Real Tigers (18 page)

“But evidently his plan backfired,” Marcus said.

“Silver linings,” Lamb agreed. “His old chum Monteith is tomorrow's compost, but you, you lucky devils, live to play another day. Because guess what? Now the tigers have eaten their owner, they've got a whole new agenda, and it turns out you're on it. Slough House just went live. The four of you are up.”

“There are five of us,” Ho pointed out.

“Oh, are you here too? Put the kettle on, there's a good lad. I'm parched.”

Ho chuckled.

No one joined in.

Ho dragged himself reluctantly out of his chair, and shuffled off to the kitchen.

“‘Up'?” Marcus said.

Lamb said, “Ever heard of the whackjob files?”

“It's what they call the Grey Books,” River said.

“Might have known you'd know. One of grandad's bedtime stories, was it? Go on, then. Floor's yours.”

River said, “They're the records the Service keeps on conspiracy theories. 9/11, 7/7, the Lockerbie bombing, WMDs—they're a paranoid's treasure-chest.”

“And don't forget the creepy shit,” Lamb said.

“Right,” said River. “Downing Street's run by lizards, the Royal Family are aliens, UFOs visit regularly, and the Soviet Union never really collapsed and has been running the world since '89.”

“And these are official records?” Marcus said. “Seriously?”

River said, “They're an overview of what's out there. Back in the war it was noticed that improved communications don't just let information travel faster, they let bullshit off the leash too. There was a rumour about Churchill being assassinated and replaced by a double, it went what we'd call viral today. And damaged morale.”

“Disinformation,” Louisa said.

“Except this is the crap people make up for themselves,” said River. “And with the internet, you can have a paranoid fantasy at breakfast and a cult following by teatime. Anyway, the Service learned long ago that when you know what people are prepared to believe, it makes it easier to bury uncomfortable truths. Hence the Grey Books.”

“So some of it's
true
?” said Shirley.

Louisa, thinking aloud, said, “Throw enough darts, you're bound to hit the board.”

“Uh-huh,” River said. “A couple of years ago, if you'd suggested that western intelligence agencies were hoovering up people's emails, you'd have been laughed at.”

“So some of it's true,” said Shirley.

River shrugged. “Even the complete bullshit, it's useful to know who's buying into it. Because they're the type might decide to strap on a suicide belt and pop down the local shopping centre. So if it's out there, the Service keeps track. Monitors, records, stores.”

“And I thought we had dipshit jobs.”

“It's mostly outsourced. There are people happily spend their lives paddling about the internet, researching bonkers theories. The Service keeps a few on retainer. It's like having ready-trained dung beetles.”

“Doesn't sound too secure,” Marcus objected.

“Well. They're probably not told they're doing it for MI5.”

“They probably think they are, though.”

“But who's gonna listen to a twenty-four-carat nerd?”

“Speaking of which,” said Lamb.

Ho paused in the doorway, mug in hand. “What?”

“Never mind.” Lamb took the tea and used a surviving software package for a coaster. Ho swallowed an objection, and resumed his seat. “So, now you know. The tinfoil-hat tomes, bedtime reading for teenage boys and middle-aged virgins. Thank God we won the Cold War, eh?”

“What's any of this got to do with us?” Louisa asked.

“It's what they want. Monteith's so-called tiger team.” Lamb scratched an armpit, then slid his hand under his buttocks. “They want the whackjob files, and you're going to help them get them.”

“Why us?” said River.

“Well, we've established they're fucking idiots,” Lamb said. “Who else they gonna call?”

Marcus said, “And where are they kept? These files.”

“I'm so glad you asked.” Lamb levered himself out of the chair a few inches, and hovered. They braced themselves. Then he shook his head, and lowered back down. “Not gonna happen,” he said. Then: “Yeah, where are the files? Go find out, will you?”

“Can't Ho do that?”

“You've changed your tune. Weren't you calling him a useless twit this morning?” He looked at Ho. “His words. Not mine.”

Ho nodded gratefully.

“‘Twat,' I told him. You're a useless
twat
.” He looked back at Marcus. “You still here?” Now he pointed a finger at Shirley. “And you go keep him company, or whatever it is you do round here.” He aimed the finger at River next. “And as for you—”

“Can't Ho do it?” River said.

