“And that’s your main concern.”
“Yes. Besides, those whose deaths he caused were enemies of the state, remember? We’re not talking about the slaughter of the innocents. And in case you need reminding, you didn’t come to me demanding a light be shone on the truth. You came for money.” She picked up the disk and examined it briefly. “This belongs in a museum. The tech, I mean, not the contents.” She dropped it into her bag.
CC said, “You could say the same about me.”
“The thought had occurred. Where are your friends?”
“They had nothing to do with this.”
“Of course not. Where are they?”
“On various trains. Heading home. Forgetting this happened.”
“It was all you, wasn’t it? Your hat, your rabbit.” She shook her head. “Supposing I’d told you to screw yourself and publish? Where’d that have got you?”
“I knew you wouldn’t.”
“Because you’d have wound up in court. Or been tried by the press. Public enemies numbers one through four. And yes, the Park would have had headlines too, but we’ve weathered worse.”
“If we were going to be part of the cover-up, we deserved to be compensated. And since we weren’t, why help cover it up?”
“And what about the murder charge?”
“We never committed murder.”
“A good lawyer might agree that Pitchfork’s crimes were his alone. That you were bound by the rules of the Service not to warn his victims, that doing so might have been treason. But it’s Malone I’m talking about.”
In the street a horn sounded, then another. Two cars having a row. CC said, “Malone was found by his old comrades. The identity you gave him fell apart, and the Provos found him. Executed him.”
“That’s certainly the official rumour. I mean, the coroner delivered an open verdict, but we all knew what she meant. But it doesn’t really fly. Because if his old colleagues had come for him, we’d have been aware of it. It’s not like we weren’t keeping an eye on them.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Well, I was hoping you’d join the dots and save me the bother. But if you need it spelling out, what I’m trying to say is that your friends Avril, Al and Daisy murdered Dougie Malone. Are you sure you won’t sit down? You look fit to drop.”
“I was thinking,” Daisy said, “there’s probably a party shop round here. There’s always one somewhere, have you noticed?”
Al and Avril shared a look.
“Only then we could buy some big red noses, and maybe clown shoes or something. In case we’re not conspicuous enough.”
Though in fact they were just three people, none of them youngsters, who’d emerged from a taxi, which had made a significant dent in the bounty CC had dispensed. CC’s car was nearby, on a meter. Avril’s watch, meanwhile, was still tucked down its back seat cushion. And CC himself was presumably close at hand, answering a summons from Diana Taverner . . .
Not for the first time, Avril wondered what CC had thought he was doing, trying to put one over the Wicked Witch of the Park. Except the answer was obvious; he had thought, like any hero, that his guile was a match for anyone’s. Same old story. But in the real world Hansel and Gretel were eaten, and hungry bears watched Goldilocks dance herself to death. “Cover the area,” Avril said, and they separated. If Taverner had a place round here for covert meetings, it might be possible to recognise it from the exterior. Service properties came in different varieties. Intelligence factories were notable for a lack of windows, while upstairs rooms commandeered for surveillance purposes would have theirs propped open, to allow unimpeded lines of sight and sound. A safe apartment would have thicker windows than its neighbours, light hitting them in a different way. It was all about glass; reflective surfaces. Mirror mirror on the wall. But maybe she was out of date.
Her phone pinged, and a moment later did so again. Al and Daisy, checking in. She pinged back, the single letter K. For the busy spy, the time it would take to key the preceding vowel was an unaffordable luxury.
Having ironic little thoughts was a self-indulgence too. Whatever CC had become entangled in, he had Al’s gun in his pocket. With a prop like that to hand, the chances of things getting messy skyrocketed. But then, things had become messy long ago, when they’d decided to kill Malone.
A figure up ahead who might be CC morphed into someone else: wrong age, wrong shape. Keep looking. She turned a corner, crossed the road, reversed direction.
At the time it had felt like unfinished business; something that should have happened sooner. Leaving CC out of it, though, had required deliberation—CC would have balked at wreaking revenge. It’s not revenge, it’s housekeeping. Where there are germs, you bring bleach. Though the bleach had stung their own fingers in the end.
Her phone pinged again: Al, this time with a full sentence. CC would never have tried to blackmail the Park if he’d known what we did. She had to smile: synchronicity. In a different life, they’d have made a reasonable couple. In this one Al loved Daisy, and always had done.
She didn’t reply. Looking skyward, as if checking the weather, she scanned upstairs windows, trying to gauge the depths each concealed. Maybe behind one of them, Di Taverner, a woman whose very thoughts were gilded splinters, was talking to CC. She’d be explaining, first, why his blackmail attempt had failed, and then why he had no choice but to fall in with whatever she was about to outline.
Which would doubtless be ugly and dangerous, Avril thought. But he wouldn’t be facing it alone.
Shirley had done as much staring out of the window as she could tolerate, and given that the alternative was to work she took to brooding instead about Louisa’s future plans, and how she might—well, maybe not fuck them up, but that was the backup plan. They were colleagues, and she had the greatest respect, but Jesus: If Louisa was in line for some high-profile security job, she—Shirley—would be failing in her duty to herself if she didn’t point out to whoever was in charge that she was the better candidate. The most basic review of their respective CVs underlined that. Louisa was in Slough House because she’d botched an op that put a bunch of hooky guns on the street, whereas Shirley’s so-called crime was decking a handsy colleague, which wasn’t so much misdemeanour as social duty. Anyway, long story short, she, Ash and Lech were now in Roddy’s room, brainshowering—which she wasn’t a hundred per cent was an actual word—how to get the lowdown on Louisa’s new job, supposing it actually existed. Or some of them were.
“Not really our business, is it?” said Lech.
“Not really our business, is it?” Ash mimicked.
“Fuck off. I mean, if she’s decided to move on, who can blame her? She’s been here longer than any of us.”
“Except me,” said Roddy.
“I wasn’t counting you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t count.”
“It’s not that she’s leaving, it’s where she’s going,” Shirley said. “If they’ve got openings, we should know about them.”
Lech shook his head. “What, she’s found a new job, so we should all go with her? What world are you living in?”
Ash said, “Same one as you. That’s our problem.”
“You can quit. No one’s asking you to stay.”