Slow Horses (12 page)

‘Meaning what he believed in came as no surprise to those around him.’

‘Of course it didn’t.’ River’s grandfather leant back in his chair for the first time since his bathroom excursion. A distant look filmed his eyes, and River had the impression he was looking into the past, when he’d fished in similar waters. ‘So you be careful if you’re thinking about going off reservation. The company Hobden kept before his fall from grace is a lot less savoury than the type he’s mixed with since.’

‘I’m not running a game. I’m not going off reservation.’ Did every occupation come with its own language? ‘And Hobden’s of no interest. Don’t worry, old man. I’m not heading for trouble.’

‘Call me that again and you will be.’ Sensing a natural end to the conversation, River started making the movements you make when you’re ready to leave, but his grandfather hadn’t finished. ‘And I don’t worry. Well, I do, but there’s precious little point in it. You’ll do what you’re going to do, and nothing I say’ll steer you on to any other course.’

River felt a pang. ‘You know I always listen—’

‘It’s not a complaint, River. You’re your mother’s son, that’s all.’ He gave a low chuckle at whatever expression washed across River’s face. ‘You think you get it from me, don’t you? I wish I could claim the credit.’

‘You raised me,’ River said. ‘You and Rose.’

‘But she had you till you were seven. She could have taught the Jesuits a thing or two. Heard from her lately?’

This last thrown in casually, as if they were discussing a former colleague.

River said, ‘Couple of months ago. She called from Barcelona to remind me I’d missed her birthday.’

The O.B. threw his head back, and laughed with genuine amusement. ‘There you go, boy. That’s how you do it. Set your own agenda.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ River told him.

The old man caught his elbow as River bent to kiss his cheek goodbye. ‘Be more than careful, lad. You don’t deserve Slough House. But make a mess trying to break out, and nothing anyone says will save your career.’

Which was as close as his grandfather had ever come to admitting he’d put a word in after the King’s Cross fiasco.

‘I’ll be careful,’ he repeated, and left to catch his train.

He was still thinking about that the following morning.
I’ll be careful
. How many times did you hear that, immediately before somebody had an accident?
I’ll be careful
. But there was nothing careful about the memory stick in his pocket; nothing accidental about its being in his possession. The only careful thing he’d done so far was not look at it.

Doing that would make him privy to information closed to Sid Baker; probably even to Spider Webb. It would give him an edge, make him feel a full-fledged spook again. But it could also get him banged up. What was the word the O.B. had used? Excommunicated …
There are certain beliefs you should keep under wraps if you want to dine at High Table.
River was a long way from High Table, but there was further to fall. And if he got caught with the stick in his possession, he’d fall all right.

Though if that happened, everyone would assume he’d read what was on the stick anyway …

His thoughts chased backwards and forwards. A guilty conscience was the worst thing to be wearing. Climbing the stairs at Slough House, he had to fix his expression into whatever it usually was, this time of the morning:
When you need to act natural, don’t think about what you’re doing
. An old lesson.
Think about anything else. Think about the last book you read
. He couldn’t remember the last book he’d read. But whether the effort of trying to do so made him look less or more natural he never found out, because no one was interested in River’s state of mind that morning.

Roderick Ho’s office door was open, so River saw from the landing that everyone was gathered there: an unprecedented event. But at least they weren’t talking to each other. Instead, all were staring at Ho’s monitor, the largest in the building. ‘What is it?’ River asked, but hardly needed to. Stepping inside he could make out, over Ho’s shoulder, a badly lit cellar, an orange-clad figure on a chair with a hood over its head. Gloved hands held up an English newspaper, which was shaking. This made sense. Nobody ever sat in a badly lit cellar holding the day’s newspaper for a camera without feeling fear.

‘Hostage,’ said Sid Baker, without looking away from the screen.

River stopped himself from saying
I can see that
. ‘Who is it? Who are they?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘What
do
we know?’

Sid said, ‘They’re going to cut his head off.’

