Slow Horses (29 page)

The thumps and jolts and crashings would not stop. The cord binding his wrists would not fray. Hassan would not find himself unleashed, but would lie suffering until the car reached its destination, and then he too would reach his destination. This was his last journey.

So even if he could. Even if he could make the best joke ever. Even if he could make the best joke ever, with its subject the decapitation of unwilling humans, this was not a joke Hassan could ever make, because Hassan was never going to make jokes again. Not that he had made that many to begin with. Because if he were to be uncompromisingly harsh on himself—if he were to tell the truth, observing the contract between stand-up and audience—Hassan would have to admit this too: that he had never been particularly funny. He could make jokes, yes. He could ride riffs. He could unreel a comedy thread and wrap it round the usual observation posts: quips about old people shopping, and teenagers texting, and how nobody smiles on buses. But only in his head. He had never been himself in public. And now never would be. Doing so would remain forever on the list of things Hassan had intended to do in his twenties; a list which would never grow longer and never grow shorter, for Hassan’s twenties were not going to happen.

Because these people were never going to let him go. Not without killing him first.
We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web. Fucking Paki
.

The car bounced and bashed him, and Hassan Ahmed tried to make himself smaller. In his mind, he escaped in seventy different ways, but his body remained in the boot.

The common wisdom was that car-theft gave you a buzz, but that probably only held true if your evening hadn’t already involved blood, firearms and a severed head. The car was a beat-up Austin, taken from a sidestreet, and River guessed its owner’s reaction on finding it gone would be a sigh of relief. There were no spare keys in the glove compartment or behind the rearview mirror, but there was a mobile phone in the former; a chunky grey thing that looked like River’s own phone’s distant ancestor. Hotwiring took him seven minutes, which was probably six minutes fifty over the record. He’d driven back the way they’d come, crossed the river at Blackfriars, then tried to use the phone to call the hospital again, only to find it was pre-pay, and out of credit.

This, at least, gave him a buzz, but not a welcome one. Throwing the phone through the window would have relieved his feelings, but he settled for swearing heavily. Swearing was good. Swearing helped. It kept his mind off the possibility that Sid was dead; kept it, too, from flashing back to the head on the kitchen table, raggedly sawn from its owner.

But why had it been familiar?

He didn’t want to dwell on it, but knew he had to … The answer was buried within his subconscious and ought to be within his grasp. He stopped swearing. Remembered he was on a mission, and came to a halt at a junction, reestablishing his bearings. He was on Commercial Road; heading for Tower Hamlets, where he’d collect Kay White. Stationary, he was hooted by a car behind, which swung out to pass him. He swore again. Sometimes it was good to have a visible enemy.

Because God knows, River thought bitterly, he was weary of the invisible kind.

Pushing thoughts of severed heads aside, he resumed his journey. Another two minutes, and he found his turning: on the left-hand side was a three-storey brick-built block, its matching window frames and guttering marking it out as association housing. Maybe twenty yards ahead, double-parked outside what could easily be Kay’s address, was the car that had hooted him three minutes ago: lights on, engine running. A figure hulked behind the wheel. River reversed into a space, and disconnected the ignition wires. Got out and walked back to the main road. Turned the corner, dropped to one knee and peered back round, just as a man brought Kay White out of her home and loaded her into the waiting car.

She was neither cuffed nor roughly handled. The man was guiding her by the elbow, but it could have been taken as support if you didn’t know what you were watching. He settled her into the back seat, and got in after her. The car moved off. The moments during which River could have done anything to stop any of this had been over before he got here, and he wasn’t sure what use he’d have made of them anyway. The last time he’d tried an intervention, Sid had wound up lying in the street.

The car reached the next junction, turned, and was gone.

River returned to the Austin, and stole it all over again.

Struan Loy’s night had started promisingly. He’d had a date, his first in three years, and had planned it like an attempt at Everest, the base camps being wine bar, Italian restaurant and her place. Base one had proved a tremendous success, inasmuch as she had turned up; base two less impressive, as she’d left halfway through, and base three remained whereabouts unknown. Loy had returned home to an unmade bed and three hours’ sleep, interrupted by the arrival of Nick Duffy.