“Ho, Ho, Ho,” Lamb said. “It's like Santa's ghetto round here.”

“Grotto.”

“
Gesundheit
. As for you, and also you”—including Louisa—“go find out who's behind this tiger team. He's the one we're dealing with. All clear?”

A monstrous fart erupted without warning.

“Ah, good. I was worried that was trapped. Right, fuck off, the lot of you. Back here with answers, five sharp.”

This addition to the atmosphere made them glad to troop out, but Lamb called Louisa back. “You ran online interference last year, right? Loitering in restrooms?”

“Chat rooms.”

“Whatever. When you've worked out who our Mr. X is, see if you can find his footprints in any of the likely places. Bananas hang in bunches, so maybe he's been seeking company. He wants the whackjob files. Be good to know why.”

Louisa said, “You do realise, whoever he is, he probably doesn't use his own name online?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Well, it's a bit like looking for a car without knowing the make, colour or registration.”

“If you're not challenged, you won't grow.”

Louisa stared.

Lamb shrugged. “I get emails from HR. Some crap's bound to rub off.”

“How deep is the Park into this?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Whenever we get mixed up in one of Diana Taverner's schemes, somebody gets hurt.”

“I hope you're not questioning my judgement.”

“Just an opinion.”

“Well, you know what they say,” said Lamb. “Opinions are like arseholes.” He showed yellow teeth. “And yours stinks.”

When Louisa left, he turned to Ho, who was staring sullenly at his screens. “Ready to do some real work for a change?”

“. . . Suppose.”

“There's a good little monitor monkey.”

He told Ho what he wanted.

•••

It was
the heat. It was the heat and the bottle, but mostly the heat.

But also mostly the bottle.

Catherine was hungry but couldn't eat, because eating would disturb the unity of the tray. If she ate the sandwich, the apple or the flapjack, or drank the water, she would bring the wine into focus, so it was best if she left things as they were, allowing the wine to blend into the background. If she continued not to notice it, its threat would be neutralised. It would offer no danger.

She had run a bath a while ago—what kind of kidnapping was this, where they served you drinks in an en suite prison?—but the action had dredged up unwanted images, because the bath was where she'd found Charles Partner's body. A shot to the temple was not as neat as it could be made to sound. The contents of a head were untidy when displaced. She let the water drain away, and wearing only her slip returned to the bedroom, where the tiny bottle of Pinot waited like a hand grenade.

Partner had called her Moneypenny occasionally, an offhand note of affection. She had been sober for some time when he killed himself, and had remained sober ever since. So why did the wine bother her now?

No sober day is wasted.

A familiar thought—it was a bedtime mantra, a grace note on which to end her days. No sober day is wasted, meaning that whatever else she'd done or failed to do on any given day, there was always this achievement to reflect on in the violet hour. Every sober day was one more to her total, and though she did not keep a tally in the manner of many recovering alcoholics, she did not need to: each individual day was the only one worth counting, because the present was where she lived.

It occurred to her now, though, that her mantra had another aspect. If no sober day was wasted, then nobody could take one from her. Even if today brought a slip, the total would stay the same. All that would happen was that she would not be adding to it. It was like money in the bank. If you missed making a deposit, that didn't mean the sum grew smaller.

She returned to the bathroom to splash water on her face. Perhaps she should eat the apple, drink the water. The wine would remain camouflaged by the sandwich and whatever it was, the flapjack. What kind of kidnappers brought flapjacks? It was beyond absurd. She could mix the wine with the water; it would barely be noticeable. Like taking medicine. And then it would be gone, and she need think of it no more.

There was no mirror in which to talk herself down. Look herself in the eye, and ask what she thought she was doing.

And really, she was past this stage. No alcoholic, she knew, was ever past this stage, but in the comfort of her own head she allowed herself to believe she was, in the same way that her colleagues allowed themselves to believe that their careers might yet revive. Because belief was not about actually believing; belief was simply somewhere to shelve hope. But in her own defence, she had passed every test she had set herself, or been set. For some time, Jackson Lamb had been in the habit of pouring her a glass of whisky when they sat in his office at night. She had never yet succumbed, but often wondered what his reaction would be if she did. She thought he would snatch the glass away. Perhaps all that meant was, she hoped he would. But she suspected that he enjoyed testing the limits of other people's survival instincts, probably because his own had been subjected to rigorous examination over the years. The forms this had taken, she'd never heard him speak about—a thought she'd once had about Lamb was that when they'd pulled the Wall down he'd built himself another, and had been living behind it ever since. Hard to understand another human once they'd bricked themselves up like that. So she might be right, might be wrong: it was possible that when Lamb tempted her, it was because he wanted her to fall. The important thing to remember was that she'd not yet done so.

