Real Tigers (10 page)

River began to recite the number the man on the bridge had given him, but she cut him off.

“I meant what's it about, dear? What interest does our Mr. Lamb have in it?”

“I don't know.”

“Keeps you in the dark, does he?”

“You know Jackson,” he said again.

“Better than you, I expect.” She appraised him. “How did you get in?”

“Get in?”

“Upstairs. Or have they adopted an open-door policy since this morning?”

“I made an appointment.”

“Not with me you didn't. Where's your laminate?”

“I had a meeting with Lady Di.”

“My, aren't we grand. I didn't know she lowered herself to parleying with exiles. Or does your grandfather's name open doors?”

“I've never relied on it,” River said.

“Of course not. Or you wouldn't be a slow horse.”

River didn't care to follow this thread. And the seconds were ticking away. It occurred to him to take out his phone and show this woman the image of Catherine. All he'd have to do was ask her help.

And Security would be kicking down the doors a moment later.

She said suddenly, “How is he?”

Without needing to ask, he knew she'd changed the subject.

“Lamb? Same as ever,” he said.

She laughed. It wasn't an especially happy sound. “I doubt that,” she said.

“Believe me,” River said. “There's been no improvement.”

Twenty minutes now, if that. And he didn't just have to trace the file and photograph its contents, he had to get somewhere he could transmit them, which meant leaving the Park. Anywhere inside these walls, trying to send an attachment out would be sounding a fire alarm.

The couple in the car would have been checked out by now. His own failure to reappear would have been noted. He doubted they'd put the building into lockdown—he was only a slow horse; could easily have got lost—but they'd send people looking, and soon. He had to make a move. But Molly Doran was talking.

“Jackson Lamb's lived so long under the bridge he's half-troll himself now. But you should have met him a lifetime ago.”

“Yeah,” said River. “I bet he was a heartbreaker.”

She laughed. “He was never an oil painting, don't worry about that. But he had something. You're too young and pretty to understand. But a girl could lose her heart to him. Or other parts of her body.”

“About this file.”

“For which you don't have a chitty.”

“Even when he was young, and girls were losing their hearts to him,” River said, “did you ever know him to fill out a form?”

“That's smooth. I like that.” Without warning, Molly rolled forwards, so her chair was back in the aisle. “You get that from your grandfather, I expect.”

“The thing is,” River said. He leaned forward, bending so his mouth was near her ear. “I'm not entirely supposed to be here.”

“You amaze me.”

“But since I had an appointment with Lady Di anyway, and knowing Jackson needed to see this file . . . ”

“You thought you'd kill two birds with one stone.”

“Precisely.”

“Maybe you've picked up a bit of him to go with your grandpa,” Molly said. “Jackson was never one for going round the houses. Not when he could drive a battering ram through them.”

“I told you he was the same as ever.”

“What was the file you wanted?”

He repeated the number. He'd always had a good memory for numbers; he had, too, a good memory for the man on the bridge. He hoped they'd meet again.

“That's curious,” Molly Doran said.

“How so?”

“Slough House is all closed cases and blind alleys, isn't it? Nothing live, nothing contagious. That's what I've always heard.”

“We crunch numbers,” River admitted. “And chase tails. If anything interesting popped up, we'd probably hand it over to the Park.”

“Probably?”

“It hasn't happened yet.”

Fifteen minutes. Or fourteen. Or twelve. He'd studied Molly Doran's face as he gave her the number, but not by the slightest eye movement had she indicated in which direction the file might be found. And without some kind of clue, he could wander round here for hours without coming close. The last kind of system a Molly Doran would have would be one where the numbers explained where they were.

“Then what's happening now?” she asked. “Because this file's most definitely live. What with its subject being the Prime Minister and all.”

Her tone hadn't changed.

Someone walked down the corridor, their heels loud as boots on cobbles. When they paused, River felt his heart do the same. Something hummed and something murmured, and that was the lift door opening. The boots found their way inside, and the hum and murmur repeated themselves in reverse.

All this while, her eyes were breaking him down like Lego.

“Can I tell you the truth?” he said.

“I really don't know,” Molly said. “But it might be interesting finding out.”

“Jackson's in one of his . . . playful moods.”

“He has those,” she agreed.

“Right.”

“About as often as I go jogging.”

“There's a bet involved.”

“That sounds more plausible.”

“He bet me I couldn't find out the PM's schoolboy nickname.”

