“If he wakes up,” Marcus said thickly. He spat a huge red gobbet, but his mouth immediately filled again. “You hit him kind of hard.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Any more around?”
“I think they mostly ran away,” River said.
“Huh.”
“Louisa shot a few.”
“Good.” He spat again. His tongue was numb. He had a sudden memory of eating ice cream that morning—strawberry and pistachio—and wondered if he’d ever know flavour again.
River prodded Nick Duffy with his foot, to see if he was conscious or alive, and then kicked him very hard for no special reason. It had been a long day.
“Is he breathing?” Marcus asked.
“Fuck knows. Don’t care.”
“A hand here?”
River helped him up, and they stood for a moment, breathing hard, as yet another train went past, casting brief slices of light through the gaps in the breeze-block wall, and rustling through the litter with its draught. And then it was dark once more, and the air hung heavy with heat, and the distant wail of the city throbbed and stammered. Marcus collected his gun, spat again, and shook his head.
“I’m kind of disappointed nobody went under a train.”
“Yeah, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you?” River said. “Place like this.”
Then they walked back across the wasteground to where the others were waiting.
It was the hour after lunchtime, and the heat had changed its tune; a subtle variation that brought the promise of release, if only because it seemed unlikely it could keep up this tempo forever. In the mis-shaped square near Paddington the trees hung listlessly over desiccated garden beds, and pigeons hunkered in their shade, more like stones than birds. They barely fluttered when a dog barked in the road, and didn’t stir at all when Jackson Lamb stomped down the path, his shirt untucked, one shoelace undone. He wore a pair of plastic sunglasses and carried a manila folder, tied shut with a length of pink ribbon. Anyone else would have been taken for a lawyer. Lamb looked like he’d just lifted it from a bin.
He slumped heavily onto the bench next to Diana Taverner, who herself looked like she’d wandered in from the right side of town; her blouse hanger fresh, her grey linen trousers immaculate. Only her eyes, when she looked at him over the top of her Gucci shades, betrayed any hint of misplaced cool.
“Jackson.”
“You couldn’t have picked a bar? Somewhere air-conned?”
“It seemed best to be somewhere we won’t be overheard.”
“So thanks to your guilty conscience, I’m damp as a bimbo’s cleavage.” He slumped back, and fanned himself with the folder. “Gets any hotter, I’m going topless.”
Taverner suppressed a shudder and said, “So. It seems your crew had themselves quite the little party yesterday.”
“You know what it’s like. Sun’s shining, school’s out. Seemed a shame to keep them cooped up inside.”
“Quite a lot of bodies littering our facility near Hayes.”
“Sounds like my local,” Lamb said. “Saturday nights get a bit hectic.”
“Can we be serious for a minute?”
Lamb made an expansive gesture with his free hand.
“Traynor dead, Donovan dead. He took quite a few Black Arrows with him, it seems, along with two of Nick Duffy’s men. And as for Duffy himself . . . ”
“Yeah, Cartwright was asking after him. Sore head?”
“Limited brain function.”
“Anyone noticed?”
“You licensed a small war, Jackson. There are going to be questions.”
“I licensed nothing.” He produced a pair of cigarettes from his pocket, stuck one behind his ear and lit the other. Taverner waved smoke away. Lamb said, “Ingrid Tearney approved yesterday’s outing, and I’m guessing it was her who then changed her mind and sent the troops in.” He waggled the folder. “When she realised exactly what it was Donovan was after.”
“Not the Grey Books.”
“Not the Grey Books. And before you start spinning fairytales, Diana, this’s got your fingerprints all over it. Those soldier boys didn’t find out about Slough House from the phone book. Everything they had, from the names of my crew to Ingrid Tearney’s private number, that all came from someone on the inside.”
Diana let her gaze wander the square, perhaps wondering if Lamb had brought backup. But nobody caught her attention for long. She turned to look at him instead. “Shame. I was rather hoping to convince you it was Ms. Standish did all that. Did she enjoy being . . . ‘kidnapped’? Rather more attention than she usually gets, I’d have thought.”
Lamb said, “You even told me where they were, the whackjob files, when we talked on the phone. Talk about signposting.”
“No discussing Ms. Standish, then? All right, Jackson, yes, hands up to this one. The tiger team was my idea, and I sold it to Judd. I brought Donovan on board, though his method of creating a job vacancy at Black Arrow was his idea, not mine. As was killing Monteith. That’s the trouble with going freelance. You can’t always keep the talent on the straight and narrow.”
“But you had to go out of house, because you needed a third party to bring this to light.” Lamb waved the folder again. “Everything you always wanted to know about the Service’s use of black prisons, but were afraid to ask.”
“Don’t act like you’re surprised.”
“Trust me. I’m not.”
He might as well not have spoken.
“We’ve used them for years, Lamb. Project Waterproof. A way of deporting undesirables without going through all that tiresome legal bullshit. And it hardly makes us outcast among nations. They’ve long been doing it in the good old US of A.”
“Maybe so,” said Lamb. “But I thought we’d denied using them in the UK of E, S, W and NI.”
“That’s the whole point. We’ve denied using them. Most categorically, and in front of Parliamentary Committees. More to the point, we both know precisely who has denied using them.”
“Ingrid Tearney,” said Lamb.
“Whose name’s so plastered over the paperwork, you’d think it was the logo. Flight plans. Transport requisition. Fuel . . . You can’t conjure an international flight out of nothing. And it’s not like these places come round and collect. Have you got a spare one of those?”
Lamb checked his second cigarette was still tucked behind his ear, and said, “No.”
“Too hot to smoke anyway . . . And we’re not talking registered charities here, either. They’re actual prisons. Or used to be. They’re . . . special purpose now. And require payment.”
“In return for the permanent removal from circulation of various miscreants,” Lamb said flatly. It was impossible to tell from his tone whether he approved or not.
“Well, you can’t have a parole hearing if you’ve never been sentenced.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “I don’t mean to sound judgmental. These are people who, on the whole, we don’t really want loose on our streets.”
“On the whole?”
She shrugged. “There’s rumours Tearney’s used Waterproof to vanish people for personal reasons.”
“Perks of the job.”
“I’m sure the PM will see it that way.”
“He’ll probably ask her to use it on Judd. And this is what the Dunn woman learned that night in New York.”
“The guy who approached her, he was a delegate from . . . Well, let’s just say one of the ’Stans. Some while back, he’d brokered a deal for the use of a couple of his nation’s particularly remote high-security facilities.” She paused. “Their version of high security’s not as high-tech as you might imagine. It mostly involves thick walls and no plumbing.”