Real Tigers (14 page)

“What did they say at the Park? About River?”

“He's under arrest. Something about an attempt to steal a file. You can go clean his desk out if you want.”

“Didn't take long, did it?” Louisa said. “Catherine goes off reservation, and we're one down not twenty-four hours later. I'd give us till the end of the week.”

“‘Us'?”

“Slough House.”

Lamb chuckled.

“You don't think we're a team?”

“I think you're collateral damage,” said Lamb.

“And yet here you are, looking for clues. What was the file River was trying to steal?”

“Wrong question. You should be asking, what the hell was Cartwright doing, trying to steal a file?”

“Well, I assume it was a ransom demand,” Louisa said. “Whoever took Catherine got in touch with him.”

“Has Ho traced her phone?”

“She's taken the battery out. Or someone has.”

Lamb grunted.

“So what now?”

“Well it's long past lunchtime,” he said. “And no bugger's fetched me a carryout yet.”

“So that's the bigger picture sorted. But what about these other issues? You know, the danger your team's in. That sort of thing.”

“Cartwright's not in danger. They might work him over a bit, but they'll give him to the plod soon enough. He'll be perfectly safe.”

“But in prison.”

“Yeah, well. Silly sod should have thought of that before having his awfully big adventure. He's in MI5, not the Famous Five.” Lamb flicked ash onto Catherine's desk. “You'd think he'd have worked that out by now.”

“And what about Catherine?”

“Remember what I just said about collateral damage?”

“So whoever's fucking about with Slough House, you're just going to let it happen.”

The chair creaked dangerously as Lamb leaned back, dangling his arms over the sides. “What do you expect me to do?” he said. “It's not as if we know who's doing the fucking about.”

“And when we find out?” Louisa asked.

“Ah,” said Lamb. “That'll be a different story.”

“Slough House,”
Judd said. “Close it down. Today.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Do we own the building?”

“Yes.”

“Better still. We can flog it off now the market's recovered. That'll pay for the odd decoder ring, what?”

“And the agents?”

“Have them put down.”

“. . . Seriously?”

“No. But it's interesting you felt the need to ask. No, just sack them. They're all retards or they wouldn't be there anyway. Hand them their cards, tell them goodbye.”

“Jackson Lamb—”

“I know all about Jackson Lamb. He's supposed to know where some bodies are buried, yes? Well, newsflash, nobody spends a decade in this business without stumbling across the occasional corpse. And if he feels like kicking up a fuss, he'll find out what the Official Secrets Act's for. Wormwood Scrubs is more than big enough to hold him as well as Cartwright. Speaking of whom, yes, hand him over to the woolly suits. Don't see why having a grandfather in the business should buy him any favours.”

Thus spoke a man whose own grandfather had paid his school fees.

Tearney knew what this was, of course. Slough House meant nothing to Judd; he cared less about it than she did, and she didn't care at all. Were it not that it acted as a thorn in Diana Taverner's side, she'd have erased it without a moment's thought. Lamb was a Service legend, but there were museums full of one-time legends: label them, hang them on a hook, and they pretty soon lost their juju. The slow horses could be history by teatime, and would have passed from her thoughts before supper. But to wipe Slough House out of existence on Peter Judd's word was a different matter entirely. And if she let him get away with it, she'd wind up in his pocket.

Of course, a pocket was a good place to be if you were probing the wearer for soft tissue.

She said, “Consider it done.”

•••

Donovan turned
away and opened the van, producing something from its depths which for one heart-quelling moment Monteith thought was a pistol, with elongated neck. A silencer? But when Donovan unscrewed the cap and took a pull from it, Monteith saw it was a bottle of water.

He shook his head. Too much heat, too much excitement. From the bright sun outside to the petrol-fumed air of the car park had been like stepping from one form of battery to another: having been slapped silly by sunshine, he was now being rabbit-punched by pollution. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that London was more than one city. There was the one he was taxied comfortably about in, whose views were spacious and spoke in agreeable accents of wealth and plenty, while the other was cramped, soiled and barbarous, peopled by a feral race who'd strip you bare and chew the bones. The divide itself didn't worry him—it was why the security business paid dividends—but he didn't like being caught on the wrong side.

