Real Tigers (31 page)

“Is that thing velcroed to your head?” Duffy asked now.

Longridge had taken some heavy blows, and been dragged a few hundred metres across rough ground; the sleeve had been ripped off his sweatshirt, and his right cheek was a mess. He should have lost his cap by now. Duffy leaned down and ripped it from his head. Not velcro but parcel tape, the thick brown kind. Partly fastening the cap to Longridge's head, and partly securing his gun inside it: small revolver, sissy-looking piece, which frankly Longridge should have been ashamed to be carrying.

“You keep your gun in your
hat
?”

“Didn't look there, did they?” Marcus said.

“No, well. I swear, you just can't get the help.”

“Fuck you, man. If you're gonna do it, do it.”

“Okay.”

“Prick.”

“Thanks,” said Nick Duffy. “That makes it easier.”

T
he motorway was quiet
in the way motorways sometimes are, its traffic-buzz little more than static, with only the occasional comet of oncoming headlights. Catherine sat in the front next to Ho; Lamb in the back. They'd left Craig Dunn at the farmhouse, having called—at Catherine's insistence—an ambulance. Lamb was toying with a cigarette, rubbing the filtered end absent-mindedly against his cheek, occasionally losing it in his thinning mat of hair. Catherine had made it clear that if he lit it, he'd be dumped on the hard shoulder.

“This car already stinks like an eighties pub.”

“You could smoke in pubs then?” asked Ho.

Lamb sighed heavily, like an elephant deflating.

“It's a revenge thing,” Catherine went on. “Must be. Dunn's death wasn't an accident.”

“That's quite a leap,” said Lamb.

“Fine. Let's think of another reason they'd be working together. Her brother, her fiancé, and the man supposedly responsible for her death.”

“Tribute band?”

“They must think it was some kind of conspiracy,” Ho said. “Whatever happened to Dunn. And that's why they're after the Grey Books.”

“Roddy,” said Catherine, before Lamb could speak. “They're not really after the Grey Books. That was a ruse. To get them into the place where the Grey Books are kept.”

“. . . You sure?”

“Sean Donovan is a lot of things,” Catherine said, “but he was never a conspiracy nut. Whatever they're looking for, it's not in the Grey Books. They're after proof she was murdered. Murdered by the Service, I mean.”

Lamb said, “They'll be lucky. If it was a Service hit, there won't be an order on file. Tearney's a paper-pusher, but even she wouldn't ask for a receipt for wet work.”

“Then what?”

Lamb stared out of the side window for two minutes, his face squashed into a scowl. When he spoke again, his voice was flat and final. “Tearney didn't come up through the ranks. She's a committee animal; she runs meetings, not joes. Dunn died six years ago. Back then, Tearney wouldn't have known her way under the bridge, certainly not well enough to have someone bump off army personnel. Even just a captain.”

“You mean, it's not Tearney they're after?”

“I mean, if it's Tearney they're after, there's someone else pulling their strings. How'd they know about Slough House, for a start?”

“Oh,” said Catherine.

“Yeah, right. Oh.”

“What?” said Ho.

“Above your pay grade,” Lamb said. “Stop at the next services.”

“We're okay for petrol.”

“It's not the car's fuel I'm worried about,” said Lamb, putting his unlit cigarette in his mouth. “It's mine.”

In their
ears, nothing but ringing. In their eyes a shadow-show; everything silhouetted against everything else.

But it would have been a lot worse if the flash bomb had cleared the cabinet and landed on their side, instead of bouncing back the way it had come.

River, eyes screwed shut, reached out and felt for Louisa.

“Oy. Hands.”

“You okay?”

“Uh-huh. You?”

He nodded, then said, “Uh-huh.” The thing about a flash bomb was, it preceded an attack. But maybe that only happened when you threw it in the right direction.

“And they call us special needs,” he muttered.

“What?”

“We need to get out of here.” He looked at Donovan. “Can you walk?”

Donovan shook his head. His features were glazed with sweat.

“You got another magazine for this thing?”

“Left-hand pocket.”

River fished it out and reloaded. Donovan reached out his hand.

“You're kidding, right?”

“Uh-uh. You two go. Back the way we came in.”

Louisa said, “You're losing blood. I mean really, a lot.”

