Nobody Walks

by Mick Herron

  As for Dame Ingrid, nothing rattled her. The placidity of her ugliness—her iron-grey hairpiece, the putty-like growth on her nose’s left flank—was its own disguise, within which she could fume and scheme unnoticed. That would have been a lesson she learned long before the Secret Service beckoned her.

  Directly opposite them, the young man nodded to his iPod’s beat.

  Too obvious, thought Bettany. Too obvious.

  He said, “Of course, it would have helped if I’d killed Marten Saar. Putting Oskar Kask in the driver’s seat.”

  Dame Ingrid said, “It really doesn’t matter to me. It mattered to Oskar, of course. He’d much rather have been in charge.”

  Mattered, thought Bettany.

  He said, “But that was Plan B, wasn’t it? Plan A being that I kill Vincent Driscoll. Of the two targets you set up, that was the one you were really after. Because that was for your own benefit, not the Service’s.”

  Dame Ingrid barked, which turned out to be her way of laughing.

  “You think this is funny?”

  “Of course not, Mr. Bettany. But something frightfully amusing did just occur to me. I had this sudden thought that maybe you were recording this conversation as a way of gathering evidence.”

  The inverted commas she draped round “evidence” were heavy as curtains.

  “And I was just counting the ways in which that would turn out to be a bad idea.”

  Bettany said, “You think you’re fireproof. Are you bulletproof too, I wonder?”

  “Really, Mr. Bettany. You should hear yourself. Threatening to shoot an old lady.”

  “You’re the one who decided I was a violent man. What did you think was going to happen once I found out who really killed Liam?”

  And there it was, out in the open.

  She patted his knee again.

  “I haven’t had a chance to tell you how sorry I am about that. Marten Saar has a lot to answer for. Drugs do so much harm to young people.”

  He couldn’t speak. This took his breath away.

  “Mr. Coe suggested that you might blame yourself, and I do hope he’s wrong about that. But psychology is such an unforgiving science.”

  The train slowed.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said abruptly.

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Maybe we should get off.”

  5.9

  They were far from the centre now, way out east, in streets that were memory-haunted for Tom Bettany, or for Martin Boyd. Round here the Brothers McGarry had once held sway. You could still drop their name in any pub and expect a nod of recognition.

  He had not given this a thought when leaving the tube, but looked round now automatically.

  She said, “You’re looking to see if we’ve been followed.”

  For a moment Bettany thought she’d been sharing his memories. Then he realised she meant her own security detail.

  He said, “The coat you’re wearing. It’s seen better days.”

  “For a man whose tailor is a sweat-shop infant, you’re very free with your criticism.”

  “I don’t care about clothes. You do. You’re broke, aren’t you? That’s why you want Driscoll dead.”

  She said, “It’s been a difficult few years. I’ve always been shrewd in my investments, or so I thought. It turns out that perhaps I was merely lucky.”

  “And the luck ran out.”

  “And the luck ran out.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  She said, “He was planning on scuppering his own company. Giving away a product which was the main reason I’d invested in him in the first place.”

  “Killing him is hardly a long-term strategy. From the company’s point of view.”

  Words rang like a chipped bell in his head. He was talking to the woman who’d had his son murdered. Her motive, lurking several layers deep, was only money. Liam, who had no money, had been killed so she might stay rich.

  She said, “It would have solved my immediate problems. Without Driscoll, the shareholders would have reversed his fatheaded decision. The first two versions of his game made millions. There’s no reason why the third shouldn’t either.”

  “And you wanted me to do it for you.”

  “That would have been helpful.”

  “And that’s why you had Liam killed.”

  His calmness as brittle now as a frosted leaf. Here in full view of the world, he might reach out and snap her neck.

  But she’d come to a halt by a parked delivery van while a man brushed past her, manoeuvring a stack of plastic pallets from which new-baked smells were drifting.

  “Good lord,” she said. “Of course not. What do you take me for?”

  If he was ambushing anyone else, thought Bishop, he’d have made himself comfortable in the boy’s flat. There was no knowing how long it would be before Bettany returned to claim his son’s ashes, and he didn’t want to spend the time huddled on a bench, stamping feet against the cold. He could commandeer the van, but passing officials tended to notice men sitting in vans, and the world was full of officials these days, community-support noddies and revenue ambassadors, or whatever traffic wardens were called this week. He didn’t want to end up on some peaked-cap wearer’s mobile phone gallery, suspicious character #101. And he had low tolerance for jobsworths asking questions.

  But the flat was no-go. Bettany was not an amateur. He’d moulded himself into the McGarrys’ crew and had kept up that pretence for years, which meant he must have developed a sixth sense for all manner of disturbance. If Bishop was in the flat when he entered, he’d know it before he’d closed the door. The smell of tobacco on Bishop’s jacket. The way the air hadn’t quite settled down.

  There were other flats in the house, though. Bishop didn’t have to be out in the cold.

  He checked that the crew weren’t drawing attention to themselves, and had a final word.

  “When I call, you get the van to the door. You understand what immediately means? Don’t even answer. Just get the van to the door.”