He remembered a late instruction he'd given, and something tightened behind his waistband. “The woman. Did you, ah . . . ”

“Shake her up a bit?” said Donovan, screwing the cap back on the bottle. His voice was flat, but Monteith heard judgment in it.

He bridled. Rank be damned: money went one way, respect the other. That was business.

“Just a joke, man. Is she still at the house?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want to speak to Judd in person before we all stand down.” He paused to look around before continuing. “No point changing shirts before the final whistle.”

There was nobody in sight, and the only vehicle in earshot was on the level below, and getting lower. Out on the street, traffic noise didn't count; it was simply the natural state of being, like the buzzing round a hive.

Donovan said, “You don't trust him, you mean.”

“. . . Why wouldn't I trust him?”

The van's back doors were still open. The soldier put a foot on its floor and began retying a bootlace. “Because he's a sneaky piece of shit.”

“. . . I beg your pardon?”

“Your pal. Peter Judd. He's a sneaky piece of shit.”

“He's also a senior officer in Her Majesty's Government. So I'd thank you to keep a civil—”

“Where are you meeting him?”

“—Did you just interrupt me?”

Donovan put his boot back on the ground, and Monteith was forcibly reminded that the older man was bigger, fitter; altogether more . . . substantial.

He took a step back. “Let's not forget who pays your salary, Donovan.”

“Yes, let's not do that.”

“You're lucky to have a job at all, with your record.”

“Don't kid yourself. My record's the reason you hired me. Puts hair on your balls, doesn't it, Sly? Having the real thing about the place, instead of plastic heroes.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Oh, I thought you enjoyed it. Makes you think people like you, doesn't it, when they call you Sly?” Donovan leaned closer, to bestow the following confidence. “I have to tell you, though. That's not the reason they do it.”

“Ring Traynor. Now. Tell him to release the woman, and get back to the office. And you can consider that your final act in my employment. You're sacked.”

Even Monteith could hear the quiver in his voice, the barely repressed anger. Let Donovan give him one more excuse . . .

Donovan laughed. “Sacked? You don't want to try for, what, ‘cashiered'? Tinpot little general like you, I'd have thought ‘cashiered' more up your street.”

“If it wasn't for me, you'd still be queuing up for your jobseeker's allowance. Bit of a change from the parade ground, that, was it? Lining up with all the ex-squaddies for your charity handout?”

Donovan shook his head, facing the floor, but when he looked up, Monteith saw he was laughing. For a moment he thought the last few minutes had just been erased, that Donovan had been having a soldier's joke, but that bubble burst in short order. Donovan wasn't laughing with him, but at what he'd just said.

“‘Charity handout'? I swear to God, I've fought wars against people I had more respect for.”

Monteith said, “I've had enough of this. Ring Traynor. And give me the keys to the goddamn van.”

“Where are you meeting Judd?”

“This conversation is over.”

“Not yet it isn't.”

Forgetting the keys, Sly Monteith turned to leave, and the next moment the world whipped past him like it was a yo-yo: he was heading for the doorway and its urine-perfumed stairwell, and then he wasn't. Instead, he was slammed back against the van's panels, breathless, his ankles dangling in space. Donovan's fists were scrunching his lapels, and Donovan's voice was drilling into his ear.

“Once more,” Donovan suggested. “Where are you meeting him?”

There was a sudden sense of release, several sudden senses of release, and Monteith's feet were back on the ground, and the contents of Monteith's bladder were heading the same way. Donovan's face twisted in contempt, and as much to prevent him expressing it as anything else, Monteith found the words tumbling out.

“Anna Livia Plurabelle's.”

“. . . Where?”

“Park Lane. Really quite decent, they do a good . . . ” Monteith's memory, or imagination, tailed away. What did they do that was good? A sudden taste of spring lamb in a blackcurrant jus filled his mouth, almost real enough to wash away the smell of his own piss.

