‘Well, it’s not like he’s a huge loss,’ said Coe.
‘Again, not helping.’ River realised he was starting to accelerate, and forced himself to ease up on the pedal. ‘Cast your mind back. The whole point was to foil the bad guys. Not do their job for them.’
‘Well, mission creep—’
‘Don’t,’ said River. ‘Just don’t.’
If he wasn’t driving he’d sink back in his seat and close his eyes, but if he closed his eyes he’d see it again: that tin of paint hurtling out of nowhere and damn near taking Gimball’s head off. One moment he was stuttering a single word over and over, now now now, and the next he was bouncing off a wheelie bin like a discarded puppet. The tin meanwhile hit the ground, leaped into the air and struck the black guy River was wrestling: he’d yelped – a high-pitched note; strangely feminine for someone who seemed, just River’s opinion, to be made of rubberised concrete – then taken off when he’d seen Gimball’s body. And still the tin’s lid remained tightly in place: they could have used that in their advertising, thought River irrelevantly. The paint manufacturers. Although it wasn’t necessarily a point in its favour, as presumably there’d be moments when you’d want the lid to come off without hassle. When you were painting a wall, for instance, rather than killing a politician. So probably not the hook for an advertising campaign. Anyway: not an important issue.
What was important was, they’d left the scene.
He’d got to his feet. His assailant was gone; River was left staring in fear and astonishment, and J. K. Coe had appeared. We’d better go, he’d said, and then he was hustling River out of the alley, leaving a scene of quiet destruction behind them: one dead Gimball, one tin of paint. All those wheelie bins, clustered round like mourners.
‘We shouldn’t have left,’ he said now.
‘Yes we should,’ said Coe.
‘You said it was an accident. So—’
‘It was.’
‘—so why did we leave? It only makes us look—’
‘We had to.’
‘—like we’re guilty of something, like it was a hit.’
‘We had to,’ Coe repeated. He glanced across at River, then back at the road unfurling in front of them, all its marginal twinklings, its brief reflections, amped up to maximum. ‘Think about it. We were there unofficially—’
‘Lamb sent us.’
‘—because we’re Slough House, not Regent’s Park, and Slough House doesn’t get sent anywhere, doesn’t matter what Lamb says.’
‘We left the scene of a crime.’
‘An accident. One in which the security service’s loudest and most public critic was … glossed over. Sorry.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake—’
‘So any suggestion of Service involvement in his death, including our presence, will be blanketed. You understand? The Park will cover it up. Whatever the cost. And you and me – we’re not expensive, if you see what I mean.’
‘This is a fucking nightmare.’
‘It is what it is,’ said Coe. ‘On the upside, we do have a readymade scapegoat.’
‘You’re gonna put this on the black guy?’
‘Let’s not play the race card. I don’t care what colour he is, he was there to kill Gimball. The fact that he didn’t—’
‘That you did.’
‘—by accident, yeah, the fact that he didn’t’s neither here nor there … Its lid stayed on, did you notice?’
‘The paint?’
‘Yeah. Would have been a real mess if it hadn’t.’
‘It’s a real mess anyway,’ River pointed out. ‘Was he one of them?’
‘One of the Abbotsfield crew? How should I know?’
‘Because he didn’t have a gun, did he?’
‘I imagine he’d have used it if he did. Are you going to drive this slowly all the way?’
‘I thought it best not to attract attention,’ said River, through gritted teeth. ‘In the circumstances.’
‘Not sure five miles an hour under the speed limit is the best way to do that.’
That this was a good point didn’t improve River’s frame of mind. He sped up though, nudging, then jostling, the limit. Coe meanwhile – at last – closed his eyes; assumed what had until recently been his default setting, though without inserting his earbuds. He had one final comment to offer.
‘Probably a tricycle,’ he said.
River didn’t ask.
She wanted to know about his work, Ho said.
‘And why was that?’
… Because she was interested.
‘You told her you worked for the intelligence services?’
No. She thought he worked for a bank, but she’d quickly cottoned on that he was no mere desk jockey.
‘Imagine me just shuffling papers?’ Ho shook his head. ‘No, she could tell I did the digital dance, you know?’ He trilled a little riff on the tabletop in front of him. ‘The keyboard solo.’
‘And how did she work that out?’
‘… I told her.’
‘And once she knew you were a computer ace, Roddy, what did she ask you for?’
Just to help her out occasionally, that was all. So that’s what he did. Because she was Kim – his girlfriend.
Emma Flyte was trying hard not to shake her head, or sigh deeply, or even just burst into tears. ‘Help her out with what?’
Little stuff.
Sorting her credit card troubles, for example: she was always having trouble with her credit card. Or being defrauded in restaurants. So occasionally he’d step into the breach and, well, yeah, make sure everything got sorted.
Flyte didn’t have a word for the expression that accompanied this. It seemed intended to be a conspiratorial smile, but looked like a wasp-victim’s smirk.
‘And you didn’t have a problem with that?’
Well, you know, he explained. Chicks. Right?
‘So when did it stop being about the money?’
Well, it wasn’t the money as such, more the principle—
‘When did it stop being about the money?’
And so it was that Emma Flyte learned that a few months previously Ho had woken up one morning and, well, it must have been the tequila’s fault, because he had no memory of the previous evening and Kim, his girlfriend, was acting all moonstruck, telling him how much it turned her on, all the secrets he’d told her. But that was okay, because she was basically family, right? She was his girlfriend.
Sweet God in Heaven, thought Flyte.
‘Your girlfriend. But apart from her name, and a false address, and the fact that she’s Chinese, you know damn all about her, right?’
For the first time, Ho looked puzzled. ‘Chinese?’
‘Well she is, isn’t she?’
‘No,’ said Ho. ‘She’s Korean.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Danny said. ‘How come Gimball’s dead?’
Shin said, ‘Somebody killed him.’
‘But who? And why does that mean we let Jaffrey live?’
An said, ‘Because the plan calls for a populist leader to die. And a populist leader died.’
‘But we didn’t kill him!’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
They had left the scene at speed, the van still ringing from the wrench hurled by the madwoman.
An said, ‘Gimball’s dead, and nobody will believe it’s a coincidence. They will believe it was part of the plan, and that in itself will mean the plan works. Don’t you see?’
Danny stared, as did Shin, though Shin was trying to pretend that he too had been going to say that very same thing.
‘So for now, we should lie low.’
Lying low meant parking near the university, where the natural camouflage was greatest. Still bewildered at the sudden alteration in the evening – still angry he felt two steps behind the others – Danny found himself thinking about the girl, Kim, a low-rent con-artist who’d been working the target. She had family back in North Korea; distant, but not so distant she was happy to let them become the object of official attention. Or perhaps she was just savvy enough to realise that some offers, you didn’t say no to. However distant those family members might be, her own face, her eyes, her teeth, were within reach, and easy collateral.