  The way he’d work it, he decided, was not to make an attempt in the flat itself. Wait till Bettany was in, then get him coming back out, on the landing, on the stairs.

  Not that this was set in stone. If you wanted a plan to work, you had to be ready to improvise.

  He let himself into the house without bothering Greenfield. Upstairs, he spent ten minutes fiddling with the lock of the door opposite Liam Bettany’s flat. Once he’d have been through it like butter, but his misspent youth was an ancient memory.

  The flat was cold, but bearable. He checked it was empty, then dragged an armchair into the hallway. The front door had a peephole, and nobody was getting into Liam Bettany’s place without Bishop knowing about it.

  Take him on the landing, take him on the stairs. Quick zap of the stun gun and it was game over, right there.

  But be ready to improvise, he warned himself.

  He settled in to wait.

  The man pushing the trays of croissants had disappeared through a shop doorway, but the fresh-baked smell lingered. Otherwise, it was the usual street odours—traffic and grime and old clothing.

  Bettany said, “Keep walking.”

  She said, “Dear boy. Think about it. Why would I have someone killed in order to persuade you to kill someone else? Why wouldn’t I just have had the someone else killed in the first place?”

  Because you think in circles, Bettany thought. Because there was always the chance that this moment would happen, and this was always going to be your defence.

  And because if you got me to do it, the link between yourself and the act would be invisible. Even I wouldn’t know my true motive.

  He took a breath. On these same streets, years ago, he’d daily moved among people who trafficked in weaponry that somewhere down the line would maim and kill innocents. Right now, he’d have preferred their company.

  Stay on track, he thought. Follow this through to the end.

&nbs
p; He said, “So what are you telling me? That it was actually Driscoll who killed him?”

  “That would be neat, wouldn’t it? Are you likely to believe me if I said that was so?”

  “I doubt I’d believe you if you told me this was London.”

  “Harsh.” She pursed her lips. “Well, then. No, Driscoll had nothing to do with Liam’s death either. Though I confess I had hoped that ten minutes of Mr. Coe trying to convince you otherwise would persuade you that he had.”

  It went beyond arrogance. She viewed the world through a prism all her own, by the light of which things existed solely in relation to her.

  Whoever had killed him, Liam had been her piece of Lego.

  He said, “What was his motive supposed to be?”

  “You’ve met Vincent.”

  “Yes.”

  “How hard would you have to look for a motive? Vincent is … askew.”

  Bettany said, “And you thought that would tip the balance for me? That Driscoll’s a touch out there? That’s evidence?”

  “I confess, I’d thought you’d be a little less on your game. A little more raddled, after drinking your way round the rougher ports of Europe. No disrespect, dear, but wasn’t that a touch retro?”

  “I considered the French Foreign Legion,” Bettany said. “But I didn’t like their hats.”

  “There. A quip makes everything rosier, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re very sure I won’t kill you.”

  She gave him a motherly look. “Oh, you’re not going to do that. You beat a man half to death once, didn’t you? On the McGarrys’ instructions. That was one of the reasons I thought you could be relied on to extract a proper vengeance. But killing me, here, now? There’d be no purpose. I did not harm your son.”

  “Somebody killed him.”

  “No.”

  “You had Kask do it.”

  “No. Your son fell.”

  And this time there was something in her eyes he hadn’t seen there until now. This time, he thought, she was telling the truth.

  “Your son fell,” she said again, gently. “Nobody pushed him.”

  “He wasn’t alone on that balcony—”

  “A deduction based on the absence of matches or a lighter. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  He could almost see it come tumbling down, this house of cards he’d built. She knew. And there was only one way that was possible.

  “Straight-line thinking, Mr. Bettany. It’s an asset in a field operative. It prevents clouded judgement, allows you to plough on and get the job done. But it’s not always—”

  “What did you do?”

  “A piece of evidence was removed. That’s all.”

  It was Bettany’s turn to come to a halt, suddenly enough that someone bumped into him. He turned, caught a glimpse of a grey hoodie.

  Whoever it was bustled past, and was gone.

  Tearney said, “There was a policeman.”

  “Welles,” Bettany said.

  He remembered Welles’s helpfulness. Taking him to the crematorium, directing him to Liam’s flat. Delivering Liam’s effects.

  Minus Liam’s lighter.

  “He was very useful last year,” Dame Ingrid said. “After the unpleasantness with the, ah, gangbanger that Mr. Kask murdered. Policemen are so open to persuasion, don’t you find?”

  His mind was still reeling. He felt like he’d taken a blow to the head.

  “He was quite happy to let Oskar have the lighter, not that anyone needed to have it. He could have simply disposed of it. But Oskar … Well. Oskar had his own way of doing things.”

  He said, “I spoke to Marten Saar. Oskar’s blown. Did you know that?”

  “I thought there was probably a reason his body turned up in a lift shaft.”

  She knew. He hadn’t read a trace of it in her features, but that was another advantage to her Toby-mug face.

  “An accident in the early hours,” she said. “Apparently the doors opened at the wrong moment, and poor Oskar didn’t look where he was stepping.”

