Real Tigers

by Mick Herron

  It had taken little effort to persuade Donovan he’d been the victim of a conspiracy; little more to convince him it was of Ingrid Tearney’s making. Diana had handed him the opportunity for revenge, and he’d brought his service chum, Alison Dunn’s fiancé, along with him.

  At the corner, next to a row of bikes, she lit a cigarette and checked her phone. Nothing. And then, before she could change her mind, she called Peter Judd’s number. When she’d fed Judd the tiger team idea, she’d told him nothing of the underlying scheme. This afternoon, he’d made it clear he suspected her of holding out on him . . . He’d be a dangerous friend to have, PJ, but sometimes you were left with little choice. Lovers were the only true enemies. All the others were constantly shifting.

  He answered on the second ring. “Diana.”

  “PJ. I have a small confession to make.”

  “You mean you weren’t being entirely honest with me earlier?” His tone was flat as a road. “I’m shocked, Diana. Shocked to the core.”

  “I do know your tigers. Operationally, I mean.” No names on an open line. “But what they did this morning, that was no part of their mission.”

  Sentiment didn’t play a large part in Peter Judd’s world, or not when the cameras weren’t running. “Can’t enjoy a scone without spreading a little jam,” he said. “But really, Diana, we’d be much more comfortable discussing this somewhere private. Why not have Seb call you a taxi?”

  “Who’s Seb?” she asked a dead connection, then started as a sleek-looking man with dark hair brushed back from a high forehead materialised at her side.

  “Cab, Ms. Taverner? Your lucky night. There’s one coming now,” and he raised an arm to flag it down, his other hand ever so lightly on her elbow.

  You don’t get lucky twice, Shirley learned.

  Her second opponent was a harder proposition.

  She hit him with the same tackle that had produced such splendid results two minutes back, already picturing a heap of broken Arrows piling up below, as she despatched the whole platoon one by one. But instead of toppling through the window he threw himself hard onto the floor, regaining the advantage by pulling her with him. She landed hard, felt a sharp metallic crack. For a moment they were spooning almost, and she could smell his body odour, rank in the evening’s heat. The cosh he held looked like something you might buy under the counter; short, fat, ugly. But he couldn’t swing it while they were wrestling, and when he tried to wrap an arm around her throat she bit his wrist. He howled like a dog, and she pushed free from his grasp only to fall flat on her palms when he grabbed her foot. Shirley let her leg go limp then kicked viciously, catching him somewhere, she hoped his face, but the impact wasn’t squishy enough. Her foot came free. She scrabbled forward a yard or two, regained her feet and turned to him, her palms stucco-rough with grit and glass. She brushed them on her trousers, her gaze not leaving the man in front of her.

  Bigger than her, but most men were. What mattered more was that he’d tossed the cosh through the window; had produced in its place a wickedly grooved knife.

  He grinned, his teeth showing whiter than reality against the black of his balaclava. “I am gonna skin you alive, sweetheart.”

  Save your breath, she warned herself.

  “Gonna make holes in you.”

  She backed along the corridor, feet scrunching on the floor.

  “Make you squeal like a piglet.”

  He lunged and she parried, her forearm knocking the knife aside, and she slapped the flat of her hand into his face. It should have been enough, but she’d lost some balance and didn’t connect with the force she might have done. He reared backwards, and she reversed too.

  “Doing the old quickstep, eh?”

  He’d watched a lot of movies, she thought. That was fine. The more they talked, the less breath they had.

  “Let’s see what you got, darlin’.”

  What I’ve got is anger management issues. Apparently.

  “Because we can go easy or we can go hard.”

  Fuck it then. Let’s go hard.

  She aimed a punch at his sternum, high and fast, but not fast enough. He leaned back, grabbed her arm and reeled her in backwards, crushing her against his chest, the tip of his knife suddenly pushing into her chin.

  “Got you right where I want you now, honey.”

  “Yeah,” said Shirley, “me too,” and flexed her free left arm up over her shoulder to drive the splintered edge of half a compact disc into his eye. When he screamed and released her, she turned and landed a kick where her punch had been aimed. He staggered backwards, his thighs hit the window ledge, and over he went, still screaming.

  Shirley made a crosshatch sign with her fingers. Hashtag epicfail, dickhead.

  He’d taken the knife with him, but when she patted her jacket pocket the other half of the Arcade Fire CD, broken in her recent fall, was still there. Might come in handy.

  On the ground below, a shadow was heading towards the Black Arrow van.

  Shirley ran back to the stairwell.

  Donovan fired three times on his way to where Traynor lay, his shots directed at the space where the door had been. When he reached his friend he dropped to his knees and cut the plastic ties binding his feet. Louisa stood and fired twice, both bullets carving chunks from the already battered door frame.

  I killed a man three minutes ago, she thought. Maybe two. Possibly three.

  The thought felt like an intrusion from an onlooker; someone not immediately involved in the action, and thus able to adopt judgmental attitudes.

  A figure popped briefly into sight through the doorway and squeezed off a shot at Donovan that went wild.

  He was cutting Traynor’s wrists loose now.

  River said, “He won’t make it.”

