by Mick Herron
But this didn’t matter. Dancer Blaine was a crook, an underworld fixer, and he had done what fixers do and fixed Jaffrey’s problem. So despite the pitch he’d had to breathe – because of the pitch – Jaffrey was now light and free, and believed in possibility again. He was tethered to the earth by habit, nothing more. He was suddenly ravenous. He was deeply relieved.
There was a coffee shop with tables outside, despite the narrow pavement. He sat and ordered coffee and two croissants, and stretched his legs as far as they would go. The weight in his pocket was that of his own heart. He rang his mother and spoke to her of nothing much; listened to her talking until the coffee arrived, and then told her he had to go, that he had a meeting. He was starving; he was empty. He didn’t so much eat as inhale the first of his pastries, and ordered a refill of coffee before he’d finished the cup.
He closed his eyes. Dancer Blaine saying, A pleasure doing business with you. He hadn’t been able to reply. The pleasure lay in it being over.
A shadow fell.
Zafar Jaffrey did not open his eyes. Until he did so it could be ignored, this new reality. It was the waitress, to refill his cup; it was the manager, eager to know all was satisfactory. As long as he kept his eyes shut, this could easily be the truth: everything was satisfactory, everything shone.
‘Mr Jaffrey?’
This happened too. He was recognised; his was a known face. Even here, in large London, where different rules applied.
‘Mr Zafar Jaffrey?’
‘I’m resting,’ he said.
‘My name’s Claude Whelan,’ the shadow said, and Zafar knew that soon he’d have to pretend to wake up.
‘Emma Flyte.’
‘Ma’am.’
‘You look rough. Bad night?’
‘I’ve had better.’
She’d have worse.
The pair had met in the lift lobby: Flyte having just arrived back at the Park; Diana Taverner taking a break from the hub. Flyte did seem tired, it was true. Taverner herself had been awake for more hours than she could remember, and could have given Flyte a decade and still come out ahead. But there was something within her that thrived on emergency, and she was glowing at the core. That said, she wasn’t deluded enough to think she outshone Flyte, for whom looking rough was on a par with Trump looking presidential: all the wishful thinking in the world wasn’t going to make it happen. But Taverner was Second Desk, and outranked any mirror in the building. And Flyte wasn’t likely to take it to HR.
‘Well, you’ve certainly been busy.’
‘I’m sure we all have.’
‘Though in your case, it’s kept you from following instructions. You were supposed to be at Slough House.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which was supposed to be in lockdown. Any special reason that didn’t happen?’
‘Things got out of hand,’ said Flyte.
‘That happens when Jackson Lamb’s involved,’ Taverner conceded. ‘Which is why I put you on it. Aren’t you the expert on crowd control?’
‘He’s not so much a crowd, though, is he? More a road traffic accident.’
‘Nice. Doesn’t explain why you came back here and interrogated Roderick Ho, though.’
‘It seemed important to find out what he knows.’
‘What he knows is, he passed a classified document to his girlfriend. He’s going down for a long time.’
‘Is he?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Flyte said, ‘He claims the document wasn’t classified.’
‘That’s his defence? Good luck with that in court. He downloaded it from the Service database, Flyte. That’s not like nicking Post-its. You’re aware what use the document’s been put to?’
‘I am.’
‘You see, that worries me too. That knowledge puts you way out of your depth. And interrogating Ho without authorisation, that’s outside your jurisdiction too. Mind telling me what you’re up to?’
‘With respect, ma’am, I’m authorised to interview Service members at my discretion.’
Taverner paused. It was true: as Head Dog, Flyte had authority to question any Service member, herself included, though if it ever came to that there’d better be seconds involved, and an ambulance on standby. ‘But you abandoned a lockdown I instigated. Where’s your authorisation to do that?’
‘As a division head, I can delegate as I see fit. I had Devon sub me.’
‘Devon?’
‘Devon Welles, ma’am. You can’t miss him. He’s the Dogs’ diversity appointment.’
