Real Tigers (8 page)

“Terribly dull these meetings can be,” Tearney said. “I do appreciate your taking the time to attend.”

Attendance was compulsory. The Service was a corporation like any other.

“I should be on the hub,” Diana said. “Will this take long?”

“I just wanted your confirmation that the records transfer has been completed satisfactorily.”

“As of last month, yes.”

“And we're talking about records up to Virgil level, yes?”

“As per the brief.”

The grading system changed on a biannual basis, but Virgil was currently the second-highest classification. The service being what it was, this meant that a lot of sensitive data was logged Virgil, on the ground that those most likely to wangle access to intelligence—oversight committees, Cabinet Ministers, TV producers—tended to focus their attentions on the highest grade, Scott-level, on the assumption that this was where the hardcore secrets were. Virgil-level, being more accessible, was generally overlooked. Which didn't mean Ingrid Tearney wanted those records stored off-site.

“Ingrid, I thought you already knew all this.”

“Merely dotting i's, my dear. You'll be warmly acknowledged in HR's weekly catch-up this morning, I can assure you.”

“I'm so grateful. Was that all?”

“You know, one of the burdens of leadership,” Tearney continued, as if Diana hadn't spoken, “is not being privy to the gossip below stairs. It can be difficult to take the temperature, if you know what I mean.”

Assuming she was not genuinely being asked if she understood a common idiom, Diana said nothing.

“And it would be good to know precisely how things stand.”

“Well, we're over-worked, under-resourced and under-appreciated. The general mood more or less reflects this.”

Dame Ingrid laughed, a rather more tinkling sound than you'd expect the warthog to make, Diana thought grudgingly. She said, “I can always rely on you to deliver uncomfortable truths, Diana. That's one of the reasons you're such a valuable Second Desk.”

“Is there a problem, Ingrid?”

“Our new overlord is rattling his sabres. He's spoken of the need for fresh starts, for—I think he said a
reboot
. Always keen to appear savvy.”

“All new ministers say that.”

“This one means it. Too many skeletons falling out of closets, apparently. As if it were possible to maintain an effective security service without an occasional blurring of the boundaries.”

Which was a polite way of describing, among other
faux pas
, the wholesale illegal surveillance of the nation's online footfall, not to mention the toothless surrender of same to a foreign power.

Diana made a non-committal noise.

“We're not natural allies, are we? You and I.”

“I'm fully committed to the Service,” Diana said. “Always have been. You know that.”

“And you're currently wondering how best to make that commitment known in the event that Peter Judd succeeds in removing me as head.”

Issuing a denial would have been tantamount to confession. Instead, Diana said, “What makes you think he wants to do that?”

“Because it's the most obvious way of flexing his muscle, which he's going to want to practise doing before taking on the PM. Or did you think Home Secretary was the pinnacle of his ambition?”

Nobody over the age of three thought Home Secretary the pinnacle of Peter Judd's ambition.

“So I thought it best to advise you that any assault PJ makes on the Service won't stop with lopping off the head. I have it on good authority he's not keen on the Second Desk role. That he wants an intermediate level built into the command structure, to allow for greater political oversight. This would be by ministerial appointment, you understand. And almost certainly filled from outwith the Service.” She glanced sideways. “As I said, we're hardly natural allies. But there's an adage that fits.”

My enemy's enemy is my friend, Diana supplied mentally. She said, “And I remain fully committed to the Service. As I said. We've weathered ministerial interference in the past, Ingrid. Judd might be one of the big beasts when he's on home ground, but he's going to have his work cut out for him if he's taking on Regent's Park.”

At that moment, her pager buzzed.

Dame Ingrid said, “Thank you, Diana. I'm glad we had this little chat.”

She thinks we've made an alliance, Diana thought, as the Service chief nodded in farewell, and moved on down the corridor.

Then she reached for her pager, recognised Security's number, and called the front desk on her mobile.

“Ma'am? We have a walk-in, an off-site agent. He says you're expecting him. But there's nothing on the time sheet.”

“I'm not expecting anyone. Who is it?”

“One River Cartwright.” Security reeled off Cartwright's Service number.

“Sign him in,” Diana said. “I'll be on the stairs.”

T
hirty-nine minutes . .
.

Being in Regent's Park always gave River a hollow feeling; the same you might get on stepping inside the marital home once the divorce had come through. Well, he said “always.” There'd been a time when that might have been the right word, early in his career, when it was still a “career”; before he'd become
persona non grata
, which was Latin for slow horse. Since then, he'd been inside its precincts, what, twice? On one of those occasions, summoned by Spider Webb. That had been Spider rubbing it in; letting River know he might as well be in Siberia. Well, Siberia might as well be where Spider was now: all those endless white spaces, bare of life. Was that what being in a coma was like? River hoped never to find out.

At the desk he showed his Service card, and said he was there to see Diana Taverner. An all-or-nothing play; one she'd go for, he hoped, if only to find out what he thought he was doing, turning up at head office—she might let him in just to have him beaten up.

While the security woman paged Taverner, he looked around.

Thirty-eight minutes.