  “Thanks for the input.” Louisa stood again and fired twice, thinking two, three, two, two, two. The magazine held fifteen. If Traynor had fired more than the two she’d witnessed, she was going to be out of ammo very soon.

  “Welcome.”

  And then River was gone again—he was doing that a lot—had leaped from their cover and was running towards where Donovan was struggling with Traynor. The figure in the doorway popped into sight again: he fired once, then jerked back to safety when Louisa shot back. River shouted Donovan’s name, and the soldier stooped and slid his gun across the floor, then hauled Traynor to his feet. River scooped the gun up and slid to a halt behind the overturned filing cabinet just as the figure behind the broken wall appeared again and rattled off three shots at the two soldiers. Donovan and Traynor collapsed. River stood, aimed, and fired at the precise moment Louisa, somewhere behind him, did the same. The Black Arrow with the gun jerked backwards as if his strings had been cut.

  There were smells in the air now: cordite, blood. The dust that hangs around archives was swimming in the air.

  A baton slammed into the cabinet next to River’s head, but it had been hurled, not swung. A shape disappeared behind a stack of crates. River thought about shooting, but didn’t; if it was armed, it would have fired at him.

  Louisa joined him. “There’s at least one loose in here,” she said. “No idea how many through there.”

  The corridor behind the blasted door, she meant.

  River said, “They’re sitting ducks if that’s the only way they can get in.”

  “We don’t have much ammo.”

  “They don’t know that.”

  He plucked a ledger from the floor and lobbed it at the doorway. Neat throw: it sailed right through unmolested.

  “Good shot,” Louisa said. “Proving what exactly?”

  “Maybe they don’t have much ammo either. Cover me.”

  She stood and took aim at the doorway, arms steady on the top of the cabinet, but nobody appeared there. River ran in a crab-like crouch for Donovan and Traynor, who were in a h
eap on the floor; when he pulled Donovan up his face was covered in blood.

  But the blood was Benjamin Traynor’s, the back of whose head was missing.

  Donovan had been hit too, but a good-guy wound—good guys get shot in the shoulder. His eyes were out of focus, though, and River struggled to get him off the ground. He half-dragged half-carried him back to the cover of the overturned cabinet, then dropped him, panting.

  “They’re either mustering their forces or have no fucking clue what to do.”

  “Or they’ve gone,” Louisa said. She was unbuttoning Donovan’s shirt; to check his wound, River assumed.

  Donovan came awake, and he seized her by the wrist with his good hand. “Don’t.”

  Louisa laid her gun aside, and unclamped his hand. “Your friend’s dead,” she said. “And an unknown number of hostiles are shooting at us. I think we can safely say your operation’s fucked.”

  “Ben’s dead?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He closed his eyes again, and she undid another button, then pulled free the folder he’d been carrying. An ordinary manila one, its top corner stained with his blood, or his friend’s.

  She handed it to River. “Let’s keep this safe.”

  “By which you don’t mean re-shelve it,” River said, tucking it inside his own shirt, jamming the unbloodied edge into the top of his jeans.

  “No, well. It might repay study. Seeing as how people are trying to kill us.” She pulled Donovan’s shirt aside and looked at his wound. “This doesn’t look too bad,” she told him.

  “Nice to know,” he said through gritted teeth. “How’s the other one looking?”

  Uh-oh.

  He’d been hit in the thigh, too; not so much a good-guy wound, with bone showing through his trousers.

  River was peering round the edge of the cabinet. “There’s movement.”

  “Oh good.”

  “We might need a plan soon.”

  “No offence,” Louisa said, “but I wish Marcus was here.”

  “None taken,” River said. “I was thinking the same about Shirley.”

  Something hard and round came flying through the shattered doorway, and bounced off the cabinet.

  Then everything turned to white light.

  Marcus Longridge’s hands were secured behind him, with a pair of those plastic cuffs that were so popular these days, and he’d been similarly bound at the ankles. He lay on his side in the back of the Black Arrow van, and had clearly clocked that he wasn’t alone, and had registered the very former nature of his companion. A bullet to the head was a decisive punctuation mark. He couldn’t be in much doubt that he faced the same full stop.

  What was odd, though, was that his damn baseball cap was still on his head.

  Nick Duffy didn’t remove his balaclava because there were rules, and they kept you alive, but he knew Longridge had recognised him. Duffy had approached him once, in fact, before his fall, to see if he fancied a role with the Dogs: they could always use men with Marcus’s skills. The people they were sometimes called upon to apprehend often didn’t want to be apprehended, and were highly trained in methods of resisting said apprehension. So having people on your side even more highly trained in smacking heads off walls was a plus. Hence the offer.

  To which Longridge had replied, “Does my ass smell like bacon to you?” which Duffy had paraphrased in his subsequent write-up, but hadn’t needed Google Translate to catch the drift of.

  “Is that thing velcroed to your head?” Duffy asked now.

  Longridge had taken some heavy blows, and been dragged a few hundred metres across rough ground; the sleeve had been ripped off his sweatshirt, and his right cheek was a mess. He should have lost his cap by now. Duffy leaned down and ripped it from his head. Not velcro but parcel tape, the thick brown kind. Partly fastening the cap to Longridge’s head, and partly securing his gun inside it: small revolver, sissy-looking piece, which frankly Longridge should have been ashamed to be carrying.