Besides, one night—the odds were in her favour—he'd run out of booze, and be forced to reclaim the glass he'd poured her. That was going to be sweet. And once he'd drunk that, she'd fetch the bottle she kept in her desk drawer, provided he hadn't found and drunk it before the opportunity presented itself. That, too, would be a kind of victory. Though of course, to aim for victory would be to admit she was playing the game.

Back in the bedroom the bottle of wine sat waiting for her, obdurate on its untouched tray, and shimmering in the heat.

C
aviar had been on
the menu at Anna Livia Plurabelle's, and while Judd had refrained from indulging, now, as he brushed a vacant bench with a rolled-up copy of the
Standard
, he recalled an article he'd read on how the roe was harvested. Sturgeon were big fish, four foot long, and kept in tanks significantly smaller than that. When their time came, they were dispatched by hand, this, apparently, ensuring minimal damage to the roe. Given the size of the fish, those tasked with its demise tended towards the muscular, as well as—by implication—the violent. The resulting image had been indelible: stocky bruisers, sleeves rolled up, punching fish to death. Thuggery run riot in the kitchens of the rich.

The article had been intended to inspire shock, but Judd had barely managed surprise. That a delicacy for the pampered was acquired through brutality was hardly news. By any civilised standard, it was how luxury ought to be measured—wealth meant nothing if it didn't create suffering. Because the standard liberal whine that the rich were cushioned from life's harsh realities was laughable ignorance: the rich created those realities, and made sure they kept on happening. That was what kitchens were for, along with prisons, factories and public transport.

So the rich, by which he meant the powerful, took messy violence in their stride—it was the cost of doing business—which was one of the reasons Peter Judd hadn't wasted time grieving the loss of his school friend. The traditional press, hanging on Twitter's coat-tails, was no doubt picking up the threads of the story now, and he'd be called on to comment: pointless to deny there was a delicious irony in an old chum of the Home Secretary falling victim to public savagery. But he'd never had difficulty in counterfeiting anger or remorse—
appalling barbarism, whose perpetrators, I am confident, will feel the full might of British justice
—so wasn't fazed by the prospect, and wouldn't lose sleep over Sly's death either. People died. It happened. How Monteith's dropping the ball affected his own game plan mattered more to Judd right now.

Satisfied the bench was as clean as it was going to get, he sat. It was shaded by trees set in a railinged square, which wasn't actually square at all but oblong: near Praed Street, not far from Paddington, and off the refined map. Hotels lined each side, but they were for downscale foreign tourists or out-of-town businessmen, neither of whom were likely to be haunting the area in the early afternoon. This made it a safe spot for a one-off meeting, and while waiting for this to happen, Judd paged through the
Standard
. As usual, he featured within, which was good news—the day the Mickey Mouse papers ignored him, he'd know his career was over. What it actually said didn't matter. So long as it carried a photo, he was golden.

He heard the clacking of her heels on the path a full minute before she appeared.

Judd rolled the paper again, and used it to tap the space on the bench next to him. “It's reasonably dirt-free,” he said. Then added, “The bench, I mean. Not this rag.”

“I'd rather stand.”

“Would you? Would you really? Well, how very nice for you.” His tone slipped from penthouse to pavement. “But when I say sit, you sit.”

Diana Taverner sat.

•••

Sean Patrick
Donovan.

That was the name River found, a recent recruit to Black Arrow; hired as Chief Officer i/c Strategy-Operations, a suitably pseudo-military title for one of these outfits—River had no trouble imagining a bunch of Territorial Army vets, Prison Service rejects and ex-community coppers making up the ground crew. Probably unjust but he hurt almost everywhere, Nick Duffy's blows having had the cartoon-like quality of spreading the pain of their impact outwards, until every available inch felt tender and ill-used. His grip on his mouse tightened, but he had to keep thoughts of vengeance at bay, focus on the task at hand—Sean Patrick Donovan.

