There was no need to check she had her blade. She always had her blade.
The corridor wasn’t long, and she moved along it soundlessly. It was funny how the old skills came back.
. . . but not bursting onto it because bursting into a room where there’s an armed man was a mistake, so she made herself stop, breathe, wait and then push the door open softly, with no light breaking through because the staircase was unlit, and half the group had their backs to her, including the gunman, and looking her way were River and Sid and that pompous arse Peter Judd, and all that was needed was for everyone to keep a cool head and it would be fine, they’d all walk out into the sunshine and laugh about it, enjoy a glass of wine, and she’d tell them about the new job, that she was moving on, but first the present had to be dealt with, meaning the gun, and it was unlikely she’d be able to reach the gunman without triggering a reaction, but the best way of dealing with doubts was to shelve them, so that’s what she did—took a deep breath—stepped quietly onto the dark dance floor, inching away the distance between herself and the assembled group, hoping nothing unexpected would intervene . . .
Ash said, “I’m out of here.”
“You can’t just—”
She waved her phone at Lech. “Ambulance?”
The man on the floor groaned as she stepped round him, and that was a good thing—at least he was alive—though obviously also a bad thing: He’d been thrown through a window. Whatever. With his blood on her trainers, which luckily were machine washable, she headed up the stairs, phone in hand. At the top was a lobby area, and a row of switches on the wall next to a set of double doors.
With her free hand she slapped all six, and pushed through the doors into the dance hall.
“But this way you’ll be safe,” CC said, and suddenly the room was full of light. Something else clicked, this time inside him, and somehow he was falling upright, as if his strings had been tightened. A sentence formed but split into pieces, and he was confetti, scattered piecemeal around the company, settling on their sleeves, on their shoulders, at their feet. The lights went out, but remained on. Whatever he’d been holding he now wasn’t, but he couldn’t remember what it was, or why he’d needed it, or who mattered.
“He’s stroking.”
“I—”
“He’s stroking!”
River stepped forward as CC dropped like a brick.
The gun went skittering across the floor.
What felt like hundreds of lights went on, and Judd thought: It’s all about keeping your head.
Like that time a husband came home unexpectedly, and he had to exit through a window in his boxers.
Or any occasion on which he gave evidence before a parliamentary committee.
Or talking to his wife, ever.
Here, it was about not making sudden movements, while all around descended into chaos. “He’s stroking!” someone said, and the gunman went into a spasm which, with luck, would kill him and everyone else, Judd excepted. For half a second everything stilled, then Cartwright stepped forward and the gunman toppled into his arms, his weapon spinning across the dance floor. Walk away—the nearest door—all he had to do was reach it, step through and leave all this behind him. But his feet were glued in place. One of the two newcomers, an old man, stooped for the gun, the manner in which he did so suggesting he was no stranger to weaponry. Cartwright and the young woman were bent over the gunman; the other woman was on her knees too, saying “See, see!” as if the others weren’t paying attention. Walk away—this time he could move, but when he turned a ghost was there, right in front of him; a woman his own age, and he yelped, couldn’t help it, and she raised a hand, and his rugby days came flooding back and he did what you do when your opponent is smaller, frailer, weaker: He dropped his shoulder and flattened her while someone shouted, “Daisy!”
Entering the club, Ash found, was like stepping through a broken mirror—there were lights and action, slotting together in fragments: River Cartwright, holding on to an older man who was having a seizure, and a woman who might be Cartwright’s partner, and some old people who God only knew what they were doing, one of them stooping for a gun, and Louisa too, behind the old crew, caught in the middle of something, her posture an unfinished movement, and—nearest Ash—Peter Judd, and yet another old woman he’d just sent sprawling . . . It was true what they said about Slough House, that the place was a nutjob’s TikTok feed, which, when not boring you rigid, was banging away like a bat in a biscuit tin—the slow horses hadn’t been here five minutes and already there’d been someone thrown through a window. She had blood on her trainers. And the old man was pointing the gun at Judd, shouting “Daisy!”
Not so long ago Ash had never heard of the slow horses: She was still at the Park, a fledgling spook, and the night when it all went wrong hadn’t happened. Back then she could have called her mother and told her the truth—that she worked for their country, she kept people safe—but here and now she was on her own, and keeping people safe meant reaching Judd and pulling him out of harm’s reach, because the old man wasn’t just aiming the gun, he was squeezing the trigger . . .
But you had to be fast to outrun a bullet. You had to be fast indeed.
Al shouted, “Daisy!” and Avril looked up to see him levelling the gun just as a woman who’d come out of nowhere launched herself upon him.
If she’d had time to turn her head, Avril would have seen Judd taking flight; she’d have seen Daisy scrambling to her feet.
She’d have seen Ashley Khan taking a headlong dive.
But when Al fired the gun, she had her eyes clenched tight.
. . . but the unexpected happened, because the unexpected always does, and on this occasion it arrived in a storm of light which poleaxed the gunman, sending his weapon Catherine-wheeling across the floor towards the old man to Louisa’s left, who scooped it up and aimed it in one motion, and never jump on an armed man, that was an instruction learned on the mats at Regent’s Park, never jump on an armed man because bullets can go anywhere, but she jumped anyway, catching him hip height and spilling him just as he fired, and then she was on top of him, and he wasn’t fighting back but she had to be sure he wouldn’t start so she punched him quickly in the face, which wasn’t where she’d thought she’d ever be—punching a senior citizen—but you don’t write your own story, you’re propelled by it, and she was levering herself upright when it was her turn to be side slammed, leaving her on all fours, though the assault was quieter than hers had been, more subtle, and the woman who’d been sent sprawling by Judd moments ago was looking down on her, something dripping in her hand, but she wasn’t there long before River was there instead, saying Louisa’s name, panic in his voice which didn’t seem necessary because panic was for when you didn’t know what was happening, for when you were coming adrift, and she felt strangely anchored to the here and now, knowing what her story held in store, it held in store what all stories hold; what it holds in store is an ending.
Ash lay staring at the ceiling, which was far away, aware, as she hadn’t been a moment ago, of how cold she was, and also how hot; the two states existing side by side, which felt unlikely. She should call her mother—she was bound to have an explanation, or, failing that, an opinion. But as the clamour around her grew, as people knelt and shouted and generally filled the club with the kinds of noise that suggested the evening had taken a bad turn, and as doors slammed and lights went on and off, it became troublingly apparent to her that her phone was nowhere to hand.