‘And Roddy.’
‘Every cloud.’ He made his own final cloud, then squashed his cigarette out on the side of his bin. It was not, Catherine noticed, one of the monstrosities he’d been smoking lately. Just an ordinary filter tip.
He saw her noticing. ‘What?’
‘Just wondering what we do now.’
‘We gather them in,’ he said. ‘Before more bodies hit the streets.’
The activating order came from Catherine Standish, but he knew it originated from Lamb himself.
Blake’s grave. Now.
Roderick Ho stared at the text for a full five seconds, as if waiting for it to self-destruct, then tapped out his answer:
Roger that.
Then thought a few moments, and sent another:
A-OK.
Just in case she didn’t understand the first one.
After that, he was locked and loaded; ready to rock and roll. Cylinders firing and systems go: Welcome to the Rod-eo, he thought, then thought it again, because it was a new one. Welcome to the Rod-eo.
Saddle up.
Blake’s grave meant Bunhill Fields, the cemetery not far from Slough House. Blake was some dead guy, but that wasn’t important; what mattered was, it was where the team assembled when heavy shit was going down, and Slough House itself was off-limits. The emergency zone. And getting the call meant dropping everything and travelling light, because when you were called to the graveside, you needed to make sure it wasn’t going to turn out to be your own.
(A brief image struck him: of Lamb cradling Roddy’s body in his arms. Lamb’s broken gaze was directed heavenwards. Why? he was wailing. Why? For some reason Lamb was dressed as Batman, while Roddy’s own sweet corpse was in Robin costume. Very strange.)
Anyway. When word came down from Lamb that he needed his team, everyone knew what the real score was: he needed the Rodster. The rest of them could stand round making up the numbers, and that was fine, but what Lamb wanted was his best guy by his side. The others were camouflage.
And this was the part of the job Dyno-Rod loved: the part where his street skills came to the fore. Roddy Ho was the Duke of Digital; everyone knew that. He was Master of the Monitor, Lord of the Laptop, but that was only half the story. Take him away from his screens and he was also King of the Kerb, Sultan of the Streets, the something of the Pavements. He scrabbled about in his cupboard for his second-best pair of trainers – your second-best pair were your best pair, every fool knew that: they were what you wore when the going got rough – and grabbed his dark-blue hoodie from its hanger. Prez, pro, padrone, prince. Prince of the pavements. With smooth, practised economy Roddy readied himself for action: trainers on feet, hair tousled just right, and bang, he was out the door, only returning twice; once to change his blue hoodie for a black one – more ninja – and again to check he’d locked up properly. After that it was showtime, all the way.
No car. This was what it meant to go dark; you surrendered to the city, let it breathe you in gently, and carry you where you needed to go. Any watchers out there, they might hold you in their gaze for a moment, but then you’d shimmer and vanish, and they’d be left shaking their heads: what just happened? Then return to their original stance, waiting for your appearance, not understanding that you’d been and gone. That you’d cast no shadow; had slid through the streets like a whisper, your effortless passage a silent hymn to London’s dark and energising graces.
So any Regent’s Park newby assigned to pin a tail on the RodMan better bring their A-game, because the Rodinator left no trail. They’d have a happier time of it chasing smoke through a hurricane: Roddy owned the streets.
It was threatening rain, though, so he caught a bus.
When Lech Wicinski received the word he hadn’t the faintest clue what it meant, but his carefully composed reply – What?? – elicited no response from Catherine. So he phoned Shirley.
‘I just got a strange text.’
‘“Blake’s grave”? Me too. It means get there, now.’
‘Why? Do you think Lamb knows?’
‘Knows what?’
For fuck’s sake.
‘… Knows we just beat up a civilian. And stole his stuff.’
‘Oh, that.’ Shirley fell silent. ‘But why would he want us at Blake’s grave? When he could just bollock us in his office in the morning?’
A bollocking, Lech thought. He was thinking more along the lines of police, arrest, trial, imprisonment. Shirley’s more relaxed approach was likely drug-addled lack of perspective, but on the other hand might be based on experience. What happened earlier probably wasn’t the first time a slow horse had walked away from someone else’s wreckage. He’d heard rumours: about politicians, scaffolding, tins of paint. Mind you, that sounded a lot more accidental than thumping a civilian with a sap then stealing his money. So presumably Shirley hadn’t been involved.
He said, ‘So what does getting to Blake’s grave usually entail?’
‘You mean, what does it mean?’
‘… Yes, okay. That.’
‘Means some shit has hit a fan. And we’re all about to get spattered.’
‘Then why so cheerful?’
Shirley said, ‘Well, it beats an early night.’
So Blake’s grave, Lech interpreted, was the Slough House equivalent of the Park’s Apocalypse Protocol, in which all agents got out of the building and off the map, to regroup at various locations around the city. For Slough House, of course, only one rendezvous point was required. Otherwise, the slow horses would simply be several groups of a single person each, which was pretty much what they were the rest of the time.
The protocol also demanded you went dark: no phone, no vehicle, no watchers on your back. So Lech took batteries and SIM card from his phone. If Slough House had gone tits up, he’d better not paint himself bright colours. On the other hand, if this was Lamb’s idea of a wind-up, he wanted the wherewithal to Uber himself home afterwards, so instead of leaving the parts behind he put them in his pocket. Then he checked himself in the mirror, as he always did now – still a mess; those scars will never heal – and left the flat at the same time that Shirley, still in Shoreditch, ordered a vodka for the road. It would take her, like, five minutes to get to Bunhill Fields? Ten, max. And she knew it was an emergency shout, that three-word text, but really: what kind of emergency could it be? And if it was a really big one, she’d need another vodka inside her.
She was still keyed up from earlier. Playing it over in her head, they’d been lucky, her and Lech; him that she’d turned up at the right moment, when the guy in the black mac had been about to make his face a bigger mess than it already was, and him and her both that nobody had come in while they were dragging a stunned body into the cubicle. Two strokes of luck: maybe this was an end to her jinx run. Maybe this time she could partner up without having to pencil in an expiry date.
Not that her last partner had been her best friend or anything. In fact, when you got right down to it, it was possible he hadn’t even noticed they were partners.
And why did it matter whether she had a partner anyway?
The thought was one she’d been pushing away for as long as it had been creeping up on her. Her relationship history was back on an upward keel – she’d recently made it to a six-day anniversary – and it wasn’t like she was desperate to share an office again. It was more that, when it was her turn, she didn’t want to be bleeding on a hillside on her own, in the snow. She wanted somebody with her, holding her hand or saying her name. Not that she was superstitious. Shirley had no plans to die soon. But planning had nothing to do with it, as her late colleagues would no doubt testify. Or Blake, for that matter. She doubted he’d picked out his grave in advance. One day you’re wondering what to do at the weekend; the next, your weekend’ll never come.