Real Tigers

by Mick Herron

  River dropped the pipe and bent over, panting. “I’m gonna pin a note to his jacket,” he said, “so when he wakes up he’ll know it was me did that.”

  “If he wakes up,” Marcus said thickly. He spat a huge red gobbet, but his mouth immediately filled again. “You hit him kind of hard.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Any more around?”

  “I think they mostly ran away,” River said.

  “Huh.”

  “Louisa shot a few.”

  “Good.” He spat again. His tongue was numb. He had a sudden memory of eating ice cream that morning—strawberry and pistachio—and wondered if he’d ever know flavour again.

  River prodded Nick Duffy with his foot, to see if he was conscious or alive, and then kicked him very hard for no special reason. It had been a long day.

  “Is he breathing?” Marcus asked.

  “Fuck knows. Don’t care.”

  “A hand here?”

  River helped him up, and they stood for a moment, breathing hard, as yet another train went past, casting brief slices of light through the gaps in the breeze-block wall, and rustling through the litter with its draught. And then it was dark once more, and the air hung heavy with heat, and the distant wail of the city throbbed and stammered. Marcus collected his gun, spat again, and shook his head.

  “I’m kind of disappointed nobody went under a train.”

  “Yeah, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you?” River said. “Place like this.”

  Then they walked back across the wasteground to where the others were waiting.

  It was the hour after lunchtime, and the heat had changed its tune; a subtle variation that brought the promise of release, if only because it seemed unlikely it could keep up this tempo forever. In the mis-shaped square near Paddington the trees hung listlessly over desiccated garden beds, and pigeons hunkered in their shade, more like stones than birds. They barely fluttered when a dog barked in the road, and didn’t stir at all when Jackson Lamb stomped down the path, his shirt untucked, one shoelace undone. He wore a pair of plastic sunglasses and carried a manila folder, tied shut with a length of pink ribbon. Anyone else would have been taken for a lawyer. Lamb looked like he’d just lifted it from a bin.

  He slumped heavily onto the bench next to Diana Taverner, who herself looked like she’d wandered in from the right side of town; her blouse hanger fresh, her grey linen trousers immaculate. Only her eyes, when she looked at him over the top of her Gucci shades, betrayed any hint of misplaced cool.

  “Jackson.”

  “You couldn’t have picked a bar? Somewhere air-conned?”

  “It seemed best to be somewhere we won’t be overheard.”

  “So thanks to your guilty conscience, I’m damp as a bimbo’s cleavage.” He slumped back, and fanned himself with the folder. “Gets any hotter, I’m going topless.”

  Taverner suppressed a shudder and said, “So. It seems your crew had themselves quite the little party yesterday.”

  “You know what it’s like. Sun’s shining, school’s out. Seemed a shame to keep them cooped up inside.”

  “Quite a lot of bodies littering our facility near Hayes.”

  “Sounds like my local,” Lamb said. “Saturday nights get a bit hectic.”

  “Can we be serious for a minute?”

  Lamb made an expansive gesture with his free hand.

  “Traynor dead, Donovan dead. He took quite a few Black Arrows with him, it seems, along with two of Nick Duffy’s men. And as for Duffy himself . . . ”

  “Yeah, Cartwright was asking after him. Sore head?”

  “Limited brain function.”

  “Anyone noticed?”

  “You licensed a small war, Jackson. There are going to be questions.”

  “I licensed nothing.” He produced a pair of cigarettes from his pocket, stuck one behind his ear and lit the other. Taverner waved smoke away. Lamb said, “Ingrid Tearney approved yesterday’s outing, and I’m guessing it was her who then changed her mind and sent the troops in.” He waggled the folder. “When she realised exactly what it was Donovan was after.”

  “Not the Grey Books.”

  “Not the Grey Books. And before you start spinning fairytales, Diana, this’s got your fingerprints all over it. Those soldier boys didn’t find out about Slough House from the phone book. Everything they had, from the names of my crew to Ingrid Tearney’s private number, that all came from someone on the inside.”

  Diana let her gaze wander the square, perhaps wondering if Lamb had brought backup. But nobody caught her attention for long. She turned to look at him instead. “Shame. I was rather hoping to convince you it was Ms. Standish did all that. Did she enjoy being . . . ‘kidnapped’? Rather more attention than she usually gets, I’d have thought.”

  Lamb said, “You even told me where they were, the whackjob files, when we talked on the phone. Talk about signposting.”

  “No discussing Ms. Standish, then? All right, Jackson, yes, hands up to this one. The tiger team was my idea, and I sold it to Judd. I brought Donovan on board, though his method of creating a job vacancy at Black Arrow was his idea, not mine. As was killing Monteith. That’s the trouble with going freelance. You can’t always keep the talent on the straight and narrow.”

  “But you had to go out of house, because you needed a third party to bring this to light.” Lamb waved the folder again. “Everything you always wanted to know about the Service’s use of black prisons, but were afraid to ask.”

  “Don’t act like you’re surprised.”

  “Trust me. I’m not.”

  He might as well not have spoken.