  “So you lose,” he said. “Both ways, you lose.”

  “Be careful, Mr. Bettany.”

  “Vincent’s still alive, so your money’s history. And your plan to infiltrate the local franchise of the Russian mafia’s up in smoke too. Not a good day for your bank balance or your job.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  “And that’s it? You’ll survive? The end?”

  “What were you expecting? A desperate rage that you failed to play your part? Mr. Bettany, I run a very large, very busy Service. You have no idea how many schemes I’ve overseen that came to nothing. You get used to it.”

  “My son died,” he said flatly. “And you used that for leverage. You used me.”

  “Your son was a loser, Mr. Bettany. A pothead and a loser. He fell off that balcony because he was stoned, and he was stoned because he was a loser. He only had a job because he got lucky on a computer game. You have to wonder, don’t you, if he’d had a father around, would he have ended up that way? Please don’t.”

  This, because his hand had gone to his pocket, and the heavy warm weight of the gun.

  “Do you really think I make this journey alone every day? Even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t let me.”

  His hand stayed where it was.

  “The last thing you’ll know,” she said, “is me tugging my earlobe.”

  “And what if you’re bluffing?”

  “There’s only one way to find out. That’s why they call it bluffing.”

  He didn’t look around. It made sense that she would have people watching her, but he found he didn’t care one way or the other. What mattered more was that he believed her about Liam, that there had been no murder, and that his son’s death was nothing more than a druggy accident. But for all that, she’d used Liam’s death as if it were of no more consequence than a broken bottle.

  The ends she’d sought, he didn’t much care about. But the means she’d chosen—for that, he thought, he could kill her.

  Perhaps she sensed this, because something in her gaze wavered.

  She said, “You do realise that if you do anything foolish, the consequences will be … severe.”

  “You think I care?”

  “About yourself, perhaps not. But there are protocols. If you produce that gun, there’ll be repercussions beyond your own death.”

  “I have no family.”

  “And no one you care about.”

  “No.”

  “Then it won’t disturb you to know that anyone you’ve had contact with since your return to this country will come to harm.”

  He almost laughed. “Dancer Blaine? Marten Saar?”

  “I was thinking of Felicity Pointer.”

  He closed his mouth.

  “And Driscoll, and that man of his. And Mr. Coe, of course. Possibly others. Are you prepared to have their deaths on your conscience?”

  “That wouldn’t happen.”

  “The attempted murder of the head of the Intelligence Service, Mr. Bettany? There’ll be official inquiries, yes. But there’ll also be payback.”

  He stared into her eyes, and saw no sign that she was bluffing.

  They were drawing glances now. Standing on this street, in this busy corner of London. Electricity coming off them, probably.

  She said, “So what happens next is simple. You return to the life you were, until recently, squandering in the great ports of Europe, and it’ll be like this never happened.”

  “Meaning you’ll find some other way of dealing with Driscoll.”

  “That would be foolish of me, given what you know. No, Mr. Driscoll will remain unharmed, as will Ms. Pointer and everyone else.”

  This with the air of a fairy godmother, waving her wand and promising future happiness.

  “My own difficulties will, I’m sure, prove soluble by other means. You didn’t think yours was the only iron in my fire, did you?”

  He said, “And I walk away unharmed.”<
br />
  “You have my word.”

  No expression crossed his face. It didn’t have to.

  She said, “In the circumstances, I’m not likely to put it in writing. But dealing with you would be an added complication. And it’s not like any of this is on the books.”

  For a long moment, Bettany said nothing. His hand remained inside his jacket, resting on the handle of the Makarov.

  Dame Ingrid raised her own hand. Let her fingers rest on her little slab of a chin.

  “One tug on an earlobe,” she said.

  “It would be so easy,” he replied, but didn’t finish the sentence.

  She knew.

  He turned and walked away.

  5.10

  Ingrid Tearney watched him go. So this was how a field agent felt. Her heart rate had climbed new heights in the past thirty minutes. For half a moment there, right at the end, she’d thought he was going to kill her.

  And the reason he hadn’t, she decided, had nothing to do with her threats of instant reprisal—a tug on her earlobe, an armed response from her security detail. It was the thought of what would follow, the deaths of the others involved.

  As it happened, she’d been lying about the security detail, and the widespread slaughter of civilians didn’t feature among the protocols that would follow the murder of the head of the Intelligence Service.

  Joes thought a life spent in committee rooms left you soft. But it had taught her to lie like a bastard.

  Useful skill.

  She reached for her phone now, reflecting on another of her recent lies, that it would be possible for Bettany to return to his old life. Of course, he almost certainly didn’t believe that either. He had to know that he knew too much. Besides, he had seen her fear, and she really couldn’t allow that.

  The number she sought was near the top of her call list.

  There was no Oskar to instruct any more. A pity, because a line into the Cousins’ Circle would have been a professional triumph, but hardly a tragedy. Oskar Kask, her wholly-owned gangster, had been malleable, conscienceless, but incapable of subtlety. A blunt object. And since he’d proved not blunt enough to deal with Bettany yesterday, he’d not have been much use to her even if he weren’t dead today.