“So I'll just lie here and bleed quietly. But leave me my gun. I'll deal with the rest of this crew.”

River and Louisa exchanged glances.

Donovan grabbed River by the shirt. “You think we did all this for nothing? Ben knew we might be killed. Well, he's dead. And if that folder stays down here, he died for nothing.”

Louisa said, “I already told you. We're not on your side.”

“You're on theirs?”

“It's not as simple as that.”

“We're only in this because you took Catherine,” River said.

“Then give it to Catherine.” He closed his eyes briefly.

River unpeeled Donovan's fingers from his shirt front.

Louisa peered round the cabinet. A pair of figures were cautiously making their way through the wrecked wall, one holding a gun. She fired once, over their heads, and they scuttled back to safety.

Donovan opened his eyes again. “Give it to Catherine,” he repeated. “And when you do, tell her I'm sorry.”

Louisa said, “Another minute, two at most, they'll try again.”

River said, “We'll have to carry him.”

“Like hell you will.” Donovan reached for River again, but River batted his hand away. “You try taking me anywhere, I'll resist. How far do you think you'll get?”

“You seriously want to die?”

“I seriously want that information out there in the light.”

“Louisa?”

She said, “If he won't come willingly, none of us'll make it.”

“If we take the gun, he's dead for sure. And if there's anyone between us and the exit, they can't be armed. Or they'd have made a play by now.”

Louisa said, “There'll be more of them up top.”

“You think?”

“Don't you?”

River said, “Yeah, probably. But they're not all armed.”

“They don't all have to be,” she said. “One'll do.”

“Your call,” he said.

She looked at Donovan, then back at River. “Oh, for Christ's sake. Leave him the gun,” she said.

“Prick.”

“Thanks,” Nick Duffy said. “That makes it easier.”

The windscreen of the van collapsed inwards in a storm of metal.

Marcus arched his back and kicked out with both bound feet, catching Duffy mid-chest: he flew backwards into the van's rear doors, which opened to spill him onto the ground. His gun disappeared in the dark just as the tumbling klieg light completed its bounce off the roof of the van. With a loud crash the floodlight shattered in a shower of glass. Marcus lay on his back, legs in the air, and tried to ease himself through the loop of his cuffed hands. It was like performing yoga on a bus. He focused on the mess on the sidepanels, the smear of brain matter oozing floorwards.
Do this now, in the next three seconds, or that's what your future looks like.
It was all about taking control again, being in charge of the situation. But he couldn't even take charge of his own damn legs, and he was still caught in that position, bound hands locked behind his arse, legs in the air like a chicken, when a figure leaped through the open back doors of the van, wielding a gun.

He blinked, ready to die.

“Found this,” Shirley said, her voice bright.

Then she said, “Ha! What do you look like?”

The domino-collapse
of the shelves had been halted halfway, where the crates had blocked their fall. Getting that far was a scramble over tumbled boxes, files, a snowdrift of paper; not an easy journey to undertake without a lot of noise. When Louisa tripped on a length of wood River risked looking back. Their view of the doorway was obscured by the fallen cabinet, but Donovan had hauled himself upright, gun at the ready. Horatio at the bridge, River thought, pulling Louisa to her feet. He couldn't remember what had happened to Horatio. He got to be a hero, but that was true of a lot of dead folk.

“You okay?”

“Yes.” Short sharp answer. “Run.”

They'd reached the back half of the room, where the crates were still in ordered rows; crates containing God only knew what. More documents, more relics of a covert history. Conscious of being in a narrow aisle, a straightforward target for anyone at either end, they took it at a gallop, and had almost reached the far doors when they heard the first shots. River dived for cover; Louisa kept moving, throwing herself into a dive at the last moment, hitting the doors, sliding through them, head and shoulder first. The doors swung shut behind her. She rolled onto her back. A Black Arrow stood over her, a truncheon in his hand. He raised it to bring it down upon her. She, in turn, raised the gun in her hands, the gun she was only half-sure was empty, and pointed it at his face.

“Don't,” she said.

“. . . You don't either.”

“I won't. So long as you drop that and go.”

He hesitated a moment longer, probably weighing the truth of her words more than he was his own chances. Then he sagged at the knees slightly, let the truncheon drop to the floor, and made for the doors. He opened them just as River pushed through from the other side, and for a moment the two stared at each other in crazed horror. Then the Black Arrow was gone, back inside the chaos of the storage room.