Standing in a car park, slumped against a van. Discovering that the scheme he'd been orchestrating had been someone else's all along . . .
Every age calls forth its heroes
: he'd thought that just this morning. Back when he'd been one of the heroes he was talking about, surrounded by memorials to idiots who'd thrown everything away.

At least that had been their choice.

“What time?”

Monteith said, “Half an hour?”

His trousers were clammy, and for a disconnected second he pictured himself turning up at Anna Livia's—
no
one used the ‘Plurabelle'—steaming in the sunshine. What the hell was PJ going to say? Except PJ wasn't going to say anything, or not to him, because no way was Donovan going to let him walk out of this car park.

He felt the soldier's hand on his neck.

“This is what you're going to do,” Donovan said. “You're going to lie quietly in the back of the van. Nothing to worry about.”

“I don't want to get in the van.”

His voice sounded as if it were coming from some distance away. From down the hall, the far side of the kitchen . . . From the pantry where he used to hide when he was small, and things weren't going right.

“Doesn't matter what you want. I'm going to tie you up, but I'm not going to hurt you. No worse than what we did to the woman.”

Monteith wasn't thinking about the woman. He was thinking about being left in the dark of the van; tied up and gagged . . .

“What's all this about?”

“Not your concern.”

Donovan pulled him round to the back of the van, one of whose doors hung open. The smell was the usual aroma of men and petrol and motorway miles and motorway food. The thought of being locked inside it filled Monteith with horror.

“I'm going to throw up,” he said.

He retched, bending double. Donovan swore under his breath, but relaxed his grip a fraction, and Monteith wriggled out of his jacket.

“Oh for God's sake,” muttered Donovan, and took off after the runaway.

You didn't
have to go back far to recall a culture that said: Yes, we like a drink at lunchtime. The political culture, he meant—Peter Judd was well aware that the culture in general was chucking booze down its neck like a mental hobo. But the political culture, meaning Westminster, had cleaned up its act since the millennium, a shift in which Judd himself had played no small part. A public disavowal of some of the more famous extravagances of his youth had, near as damn it, established a party line, or at least had drawn a line across which his party didn't dare tread. Backbenchers were like those dipping desk-toy ducks—start one off, and it would continue until forcibly stopped. Or in this instance, stop until forcibly started. Once the House's reputation for being more or less sober during daylight hours had been salvaged, and his own status as architect of the “New Responsibility” (copyright, some broadsheet reptile) safely established, Judd was happy to revert to drinking at lunchtime when he felt like it. One of the advantages of being a Big Beast in a Parliament noted for its stunted brethren.

Pygmies, he thought, swirling the quarter inch of Chablis, breathing in the perfume, then nodding at the girl to fill the glass. Anna Livia's chose its staff carefully. This one was a redhead, her hair tamed with a black bow matching the shoelace tie that dangled onto the table as she poured. Flesh-toned bra, so as not to show beneath her blouse. Such observations came naturally to Judd, who could no more look at a woman without assessing her bedability than he could see a microphone without minting a soundbite. She smiled—she had recognised him, of course—then replaced the bottle in its bucket and moved away. He'd leave a decent tip, and get her number. He was supposed to be behaving himself, for reasons of marital harmony, but a waitress hardly counted, for God's sake. He glanced at his watch. Sly was late.

Sly was another pygmy, of course.

“You'll catch yourself using that term in public,” his agent had admonished. “Then there'll be trouble.”

Judd shrugged such wisdom off. There was always trouble, and he always rose from the resulting miasma looking a lovable scamp: lovable, anyway, to that gratifyingly large sector of the populace to whom he'd always be a figure of fun: breathing a bit of the old jolly into politics, and where's the harm in that, eh? As for those who hated him, they were never going to change their minds, and since he was in a better position to fuck them up than they were him, they didn't give him sleepless nights. The public, on the other hand . . . The public was like one of those huge Pacific jellyfish; one enormous, pulsating mass of indifference, drifting wherever the current carried it; an organism without a motive, ambition or original sin to call its own, but which somehow believed, in whatever passed for its brain, that it chose its own leaders and had a say in its own destiny.