And today, London has slipped onto a war footing. Armed police on the streets are an unhappy outcome, but it seems there are prices to be paid for the common liberties London enjoys: the freedom of its citizens to walk its streets, to show their faces uncovered, to hold hands in public. Months go by without a civilian seeing a gun. But recent lessons have been harsh, and the capital’s dead, and the dead of its sister cities, are a familiar presence wherever crowds gather, so armed police are on the streets today. In the Abbey’s environs the pavements have been trammelled by metal barriers, and behind them Londoners, visitors too, are gathering to pay their respects to the Abbotsfield dead, because Abbotsfield could have been anywhere, and London is anywhere too. This is what London and its sister cities have learned: that hate crime pollutes the soul, but only the souls of those who commit it. When those who mourn stand together, their separate chimes sounding in unison if only for a moment, they remain unstained. So the people gather and wait, and the armed police officers study new arrivals, and twelve o’clock comes and goes in a welter of bells, and afternoon begins.
It was hours since anyone had put their head down. Claude Whelan was back at Regent’s Park; relieved to be at his desk, where he could at least feign some semblance of control; Di Taverner, likewise, was in situ, though roaming the hub now, looking over the shoulders of the boys and girls. She lingered longer than usual at one particular desk: a young woman’s – Josie – whose Breton-hooped T-shirt accentuated her breasts, and who had a way of blinking shyly when spoken to. The casual observer would have found it impossible to guess what Taverner was thinking, but a seasoned Lady Di-watcher would have known a mental note was being taken, information stored.
‘Sit rep,’ she said.
Josie blinked, then read from her screen. ‘The royals are due at the Abbey in fifty minutes. PM in forty. There’s been a disturbance on Great Smith Street, but it’s already over. A few drunks getting out of hand.’
Taverner said, ‘We don’t call them the royals, and we don’t call him the PM. Let’s maintain coding protocols, shall we?’
‘Sorry, ma’am.’
‘What’s our street-level status?’
‘Kestrel One’s on Millbank, Two’s on Westminster Bridge. Neither reporting anything suspicious. Three through Five are strung out along Whitehall. The crowd’s mostly subdued, they say, with a few angry outbreaks. Chanting about Dennis Gimball. Probably orchestrated by one right-wing group or another.’
That lines of connection were being drawn between the Abbotsfield massacre and the death of Dennis Gimball didn’t much surprise Taverner. Conspiracy theories bloomed at the rate of one hundred and forty characters a second.
She said, ‘Any arrests?’
‘A handful, ma’am. That we know of.’
Taverner placed her hand on the shoulder rest of Josie’s chair. It felt warm. ‘Are you keeping Mr Whelan up to speed?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Email, or …?’
‘He prefers me to step into his office.’
Taverner nodded, as if her mind was on something else entirely. ‘Tread carefully,’ she said, and returned to her room.
Kim Park, Roderick Ho’s girlfriend, was downstairs now, delivered by Flyte and Welles. On first time of asking, she’d had little to say she hadn’t already told Flyte, though her interrogation would continue for some while yet. Kim had been well aware of her rights; of how long she could be detained without charge. What she was now in the process of learning was that this only counted when she was under arrest, which she wasn’t. Legally, she’d been abducted. And the best of luck to her making an issue out of that, thought Taverner. She had at least provided identikit drawings of the terror suspects, though like every such picture Taverner had seen, the resulting images resembled automatons: batteries not included. She suspected their real-life counterparts would look little different. Terror-bots, she’d called them earlier. Those prepared to murder for their beliefs were inevitably without empathy, the human light in their eyes dimmed to nothing. She occasionally felt a little detached herself. But she’d never waged war on children.
Josie looked like she might be fair game, though. And if she was sitting on Claude’s lap while delivering her memos, she’d better be prepared to learn the meaning of collateral damage.
For a moment Taverner dimmed her own eyes. Emergencies tested the systems, her own not excluded. When this was over, she’d need to sleep for forty-eight hours. But not yet.
She turned the TV on, found a news channel. Aerial images of London filled the screen. Just ten years ago, it had looked so different: no Heron Tower, no Needle. Fold back twenty years, and you lost the Gherkin, the Eye, half the skyline. And twenty years from now, who knew; there might be monorails stretched between hundred-storey towers. But it would still be London, because that was the rule. Under the glitter and glad rags, the same heart beat.
Meanwhile, at ground level, the Met’s chief commissioner currently ruled the streets. But Di Taverner had agents out there too; Kestrels One to Five, watching, taking the city’s pulse. If an attack came, the terrorists were unlikely to be taken alive. Having agents on the scene pushed the odds a little further in that direction.
And it would soon be over either way; following which, there were other tasks in hand. Emma Flyte needed dealing with; her bagman, Devon Welles, too. The pair were confined to the Park for the duration. Taverner suspected conspiracy about seventy per cent of the time; whatever Flyte had been up to possibly fell into the cock-up category, but that was enough to come down on her hard. Slough House, too, was on her agenda. It was long since time Jackson Lamb got the message: among the bells heard today were some that tolled for him.
Protecting the Service was her top priority, now and always. Chopping away the dead limbs that threatened to choke its healthy trunk: that was good husbandry.
Up on the screen, footage of the gathering crowds was on both channels. Londoners were taking to the streets in a show of solidarity with the distant dead. It was a predictable, admirable response, and one the killers were relying on. Di Taverner hoped that, come tomorrow, there would be no more victims to remember. But it was true of every crowd that if you broke it down into its constituent parts, there would always be victims among them.
River Cartwright was in the crowd, threading through knots of people, most of them sombre, serious, aware of the day’s burden, and conscious of making a statement. We are not afraid. The talk was of Abbotsfield, Dennis Gimball’s death figuring highly too, and connections were being drawn. Every time he checked the BBC website, he expected to find his own face staring at him, alongside Coe’s. The police are seeking these men. But so far, nothing.
Twice he’d had to show his Service card to be allowed through a barrier: he didn’t remember London ever being tied this tight. But it made sense. An attack at the Abbotsfield memorial service would be more than a propaganda coup; it would be a dagger in the heart of the Establishment, even if the shooters got nowhere near the Abbey itself. Which they wouldn’t. Any armed hostile in central London right now would last seconds, no longer. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t take dozens of bystanders with him, writing headlines that would scorch their way around the world.