Chapter 5

Not everyone had been in Ho’s office when River got there. How had he failed to register Jackson Lamb’s absence? Before long this was rectified: a heavy thump on the stair; a loud growling noise which could only have emanated from a stomach. Lamb could move quietly when he wanted, but when he didn’t, you knew he was coming. And now he didn’t so much enter Ho’s office as take possession of it; breathing heavily, saying nothing. On the monitor, the same absence of event: a gloved, hooded boy in an orange jumpsuit, holding the English newspaper with its back page showing. It took a moment for River to register that he’d reached that conclusion—that the figure was a boy.

A thought interrupted by Lamb. ‘It’s not nine o’clock and you’re watching torture porn?’

Struan Loy said, ‘When would be a good time to watch—’

‘Shut up,’ Sid Baker told him.

Lamb nodded. ‘That’s a plan. Shut up, Loy. This live?’

‘Coming over as a live feed,’ Ho said.

‘There’s a difference?’

‘Do you really want to hear about it?’

‘Good point. But that’s today’s paper.’ Lamb nodded again, approving his own deductive brilliance. ‘So if it’s not live, it’s not far off. How’d you pick it up?’

‘From the blogs,’ Sid said. ‘It appeared about four.’

‘Any prologue?’

‘They say they’re going to cut his head off.’

‘They?’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t know yet. Grabs the attention, though.’

‘Have they said what they want?’

Sid said, ‘They want to cut his head off.’

‘When?’

‘Forty-eight hours.’

‘Why forty-eight?’ asked Lamb. ‘Why not seventy-two? Three days, is that so much to ask?’

Nobody dared ask what his problem was. He told them anyway.

‘It’s always one day or three. You get twenty-four hours, or seventy-two. Not forty-eight. You know what I already hate about these tossers?’

‘They can’t count?’ River suggested.

‘They’ve no sense of tradition,’ Lamb said. ‘I don’t suppose they’ve said who the little blind mouse is, either?’

Roderick Ho said, ‘The beheading threat came over the blogs, along with the link. And the deadline. No other info. And there’s no volume on the feed.’

Through all of this, none of them had taken their eyes off the screen.

‘Why so shy?’ Lamb wondered. ‘If you’re cutting somebody’s head off, you’re making a point. But if you don’t tell anybody why you’re doing it, it’s not going to help your cause, is it?’

‘Cutting heads off doesn’t help anyone’s cause,’ Sid objected.

‘It does if your cause involves chopping people’s heads off. Then you’re preaching right at your niche market.’

Ho said, ‘What difference does it make who they are? They’re Al Qaeda, whatever they call themselves. Sons of the Desert. Sword of Allah. Wrath of the Book. They’re all Al Qaeda.’

There was another late entry: Jed Moody, his coat still on. ‘You’ve heard?’

‘We’re watching it now.’

Kay White started to say something, but changed her mind. In a more cruel mood, everyone present would have marked this down as a first.

River said, ‘So what do we do?’

Lamb said, ‘Do?’

‘Yes. What do we do?’

‘We get on with our jobs. What did you think we did?’

‘For Christ’s sake, we can’t just act like this isn’t happening—’

‘No?’

The short, sharp word punctured River’s balloon.

Lamb’s voice became flat and unimaginative. The boy on the monitor, the hood on his head, the newspaper he held—it might have been a screensaver.

He said, ‘Did you think the Batphone was about to go off, Lady Di shouting all hands on deck? No, we’ll watch it on telly like everyone else. But we won’t
do
anything. That’s for the big boys, and you lot don’t play with the big boys. Or had you forgotten?’

Nobody said anything.

‘Now, you’ve got papers to shuffle. Why are we all in this room?’

So one by one everybody left, except Ho and Moody, whose room it was. Moody hung his raincoat on the back of the door. He didn’t speak, and Ho wouldn’t have answered if he had.

Lamb stood a moment longer. His upper lip was flecked with an almond croissant’s sugary dust, and as he watched the computer monitor, on which nothing happened that hadn’t been happening for the past several minutes, his tongue discovered this seam of sweetness and gathered it in. But his eyes remained oblivious of what his tongue was doing, and if Ho or Moody had turned his way, what they saw might have startled them.

For a short while, the overweight, greasy has-been burned with cold hard anger.

Then he turned, and plodded upstairs to his office.