  “You keep your gun in your hat?”

  “Didn’t look there, did they?” Marcus said.

  “No, well. I swear, you just can’t get the help.”

  “Fuck you, man. If you’re gonna do it, do it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Prick.”

  “Thanks,” said Nick Duffy. “That makes it easier.”

  The motorway was quiet in the way motorways sometimes are, its traffic-buzz little more than static, with only the occasional comet of oncoming headlights. Catherine sat in the front next to Ho; Lamb in the back. They’d left Craig Dunn at the farmhouse, having called—at Catherine’s insistence—an ambulance. Lamb was toying with a cigarette, rubbing the filtered end absent-mindedly against his cheek, occasionally losing it in his thinning mat of hair. Catherine had made it clear that if he lit it, he’d be dumped on the hard shoulder.

  “This car already stinks like an eighties pub.”

  “You could smoke in pubs then?” asked Ho.

  Lamb sighed heavily, like an elephant deflating.

  “It’s a revenge thing,” Catherine went on. “Must be. Dunn’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “That’s quite a leap,” said Lamb.

  “Fine. Let’s think of another reason they’d be working together. Her brother, her fiancé, and the man supposedly responsible for her death.”

  “Tribute band?”

  “They must think it was some kind of conspiracy,” Ho said. “Whatever happened to Dunn. And that’s why they’re after the Grey Books.”

  “Roddy,” said Catherine, before Lamb could speak. “They’re not really after the Grey Books. That was a ruse. To get them into the place where the Grey Books are kept.”

  “. . . You sure?”

  “Sean Donovan is a lot of things,” Catherine said, “but he was never a conspiracy nut. Whatever they’re looking for, it’s not in the Grey Books. They’re after proof she was murdered. Murdered by the Service, I mean.”

  Lamb said, “They’ll be lucky. If it was a Service hit, there won’t be an order on file. Tearney’s a paper-pusher, but even she wouldn’t ask for a receipt for wet work.”

  “Then what?”

  Lamb stared out of the side window for two minutes, his face squashed into a scowl. When he spoke again, his voice was flat and final. “Tearney didn’t come up through the ranks. She’s a committee animal; she runs meetings, not joes. Dunn died six years ago. Back then, Tearney wouldn’t have known her way under the bridge, certainly not well enough to have someone bump off army personnel. Even just a captain.”

  “You mean, it’s not Tearney they’re after?”

  “I mean, if it’s Tearney they’re after, there’s someone else pulling their strings. How’d they know about Slough House, for a start?”

  “Oh,” said Catherine.

  “Yeah, right. Oh.”

  “What?” said Ho.

  “Above your pay grade,” Lamb said. “Stop at the next services.”

  “We’re okay for petrol.”

  “It’s not the car’s fuel I’m worried about,” said Lamb, putting his unlit cigarette in his mouth. “It’s mine.”

  In their ears, nothing but ringing. In their eyes a shadow-show; everything silhouetted against everything else.

  But it would have been a lot worse if the flash bomb had cleared the cabinet and landed on their side, instead of bouncing back the way it had come.

  River, eyes screwed shut, reached out and felt for Louisa.

  “Oy. Hands.”

  “You okay?”

  “Uh-huh. You?”

  He nodded, then said, “Uh-huh.” The thing about a flash bomb was, it preceded an attack. But maybe that only happened when you threw it in the right direction.

  “And they call us special needs,” he muttered.

  “Wha
t?”

  “We need to get out of here.” He looked at Donovan. “Can you walk?”

  Donovan shook his head. His features were glazed with sweat.

  “You got another magazine for this thing?”

  “Left-hand pocket.”

  River fished it out and reloaded. Donovan reached out his hand.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Uh-uh. You two go. Back the way we came in.”

  Louisa said, “You’re losing blood. I mean really, a lot.”

  “So I’ll just lie here and bleed quietly. But leave me my gun. I’ll deal with the rest of this crew.”

  River and Louisa exchanged glances.

  Donovan grabbed River by the shirt. “You think we did all this for nothing? Ben knew we might be killed. Well, he’s dead. And if that folder stays down here, he died for nothing.”

  Louisa said, “I already told you. We’re not on your side.”

  “You’re on theirs?”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “We’re only in this because you took Catherine,” River said.

  “Then give it to Catherine.” He closed his eyes briefly.

  River unpeeled Donovan’s fingers from his shirt front.

  Louisa peered round the cabinet. A pair of figures were cautiously making their way through the wrecked wall, one holding a gun. She fired once, over their heads, and they scuttled back to safety.

  Donovan opened his eyes again. “Give it to Catherine,” he repeated. “And when you do, tell her I’m sorry.”

  Louisa said, “Another minute, two at most, they’ll try again.”

  River said, “We’ll have to carry him.”

  “Like hell you will.” Donovan reached for River again, but River batted his hand away. “You try taking me anywhere, I’ll resist. How far do you think you’ll get?”