Oh shit, he thought.
Five minutes later, miles away, Shirley finished her chips and the streetlights flickered on, making the world subtly different. It was time, she thought. Whatever was going on with that van: it was time for her to make a move. Because if anything was going to happen, shadow-time was its cue.
She should fetch Louisa, really, but what good would that do? Two of them and just one weapon: if there were bad actors in the van, bringing Louisa would double their targets. She crumpled the fish-and-chip paper, wrapped it round the empty polystyrene carton, and left the resulting brick-shaped wedge on the car roof. She could feel the wrench up her right sleeve, its head digging into her palm. When she loosed her grip it would drop into her hand seamlessly, or that was the idea. In an ideal world, she’d have got to practise the move.
Marcus? she thought.
You go, girl.
She went.
Shin was staring at his phone. ‘There is something,’ he began.
‘She’s coming.’
‘What?’
‘The woman,’ An said. He had taken over the watcher’s role; had his eye pressed to the peephole in the van’s back door. ‘She is approaching.’
‘Then we move,’ Danny said.
He was holding a semi-automatic weapon, nursing it as if it were his newborn.
‘We move,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll take the woman, then we go in.’
It would not be like Abbotsfield, Danny knew. There they were uniformed, and in the open air: blue skies above, and old stone buildings echoing to their presence. There had been water babbling nearby, and deeply rooted trees bearing witness. It was as though they had stepped through the centuries, bringing warfare to a world that thought itself free of bloodshed. Here, there were no hills to scream down from, and no birds to take flight. There would be walls and windows, that was all, and the dying would know themselves deep in the heart of their city: but they’d still die. It was the final, necessary lesson. That they’d die.
And first among them would be that woman with her stiff-armed walk; approaching them now, An said; walking towards them with intent.
Danny reached for the handle on the back door.
‘No. Wait.’
And this was Shin again, still caressing his phone, but looking at Danny, and speaking with more authority than of late.
Danny scowled, and gripped the handle. The gun hung over his shoulder, its webbed strap as familiar to him as the feel of his shirt, of the belt round his waist.
‘I said wait!’
The door released, and air broke in, a sudden waft of summer evening pushing past the reek of male bodies.
Then An put one hand on Danny’s sleeve, and with the other reached across him and pulled the door shut.
‘What?’ Danny said.
Shin, putting his phone away, said, ‘It’s already done. We must leave.’
‘What do you mean, already done? How—’
‘Go! Drive!’
This to Chris, who sat at the wheel.
‘—can it be done?’
Chris started the van, which gave a sudden lurch.
‘No! We have a mission!’
Shin leaned forward and struck Danny across the face. ‘Enough!’
Danny looked wide-eyed at An, but An refused to meet his gaze.
‘This goes in my report,’ Shin hissed. Then, to Chris again, ‘Why are we still here?’
The van pulled away.
Louisa had come to the window again, ignoring the irritated glances from her fellow citizens, while Zafar Jaffrey explained how a modern city, a model community, found space for all within its embrace: there were no exclusions, no pariahs. Yeah, fine. Until a bunch of them turn up with guns and start their own exclusion process. But she was a little ashamed of that knee-jerk response: occupational hazard, she supposed. Which didn’t mean other people shouldn’t be setting their sights higher.
Outside, Shirley had left her car-roof picnic; was walking down the road in a purposeful way, her stiff right arm offering a clue to the monkey wrench’s current whereabouts. She seemed to be heading for the van, whose back door popped open at that moment. Something happening, Louisa thought, and at the same moment became aware of a murmuring behind her; Jaffrey’s audience responding to external events. Shirley flexed her arm, and Louisa saw the wrench drop cleanly into it, and then the van door closed again and the vehicle coughed into life. Shirley started to run. Behind her, Louisa could hear chairs scraping, and shocked noises, Oh my Gods and Bloody hells. Her phone buzzed. The van pulled away, and Shirley was going full pelt now, shouting something, Louisa couldn’t hear what. Oh Jesus, she thought, and then Shirley was in the middle of the road and the wrench in full flight; it arced, graceful as a swallow, and hit the departing van’s back door with the business end before clattering to the ground. Shirley came to a halt, put her hands on her knees, and stood panting and doubtless swearing, but her quarry was gone. The whole thing had taken maybe four, five seconds.
Louisa shook her head. If they were ordinary solid citizens in that van, we’re going to be hearing about that, she thought.
It’s tails, she’d told River. You get Coe.
She shouldn’t have lied. Coe would have been less trouble.
Then she returned to the crowd behind her, to discover what the fuss was about.
9
LAMB SAID, ‘FUCK ME. So that happened.’
On the BBC website, video had been posted of a scaffolding-clad alleyway, where folk in white jumpsuits teamed about. Either ABBA had reformed in Slough, or a body had been discovered there.
Dennis Gimball, according to social media.
Catherine said, ‘There’s been no official confirmation, but …’
‘But everyone’s favourite Europhobe just made a hard Brexit.’ Lamb magicked a cigarette from thin air, then thinned the air further by lighting it. ‘And here’s me having gone to the bother of sending Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and the other one to stop that happening.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘I sometimes wonder why I get out of bed in the morning.’
‘Probably just to spread sweetness and light.’ Catherine was texting; calling River and Louisa home. She didn’t call it ‘home’, obviously. When she’d finished she looked up to see Lamb glaring at her iPad: she’d put it on his desk to show him the breaking news. Aware of how brief Lamb’s relationships with technology could be, she plucked it from his ambit. ‘So. Gimball’s dead and the bad guys are winning. Not our finest hour.’
Lamb sniffed. ‘On the other hand, this proves our theory’s right. So, you know, swings and roundabouts.’
‘I’m sure that’s a great comfort to the deceased.’
‘He sleeps with the silverfishes,’ said Lamb. ‘That’ll have to be comfort enough.’
Catherine left the room to boil the kettle. When she came back with two cups of tea, Lamb had his unshod feet on his desk. All five toes were showing through one sock; three through the other. It was as close as you could get to not wearing socks, she thought, without actually not doing so. She put a cup in front of him and resumed her seat. Lamb farted meditatively, then said, ‘So where does this leave us?’
‘Well,’ Catherine said. ‘You had working knowledge of the possibility of an assassination attempt on Dennis Gimball, but all you did was send a couple of unarmed desk operatives to stand around while it happened. And failed to inform the Park because you were worried they’d issue some scorched-earth protocol to cover up the fact that the potential assassins are following the Park’s own join-the-dots destabilisation playbook. Did I miss anything?’