“And Wikipedia isn't helping?”

“You'd think, wouldn't you? I expect he's got someone wiping it.”

“So a quick glance would be all you need.”

“That's right.”

“And maybe I should turn round while you're doing that. A quick three-pointer.”

“. . . If you like.”

“Well, if I wasn't watching, I wouldn't be involved, would I? So that would save me being your accomplice while you break the Official Secrets Act. And I really can't be doing with a five-year stretch in Holloway. Prison food plays havoc with the digestion, so I've read.”

River didn't have to turn to know they had company. As he felt his arms gripped from behind, and the plastic restraints clip into place, he was conscious mostly of Molly Doran's gaze, which was partly pitying, partly curious, as if his behaviour was beyond anything she could readily understand. And this from a woman familiar with Jackson Lamb, he thought. I must really be in trouble.

She didn't speak again as he was taken, moderately politely, from the room.

When Catherine
heard the padlock being shifted, she sat up on the bed, feet on the floor. Wasn't this how prisoners responded to a rattle on their chain?

She'd thought it would be Bailey again—the young man who'd taken her photo—but it was the second soldier; the one whose presence at the Angel had driven her back onto the streets. Like Sean Donovan, he had the lifetime soldier's way of entering a room: taking it all in in one sweeping glance. Nothing could have changed since the last time he'd been in here, but that was no reason for taking chances. This done, his gaze rested on Catherine.

She waited.

“Sorry about this,” he began.

But he didn't look sorry.

T
ime was, walking up
Slough House's stairs made every day midwinter for Louisa. Now, she carried her own weather with her. Stepping through the yard, pushing open the door that always stuck, didn't affect her. It was a mood she was already part of, wherever she happened to be.

On the first landing she stopped at Ho's office. Ho was at his desk, four flat screens angled in front of him as if he were catching a tan. He was nodding in time to something, which the well-padded earphones dwarfing his head suggested might be music, but could as easily be the binary rhythms of whatever code was conjuring the images swarming on his screens. More than once she'd come into this room and he hadn't even noticed, though he'd configured his workstation for a view of the door: when he was in the zone, if the webheads still said that, it was like he'd relocated to the moon. Because while Roderick Ho was a dick, that was only the most obvious thing about him, not the most important. Most important was, he knew his way round the cybersphere. This was arguably the only thing keeping him alive. If he weren't occasionally useful, Marcus or Shirley would have battered him into a porridge by now.

But today he wasn't on the moon because he was watching her as she stepped into his office. He even pulled his earphones off. That put him in Jane Austen territory, etiquette-wise: Louisa had known him to hold a palm up, as if warding off traffic, if he suspected somebody was about to speak when he was doing something more interesting, like popping a cola can, or preparing to exhale.

He said, “Hello.”

. . . That was weird.

“You feeling all right?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why?”

“No reason. Can you trace Catherine's phone?”

“No.”

“I thought you could do that. GPS. Whatever.”

“I can, but only if it's on. And it's not on.”

“You already tried? Was that your idea?”

He shrugged.

Marcus was standing behind her now; Shirley too. Marcus said, “You didn't find her, then.”

Shirley said, “We didn't find Cartwright either.”

“I can tell,” Louisa said. “Here, you missed a bit.”

She touched her upper lip, and Shirley rubbed her own, obliterating a smudge of ice cream. She scowled at Marcus. “You could have said.”

“Where's the fun in that?”

Ho was watching all this as if it were taking place behind bars. Louisa said to him, “How about River's phone?”

He shrugged again, sulkily this time. “I'd need his number.”

Louisa read it out to him off her own.

Ho said, “Have you got everyone's number in there?”

“No.”

Shirley nudged Marcus.

Ho's fingers started salsa-ing across his keyboard.

Louisa walked to the window. Same view as from hers, but lower down. She thought: when I joined the Service, this was not what I was expecting. The same view every day, with minor variations.

For a while last year that had seemed less important, but like everything else, this had turned out a false reprieve. Life's cruellest trick was letting the light in, just enough so you knew where everything was, then shutting it off without warning. She'd been bumping into the furniture ever since.

Back in her flat, replastered into a section of wall behind her fridge, was a fingernail-sized uncut diamond, booty from a heist she'd helped derail. She had no idea how much it was worth, but couldn't see that it mattered much.

Min, you stupid bastard, why did you have to die?

And then she shut that thought off because there was nowhere it could lead her that would do anyone any good.