The name hadn't been hard to come by: Sly Monteith had announced it in a release to the trade press back in February—
delighted to announce
and
formidable experience in the armed forces
, etc etc. A brief online trawl revealed that Donovan's
formidable experience
included a stretch in a military prison prior to dishonourable discharge, a fact that received significantly less coverage. There was a photo, Donovan and another appointee, Benjamin Traynor, flanking their new boss, a champagne flute between two pint mugs. Neither of them cracking a smile, though Monteith's superior expression more than made up.
Look at my dancing bears
, thought River. Well, he'd had that smirk wiped off his face good and proper.

Ex-army; high rank; hard time. That ticked a lot of boxes as far as River was concerned: there might be other suspects, but this one would do to start with. He winced as another flash of pain lit up his body's circuitry, bit down until it passed away, then emailed what he'd found to the other slow horses, yards away.

Long past
the hour Marcus Longridge mumbled something about getting lunch, and slipped out of the office pretending not to hear Shirley Dander's response, which involved a chicken baguette. The yard smelled worse than ever; the street was hot as hell. In the bookies by the station he filled out a betting slip for the 3:20 at Towcester, which he'd diligently researched under cover of work, and while he waited stood and glared at the tin bastard of a roulette machine. It kind of looked alive, with a demon's eyes and grinning mouth . . . Wrapped up in this, Marcus forgot to follow the race, and glanced up just in time to catch the closing moments, which was like being sucker-punched by a supermodel: a beautiful moment nearly like pain. £160, straight to his trouser pocket. A sweet return on twenty quid.

He collected his winnings and patted the machine on his way out; insult to injury.

Marcus could, and should, have gone straight back to Slough House, but he was buoyed by success. This was the turning point he'd been waiting for. And there was a row of Boris Bikes over the road . . . He thought: what the hell. Quicker than tubing it. Excavating his debit card from his newly thickened wallet, he released one from its rack. Regent's Park, here he came.

Louisa Guy
tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, briefly tugged at her blouse to fan her skin; suffered a brief, unasked-for memory of last night's stand—a bachelor pad in the worst sense, with month-old sheets and dishes in the sink, but still: enthusiastic and vigorous sex, leading to three hours' dreamless oblivion—and shook her upper body once, refusing to allow Lamb's gibe headspace.

Here's me thinking you'd been banging your brains out every night, and it turns out they're still functioning.

Which they were, but seriously, she didn't need brains for the task Lamb had set her. She needed blind faith and the devil's luck.

Roderick Ho abhorred Google, Yahoo, Bing and all the other popular engines: they searched, he claimed, less than 0.5 percent of the internet's contents, and he'd sooner eat a vegan pizza than use them. But since Louisa would sooner bake him one than ask him for a tutorial on the Dark Web, they were all she had to rely on. Still, what else was she going to do? Sean Patrick Donovan was her target, if Cartwright's guess was on the money. Closing down all other programs, in the hope this would free up enough space to allow her ancient machine some speed, she set to work.

Conspiracy theorists, she knew, were paranoid by definition, and usually with good reason—they were indeed being watched, largely because they were standing on an upturned bucket, haranguing the sheeple about their wingnut delusions. For months the previous year she had monitored message boards for suggestions of terrorist activity, and while she'd never entirely thrown off the suspicion that every other poster she encountered was an undercover cop, she'd grown used to eavesdropping on tin-hat conversations, from how the government was controlling the weather to the thought-experiments carried out on anyone who rang HMRC help lines. And all of these philosophers, without exception, were convinced they were under surveillance, their every online foray or mobile chat recorded and stored for future use. That this was probably true was an irrelevance, of course; they were simply caught in the same net as everyone else. Louisa had never trapped a terrorist; never stopped a bomb. She'd read a lot of discussions about 9/11, obviously, but contributions from structural engineers had been conspicuous by their absence. And while the help-line thing was probably true, that was just the law of averages at work.

And speaking of paranoia, how did Lamb know what she got up to outside work?

It didn't matter. Was just the law of averages again. Sod him, anyway.

The point was, anonymity was the paranoid's cloak—during her months treading those boards, Louisa hadn't come across anything remotely resembling a real name. Donovan could be venting three times daily on a host of sites, and if his username was SpaceRanger69, she'd never know about it. But Lamb had spoken. So here she was.