Now he sat blinking in harsh underground light. The room was padded, its walls covered with a black synthetic material which smelled of bleach. A table dead centre had a straight-backed chair on either side, one of them bolted to the floor. This was the one on which Loy had been told to sit.

‘So,’ he said to Diana Taverner. ‘What’s up?’

He was aiming for a carefree delivery, with about as much success as Gordon Brown.

‘Why should anything be up, Struan?’

‘Because I’ve been brought here in the middle of the night.’

And certainly looked like he’d dressed in the dark, thought Taverner.

‘Nick Duffy brought you here because I asked him to,’ she said. ‘We’re downstairs because I don’t want anyone to know you’re here. And we’re not having this chat because you’ve done anything wrong. We’re having it because I’m reasonably sure you haven’t.’

She leant just enough on
reasonably
for him to pick it up.

He said, ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Taverner said nothing.

‘Because I’m pretty sure I haven’t done anything.’

‘Pretty sure?’

‘A turn of phrase.’

She said nothing.

‘I mean, I know I haven’t done anything.’

She said nothing.

‘Or not since, you know.’

‘Not since that e-mail suggesting that your boss and mine, Ingrid Tearney, was an Al Qaeda plant.’

He said, ‘It was the outfit she wore on
Question Time
, you know, that desert-gown thing …’

She said nothing.

‘It was a joke.’

‘And we have a sense of humour. Otherwise you’d not have seen the light of day since.’

Loy blinked.

She said, ‘Only kidding.’

He nodded uncertainly, as if receiving his first glimpse of how unfunny jokes could be.

Diana Taverner glanced at her watch, not caring he knew it. He only had one chance to climb on board. This wasn’t a decision he could mull over, and get back to her in the morning.

‘So now you’re in Slough House,’ she said. ‘How’s that working out?’

‘Well, you know …’

‘How’s that working out?’

‘Not so great.’

‘But you haven’t quit.’

‘No. Well …’

She waited.

‘Not sure what I’d do otherwise, to be honest.’

‘And you’re still wondering whether you’ll ever be let back upstairs.’

‘Upstairs?’

‘The Park. Do you want to hear something really funny, Struan? Do you want to hear how many people have made the journey back from Slough House to Regent’s Park?’

He blinked. He already knew the answer to that. Everyone knew the answer to that.

She told him anyway. ‘None. It’s never happened.’

He blinked again.

She said, ‘Of course, that doesn’t mean it never will.

Nothing’s impossible.’

This time he didn’t blink. In his eyes, she saw wheels starting to turn; possibilities sliding into place like tabs into slots.

He didn’t speak, but he shifted in his chair. Leant forward, as if this was a conversation he was sharing, rather than an interrogation he was subject to.

She said, ‘Have you noticed anything unusual at Slough House lately?’

‘No,’ he said, with absolute certainty.

She said nothing.

‘I don’t think so,’ he added.

She checked her watch again.

‘What sort of unusual thing?’

‘Activity. Activity above and beyond the normal course of events.’

He thought about it. While he was doing so, Diana Taverner reached for her bag, which she’d hung on the back of her chair. From it she produced a black-and-white photograph, three inches by five, which she placed on the table between them. Turned it so it was facing Loy. ‘Recognize him?’

‘It’s Alan Black.’

‘Your former colleague.’

‘Yes.’

‘Seen him recently?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t seen him lately in Jackson Lamb’s company?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that presents us with a problem.’

She sat back and waited.

‘A problem,’ he said at last.

‘Yes. A problem,’ she agreed. ‘Tell me, Struan. How would you like to be part of the solution?’

In Struan Loy’s eyes, wheels turned again.

‘Should we go round the back?’

‘Can we get round the back?’

‘There might be an alley.’

Min Harper and Louisa Guy were at Ho’s place; had pulled into the last available space moments before another car had arrived, slowed, then headed on down the street and parked. The pair watched without speaking while a man emerged.

