by Mick Herron
If he smashed the window, glass would go tumbling down onto passing strangers, leaving ears severed, lips like burst strawberries. Wounds blossomed whenever Coe closed his eyes. He couldn’t walk into his sitting room without seeing it draped in black plastic.
He scrunched his hands and punched his cheeks. For hours he’d been unable to stir himself to life. The small time he’d not been brooding on Bettany, he’d been brooding on Dame Ingrid instead. Who had not only fed him to the cut-throat bastard, but had seen no evil in what she’d done.
You’ve had an upsetting experience.
Thanks. He’d worked that out.
If he’d killed you we’d have swept it under the carpet. You’d have been a random victim of city crime.
A few short days ago, admiring the view from Ingrid Tearney’s office, he’d thought he was on the inside track. He understood now that he’d been chosen for precisely the opposite reason. Dame Ingrid, reaching for someone from one of the Service’s lesser departments, had plucked the slightest nobody. When you’re staking out bait for a tiger, you don’t use your best goat.
And take the rest of the day off, he’d been told.
You don’t look yourself. We all need a sick day now and then.
So he was expected to turn up tomorrow as if everything was normal.
He laid a hand flat against the window. Didn’t punch but pushed gently, enough to feel the glass pushing back—to know that it was solid, and wouldn’t give without effort. Even glass was capable of that much. And he remembered again how he’d shit himself when Bettany had stepped into view, naked, wielding a knife.
Enough. He grabbed his car keys from their hook. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but simple movement might suffice. Perhaps he could lose himself on the grey streets, in the grey traffic. If he managed that much, he’d never have to turn up anywhere again.
The gunman had left by the towpath door, and by the time Bettany burst through it he’d vanished. Cramming the gun inside his coat, Bettany ran for the bridge.
On its near side a muddy slope between bushes led up to the road, a shortcut for kids. Bettany, taking it at a gallop, was two strides up when he lost his footing, and felt the air rush past as everything turned somersaults. He landed flat on his back, the breath knocked out of him, and the Makarov clattering on the towpath.
A young man stared at it in horror.
Bettany grabbed the gun and snarled, “Police.” It came out a breathless gobbet. He shoved the Makarov out of sight and tried the slope again, his hands grabbing at spiny branches. His fingers were bloody when he reached the top, and there was no sign of his quarry. Behind him was a garbled alarm, a young man shouting into his phone. Bettany kept moving.
Cars lined the road. The gunman could be yards away, crouching behind a wheelbase, but Bettany didn’t think so. Hiding places left you immobile. When the chance to run presented itself, you ran.
The street hit a main road a hundred yards ahead, and traffic criss-crossed the junction. Bettany jogged that way, conscious of the gun in his pocket, of the call being made on the towpath. A running man on a London street was someone to notice. He might as well be wearing a rhinestone jacket … He stopped at the corner. Both pavements were busy, pedestrians ambling past or popping in and out of shops, queuing at bus stops, crowding the pedestrian lights on the next block. Still no quarry, which didn’t mean he wasn’t near. Bettany had pulled that trick himself—dumped a coat, affected a slouch, adjusted a collar. It could earn you two minutes’ grace in a crowd.
Motionless, he tried to take in everything, alert for that tiny giveaway, the turned head, the altered speed. But there was nothing. A bus trundled past, stopped yards away, and disgorged more extras. In the distance a siren whined.
Bettany didn’t bother with the slouch, or adjusting his collar. He didn’t check the bus’s destination either, but joined the queue boarding it, and allowed it to carry him away.
5.2
Never set off into city traffic without a plan in mind.
If you do, other drivers will hate you and try to kill you.
The third time he’d caused mass outrage by hesitating at a junction—the screaming of horns a mechanised fatwa—JK Coe thought he’d better choose a destination, even if he allowed the signage to dictate it.
East, something read.
If he drove far enough east he’d reach the sea. But even as the plan formulated it dissolved into spray, splashed into nothing, and he was passing another sign, and flashing his indicator far too late for the car behind him—
Another metal threat, spelt out in five blasts on a horn.
But he’d made his decision and was circling the roundabout, finding his exit.
N1.
Where Bettany’s lair was, his late son’s flat.
Two days ago, Coe had studied his file. It was no great feat of memory to dredge an address from it—doing research, assimilating information, reproducing it as required, was what he did. Illegally, he fished his iPhone out and dropped it in his lap. Driving one-handed, he tapped to his streetfinder and entered the details.
Now he had a plan, the proof of it in front of him, a red line tracing a course through city streets, the way magic maps in children’s storybooks did. Science was dragging old myths into everyday life—something to think about instead of thinking about what he was doing. Last night the monster had crawled into Coe’s cave, and how had that worked out? But here Coe was, heading for the monster’s own den. What was he going to do when he got there—ring its bell and run away?
Half his attention on the map, the rest of it all over the place, he nearly blew a red light and screeched to a halt a yard over the line.
The silence that greeted this reeked of contempt.
