“No,” said CC. “I’m making us whole again.”
Slough House, coming on midnight, and flickering screens were strobing Roddy Ho’s form and throwing shapes—he looked like a disco king, if only there were an audience to admire him. But the way of the data warrior is a lonely one, and his keyboard his only companion. Still, it was a comfort to know there were others like him, out in the darkened city—men on their own, hunched over laptops, putting the world to rights—and it was hard not to believe that they sensed his presence as they went about their duty; that as they spread their virtual seed hither and yon, they were following his path, if not so stylishly.
Were less tasked, too, with vital missions. Earlier in the day, Lamb had pleaded with Roddy to attempt the impossible—as per—and then, secure in the knowledge that the RodJob was on the case, had told him, bantz, to fuck off till it was done. You had to hand it to the old man, he could do a straight face like no one else. But anyway, here was Roddy, monitors alight with life, an orange Post-it affixed to the nearest—he’d always enjoyed digital dancing in the dark. The hummingbird flies by night, he told himself, rubbing his arm. He knew this for a fact. He’d googled it.
But nightbird or not, cracking the Service’s online traffic was no task for lightweights. It took your Stan Lees, your George Lucases, your Roddy Hos, to achieve this level of creative brilliance, and careful pacing was required. So on the clock ticked, and on the RodMeister laboured, weaving a passage through a maze of encrypted corridors, many littered with the virtual equivalent of IEDs, triggering which would set floodlights converging on him . . . A mental image formed of Roddy scaling a high-wired fence, caught in the cross-beams of conning-towers . . . A blaze of bullets; a torn tattered body; a beautiful corpse hanging by the ankles. It would take a heart of granite not to weep.
“The fuck you still here for?”
Roddy gave a note-perfect imitation of a man squeaking in fright.
“I . . . What are you still here for? I mean, the fuck still here for?”
Shirley was chewing gum with her hands in her pockets, like a cartoon rendition of a ten-year-old. She must have been up in her office, because she hadn’t come through the back door: No one did that without a ruckus save Lamb, and even he sounded like a walrus attacking a lobster pot most times. Her hair, what there was of it, was tufted into spikes, which had provoked Lamb into asking, Is that fashion or chemo? Roddy was on the verge of echoing him, but luckily Shirley spoke first. “No law against staying late. Besides, I wasn’t working. Creep.”
In fact, she’d been asleep, though the end result was the same: pushing midnight, still at work. She should be on overtime.
Ho had been eating pizza, so she helped herself to a slice from the box on his desk, nearly but not quite tipping it to the floor, and leaned against the wall to eat, choosing a spot where she could see his monitors and attempt to work out what he was doing. This, she accepted, was unlikely. It was akin to watching performance art, which in theory Shirley approved of—it allowed the talentless to call themselves artists, which appealed to her anarchic streak—but in practice was appalling shit that no one understood. But at least Roddy, if he didn’t volunteer explanation, could be coerced into divulging one. Besides: pizza.
He said, “Yeah, this is classified?”
“We, like, literally do the same job? Duh-brain.”
Roddy looked at his screens. There was nothing on them that would mean anything to Dander. Put him in front of them and he was looking at trapdoors and trolleys, tracks and tramlines; he was Indiana Jones on a subterranean railway, avoiding poison darts. But all Shirley would see was streams of glowing numbers. For a moment he hovered between two worlds, the one he mostly lived in and the one he suspected Shirley and everyone else inhabited. Perhaps if they understood more about his world he’d feel more at home in theirs. But the moment passed, and they were on opposite sides of a chasm again. He said, “If I was allowed to tell you about it . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I still wouldn’t.”
“Asshat.”
The pizza box chose that moment to topple to the floor, landing contents-side down as the laws of physics dictated. Both stared at this for a second, then resumed their glare-off.
Shirley said, “This was Lamb’s little job?”
“Yeah. I mean no. And it’s not little.”
“Breaking and entering, right?”
“Like I said. Classified.”
“Into some place or person’s records.”
“Above your pay grade. Loser.”
“Which means you must’ve written it down. Because no way do you remember details. Loser.”
She stuffed the last piece of crust into her mouth without taking eyes off Roddy, who stared back unflinchingly, almost, until a slight tremble gave him away. Then he grabbed for the Post-it, almost managing to cram it into his mouth before Shirley had him by the wrist, twisting his hand and unwrapping his fingers, forcing him to relinquish it.
“Munchkin!”
“Watch your language. Or I’ll twat you.”
She unwrapped the orange paper square while Roddy stared in murderous hatred. “I’m doing this for your own benefit,” she explained. “Secrets between colleagues is not a good idea. I mean, okay, we’re spies, but . . .”
Unscrunched, the Post-it turned out to carry two words. A name.
“Next question,” Shirley said. “Who the fuck is Julian Tanner?”
When Avril woke in the early hours, it was only partly because of Daisy’s bad dream: She had known putting head to pillow that if sleep came, it would come briefly. Pitchfork had sunk its prongs into her mind, where Pitchfork did what a pitchfork does: It shifted, lifted and sieved. Daisy’s whimperings might have had the same source but she had no coherent report to make, so Avril held her until she grew quiet again, and then lay while darkness skulked outside the window, slowly surrendering its ghosts.
Pitchfork was the operation, and also the code name of its subject. Dougal—Dougie—Malone, long-time IRA enforcer, and the owner of a well-earned reputation for brutality, fostered not simply by his keenness for punishment beatings, but by the methods he chose to implement them: the hammer, the car jack, the crowbar. A short, narrow man, he carried himself like an unpulled punch, and to look into his eyes was to set your darkness echoing, as if his presence dared you unleash the devil in yourself. For two decades he was the Provos’ iron fist in its studded glove, seeking out dissent in its ranks and pounding it flat. He had raped at least seven women. And for half the time he enjoyed such power he had been an informer for the British intelligence service, an asset so highly valued that he had a team of four assigned to his care and security: herself, CC, Al and Daisy. If he was Pitchfork, so were they.
All spies together, then, though it hurt Avril to admit Malone into their company. She would rather focus on their difference: Malone had become a spy not to uphold a cause, nor even only for the money, but to gratify evil urges. The dark was where they all worked, she could acknowledge that. But it was where Malone lived, and where he found his joys, chief among these being the death of his enemies, or some of them, because it would have taxed even his endless hatred to murder everyone. He did his best, though, directing his IRA death squad at those whom he named as informers, partly to protect his own position, but mostly because that was who he was, a man who delighted in torture and murder and rape; and who, when it was over, was removed from the Province and settled in Cumbria under a false identity, with a rumoured £80,000 a year in a Gibraltar bank account. Fifteen years later, he was found dead in his own garage, murdered by a method he’d pioneered himself on two luckless colleagues, Stephen Regan and Bernard Docherty; Provos both, and in need of jail time, but who ended up stains on a concrete floor for looking sideways at Dougal Malone.