and we have Arkady Pashkin as an asset, our asset, then everyone between Regent’s Park and Whitehall will want a slice of the credit. Especially—well, you know.”
Ingrid Tearney, his silence spelt.
“Best to have it clear from the get-go who’s done all the work.”
What he was hearing now was Diana Taverner thinking.
Mobile pressed to his ear, Webb looked up. No stars, but there rarely were in London: you had the weather, you had the light pollution, you had all the heavy artillery a city threw at the sky, and these things generally won. Except that didn’t mean the stars weren’t there.
At last she said, “What are you asking?”
“Nothing. Not much. A quick call.”
“To?”
“Nick Duffy.”
“I thought you said he was happy?”
“He is. He is. All we need is for him to put that in a report, even an interim one. To make sure everyone stays calm until the Needle job’s done and dusted.”
More silence.
“And we’ve pulled off the intelligence coup of the—”
“Don’t push it.” She thought more. “There’s no chance Harper’s death has anything to do with this op?”
“It was an accident.”
“But what if it turns out to have been a very good accident that has something t
o do with this op?”
“It won’t. Pashkin’s not even in the country yet. And if anyone had wind he’s planning to join our team, well, it wouldn’t be Min Harper bearing the brunt. He was only … He was a minor cog.”
“A slow horse, you mean.”
“It’s not like he even knew what’s going on. As far as he was concerned, he was babysitting an oil deal.”
She said, “You realise that if this gets out, Roger Barrowby’s the least of your worries? Harper might only have been a slow horse, but let’s not forget who’s in charge of that stable.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll tread carefully round any bruisable toes.”
She laughed. “Jackson Lamb bruises like an elephant.” She made a small noise: changed hands on her phone or something. “I’ll speak to Duffy.” She hung up.
And what Webb had thought then, and had seen no cause to change his mind about since, was that the thing about elephants was, they grew old and died. There’d been a documentary: an elephant carcass left by a watering hole. Hours it lasted, before the flies moved in, and the birds, and the hyenas. After that, it was parts. Jackson Lamb had been legend in his day, they said, but they said that about Robert de Niro.
That was a good thing.
Louisa Guy was handling her end, and no one at the Park, barring Lady Di, had wind of the Pashkin op. After tomorrow, he, James Webb, could be pulling the strings on the most important asset Five had reeled in since, well, ever.
All that mattered was that things kept moving smoothly.
Arkady Pashkin said, “Why aren’t we moving?”
Middle of the city, traffic in front, traffic behind, a big sign saying roadworks ahead, and a stop light clearly visible through the windscreen. So why aren’t we moving, Louisa wondered. You had to be rich to ask.
Pashkin said, “Piotr?”
“Traffic’s heavy, boss.”
“Traffic’s always heavy.” To Louisa he said, “We should have outriders. Tomorrow, I mean.”
“I think they’re reserved for royals,” she said. “And government ministers. VIPs.”
“They should be available to those who can afford them.” He glanced at Marcus briefly, as if estimating his net worth, then his gaze returned to Louisa. “You’d think, with all the practice you’ve had, you’d be better at capitalism than us.”