Waiting for the lights to turn, he took deep breaths and powered down to normal.
He was doing the research, he told himself.
Following which, he would assimilate the information.
If Bettany was there, which he might not be, nothing need come of it. Coe could still return home and spend the rest of the day, all the coming night, sitting in his stinking kitchen because his other rooms frightened him.
“Let’s flag that up as option one,” he said aloud.
His voice was flat and dull.
The lights went to green. He pulled off, following his iPhone’s lead.
The road ahead split around a park, which serviced a three-block high-rise estate on its northern edge. To the other side lay a warren of streets, built around long-gone focal points. On one of them was Bettany’s son’s flat.
Going home was option one … But the lifelessness of his own voice was an argument against. Going home was giving up. He might as well cancel all plans for the future. All there’d be left for him would be the hollow construct of his own selfhood, which he’d have to learn to live inside. It would be like dressing himself in clothes three times too big.
If he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life frightened, he had to do something today.
He’d arrived. It was a street of terraced rows twelve houses long and four storeys high, whose upper windows had small balconies bordered by wrought-iron railings. The window woodwork was white, but the front doors varied from green to purple to red. Coe drove slowly, as if looking for a parking space, and clocked the house he was after. Red door. He kept driving.
His antennae twitched.
Bettany’s flat was being watched.
Flea said, “Well.”
They were in the office with its new hole in the wall, a blank pupil staring vacantly out.
Boo Berryman, his temple a red mess, was weighing his mobile in his hand. He might have been preparing to throw it.
“What now?” he said.
Bettany had left on the run. The gunman was also in the wind. The Americanism seemed to fit. Gunmen in the office was not a British thing.
These thoughts were slow and muffled. Flea’s recent history was blurring, as if viewed through smeary gla
ss. But she’d remember fighting for air. She’d wake up some nights gasping, wrestling the pillows.
“We have to call the police,” Boo said. “There were guns.”
There was still a gun. Boo had put it on Vincent’s desk.
Flea said, “This wasn’t a random attack, you know. Not a passing lunatic. It was planned.”
Driscoll said, “Somebody’s mad because they think I’m giving away a fortune. Someone who’s invested in the company.”
“Someone who’s powerful,” Flea said.
“We could find out who,” Boo said. “The shareholders …”
“Most of them are companies,” Driscoll said. “Not individuals.”
“Which makes it a job for the police,” Boo said. “Am I the only one who remembers what just happened?”
Flea said, “He was a spy. Liam’s father. That’s the sort of people he knows, used to know. If the security service is behind this, what makes you think the police can be trusted?”
“Paranoid, much?”
“Well, yes. Just lately.”
“Are you seriously saying we do nothing?”
Boo aimed the question at his boss.
Who said, “Maybe Flea’s right. Maybe going to the police isn’t a solution.”
“People could get hurt,” Boo said.
People already have been, thought Flea, touching her throat.
Driscoll said, “If Bettany was right, I’m the one in danger. And once Shades 3’s out, the danger goes away. The company can’t reverse the release even if I’m dead.”
“And what about that madman in the meantime? He’s out there on the streets.”
“Bettany will deal with him.”
“It’s Bettany I was talking about,” said Boo.
5.3
Coe drove round a corner or two and parked by a church whose redbrick spire cast a shadow over its neighbours. A row of headstones out front had been weathered into illegibility, and a squirrel sat on one, twitching every few seconds like a furry metronome.
There was a half-full bottle of once-fizzy water in the well by the driver’s seat, and Coe drained it, then sat drumming his fingers on its empty plastic.
There’d been four of them, in pairs. Two in a van with sliding doors, another two in a car at the next junction. Maybe he was wrong, and the area was a hotbed of men with no visible occupation, but it looked to Coe like a reception committee.
The van was for Bettany.
Coe thought, I don’t even have to lift a finger.
The squirrel twitched once more, then jumped from the headstone and scampered up a tree.
Whoever they were, they were hostiles. Friendlies don’t travel in packs.
They’ll snatch him, pack him in the van. Do to him what he did to me, only for real.
Do you know what a professional would do? A professional would hurt you straight off the bat. Badly. To establish the perimeter.
There was a cracking noise as Coe crushed the plastic bottle in his fist.
The thought of Bettany reduced to a piece of meat …
It was payback. At a remove, so without risk. The crew watching Bettany’s flat might not be top-rank, because Coe wouldn’t have spotted them if they were, but they’d outweigh Bettany even if they didn’t take him by surprise. Who they were, Coe neither knew nor cared. It was hardly a shock, to find there were others wishing Bettany harm. Motive didn’t matter.
He dropped the bottle at his feet.
All that mattered was the outcome.
A group of children passed by in variations of a loosely applied uniform, grey or white shirts, dark trousers, dark skirts. Splashes of maroon on scarves and ties. A black girl, maybe twelve, glanced back at him and her eyes narrowed.
Oh, great, he thought. A lone man, parked near a school. He’d better move.