  “We’ve used them for years, Lamb. Project Waterproof. A way of deporting undesirables without going through all that tiresome legal bullshit. And it hardly makes us outcast among nations. They’ve long been doing it in the good old US of A.”

  “Maybe so,” said Lamb. “But I thought we’d denied using them in the UK of E, S, W and NI.”

  “That’s the whole point. We’ve denied using them. Most categorically, and in front of Parliamentary Committees. More to the point, we both know precisely who has denied using them.”

  “Ingrid Tearney,” said Lamb.

  “Whose name’s so plastered over the paperwork, you’d think it was the logo. Flight plans. Transport requisition. Fuel . . . You can’t conjure an international flight out of nothing. And it’s not like these places come round and collect. Have you got a spare one of those?”

  Lamb checked his second cigarette was still tucked behind his ear, and said, “No.”

  “Too hot to smoke anyway . . . And we’re not talking registered charities here, either. They’re actual prisons. Or used to be. They’re . . . special purpose now. And require payment.”

  “In return for the permanent removal from circulation of various miscreants,” Lamb said flatly. It was impossible to tell from his tone whether he approved or not.

  “Well, you can’t have a parole hearing if you’ve never been sentenced.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “I don’t mean to sound judgmental. These are people who, on the whole, we don’t really want loose on our streets.”

  “On the whole?”

  She shrugged. “There’s rumours Tearney’s used Waterproof to vanish people for personal reasons.”

  “Perks of the job.”

  “I’m sure the PM will see it that way.”

  “He’ll probably ask her to use it on Judd. And this is what the Dunn woman learned that night in New York.”

  “The guy who approached her, he was a delegate from . . . Well, let’s just say one of the ’Stans. Some while back, he’d brokered a deal for the use of a couple of his nation’s particularly remote high-security facilities.” She paused. “Their version of high security’s not as high-tech as you might imagine. It mostly in
volves thick walls and no plumbing.”

  “I know,” said Lamb. He lit his second cigarette with the stub of his first, which he then flicked, still burning, at the nearest pigeon. It failed to respond.

  “And evidently, some years later, saw the light and felt the need to come clean. Or maybe he just wanted to impress Captain Dunn.”

  “Effectively signing her death warrant.”

  “We’ve all touched pitch, Lamb. Don’t pretend your hands are clean.”

  He didn’t reply immediately. The pair sat watching the discarded stub of his cigarette blackening the already frazzled blades of grass it had landed among. Given time, given time, such a start could burn a city down.

  Eventually he said, “So what now?”

  “Documentary evidence of the project’s existence is more than a career embarrassment for Tearney. It’s an international incident waiting to happen. So it’ll be blanketed from a great height. Judd will encourage her to retire. That’ll leave a vacancy at the head of the service.”

  “To be filled by . . . ?”

  “I couldn’t possibly comment.”

  “And in return,” Lamb said, “you’ll ease Judd’s passage into Number Ten. Which should be a doddle, what with your having access to all sorts of confidential material. Such as the PM’s vetting file.”

  “He’ll be a safe pair of hands, I’m sure,” Taverner said. “We had a meeting yesterday, point of fact.” She brushed her palms the length of her thighs, stretching the linen as she did so. “He assured me that he holds the Service in high regard. That any ideas he had regarding reorganisation, he’s now shelved.”

  “He’s a fucking psychopath,” Lamb said.

  “All the more reason to have him inside the tent pissing out.”

  “This is Peter Judd,” said Lamb. “I’d be more worried about him taking a dump. Besides which, you’re overlooking something. You don’t have the evidence. I do.”

  Again, he tapped the folder that River Cartwright had given him.

  “Because of course,” he said, “if this all went public—if it found its way to, say, the Guardian—well, that would be different, wouldn’t it? A public explosion instead of a controlled detonation. Tearney would still go, but Judd would be caught in the blast. And without a friendly minister to grease your wheels . . . What do you reckon, Diana? Think you’d still find yourself First Desk?”

  Taverner said, “This is not the sort of juggernaut you want to walk in front of, Jackson.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Don’t forget, I have my team to consider.”

  “Really? That’ll be a first.”

  “They have a natural respect for me.”

  “That’s not respect. It’s Stockholm syndrome.”

  “How do you think they’d feel if I said we’d just let it go, all those folk trying to kill them? They have a right to know what was at stake.” He scrunched his nose up and sniffed noisily. “Maybe take a vote on it.”

  “. . . You have got to be kidding.”

  Lamb turned heavy eyes on her, his expression momentarily obscured by the cloud of smoke he exhaled. Then he said, “Of course I’m fucking kidding. Getting shot at’s a day at the races as far as they’re concerned.”

  “Jesus, Lamb . . . ”

  “And I wouldn’t let them vote on their favourite breakfast cereal.” He extended the folder to her, but didn’t relinquish it when she took hold of it. “But I’m serious about Judd. You’ve got a real tiger by the tail there.”

  “I can handle him.”

  “Sure?”

  “I said I can handle him.”

  He sneered at that, but let go of the folder anyway. Diana all but snatched it from his grip.

  Lamb stood, and this time the pigeons took fright: with one thought between them they clambered clumsily into the air, where they wheeled about in confusion for a while, and were forgotten about.

