The Grey Books indeed . . . She should have seen straight through that decoy. Would have done, except that it came gift-wrapped: if Peter Judd’s tiger team were a pair of reality-impaired conspiracy buffs, then they presented no real threat; an outcome so welcome Ingrid had accepted it without question. She sighed . . . She had been too willing to believe in others. It was an abiding weakness, her one great character flaw, and might prove her downfall if her eleventh-hour attempt to eliminate the whole pack of them proved unsuccessful.
Darkness was edging further into the room now, painting her lamplit corner brighter. Nothing to do but wait. And as she did so, she couldn’t quite suppress a sneaking admiration for the tenacity with which Diana Taverner had pursued her aims.
Not the least audacious aspect of which, as far as Dame Ingrid was concerned, was that she had managed all this without paperwork.
A tidy battlefield is a good battlefield, thought Nick Duffy. He wasn’t positive that particular gem appeared in those art of war texts City dickheads read on the tube, but it fitted his mood. From his current perspective, the fencing, the skip, the mounds of urban debris had transformed into landmarks: areas of cover for what was yet to come, which, ideally, wouldn’t last more than a minute. The klieg lights were poised to turn the area outside the derelict factory into a stage, and once that happened, anyone treading the boards would find their dramatic career cut short. They called it dying when it happened on stage. They called it that when it happened elsewhere, too.
He was deep in the shadows of the building nearest the railway tracks, leaning against a pillar, and while he didn’t know precisely what was happening in the complex below his feet, he had a calm feeling nevertheless; the sense of everything going to plan. Pulling the trigger on the red-headed kid had done that. You’d think it would push him in the opposite direction, that he’d have a hollowed-out feeling now, be all butterflies and shit, but that wasn’t how it worked. How it worked was, everything was going to be okay, because the alternative, now he’d killed that kid, was unthinkable. And Nick Duffy didn’t do unthinkable.
One of the Black Arrows approached, not even attempting to look stealthy. In a shaky voice, he said, “We’ve got a prisoner.”
For a second, Duffy thought he’d missed something. “They’ve come up?”
“No. He was spotted on the perimeter, checking us out.”
Perimeter, thought Duffy. These toy soldiers loved their vocabulary.
“He’s a big guy, black. Thing is, there was someone with him.”
Duffy mentally ran through Slough House personnel. A big black guy would be Marcus Longridge; someone else was either Shirley Dander or Roderick Ho. His money was on Dander. Ho was a desk-jockey.
“And they got away.”
“Fuck. Anyone go after her?”
“She’s in block one, far as we know.”
The Black Arrow gestured behind him, in case Duffy had forgotten which block was which.
“Thing is . . . ”
Another thing? Duffy said, “What?”
“They’ve put him in the van. Where we put the first prisoner?”
“Good.”
“Only . . . the first prisoner?”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“And?”
“Jesus, I mean . . . ” From toy soldier to boy soldier: Duffy could tell that any moment now, his lower lip would wobble. “Nobody said there was going to be killing.”
Duffy nodded. The Black Arrow couldn’t see his face, which was probably as well, because his expression wouldn’t soothe worries away. He leaned in closer, and just to erase any ambiguity from the situation wrapped one gloved hand round the man’s throat as he did so. “Well what the fuck did you think we were going to do? Tag them and release them into the community?” His voice had dropped an octave, a grace note he’d always found effective when explaining grim realities.
“But it’s just—”
“It’s just nothing. For the past six months your crappy little operation has been headed up by someone who today turns out to be an enemy of the state. Now there’s two ways we can deal with this. We can have a nice tidy discussion followed by a full-scale investigation, after which none of you will have a job ever again. Not to mention having MI5 so far up your arses you’ll spend the rest of your lives whistling when the wind blows. Or we can do it my way, which is quick, quiet and leaves no mess. If you’re not man enough for that, say so. But get your head round this first. If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. Understand?”
The Arrow nodded.
“Didn’t catch that, son.”
“. . . Yes.”
“Welcome aboard. This new prisoner, is he cuffed?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll deal with him. You get to your position. Anyone comes out that factory, the lights go on, and you bring them down. Understand?”
This time he didn’t wait for an answer. Leaving the Arrow in the stench of the dying building, he headed for the van.
In Roddy Ho’s opinion, he wasn’t being given enough credit for taking charge. Think of something, Lamb had told him. Do something, Marcus had said. Any way you looked at it, driving a bus through a front door was “something.” The fact that it turned out unnecessary was one of those wise-after-the-event outcomes it was hardly fair to pin on him.
In his mind’s eye, it had played out differently. He’d rolled straight out of the driver’s cabin, disarming the thug holding Lamb at gunpoint; bit of the old natural grace coming into play as he’d brought said thug to his knees with a quick one-two . . .
Later, with Louisa: “Really, Lamb said that? All I was doing was reacting, babes.”
“Jesus, Roddy, when someone calls you a hero, just accept it, yeah? Is that his gun in your pocket, by the way?”
“Hell’s teeth. Did the impact fuck your hearing up or what?”
And this was Lamb, bringing Roddy Ho back to reality.
“Dunn. Alison Dunn. That was the name of the woman Donovan killed.”
Ho said, “Yes. No. I can’t remember . . . ”
“Give me strength. If it was your brains I needed, we’d all be in trouble. All I want is your typing skills. Look her up. Is this guy related?”
For a moment, Ho couldn’t lay hands on his smartphone, and his life flashed before his eyes. Most of it involved Grand Theft Auto. Then he located it—new holster attachment, duh—and keyed in his password for the Service intranet. Typing skills, typing skills. What Lamb didn’t realise was how much more was involved than simple typing skills.
Alison Dunn, deceased. Military. Scroll down to find her surviving family.
“You know,” Lamb said, looking round at the mess the bus had made of the hallway, “when I first met you, I had you pegged as a waste of space.”
Busy as he was, Ho couldn’t prevent a smirk. He recognised a third-act moment when he heard one. “And when did you change your mind?”
“When did I what?”
Catherine emerged from the room where they’d put Dunn. “As long as you’ve got your phone out, call an ambulance.”
“Like hell,” Lamb said. “We’ll cuff him to a radiator and let the Dogs pick him up. Things are messy enough without a trip to A&E.”
“He’s a civilian,” Catherine said. “Not our jurisdiction.”
Ho looked up from his phone. Standish was glaring at Lamb in a way that made him glad it wasn’t happening to him. Babes, he told Louisa, that lady can be mighty fierce, you hear what I’m saying? Surviving family was her mother and a brother, Craig. There was a fiancé too, one Benjamin Traynor.