Ho finished tapping. “Cartwright's blocked,” he said.

“What do you mean, blocked?”

“His phone's on, but he's somewhere that's scrambling the signal.”

“Like somewhere with thick walls?”

Marcus said, “No, like somewhere with the ability to fuck with GPS.”

“Golly,” said Shirley, who'd been Comms in her pre-Slough House life. “Wonder where that might be?”

The room
he'd been locked in was underground; its only window one-way, and that from the other side. From where River stood it was a mirror. About a metre square, it threw back at him the room's blankness and his own oddly calm exterior. Inside his chest his heart thumped like a little drummer boy: all beat and no tune.

The minutes he'd been counting down were long gone, and their deadline history.
These men have poor impulse control
. . .
Soon they'll be loosening their belts.
He watched his reflected hands curl into fists. He'd made more than one poor choice this morning. Principally, he should have stayed on the bridge and dropped the man off it. Whatever happened to Catherine would have happened anyway, but at least he'd have wiped the smirk off that chancer's face.

And why didn't I do that? he asked himself.

He'd have sat, but there was nowhere to sit. The room was bare; a cube, near enough. There was no handle on the door. There was no visible light fitting either, though the ceiling emitted a steady bluish glow, which lent his reflection an alien cast. Alien, except he belonged here. It was where he'd willed himself, as much as if he'd offered his wrists to Lady Di half an hour ago.
Lock me up
, he should have said.
I'm here to steal, and I don't have a prayer.

There were protocols, and even a slow horse knew them. Slow horses, after all, underwent the same training as any other kind. Threats to fellow officers, actual physical danger, required immediate, official response: the line of command in River's case ran upstairs through Slough House and onto the desk of Jackson Lamb. Who, for all his faults—and that wasn't a short list—would walk through fire for a joe in peril; or make someone walk through fire. By ignoring that, River had stepped across the chalk line, and by bluffing his way into the Park, he'd made things worse twice over.

So they took you in, they trained you up, they prepared you for a life you'd be expected to risk when the occasion demanded, and then they locked you in an office with a view of a bus stop, and made you pour your energy, your commitment, your desire to serve into a sinkhole of never-ending drudgery. Of course he'd gone off reservation. He'd been ripe for it, and whoever had fingered him for this morning's fun and games had known it from the beginning.

Had they also known he'd screw up?

River leaned against a wall, hands on his head, fingers laced, and wondered what his grandfather was going to say. The Old Bastard had steered the Service through the Cold War without ever actually taking the helm—the real power, he'd told River more than once, lay in having one hand on the elbow of whoever was in charge. If not for the O.B. he'd have been out on the pavement after the King's Cross fiasco. But not even his grandfather could protect him this time.

The door opened without warning, and Nick Duffy came in carrying a plastic bucket seat.

Duffy was in charge of the Service's internal police; the Dogs as they were called. The position was more akin to enforcer than executive, and the Dogs were kept on a pretty long leash, so Duffy's role basically meant he could bite whoever he liked, and not expect more than a tap on the nose. The way he slammed the chair down, and the angry squeak its legs made scraping along the floor, suggested he was in a biting mood. The grim smile he summoned for River confirmed it. Other than the chair he'd brought nothing into the room with him, but when he straddled it backwards, the hands he gripped it with were calloused at the knuckles.

But it was the fact that he was wearing a tracksuit that gave River most cause for concern.

Tracksuits were what you wore when things might get messy.

As mornings
go, Dame Ingrid's hadn't been a bad one. Pulling Diana Taverner's tail was always a useful exercise, and sounding her out afterwards had nicely muddied the waters. It was always a good idea to make a predator think you're more vulnerable than you are. When Peter Judd made his inevitable move to stamp his newfound authority onto the Service, Dame Ingrid would at least know where on the battlefield Taverner would be. She'd be right behind Ingrid, looking for her weak spot.

It used to be simpler. There was the Service, and there were the nation's enemies. These changed identity every so often, depending on who'd been elected, deposed or assassinated, but by and large the boundaries were clear: you spied on your foes, kept tabs on the neutrals, and every so often got a chance to fuck up your friends in a plausibly deniable way. A bit like school, but with fewer rules. Nowadays, though, in between monitoring the nation's phone calls and scanning the latest whistle-blower's Twitter feed, geopolitics barely got a look-in. If asked to list the greatest threats to the nation's security, Ingrid Tearney would start with ministers and colleagues. Working out precisely where Ansar al-Islam came seemed little more than academic.

