All reflex, sinew and concentration, Ho shimmered through the lunchtime air like the coolest of cats, the baddest of asses, the daddy of all dudes; hot on the trail of an enemy that didn’t exist.
A little way down the road, an enemy that did turned the ignition, and pulled away from the kerb.
That morning, on her way to the Tube, Catherine Standish had dropped in at the newsagent’s for a Guardian. Behind the counter a steel blind had been drawn to hide the array of cigarette packets, lest a stray glimpse prove a gateway to early death, while to her left, on the topmost row of the rack, the few pornographic magazines to survive into the digital age were sealed inside plastic covers, to nullify their impact on concupiscent minds. All this careful protection, she thought, shielding us from impulses deemed harmful, but right there by the door was a shelf of wine on special offer, any two bottles for nine pounds, and up by the counter was a range of spirits all cheerfully marked two quid down, none of them a brand to delight the palate, but any of them enough to render the most uptight connoisseur pig-drunk and open to offers.
She bought her newspaper, nodded her thanks, and returned to the street.
One journey later, she remembered it was her turn to pick up milk for the office – no huge feat of memory; it was always her turn to pick up milk – and dropped into the shop next to Slough House, where the milk was in the fridge alongside cans of beer and lager, and ready-mixed tins of G&T. That’s twice without trying, she thought, that she could have bought a ticket to the underworld before her day was off the ground. Most occasions of sin required a little effort. But the recovering alcoholic could coast along in neutral, and the temptations would come to her.
There was nothing unusual about this. It was just the surface tension; the everyday gauntlet the dry drunk runs. Come lunchtime, the lure of the dark side behind her, Catherine was absorbed in the day’s work: writing up the department’s bi-annual accounts, which included justification for ‘irregular expenses’. Slough House had had a lot of these this year: broken doors, carpet cleaning; all the making-good an armed incursion demands. Most of the repairs had been sloppily done, which neither surprised nor bothered Catherine much: she had long ago grown used to the second-class status the slow horses enjoyed. What worried her more was the long-term damage to the horses themselves. Shirley Dander was unnervingly calm; the kind of calm Catherine imagined icebergs were, just before they ploughed into ocean liners. River Cartwright was bottling things up too, more than usual. And as for J. K. Coe, Catherine recognised a hand grenade when she saw one. And she didn’t think his pin was fitted too tight.
Roddy Ho was the same as ever, of course, but that was more of a burden than a comfort.
It was a good job Louisa Guy was relatively sane.
Stacks of paper in front of her, their edges neatly though not quite neurotically aligned, Catherine waded through the day’s work, adjusting figures where Lamb’s entries overshot the inaccurate to become manifestly corrupt, and replacing his justifications (‘because I fucking say so’) with her own more diplomatic phrasing. When the time came to leave for home, all those temptations would parade in front of her again. But if daily exposure to Jackson Lamb had taught her anything, it was not to fret about life’s peripheral challenges.
He had a way of providing more than enough to worry about, up front and centre.
Shirley Dander had sixty-two days.
Sixty-two drug-free days.
Count ’em …
Somebody might: Shirley didn’t. Sixty-two was just a number, same as sixty-one had been, and if she happened to be keeping track that was only because the days had all happened in the obvious order, very very slowly. Mornings she ticked off the minutes, and afternoons counted down seconds, and at least once a day found herself staring at the walls, particularly the one behind what had been Marcus’s desk. Last time she’d seen Marcus, he’d been leaning against that wall, his chair tilted at a ridiculous angle. It had been painted over since. A bad job had been made of it.
And here was Shirley’s solution to that: think about something else.
It was lunchtime; bright and warm. Shirley was heading back to Slough House for an afternoon of enforced inertia, after which she’d schlep on over to Shoreditch for the last of her AFMs … Eight months of anger fucking management sessions, and this evening she’d officially be declared anger free. It had been hinted she might even get a badge. That could be a problem – if anyone stuck a badge on her, they’d be carrying their teeth home in a hankie – but luckily, what she had in her pocket gave her something to focus on; to carry her through any dodgy moments which might result in the court-ordered programme being extended.
A neat little wrap of the best cocaine the postcode had to offer; her treat to herself for finishing the course.
Sixty-two might just be a number, but it was as high as Shirley had any intention of going.
Being straight had had the effect of turning her settings down a notch, and the world had been flatter lately, greyer, easier to get along with. Which helped with the whole AFM thing, but was starting to piss her off. Last week she’d had a cold caller, some crap about mis-sold insurance, and Shirley hadn’t even told him to fuck himself. This didn’t feel like attitude adjustment so much as it did surrender. So here was the plan: get through this one last day, suffer being patted on the head by the counsellor – whom Shirley intended to follow home one night and kill – then hit the clubs, get properly wasted, and learn to live again. Sixty-two days was long enough, and proved for a fact what she’d always maintained as a theory: that she could give it up any time she wanted.
Besides, Marcus was long gone. It wasn’t like he’d be getting in her face about it.
But don’t think about Marcus.
So there she was, heading past the estate towards Aldersgate Street, coke in her pocket, mind on the evening to come, when she saw two things five yards in front of her, both behaving strangely.
One was Roderick Ho, who was performing some kind of ballet, with a mobile phone for a partner.
The other was an approaching silver Honda, turning left where there was no left to turn.
Then mounting the pavement and heading straight for Ho.
So here’s the thing, thought Louisa Guy. If I’d wanted to be a librarian, I’d have been a librarian. I’d have gone to library school, taken library exams, and saved up enough library stamps to buy a library uniform. Whatever they do, I’d have done it: by the book. And of all the librarians in the near vicinity, I’d have been far and away the librarianest; the kind of librarian other librarians sing songs about, gathered around their library fires.
But what I wouldn’t have done was join the intelligence service. Because that would have been fucking ridiculous.
Yet here I am.
Here she was.
Here being Slough House, where what she was doing was scrolling through library loan statistics, determining who had borrowed certain titles in the course of the last few years. Books like Islam Expects and The Meaning of Jihad. And if anyone had actually written How to Wage War on a Civilian Population, that would have made the list too.
‘Is it really likely,’ she’d said, on being handed the project, ‘that compiling a list of people who’ve borrowed particular library books is going to help us find fledgling terrorists?’
‘Put like that,’ Lamb had said, ‘the odds are probably a million to one.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing. I’m bloody glad I’m not you.’
‘Thanks. But why do they even stock these books, if they’re so dangerous?’