They were in Balham, a stone’s throw from the railway line. Brixton, where they’d stopped for Struan Loy, had been a washout: he was either not at home or had died in his sleep. Like all the slow horses, Loy lived alone. That seemed a stark statistic, and it was odd that it hadn’t occurred to Min Harper before. He didn’t know whether Loy was single from choice or circumstance; divorced, separated or what. It seemed unsatisfactory, this ignorance about his colleagues, and he’d thought about raising the subject with Louisa, but she was driving. All the alcohol they’d put away earlier, it seemed a good idea to let her concentrate on that. Come to think of it, there was other stuff they should be discussing, but that too had better wait. From out of nowhere, they were on an op. How had that happened?

‘So …’

The man they’d been watching slipped out of sight.

‘Okay. Let’s try it.’

Crossing the road, Min felt his jacket bang against his hip. The paperweight. He was still carting the paperweight he’d used earlier, when confronting the masked intruder who turned out to be Jed Moody. He rubbed his thumb along its surface without taking it from his pocket. He hadn’t hit Moody with it. Hadn’t needed to. They’d taken a tumble, and only Min had got to his feet. He supposed that should go in the account book somewhere, in the opposite column to the one where he’d stepped off a tube train without a disk, and his career had gone whistling away down the dark tunnel.

He hadn’t liked Jed Moody, but didn’t enjoy knowing he’d been the instrument of his death. He suspected he hadn’t got to the bottom of that feeling yet. Everything had happened so swiftly since that he hadn’t yet taken it on board.

Leave it for now, he thought. You could coast for a while on that mantra.
Leave it for now
.

‘What do you reckon?’

‘Looks doable.’

They’d found a thin strip of unpaved passage between the backs of one row of houses and those on the next road. It was unlit, overgrown, and neither had a torch, but Ho lived only four houses along. Louisa led the way. The bushes were wet, and hung with cobweb. Underfoot was slick with mud, and they were walking close enough that if either went down, both would. Any other night, it would make for a comedy moment.

‘This one?’

‘That’s what I make it.’

Light showed from an upper storey. Ho seemed to have an upstairs conservatory. They climbed the fence, a flimsy wooden construction, and as Min dropped into the paved-over garden, a plank snapped cleanly behind him with a noise like a bullet. He froze, expecting alarms or sirens, but the noise simply disappeared into the dark. No curtains twitched; no voices were raised. Louisa Guy dropped next to him.

For another moment they waited. Min’s hand dropped to his pocket again, and his thumb stroked the paperweight’s smooth surface. Then the pair advanced on the back door.

As they got closer, Min thought he could hear music.

Audible music strained from an upstairs room, and light bled skywards from a skylight. It was what—after four? And Dan Hobbs could hear the music out here in the street.

He thought: I was a neighbour, I’d break the runt’s neck. Toss a wheelie bin through his window to grab his attention, and then take him by the neck and squeeze until his eyes pop like grapes.

Dan Hobbs wasn’t having the best night of his life.

He leant on the bell.

After his encounter with Jackson Lamb at the hospital, he’d come to on the floor; no obvious bruising, but he felt like he’d been trampled underfoot. The storeroom door hung open. River Cartwright was gone. Hobbs had got to his feet and made his way upstairs, where the first person he’d encountered was the newly arrived Nick Duffy.

And Hobbs learned the hard way that shit travels downwards.

‘He was just this fat guy. How was I to know—’

‘Remember Sam Chapman? Bad Sam?’

Hobbs did.

‘Bad Sam once said he wasn’t frightened of anyone except overweight guys with bad breath and ill-fitting shirts. You know why?’

Hobbs didn’t.

‘Because once in a nun’s nightmare, one of them would turn out to be Jackson Lamb. And by the time you’d realized that, you’d lost your lunch, your boots and most of your teeth. Now fuck off back to the Park.’

A couple of hours’ fuming, and he had new instructions; another slow horse to collect.

‘Name’s Roderick Ho.’ Duffy read out the address. ‘Slough House geek. Think you can handle him on your own?’

Hobbs took a breath. The Service was hierarchical, to put it mildly, but you didn’t get to be one of the Dogs by meekly observing the protocols. ‘In my fucking sleep,’ he told his boss. ‘You said yourself, even Sam Chapman couldn’t take Lamb, and I didn’t know it was him. So give me a break, all right?’