“I knew there was one behind us,” said River.

“Yeah, well. You were right.”

“Nice bluff.”

“If I was bluffing,” she muttered, holding the possibly empty, possibly not gun two-handed as they headed down the corridor, towards Douglas's room, and its hatchway to the world.

“It was
Duffy.”

“
Nick
Duffy?”

“Nick Duffy.”

“Nick Duffy, Head Dog?”

“Jesus, Shirley, how many ways you want to say it? It was Nick Duffy, Head Dog. Either he's gone way off reservation, or we've walked into a mop-up.”

She had severed his bonds with the jagged half of a CD (“Lucky you found that.” “Yeah. Lucky.”), and the first thing Marcus had done was grab his cap and peel his revolver free. He felt happier with a gun in his hand. Less happy thinking about the possibility this was a mop-up.

Shirley said, “Those Black Arrows aren't Service issue. They're not trained and they don't bounce.”

“Let's get out of here.”

They ran for the cover of the skip, ran in a half-crouch, expecting to be fired upon. But no shots came.

“You tipped the light onto the van,” he said, stating the obvious.

“It's what Nelson would have done.”

“That was smart.”

“For a cokehead, you mean?”

“Wanna bet?”

She grinned.

“That's Duffy's gun?” Marcus asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Which way did he go?”

“Not sure. I was avoiding tumbling debris.”

He peered round the edge of the skip, towards the block bordering the railway line.

Shirley said, “If it's a mop-up, it's a half-arsed one. Like I said, these Arrows are strictly part-time. And they don't have guns.”

“Some do,” Marcus said. “Duffy did. And that kid in the van was shot.”

“Well, okay, some do. But most of them have scattered. Should we take the other light down?”

Marcus looked at it, twenty yards away. “It's aimed at that building.” The factory. “At that hole in its wall.”

“Must be where the entrance is. Wanna take a look?”

“What I want,” Marcus said, “is to find Duffy.”

“Separate ways?”

“Be careful.”

They bumped fists, and split.

•••

Lamb walked
away from the pumps, round the side of the 24/7—DVDs, overpriced groceries, and pornographic magazines wrapped in coloured plastic—and lit his cigarette leaning against the free air dispenser. He checked his phone for messages: nothing. Which meant that whatever Cartwright and Guy were up to, either they hadn't finished yet, or it had all gone fine, or it had all gone badly wrong.

Gonna be a lot of empty desks at Slough House in that case.

He was unsurprised when Catherine Standish appeared behind him.

“They'll be okay,” she said.

He put his phone away. “Who will?”

“Sean Donovan's an angry man,” she said. “But it's not us he's angry with.”

“Yeah, he's already killed one man today. Remind me not to piss him off.” He dropped his cigarette and immediately produced another. “He gave you booze, didn't he?”

Catherine turned her gaze on him, her face expressionless.

Lamb said, “I could smell it, soon as I came through the door.”

“I'm surprised you can smell anything, the fags you get through.”

“What can I tell you? I'm highly sensitive.” He leaned towards her, nostrils twitching, then pulled back. “Only I'm not getting anything now.”

“Lucky you. When's the last time you changed your shirt?”

“No need to get personal. That's typical of you spinsters. Once you're past the menopause, you think you can get away with saying anything.”

She sighed. “Is there a point you're trying to make, Jackson? Because what I really want to do is get home and have a bath.”

“Did you drink it?”

“Did I drink it? You've just finished telling me you're ‘not getting anything.' I took that to mean your highly developed sense of smell can detect no whiff of alcohol.”

These last words delivered in a precise, schoolmistressy tone; a warning sign, if Lamb had cared to heed it.

“Yes, well, maybe you stuck your head under a tap or something. You alcoholics can be cunning, I've learned that much.”

“Anything you've learned about alcoholics is self-taught. Would you mind giving it a rest now? I'm tired.”

“Only he was one of your drinking buddies back in the day, wasn't he? Sean Donovan. That why he left you a bottle? Old times' sake?”

She said, “What are you after, Jackson?”

“Just concerned you're not about to have a relapse. Don't want to arrive at the office to find you naked and covered in vomit. Which is what we were expecting when you didn't show this morning, point of fact.”