But you worked with what you had. Dame Ingrid was a great believer in occupying the here and now: if the Great Game had deteriorated to the status of the Latest App, so be it. So long as there was a podium for the winner, she knew where she wanted to end up.

On her desk was the usual collection of documents for signing: the minutes of the morning's meeting; various reports from various departments. A memo on top, suggesting she ring Security, had appeared while she'd been out of the room. Security meant internal, so whatever had just happened, it probably wasn't a threat to the nation. She rang downstairs anyway; was put through to the Kennel—the inevitable in-house name for the Dogs' office—and given a twenty-second summary of an off-site agent's incursion into the Park.

“And where is he now?”

“Downstairs. Mr. Duffy's talking to him.”

It was a frequently regretted state of affairs, being talked to by Mr. Duffy.

She said, “Is there any obvious reason for—what was his name?”

“Cartwright. River Cartwright.”

“Any obvious reason for Cartwright's presence?”

“He's Slough House, ma'am.”

“That's context, certainly. I'm not sure it's a reason. Okay, let's let Mr. Duffy deal with it. Have him call me when he's done.”

Cartwright, she thought. Grandson of, if she wasn't mistaken.

She shook her head. Probably nothing.

She'd barely picked her pen up before the phone rang again.

•••

Nick Duffy
said, “Every morning I wake up and think, who's going to mess with my karma today? Because there's always someone. Job like mine, you rarely get the chance to sit back, read the papers and watch the clock till opening time.”

For a moment River had thought Duffy was going to mime the sitting-back part of that, but the older man knew what he was doing. He tilted the chair slightly was all, then let its legs slam back down. River didn't blink. This was pantomime. So far, Duffy hadn't said anything he'd not have said a hundred times before.

“No, because there's always someone got his tit in a wringer, and it's Muggins here has to pry it free. Left your Service card in the pub? Let's have Nick sort it out. Unwise conversation with an over-friendly reptile? Let's see if Nick can't smooth over the traces. Shagged the wrong bit of spare at the embassy disco? Don't worry, Nick'll throw a fright into her minder. You know the type of thing. We have a code for it in the Dogs. We call it the Really Dumb Shit.”

Hoping to short circuit this, River said, “Am I under arrest?”

“So usually, see, I'm just a glorified au pair, making sure everything's tidied away nicely, no lasting ramifications, no nasty surprises in the tabloids. But what do we have today? Something special. Somebody's ambled into the Park on my watch, and thinks they can take the Really Dumb Shit onto a whole new level.”

“Because if I am, I get a phone call, right?”

“And this is a serving agent, I'll grant you, but one with less security clearance than we give the janitors round here. Because the janitors get up close and personal with some nasty crap.” He shifted position suddenly, and River knew he was changing gear. “Whereas you, Mr. Cartwright, of Slough House, Barbican way, the most classified information you're privy to is whether the fifty-six bus is on time or not. And you're only allowed to share that if you get written permission from a superior. Which would be just about anybody, yes? Correct me if I'm wrong.”

River said, “So I don't get a phone call.”

“Of course you don't get a fucking phone call. You'll be lucky to get a blindfold.”

“Because it would be handy to have my phone back. There's something on it you need to see.”

“What I need and what you think I need are likely to be very different things, Cartwright. Let's see if I've got the order of events straight. You waltz into the Park without authorisation. You drag Ms. Taverner out of a meeting, spout crap about Mr. Webb, a colleague who might be incapacitated but, unlike you, remains an officer of good standing—”

“He wasn't standing last time I saw him.”

Duffy paused. “You've been buddying up to Jackson Lamb for too long. That wasn't funny and doesn't help.”

River said, “I came here for a reason.”

“I'm sure you did. But I don't fucking care. You were found in a restricted access area, and according to Molly Doran you were planning on putting your hands on a classified file. A
very
classified file. You know the penalty for breaches of the Official Secrets Act?”

“I didn't breach the Act.”

“Attempted breach. You know the penalty? They're not going to have you picking up litter, Cartwright. This isn't some ASBO offence. You're a member of the Service, a fuck-up member right enough but you carry a card and you're on the books. Which makes what you did not some petty offence; it puts it into the realm of treason. What were you planning on doing with the file?
That's
what I need to know. Who were you planning on selling it to?”