It was the first thought he’d had all day uncoloured by thoughts of Tom Bettany, and he was preparing to act on it when his phone rang.
Unknown caller.
“Coe,” he said.
“It’s me.”
A greeting reserved for loved ones.
The car grew colder, as if a sudden snowfall had dumped on its roof.
“It’s me,” his caller repeated. “Bettany.”
When Bishop got back from his errand to find the crew staking out Bettany’s flat in high-vis formation, his first instinct was to use his new gadget on them, see how they liked being, what would you call it? Galvanised.
Not a metaphor in this instance, he’d have had to explain to them first. Not that they’d know what a metaphor was. Or even, possibly, an instance.
“So you don’t think he’s gunna clock you? Sitting in pairs, yards from his front door?”
The five of them in a huddle on the corner, two paying less attention to what Bishop had to say than to whatever they’d trodden their box-fresh trainers in.
“Or might he just leg it before you’ve noticed he’s there?”
“He’s an old guy, right? How fast can he run?”
The man who’d spoken—who called himself Freehold—had long hair tied back with a rubber band, carefully maintained stubble, and a leather jacket with fringing on the arms. He looked more like a talent-show hopeful than useful muscle, and the Martin Boyd Bishop remembered would have put him on the pavement without breaking stride.
And something about the way he’d said old guy carried the unspoken postscript like you.
“Let me put it this way,” Bishop said.
Taking the stun gun from his pocket, he jammed it against Freehold’s chest and pulled the trigger.
Dancer Blaine had said, “It’s top of the range. Better than what the blues are using, even.”
“Sure it is.”
But Blaine had insisted.
“That’s security service issue, that is.”
Which was just Blaine’s way of adding a zero to the price, because how would he get hold of top class gear like that? But the fact was he had what Bishop needed, which was a way of putting Boyd down without killing him.
Security service issue. Didn’t sound likely.
Impressive piece of kit though, because Freehold hit the deck like his strings had been cut. Went from a smirk to a smear in less time than it took to strike a match.
“Get him in the van,” he told them. “Park it round the corner. And take the car down past the junction.”
Bishop tucked the stun gun away.
“And when he comes round, tell him old guys have their moments.”
5.4
“You still there?”
“How’d you get this number?”
Bettany didn’t reply.
And Coe didn’t need him to, because the answer was obvious. His clothes in a pile in his bedroom, like a suicide’s on a beach. Wallet and phone on top.
He said, “What do you want?”
“You reported back to Tearney, didn’t you?”
“What do you want?” he repeated.
“And she cut you loose. Told you to go home and keep quiet.” Coe said nothing.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? It’s eating away at you. I can hear it in your voice.”
Coe trapped his tongue between his teeth, and bit down hard.
“It wasn’t personal. You know that.”
And now he couldn’t help himself.
“So this is what, an apology? You’re calling to say sorry?”
“I did what I had to do,” Bettany said. “More to the point, I did what she knew I’d do. She set you up, buddy.”
“I know.”
“Of course you know. So what are you doing now? My guess is, one of two things.”
Again, he bit his tongue.
“You’re either cowering in your flat, scared of the whole world. Or you’re out pretending to look for me.”
“… Pretending?”
“We both know you don’t want to find me. So where are you? By Liam’s flat?”
Coe didn’t answer.
“Figures. Beca
use that’s where I’m least likely to be, isn’t it? In case I’m wrong and Tearney does release the hounds.”
Coe thought of the men he’d spotted, and said nothing. “You still there?”
“Third time. What do you want?”
“Same as you. To settle a debt.”
“My debt’s with you.”
“No. It’s with her. You were collateral damage. You going to blame the gun or the woman who fired it?”
Coe said nothing.
Bettany said, “She told you it was for the good of the Service, right?”
Why did you join, she’d asked.
Sense of duty, desire to serve.
“Well, she was lying. It’s about money, Coe. She wanted Vincent Driscoll dead because she’s a shareholder in his company, and he’s about to drive it off a cliff. Nothing to do with defence of the realm. She wanted a cut-rate assassin.”
Coe thought of designer suits fading at the seams. Of a thread pulling loose at a collar.
It was about money.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
“Almost from the start. You know about the Zombie List?”
It was a list of all those who weren’t quite dead yet. Anyone who’d been in the Service was on the Zombie List, and anyone on the Zombie List rang bells when they bumped into officialdom.
“Well, I’m not on it. Or the police would have known who I was. Back when they told me Liam was dead.”
Coe remembered saying as much to Dame Ingrid.
You know what records are like, she’d said. We don’t need him setting off unnecessary alarm bells.
“She said it was some … She suggested it was a bureaucratic balls-up.”
“Sure she did. But it was deliberate. She didn’t want me on the radar, not while she was prepping me to kill Driscoll.”
“Which you didn’t.”
“No. But she’d planned for that too.”
Something slapped on the car roof and Coe’s heart flipped over. A group of kids were pelting down the pavement, laughing like hyenas.
“… You still there?”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Why do you think?”
“You want something.”