* * *

In his own room River booted up, then sat silently cursing the time his computer took to flicker into life. He was barely aware of Sid Baker arriving, and jumped when she spoke:

‘Do you think—’

‘
Jesus!
’

Sid recovered first. ‘Well, sorry! Christ! It’s my office too, you know.’

‘I know, I know. I was … concentrating.’

‘Of course. Turning your PC on, that’s a tricky business. I can see it would take all your attention.’

‘Sid, I didn’t realize you’d come in. That’s all. What do you want?’

‘Forget it.’

She sat at her desk. River’s monitor, meanwhile, enjoyed its usual fake awakening; swimming into blue then reverting to black. Waiting, he glanced at Sid. She wore her hair tied back and seemed paler than usual, which might have been her black cashmere V-neck, or might have been the ten minutes she’d just spent watching a young man with a hood on his head, who’d apparently been condemned to death.

And she wasn’t wearing her silver locket. If he’d been asked if this was unusual he’d have said he had no idea, but the fact was Sid wore the locket about half the time, from which he drew the inference that it held no special emotional significance for her. But nobody was likely to ask him.

His computer emitted that high-pitched beep that always sounded impatient, as if he’d been keeping it waiting rather than the other way round.

He said, only half aware he was about to do so, ‘About yesterday. I’m sorry. It was stupid.’

‘It was.’

‘It felt like it might be funny at the time.’

‘Stupid things often do,’ Sid said.

‘Clearing it up was no fun, if it makes you feel any better.’

‘It would make me feel better if you’d done a proper job of it. There were still eggshells under my desk this morning.’

But she was half-smiling, so that probably drew a line under the episode.

Though the question of why Sid had been sent on an op in the first place continued to rankle.

His computer was awake now but in a familiarly human sort of way, which meant it would be another few minutes before it was up to speed. He clicked on the browser.

Sid spoke again: ‘You think Ho’s right? They’re Al Qaeda?’

About to make a smart remark, River bit it back. What was the point? He said, ‘What else? It’s not like we’ve not seen this before.’

Both fell silent, remembering similar broadcasts a few years earlier; of a hostage beheaded for the crime of being Western.

‘They’ll be on the radar,’ Sid said.

River nodded.

‘All this stuff we do, here and Regent’s Park, GCHQ—the lid’s on pretty tight. Once they establish who the kid is, and where it’s happening, they’ll run up a shortlist of suspects. Won’t they?’

He was online at last. ‘What was that link?’

‘Sec.’

A moment later an e-mail winked on to his screen. He clicked on the link it held, and the browser changed from a bland civil service logo to the now-familiar boy, hood, cellar.

Nothing had changed in the minutes since they’d left Ho’s room.

Again they sat in silence, but a different silence to the one that usually prevailed in their office. It was shared, rather than dictated by awkwardness.

But if either were hoping it would be broken by a voice from that cellar, they were disappointed.

At last, River said, ‘There’s a lot of time, effort and money been spent on covering extremist groups.’

Sid had forgotten she’d asked the question.

‘But there’s not a whole lot of live intel out there.’

‘Assets,’ she said.

Any other day, River might have scoffed. ‘Assets,’ he agreed. ‘Infiltrating extremist groups used to be an easier business.’

‘You sound like you know about this.’

‘I grew up with the stories.’

‘Your grandfather,’ she said. ‘He was David Cartwright, wasn’t he?’

‘He still is.’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘He’s still alive. Very much so.’ He glanced round. She had pushed her chair from her desk, and was watching him rather than the screen. ‘And it’s not like he told me State secrets as bedtime stories.’

‘I wasn’t going to suggest that.’

‘But the first bedtime story he ever did read me was
Kim
.’ River could tell she recognized the title, so didn’t elaborate. ‘After that, well, Conrad, Greene. Somerset Maugham.’

‘
Ashenden
.’

‘You get the picture. For my twelfth birthday, he bought me le Carré’s collected works. I can still remember what he said about them.’

They’re made up. But that doesn’t mean they’re not true.

River returned to the screen. The newspaper the boy held trembled. Why was he holding it with the back page showing, though?
England triumph
—last night’s World Cup qualifier.

‘The BBC,’ he said out loud, thinking of the link Sid had sent him.