River said, “You took Catherine Standish. Sent me her photo.”
“I took her,” Donovan said. “But it was Monteith sent you the photo.” He plucked another folder from the shelf. “And I think you’ll find he’s outside your jurisdiction.”
A glance, the barest shrug. The folder hit the floor.
“You knew her from the old days,” Louisa said. “Back when she was at the Park.”
Donovan opened another folder. He looked at the front page, seemed about to drop it, then looked again, more closely.
“But what I want to know,” Louisa said, “is how come you knew about Slough House?”
Glass splintered, and she turned. Through the gap on the shelves left by Donovan’s predations, she saw Traynor raise the gun to the window he’d just broken: two shots ricocheted down the corridor. In immediate response came a louder bang, and a flood of light which filled the room before receding, leaving a dark blur in its place. Traynor was thrown from the cabinet, which juddered across the floor with a heavy scraping sound. The doors bulged inwards, the left-hand one torn free of the wall by the blast, and the rows of shelving toppled like dominoes, as those nearest the blast collapsed onto their neighbours. Donovan dropped to the ground; Louisa followed when he pulled her arm, and the falling shelves spewed files and folders onto their heads. What had been an aisle was now a tunnel, and the overhead crashing continued until the last of the shelves came to rest on the first of the rows of crates. River had gone. For two seconds Louisa was blank confusion, her ears full of noise, her eyes full of light, and then a survival instinct kicked in: on her hands and knees, she scuttled through debris to what had been the central aisle, where she could make out figures pouring through what was now a hole in the wall where the doors had been. Scrambling upright, she found herself grabbed by a stranger, his features obscured by black wool. When she rapped his throat with the side of her hand he backed off two steps, comically choking for breath, and another man, identically clad, took his place. This time Louisa was flung to the floor, with something like a cosh swinging down towards her. It would have connected if a box file hadn’t hit the man in the face first. He staggered sideways, then fell when River punched him in the head.
Louisa got to her feet. A light haze had filled the room, smoke, but mostly dust. Some of the Black Arrow crew didn’t appear to know what to do now they’d broken through; a couple of others, more proactive, were sitting on Ben Traynor; had rolled him over and were cuffing his wrists. Sean Donovan emerged from behind her, and she saw him reach for the folder he’d been looking at when the doors had blown open. He tucked it inside his shirt before standing up.
River shouted. “You okay?”
She thought that’s what he shouted. Her ears were still ringing.
He shouted, “Time to go,” and then his body went rigid and the light in his eyes went out.
The way he hit the floor, she was sure he was dead.
Shirley rolled sideways, and the kick that should have taken her head off did no more than graze her ear. In the same movement she hooked her foot around her assailant’s leg and brought him to the ground. From the corner of her eye, she saw the first man bring his truncheon down on Marcus’s stomach, but that was yards away—another time zone—and she had her own enemy to worry about. She threw herself upon him, pinning his elbows with her hands. He was several stone heavier, and clad in combat-ready gear; she wore jeans, a tee and a jacket, but if she lacked a well-packed utility belt and a nightstick she at least had a hard head, and when she brought it down on his nose she heard the satisfying crunch of bone on bone. The coward screamed, and his stick went rattling across the concrete. Pushing herself semi-upright, Shirley punched him twice, very hard, in the exact same spot she’d just butted him. She’d have done so a third time, but had to throw herself sideways to avoid the first man’s truncheon, which whistled so closely past her face she could taste it. She rolled over twice then sprang into launch position, like a racer waiting for the starting pistol. Facing her, he slapped the truncheon into his open palm, once, twice, like an invitation. The second man was wheezing heavily, bubbling with blood; Marcus was prone and didn’t look like he’d be moving soon. And there were more people heading this way: she could hear the rustling of gear, the heavy tread of hot men. Another slap of the truncheon—Come and get it.
She could take him. Five seconds’ untrammelled movement from her, and he’d spend the rest of the night removing that stick from his arse.
But there was more than just him to contend with. Before the noises got closer, she feinted left, moved right, spun on her heel and ran.
Sorry, Marcus.
Shadows swallowed her, and she vanished inside darkness.
She didn’t see Marcus being gathered up and carried to the black van.
Dame Ingrid sat in the aura of her standard lamp, and to an observer might have looked serene, saintly even, given the halo effect of her blonde wig. Though if the same observer had moved closer, ignoring the soft focus, she’d have noticed that any calm in Dame Ingrid’s eyes was the kind that rocks contain, comprising a sublime indifference to the forces that produced her and a stubborn intention to endure, come what may.
There was no observer, but Ingrid Tearney rubbed her cheek anyway, as if disturbed by a stranger’s breath, then patted her wig, assuring herself it remained in place. After today’s events, she would not have been surprised to find strands of it falling about her shoulders, the way her real hair might, had it not been lost to her long ago. Today had been a day of surprises; of sandbaggings and sudden reversals. Peter Judd’s plotting had not been unexpected: PJ was a known quantity—public buffoon and private velociraptor—and Dame Ingrid had been girding her loins for an attack since his elevation to the Home Office. Diana Taverner’s machinations were hardly out of character either, but what startled Dame Ingrid was that Taverner’s plan had evidently been germinating for years.
Half an hour’s research had proved this much.
Sean Donovan was a name that would have rung bells, had Dame Ingrid ever concerned herself with the sharp end of operations. Donovan had been a career soldier, destined for laurels; his non-combat duties had included a session at the UN, where he’d advised on crushing resistance, or counter-insurgency as it was also known, depending on whose foot the boot was on. He’d been accompanied by a Captain Alison Dunn, who was engaged to Donovan’s subordinate, Lieutenant Benjamin Traynor. All very cosy, and it didn’t require much imagination to conjure up myriad ways in which things could have gone pear-shaped, but what actually happened wasn’t romantic entanglement but political indiscretion. In a Midtown bar, Alison Dunn had been approached by a junior delegate from one of the former Soviet republics. Dunn had known enough to stay sober in this company; the junior delegate had either been unencumbered by such wisdom or was pretending to be drunker than he was to excuse his flapping tongue. Or possibly—you couldn’t rule it out—his motives had been honourable. Either way, the information he passed on to Dunn had been alarming enough for her to submit a report to the Home Office, stamped minister’s eyes only, on her return home.
That had proved to be something of an error.
Dame Ingrid pursed her lips, giving her the appearance, had she but known it, of a disappointed fish. Doubtless, in recruiting Donovan and Traynor, Diana had claimed that it was Ingrid herself who had been responsible for the death of Alison Dunn, and Donovan’s consequent imprisonment; doubtless, too, she had provided them with precise instructions for laying hands on Virgil-quality documentation which would corroborate the story Alison Dunn had heard in New York. Information that would be more than enough to end Ingrid Tearney’s career.