What struck River, as ever, was the dual nature of the building; the Oxbridge kerb-flash a nod to the best traditions of the Service—its history of civilised thuggery—while the modern aspects were sunk below pavement level, safe from dirty bomb and prying eyes alike. On one of its upper corridors hung a portrait of his grandfather. He'd never been that high. You had to be some sort of mandarin.

His attention was being sought.

“. . . Yes?”

“Ms. Taverner will meet you on the staircase.”

This being handy in case she wanted him thrown down it, he surmised.

The woman handed him a laminate on a lanyard,
v
isitor
, and pointed him in the right direction.

They'd settled
on an Italian place near Smithfield, and were upstairs eating ice cream out of tin bowls: Marcus strawberry and pistachio, Shirley peach and stracciatella. Cutlery scraping against tin was as much conversation as they made until both were about finished, then Shirley nodded towards Marcus's bowl and plucked her spoon from her mouth with an audible pop.

“That's a stupid combination. Strawberry and pistachio don't go.”

“Go well enough for me.”

“Then your taste buds are wrong. Strawberry needs chocolate or else vanilla. Pistachio's not even a real flavour. They only invented it in like 1997.”

“You've been dumped, haven't you?”

“What do you mean, dumped? What kind of question's that? We're talking about ice cream.”

“Right.”

“And no, I haven't.”

“Right.”

“And even if I had been, it wouldn't be any of your business.”

“Right.”

“And anyway, how can you tell?”

“Christ, I don't know,” Marcus said. “Maybe it's the way you're such a bundle of fun.”

“Piss off.”

“What happened, she meet someone else?”

“Piss off. Why do you assume I'm gay?”

“You're saying you're not?”

“I'm saying how would you know? Do I bring my private life into work?”

“Shirley, sharing an office with you lately's like having my own personal thundercloud, so yes, on balance, you bring your private life into work. Which gives me the right to hear the dirt. Did she meet someone else?”

“And again with the ‘she' . . . ”

Marcus laid his spoon on a napkin and licked away the hint of a strawberry moustache. “It's like in books,” he said. “Thrillers, whodunnits, you know? You read much?”

“You got a point to make?”

“In thrillers, when the writer says the killer this, the killer that, and never says if it's a he or a she, it's always because it's a she. And you're like that with your girlfriend. You never say if it's a he or a she. Which means it's a she.”

Shirley sneered. “Maybe I'm just messing with your head.”

“You might be, except you're not. So what happened? She meet someone else?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough. But that means you have to drop the angry victim act. Deal?”

“You really are a hardass, you know that?”

“Yeah, that used to be my job description.”

“Well not any more it's not,” Shirley said. “Now you're a desk jockey, like the rest of us. Get used to it.”

“That's what I was told months back,” Marcus said, picking up his spoon again. “Still got to shoot someone, didn't I?”

“I doubt you'll get that lucky twice.”

“Well just in case I do,” Marcus said, “you know what I don't need? I don't need a partner pissing and moaning behind me. That shit throws your aim off.”

Shirley picked up her spoon too, but her bowl was empty. Watching her tap the one against the other, causing a high-pitched note to ring around the room, Marcus was struck, not for the first time, by how intense her concentration could be. With her near–buzz cut and her broad shoulders, an idiot might think her mannish, but there was nothing remotely masculine about her skin tone or her deep brown eyes. Still. Crouched over the ruins of her ice cream, she might almost disappear into androgyny. But either way, she had a right hook could knock you off your feet.

She looked up at him. “Is that what we are? Partners?”

“In the absence of a better offer,” he said.

“In that case, I'll have another one of these,
partner
. Butterscotch and mint.”

“Seriously?”

She stared at him, unblinking.

Marcus went to fetch more ice cream.

“Cartwright.”

Taverner, as promised, was on the staircase, a feature which fell on the kerb-flash side of the line, being wide enough to dance down, and boasting, on this particular landing, a narrow window which must have been eight foot tall. Dusty sunlight slanted through it, catching Lady Diana's hair and roasting a chestnut tinge onto its curls, momentarily distracting River. His mind had blanked. What was he supposed to call her? “Ma'am,” his mouth supplied. A glimpse of her wristwatch, as she glanced at it, reminded him: thirty-six minutes.

She said, “You're not supposed to be here, you do remember that?”

“Yes, but—”

“And you look a mess.”

“It's hot out,” he said. “Ma'am.”

It was cooler in here, though; air-con and marbled floors.

“. . . Well?”

They had history, River and Diana Taverner. Not the kind of history people usually meant when they said history, but not far off: treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back—more like a marriage than a love affair. And most of it at a remove, so their actual face-to-face encounters hadn't been frequent. Here and now, on this landing, his shirt clinging to his back, River was remembering how distracting her presence could be. It wasn't just her physical attractions; it was the way she visibly weighed up every situation she was in, calibrating the moment to maximise her own advantage.

He said, “It's about James. James Webb.”

“Ah.”

“I've been . . . visiting him.”

Spider had been Taverner's protégé once, though he'd split what he'd have no doubt called his loyalties fairly evenly between her and Dame Ingrid. At the precise moment he'd been shot by a Russian hood it was hard to tell whose side he was on, though as he'd been mostly on his own back ever since, it probably didn't matter in the long run.

