“This car already stinks like an eighties pub.”
“You could smoke in pubs then?” asked Ho.
Lamb sighed heavily, like an elephant deflating.
“It’s a revenge thing,” Catherine went on. “Must be. Dunn’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“That’s quite a leap,” said Lamb.
“Fine. Let’s think of another reason they’d be working together. Her brother, her fiancé, and the man supposedly responsible for her death.”
“Tribute band?”
“They must think it was some kind of conspiracy,” Ho said. “Whatever happened to Dunn. And that’s why they’re after the Grey Books.”
“Roddy,” said Catherine, before Lamb could speak. “They’re not really after the Grey Books. That was a ruse. To get them into the place where the Grey Books are kept.”
“. . . You sure?”
“Sean Donovan is a lot of things,” Catherine said, “but he was never a conspiracy nut. Whatever they’re looking for, it’s not in the Grey Books. They’re after proof she was murdered. Murdered by the Service, I mean.”
Lamb said, “They’ll be lucky. If it was a Service hit, there won’t be an order on file. Tearney’s a paper-pusher, but even she wouldn’t ask for a receipt for wet work.”
“Then what?”
Lamb stared out of the side window for two minutes, his face squashed into a scowl. When he spoke again, his voice was flat and final. “Tearney didn’t come up through the ranks. She’s a committee animal; she runs meetings, not joes. Dunn died six years ago. Back then, Tearney wouldn’t have known her way under the bridge, certainly not well enough to have someone bump off army personnel. Even just a captain.”
“You mean, it’s not Tearney they’re after?”
“I mean, if it’s Tearney they’re after, there’s someone else pulling their strings. How’d they know about Slough House, for a start?”
“Oh,” said Catherine.
“Yeah, right. Oh.”
“What?” said Ho.
“Above your pay grade,” Lamb said. “Stop at the next services.”
“We’re okay for petrol.”
“It’s not the car’s fuel I’m worried about,” said Lamb, putting his unlit cigarette in his mouth. “It’s mine.”
In their ears, nothing but ringing. In their eyes a shadow-show; everything silhouetted against everything else.
But it would have been a lot worse if the flash bomb had cleared the cabinet and landed on their side, instead of bouncing back the way it had come.
River, eyes screwed shut, reached out and felt for Louisa.
“Oy. Hands.”
“You okay?”
“Uh-huh. You?”
He nodded, then said, “Uh-huh.” The thing about a flash bomb was, it preceded an attack. But maybe that only happened when you threw it in the right direction.
“And they call us special needs,” he muttered.
“What?”
“We need to get out of here.” He looked at Donovan. “Can you walk?”
Donovan shook his head. His features were glazed with sweat.
“You got another magazine for this thing?”
“Left-hand pocket.”
River fished it out and reloaded. Donovan reached out his hand.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Uh-uh. You two go. Back the way we came in.”
Louisa said, “You’re losing blood. I mean really, a lot.”
“So I’ll just lie here and bleed quietly. But leave me my gun. I’ll deal with the rest of this crew.”
River and Louisa exchanged glances.
Donovan grabbed River by the shirt. “You think we did all this for nothing? Ben knew we might be killed. Well, he’s dead. And if that folder stays down here, he died for nothing.”
Louisa said, “I already told you. We’re not on your side.”
“You’re on theirs?”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“We’re only in this because you took Catherine,” River said.
“Then give it to Catherine.” He closed his eyes briefly.
River unpeeled Donovan’s fingers from his shirt front.
Louisa peered round the cabinet. A pair of figures were cautiously making their way through the wrecked wall, one holding a gun. She fired once, over their heads, and they scuttled back to safety.
Donovan opened his eyes again. “Give it to Catherine,” he repeated. “And when you do, tell her I’m sorry.”
Louisa said, “Another minute, two at most, they’ll try again.”
River said, “We’ll have to carry him.”
“Like hell you will.” Donovan reached for River again, but River batted his hand away. “You try taking me anywhere, I’ll resist. How far do you think you’ll get?”
“You seriously want to die?”
“I seriously want that information out there in the light.”
“Louisa?”
She said, “If he won’t come willingly, none of us’ll make it.”
“If we take the gun, he’s dead for sure. And if there’s anyone between us and the exit, they can’t be armed. Or they’d have made a play by now.”
Louisa said, “There’ll be more of them up top.”
“You think?”
“Don’t you?”
River said, “Yeah, probably. But they’re not all armed.”
“They don’t all have to be,” she said. “One’ll do.”
“Your call,” he said.
She looked at Donovan, then back at River. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Leave him the gun,” she said.
“Prick.”
“Thanks,” Nick Duffy said. “That makes it easier.”
The windscreen of the van collapsed inwards in a storm of metal.
Marcus arched his back and kicked out with both bound feet, catching Duffy mid-chest: he flew backwards into the van’s rear doors, which opened to spill him onto the ground. His gun disappeared in the dark just as the tumbling klieg light completed its bounce off the roof of the van. With a loud crash the floodlight shattered in a shower of glass. Marcus lay on his back, legs in the air, and tried to ease himself through the loop of his cuffed hands. It was like performing yoga on a bus. He focused on the mess on the sidepanels, the smear of brain matter oozing floorwards. Do this now, in the next three seconds, or that’s what your future looks like. It was all about taking control again, being in charge of the situation. But he couldn’t even take charge of his own damn legs, and he was still caught in that position, bound hands locked behind his arse, legs in the air like a chicken, when a figure leaped through the open back doors of the van, wielding a gun.
He blinked, ready to die.
“Found this,” Shirley said, her voice bright.
Then she said, “Ha! What do you look like?”
The domino-collapse of the shelves had been halted halfway, where the crates had blocked their fall. Getting that far was a scramble over tumbled boxes, files, a snowdrift of paper; not an easy journey to undertake without a lot of noise. When Louisa tripped on a length of wood River risked looking back. Their view of the doorway was obscured by the fallen cabinet, but Donovan had hauled himself upright, gun at the ready. Horatio at the bridge, River thought, pulling Louisa to her feet. He couldn’t remember what had happened to Horatio. He got to be a hero, but that was true of a lot of dead folk.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” Short sharp answer. “Run.”
They’d reached the back half of the room, where the crates were still in ordered rows; crates containing God only knew what. More documents, more relics of a covert history. Conscious of being in a narrow aisle, a straightforward target for anyone at either end, they took it at a gallop, and had almost reached the far doors when they heard the first shots. River dived for cover; Louisa kept moving, throwing herself into a dive at the last moment, hitting the doors, sliding through them, head and shoulder first. The doors swung shut behind her. She rolled onto her back. A Black Arrow stood over her, a truncheon in his hand. He raised it to bring it down upon her. She, in turn, raised the gun in her hands, the gun she was only half-sure was empty, and pointed it at his face.