“Getting anywhere?”

Jesus
!
How did he do that?

Suppressing the start he'd given her, she said, “Give me a break. I've only been at it five minutes.”

“Huh.” Lamb came into the office, sniffing the air suspiciously. “Why does this room smell of cheese?”

“It doesn't. What have you got Ho on?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you'd be better off him doing this.”

“Shame he's busy, then.” Lamb peered out the window at a passing bus, then rested his buttocks on the sill.

“You going to watch me all afternoon?”

“Is that how long it's going to take?”

“We don't even know for sure it's Donovan we're after.”

“No. But we'll look stupid if we ignore him, and it turns out he took Catherine.”

“What's Ho working on?”

“Above your pay grade.”

“That reminds me.” Louisa found a receipt on her desktop. “Taxi fares from this morning.”

“Yeah, you might have to wait a while. I've been getting grief about the expenses you lot claim.” He stood.

She said, “Is this all on the level? Or is something going on we don't know about?”

“I think it's safe to assume there's always something going on you don't know about,” Lamb said.

He was nearly out the door when Louisa said, “Catherine.”

“What about her?”

“Nothing. You called her Catherine, that's all.”

“Huh.”

Louisa settled back to her impossible task.

Five minutes later, she'd cracked it.

Do something
,
is what Longridge had said.
You want to impress women, make a mark, you have to do something
.

So here he was: doing something.

Just so long as it's not sitting at a screen crunching
. . . data.

Well, okay, crunching data is what he was doing, but still: it was what the moment demanded.

Roderick Ho paused to chug what was left of his Red Bull, then tossed the empty can at his wastepaper basket. It dropped neatly in, confirming what he already knew: that he was a superstar.

Crunching data, Longridge had said. As if this was something just anyone could do.

There were three properties registered to Black Arrow, one of which was a flat in Knightsbridge, clearly for Sylvester Monteith's own use, not that Monteith needed much room any more. His next lodging would be about the size of a fridge. The other two properties were larger, functional: Google Earth showed Ho they were both on industrial estates, one on the outskirts of Swindon, the other in Stratford, East London. The day the images were captured, there were seven vans visible at the former; three at the latter. These were black, rugged-looking trucks, with windowless panels on which the firm's logo was displayed, a black arrow in a yellow circle, and looked more substantial than the prefabbed buildings they were arrayed outside. Monteith chummed up to cabinet ministers, but his business didn't look blue chip. Ho printed off screenshots, left them in the tray, and focused on Monteith's personal life.

All the things kept behind firewalls—bank accounts and mortgage details; shopping baskets, mailboxes, porn domains, insurance payments—they were all low-hanging fruit. Passwords were made to be captured, and a basic crossword-solving algorithm could lay bare a life's secrets in the time it took to microwave what was left of a lunchtime pizza. So that's what Ho did while his privacy-shredding program ran the numbers on everything Sylvester Monteith wasn't using any more, beginning with where he'd kept his money, then running through what he'd spent it on. The pizza was a Four Seasons. Monteith's life was an open book. He had his wife and children; he had his business; he took holidays; he kept a mistress. Discovering how much each had cost him was just a matter of parsing his credit card statements. Crunching . . .
data
—yeah, right. This was something, and here he was, doing it.

And as he was doing it, Ho thought about what Lamb had said about Louisa banging her brains out. That had been cruel. Louisa was currently single. If she had a boyfriend, she'd talk about him: something Ho had learned not just from Mama Internet, but from listening to women talk—on tubes, on buses, in bars, on the streets. Granted they weren't actually talking to Ho, but he had ears and facts were facts, and the ones with boyfriends never shut up about it . . . No, Lamb had been way off base, but Ho had to admit: the thought of Louisa banging her brains out was one he'd return to later, back home.

Meanwhile, he was accessing hard intel.

On one of Black Arrow's business accounts nestled a reference to
temp. prop
.—a substantial payment two months back, and another for half that amount on the same day of the following month. A deposit plus rental, Ho surmised. Temporary property. Lots of reasons why a security firm might want temporary possession of a property, especially—this was a few moves later, back on Google Earth—especially one out in the long grass, somewhere north of High Wycombe; a three-storey building with a few barn-like structures nearby, and there, slap in the middle of a courtyard, what looked like—and indeed was—a double-decker London bus.