She said, “You were still friendly? I didn't realise.”

“We trained together.”

“Not what I asked.”

River said, “We weren't that friendly in the end, no, but we were close at one time. And he's got nobody else. No family, I mean.”

He had no idea whether Spider had family or not, but he was busking here. And banking on Taverner not knowing Spider's family situation either.

“I didn't realise,” she said. “So . . . what's his current condition? Any change?”

“Not really.”

Just for an instant, he saw something in her eyes that might have been unfeigned concern. And then he mentally kicked himself—why wouldn't there have been? She'd worked with him. And here was River, using his former friend's condition to bluff his way back into the very place Spider had had him exiled from . . . It occurred to him that Spider might have seen the funny side of this. That this small act of treachery was more tribute than revenge.

Thoughts for later.

Thirty-five minutes.

He said, “None at all, in fact. And no real chance of any occurring.”

Taverner glanced away. “I've been keeping an eye on the reports,” she said vaguely.

“Then you'll know. It's a vegetative state, his brain activity's almost entirely dormant. A flicker here and there, but . . . And his organs, they're not functioning on their own. Take him off the machines, and he'll die in the time it takes a heart to stop beating.”

“You obviously have a point to make.”

“We talked about it once, the two of us. On one of those endurance courses, up on the Black Mountains?”

She gave a brief nod.

“Long story short—” River said.

“Good idea.”

“—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. That's what he told me.”

“Then that information will be on his personal file.”

“I doubt he ever got round to making an official declaration. He was, what, twenty-four at the time? It wasn't something he was planning for. But it was something he'd given thought to.”

“If he'd given it a little more thought, he might have noticed planning doesn't come into it.”
Thirty-four minutes.
“What exactly are you asking me to do?”

“I just wanted to speak to someone about it. How long is he going to be lying there before a decision is made?”

She said, “You're talking about letting him die.”

“I'm not sure what the alternative is.”

But a Lamb-like crack came to mind:
They could re-skill him. Use him as a speed bump.

She said, “Look, I don't have time for this right now. Are you sure there's no family? Weren't there cousins?”

“Don't think so.”

“But anyway—it's hardly a decision we can make standing on a bloody staircase.” She fixed him with a glare, but let it soften. “But I'll look into it. You're right. If there's nobody else to take decisions, the Park will have to do it. Though I'd have thought the medical staff . . . ”

“They're probably terrified of liability.”

“God. They're not the only ones.” She looked at her watch again. “Is that it?”

“. . . Yes.”

“You're not going to explain why you should be back on the hub? Why Slough House is a waste of your talents?”

“Not right now.”

“Good.” She paused. “You'll be informed. About Webb, I mean. James. Whatever's decided.”

“Thank you.”

“But don't do this again. Turn up unannounced. Or you'll end up downstairs.”

This time there was no softening in her expression.

Thirty-two minutes.

“Off you toddle.”

“Thank you.”

River walked back down the stairs, sure she was watching him every step of the way. But when he reached the bottom and looked back up, she'd gone.

Thirty-one minutes.

Now came the tricky bit.

The man
from the bridge was elsewhere now; in Postman's Park, whose neat little garden was a popular lunch spot for local workers, mostly because of its shelter, the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. The tiles on its walls were dedicated to those who'd given their lives in the attempt, sometimes futile, to rescue others, and recalled Leigh Pitt, who “saved a drowning boy from the canal . . . but sadly was unable to save himself,” and Mary Rogers, who “self-sacrificed by giving up her lifebelt and voluntarily going down in the sinking ship.” Thomas Griffin was fatally scalded in a boiler explosion at a Battersea sugar refinery, returning to search for his mate, while George Elliott and Robert Underhill “successively went down a well to rescue comrades and were poisoned by gas” . . . Sylvester Monteith—“Sly” to those who knew him, or simply suspected his true nature—was drinking iced tea from a polystyrene cup, and wondering why self-sacrifice was deemed so honourable. Every age calls forth its heroes, he supposed. For his own part, he'd come to manhood in the eighties, and his response to any of these emergencies would have been one of pragmatic withdrawal. Later, he would have been among the first to deplore the inadequacy of the equipment at fault, and to enquire about the possibility of furnishing much-improved replacements, at a price that could only be deemed reasonable from the point of view of all future miners, sugar-refinery workers, ship-goers, and foolhardy passers-by. All would be safer, some would get richer, and the world would turn. So it goes.

Meanwhile, to ensure that the world was in fact still turning, Monteith checked his watch. It was some twenty minutes since he'd dispatched River Cartwright on a mission which was as much an act of self-sacrifice as any of those memorialised on the walls of Postman's Park. That was one of the things they didn't tell you when you signed up for duty, Monteith thought. That there was a huge divide between those who lit the cannon, and those who flung themselves in front of it. Lighting the cannon was the path to a long, happy life. The one he'd lit for Cartwright was unlikely to prove fatal, but it would make exile at Slough House seem like an extended vacation.

Even fast horses finish at the knacker's yard. That slow horses get there first was one of life's little ironies.

He finished his tea and reached for his phone.