Taverner said, ‘You might not have escaped Lamb swiftly enough. You seem to be infected.’ She consulted her phone, aware that Flyte was all but ticking in front of her: she was carrying news; it was ready to break.
‘Ma’am—’
‘One moment.’ She finished checking the duty calendar, and flashed it at Flyte. ‘According to this, Welles was off roster. He should be halfway through a forty-eight-hour leave.’
‘Yes, he should. But like I said, I asked him to sub me.’
‘And he’s still there now?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you can categorically state that Lamb’s team have been locked down for the past twenty-four hours?’
Flyte took a deep breath. ‘There might have been a slight interruption.’
‘Which would make this a disciplinary—’
‘It would. But can that wait? I need to see Mr Whelan.’
‘He’s not in the building. You’re seeing me.’
‘Then you might not want to hear this.’
‘Anything I might not want to hear, I definitely want to hear,’ Taverner said. She stared at Flyte hard. ‘Let’s go to my office.’
The boys and girls on the hub didn’t look up. They were too busy bouncing off each other like pinballs in a machine: there came a point when it stopped mattering that they were individuals. They swarmed. There was a day when all the butterflies arrived, Flyte remembered reading once: a town on the Black Sea, she thought it was. On one single day, marking summer’s arrival, the town became alive with butterflies. That thought came to mind, seeing the hub bright with activity. It wasn’t just the work being done. It was the knowledge that results were taking shape. The boys and girls were becoming butterflies.
It was possible Diana Taverner didn’t feel the same way, because she frosted the wall once they were in her room.
‘This had better be good,’ she said.
‘The final item on the Watering Hole paper,’ Flyte said.
‘The what?’
‘That’s what they’re calling it. The Watering Hole paper.’
‘I’m making a list myself,’ Taverner said. ‘And it’s getting longer by the minute. What’s the final item?’
‘Seize control of the media,’ said Flyte. ‘But it doesn’t mean exactly what it says.’
‘You seem to know a lot about this.’
‘It was actually Lamb who saw it. This final thing, the media thing, what they’re going to do is some kind of attack on camera. Somewhere there’s a lot of press, a lot of media. Somewhere public. Somewhere soon.’
‘The Abbey,’ said Taverner.
‘Yes, the Abbey,’ Flyte said. ‘Today. The Abbotsfield memorial service.’
They brought him some pizza. A meat feast, he’d ordered; the jokers arrived with a plain cheese-and-tomato onto which anchovies had been added: you guys, he thought, shaking his head, scraping the offending morsels to the edge with his finger. You guys.
Then they left him alone.
It had gone on all night. After his session with Emma, after he’d finished putting her straight on a few things, the guys had come in and he’d had to go through it all over again. You don’t talk to each other? he’d wanted to ask. But Roddy Ho knew how it went, because Kim – his girlfriend – was just the same: whenever they were together for more than ten minutes, she found it too intense and needed to be somewhere else for a while, somewhere quiet, on her own. That was gender polit
ics for you – chicks need their downtime. Was he right, or was he right?
That aside, the fact that they were keeping him here suggested a high-level threat remained in place. It made sense, cotton-woolling him – God knows, you wouldn’t want to hand the bad actors a propaganda coup like rubbing out the Rodman – but you’d have thought all concerned would have copped on by now: that if there was any rubbing out going on, it would be Roddy Ho doing it.
Because there was a word for the kind of cool he had, and it was this: feline. Cats, you only had to look at them to know they never put a paw wrong, or if they did, it was a temporary disarrangement. They landed on their feet, cats. And that was the kind of cool Roddy Ho enjoyed, where there might be the occasional excitement – a bit of a tussle, like the other night – but you always knew who was going to come out on top.
At the same time, he could hotdog it with the best of them. Your typical maverick. Best of both worlds.
Like he’d told the guys: ‘So sure, they sent someone to take me out. And look where it got them. Next time, they’ll know to send two.’
And the guys had exchanged a look.