  Taverner said, “Seriously, Catherine Standish. She’s okay?”

  “Apparently she quit.”

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  “It evens out,” Lamb said. “I thought I sacked a pair yesterday. But it looks like they’ve changed their minds.”

  He walked away down the path, a bulky silhouette against the silvery white heat of the day.

  Diana Taverner watched until he’d disappeared from view, a trick he achieved surprisingly quickly for a man his size. Then she undid the folder’s ribbon, pulling it loose so that it ran through her fingers for a long silky moment, and opened its cover. The topsheet was blank, save for a V-for-Virgil scrawled in marker pen, and a catalogue number stamped in red ink. She removed it.

  Underneath lay a copy of the Angling Times, and nothing more.

  “Oh, Jackson,” she said. “You stupid, stupid man.”

  She looked for the pigeons, which were gone, looked up at the sky, which was still there, then looked in her bag for her phone.

  Peter Judd answered on the first ring.

  “That worst-case outcome we discussed?” Diana said. “It just happened.”

  The weather is breaking on Aldersgate Street. It is breaking in other places too, keen to wash the smells of hot tar from London’s roads, but it is over Aldersgate Street that it appears angriest, and here the violet hour has given way to early darkness. Thunder rumbles, so near it might be just over the page. As yet there is no rain, but residents in the Barbican towers hover by their windows, hoping for dramatic skyscapes, while on the pavements pedestrians—still dressed for that morning’s dry heat—hurry towards shelter, wherever it might be found. In the alley that leads to Slough House’s back door a freak wind stirs hot dust, and beneath the sound of clouds crashing together (which, as every child knows, is the true cause of thunder) might be heard that of a door scraping open; a door which jams in all weathers, even weather so close to breaking as this . . . But if someone has entered Slough House, there would be noises on the staircase, which there are not. And only a ghost, surely, could climb Slough House’s notoriously squeaky stairs without the slightest whisper.

  If a ghost it is, it’s a peculiarly inquisitive one, and pauses at the first landing to test the air. Here, as always, the doors hang open, and while the rooms are empty, even a spectre would have no trouble spotting which was Roderick Ho’s room; which Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander’s. The latter is tainted with conflicting emotions tonight, as if the recent male occupant has been reflecting that for all his combat experience, he basically had his nuts pulled from the fire twice yesterday, both times by people he regards as lightweight. So much for taking control . . . And as for the female, there’s a suggestion that her recent physical exertions, satisfying as they were, are perhaps no long-term substitute for intimacy—and as a short-term measure, postpone, rather than obliterate, the need for any other kind of high. But there is a tangible sense of relief here too, that yesterday’s sackings appear to have been reversed; or, at any rate, were not referred to during the lengthy post-mortem of last night’s events. A strange quirk, perhaps, to be relieved by the prospect of remaining among the slow horses, but as every ghost knows, there are few more complicated creatures than the living.

  In the former office, meanwhile, a particularly perceptive shade might catch a trace of a fragment of conversation; the words A bus? Okay, that’s old school—words spoken by Marcus and lapped up by Roderick Ho; words Ho repeated silently to himself over and over, until they gave way to another mantra, equally silent: So, babes, fancy a drink?, this too practised over and over, mimed to a window in lieu of a mirror, and mimed long after their intended recipient had appeared on the street below, leaving Slough House, and Roddy Ho, equally unthought-of behind her.

  More stairs now. Onward and upward. On the next landing two more vacant rooms, again heavy with the late presence of their incumbents, one of these being the just-now alluded to Louisa Guy, who is currently sitting
on a barstool, and, as usual, is being approached by the usual man with the usual line, though tonight finds herself saying, Sorry, not interested, recalling as she does so a snapshot memory from yesterday evening: not the men she shot, not poor dead Douglas, nor even brave, doomed Donovan, but River Cartwright pulling her to her feet when she fell, a brief moment of contact that somehow overrules the possibility of going home with anyone tonight, a feeling which might outlast her third vodka, but then again might not. As for River himself, that lunchtime, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, he made the hop across town to Spider Webb’s bedside once more, only to find the room vacant, its bed remade, its eternally beeping machines removed; a discovery that prompted the queasy suspicion that yesterday’s trip to Regent’s Park, and his alibi-forming lie to Diana Taverner, if he ever wound up plugged into a wall-socket, if that was all that was keeping him alive, he’d want to be switched off, has produced an unintended consequence, a thought so bowel-shrinking he prefers not to entertain it, so has instead opted to visit his grandfather, the O.B., and hear familiar tales of Service myth and Spook Street legend, and lock all self-examination away.

  Again, the thunder sounds, so near it might be crashing off the roof, and this time is accompanied by, yes, a flash of lightning; a sudden electric burst that fills the uncurtained rooms, and if there were anyone here they would surely be seen now, captured in that flash as by a photograph . . . But there is nothing. Nothing, unless that shadow in the corner is darker, thicker, more substantial, than it should be . . . Unless it moves like a ghost, soundlessly flitting up one last staircase to the uppermost floor, where the rooms are smaller, and closer to heaven . . .