So now he finished his pizza, except the anchovies, and as he sat licking his fingers it occurred to him that nobody had yet told him what had happened to Kim, his girlfriend. Now he’d explained that the document he’d shown her wasn’t even classified – seriously: the Dyno-Rod, passing on secrets? C’mon – she was surely cleared of everything except curiosity, and since when was that a crime? But they were leaving him in the dark.
Or maybe …
But there was a corner of his mind Roderick Ho preferred not to visit, and he backed away from it now. It was a corner where different decisions had been made, and different destinations reached; one which, if he’d spent more time there, might have meant he’d be a little more slow horse, a little less the Rodster. It would have meant he’d asked more questions when Kim came into his life, and had more people around to help answer them … But there was no going back. This was who he was now, and Kim was his girlfriend, right? Kim was his girlfriend. And if he was partly in the dark right now, well, that was the thing about the secret world. A lot of it was just too … secret.
Roddy shook his head. It would all come out in the wash, he guessed. Meanwhile, he supposed he’d have to stay here so nobody got too worried about him. He smiled to himself. Who is this guy? is what they’re wondering, he thought. Some kind of Bond–Q combo? Scouts the Dark Web by day, and come nightfall goes clubbing with an uber-foxy chick, tossing villains through windows?
Who is this guy?
That’s what they’re wondering.
In the room next door, the two guys were sharing a meat feast. They didn’t speak much, but at length one of them paused to say, ‘Who is this guy?’
And they both shook their heads, and carried on eating.
Claude Whelan was back in Downing Street, in one of the cubbyhole incubators. The PM had kept him waiting – not a great sign – but the time had been swallowed by a call from Di Taverner, with an update from the hub. When a funeral-suited PM arrived at last, his face was red with exertion. ‘I’m in Cabinet all morning, no time to change later. This is awfully form-fitting. It doesn’t make me look fat?’
‘I really don’t …’ Whelan made himself stop; start again. Nothing would happen until this bridge had been crossed. ‘Black is slimming.’
‘It’s supposed to be, but when I stand sideways … Tubby is a cruel word, isn’t it? But you hear whispers.’
‘You look … prime ministerial.’
He looked like a side of ham at a wedding, but nobody wanted to hear that.
‘I should get more exercise,’ the PM brooded. ‘But all the chaps I played tennis with … Well.’ His face assumed a Shakespearian cast. ‘It’s the ones who make dodgy line calls turn out to be snakes in the grass. That’s telling, don’t you think?’
‘I think we’ve more important things to discuss.’
The PM sighed theatrically. ‘You think I don’t know that?’ He undid the lowest button on his jacket and released a breath. ‘Zafar Jaffrey’s in custody. It’s still a rumour, but a true one, yes?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘I wanted to know he was a safe pair of hands, and it turns out he’s involved with some underworld fixer. Really, Claude?’ It sounded like he held Whelan responsible. ‘It’s like a bad Michael Caine movie.’
Technically, the PM was too young to remember any other kind, but now wasn’t the time.
‘Perhaps. But the Gimball news is going to eclipse everything else for today at least. As things stand, you’re ahead of the curve. Make a statement now, and it’ll be the first anyone knows about it.’
‘A statement? I don’t even know what he was up to yet. He’s what? A secret ISIS supporter? I don’t believe it, Claude, the man follows Warwickshire—’
‘It’s his brother.’
‘So his brother gets killed in Syria, which was his own stupid fault by the way, and that means Zaff, what, converts to the cause?’
‘His brother didn’t die.’
‘Oh.’
‘His brother was the reason he needed a false passport.’
‘Oh.’ The PM drew a breath in, and rebuttoned his jacket. ‘We all thought he died.’
‘His own family thought he did. Hellfire missile, drone-fired, August 2016. Young Karim wasn’t the target, but he was known to be near the impact, and there was a body unaccounted for.’ Whelan shook his head. ‘There’s a ninety-five per cent accuracy reading on these strikes. Karim fell into the five. It happens.’
‘So he what, just walked away?’
‘We don’t have the details. What we do know is, he got in touch with his older brother four months ago. In France at this point, living rough. He played the prodigal card. All he wants is his old life back, because now he’s seen what it’s like, it turns out jihad isn’t a bed of roses.’
‘Yes, well, I could have told him that. Anybody could have told him that.’
‘And Zafar agreed to help him.’
‘Call me a pedant, but I was under the impression ISIS don’t much like it when you change your mind. Like swapping Celtic for Rangers.’
‘No. That’s why the whole underworld fixer business.’
‘Ah. Of course. So Jaffrey was sorting out a new identity for his brother so he could get back to Blighty undetected and, what, just pick up where he left off? Except pretending to be someone else, so his sins would go unpunished?’
‘Something like that,’ said Whelan.
‘Why didn’t Zafar come to me?’
‘Probably because you’d have seen to it young Karim stood trial, following which he’d have gone to prison. Where he’d probably have been killed.’
‘No, that’s true.’
‘Avoiding which was rather the point.’
‘Families are a nuisance, aren’t they? I forget, do you have siblings?’ The PM didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Well, anyway. I suppose it’s as well I know all this before I issue denials. Lying to the House never looks good. By the fourth or fifth time, there’s a distinct air of disapproval.’
‘There’s more.’
‘There always is.’ The PM produced a tin of breath mints from his trouser pocket. ‘Care for …?’
‘Thank you.’ Lodging it inside one cheek, Whelan continued. ‘There may be an attack on the Abbey this afternoon.’
‘At the service.’
‘At the service. It’s not intelligence, as such. More an informed guess.’
‘And where’s this guess coming from?’
‘Diana Taverner.’
‘Ah. The fair Lady Di.’ The PM fiddled with the knot of his tie. ‘Except not fair, obviously. Still. Fine-looking filly. Wouldn’t mind taking that round the paddock. Though if it ever gets back to her I said that, I’ll have you killed.’
‘Yes, well, as she’s the one you’d have to speak to, that might be a self-defeating exercise,’ Whelan said.
‘Meanwhile, she thinks it’s a credible threat. She got wind of a phrase, the snake eating its own tail. In other words, the campaign comes full circle, finishing up at a memorial service for the very first attack. It’s a self-fulfilling victim list. They’d know who’d be there. The princes, you, the Opposition leader—’
‘Oh, God. Her.’
‘—half the front bench, and the Mayor, and so on. There’ll be maximum security, obviously, but plenty of potential for serious damage. It’s the old story. They only have to get lucky once.’
The PM’s many critics took delight in highlighting his political cowardice, but occasionally, unobserved, he shone. ‘Well, we’re not cancelling, and we’re not entering the Abbey in tortoise formation. But let’s make sure the crowds are kept further back than usual, eh? In case of, whatever. Shrapnel.’
‘Of course.’
‘There’s no time for COBRA, but I’ll speak to the Chiefs about upping the military presence. Not that there’ll be room for much more. At least three thousand on the streets, and shooters – they call them shooters, don’t they? Not snipers?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Shooters on every rooftop. Good God, man. What have we come to? London used to be somewhere you felt safe. There were rules.’
‘We’re not immune to the world’s problems. We never will be.’ Whelan shifted his mint from one cheek to the other. ‘The Palace needs to be warned, obviously.’
The PM snorted. ‘I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that. No, it will go ahead as planned. All public events are targets, these days. But what are we supposed to do? Hide in our basements?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I don’t want any more lives endangered than we can avoid. That said, I want these bastards taken alive, Claude. I want prisoners in a dock. I want to see them applying for legal aid, and pleading not guilty, and appealing to the Supreme Court, and standing on all the rights we afford them. I want the world to see them begging for clemency from a system they despise. And then I want them banged up to rot for the rest of their miserable fucking lives. What I don’t want is martyrs. We’ve had too many bloody so-called martyrs.’
