‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning when he was in the field, he had more to worry about than his expenses. Things like being caught, tortured and shot. He survived. You might want to bear that in mind.’
She left him sitting there, an asset bought and paid for. Some were cheaper than others. And she already knew to what use she could put him.
From the window River gazed down on the traffic backed up along Aldersgate, victims of the roadworks that had plagued the street forever. Sid was at her desk, her monitor still unreeling the twelve-minute loop of the boy in the cellar; the actual twelve minutes long swallowed by the passing day, but each loop nevertheless chopping away at the time left to him.
‘A far-right group,’ River said, and though it was a while since either had spoken, Sid Baker picked up the tune without missing a beat:
‘There’s more than one of them.’
He turned. ‘I’m aware of that. You want me to run through some of the more obscure—’
‘River—’
‘—nutjob circuses, in case any have slipped your mind?’
‘Don’t assume it’s Hobden’s crew. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘Because it’s more likely to be coincidence that he pops on to Five’s radar the day before this happens?’
‘He popped on to yours the day before this happened. I expect he’s been on Five’s a lot longer.’
River’s grandfather would have recognized the stubborn look on his face. Sid Baker pressed on regardless.
‘The British Patriotic Party are the usual bunch of shallow-enders, blaming their lack of prospects on the nearest victim group. Get them lagered up, and they’ll break windows and beat up a shopkeeper, sure. But this is out of their league.’
‘You don’t think Hobden’s got the nous to put this together?’
‘Nous, yes. But why would he want to? Besides, if Five thought he was behind this, you think they’d be stealing his files? They’d have him answering questions in a basement.’
River said, ‘Maybe. Or maybe he’s got enough friends in high places that he can’t be tossed into a van without people getting upset.’
‘You think? He’s spent the last couple of years being strung up in print by the rags he used to write for.’
‘Because they can’t afford to look like they support him.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. They’ve strung him up because he deserves it. There’s no sympathy for views like his in the mainstream. Twenty years ago, perhaps. But times have changed.’
‘And keep changing. There’s a recession on, did you notice? Attitudes have hardened. But we’re off the point, anyway. What this is, we’ve a far-right group performing a terrorist act the same day we pull a data-theft on the highest-profile right-wing nutcase in the country. No way is that just one of those things.’
Sid turned back to her monitor. ‘You’re always saying we do nothing important here at Slough House. How does that fit in with us suddenly being on point for the whole damn Service? If Hobden’s behind this, and Five were checking him out, we wouldn’t know about it, would we?’
He had no answer for that.
‘He’ll be found. It’s not going to happen, River. This boy is not going to get his head chopped off on camera. Not tomorrow, not any other day.’
‘I hope you’re right. But—’
He bit the rest of his sentence off.
‘But what?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You were about to say something. Don’t pretend you weren’t.’
But I saw what you took from Hobden’s laptop, and it was gibberish. Whatever you were trying to steal, you didn’t get. Which means if he is involved in this, he’s at least one step ahead of Five, which means it’s not looking good for that kid right now …
‘Is this about what you were looking at in the pub?’
‘No.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘Okay, I’m lying. Thanks.’
‘Give me a break. I’d lie too if I’d come into possession of knowledge I shouldn’t have. I mean, given we’re spies and all.’
She was trying to get him to laugh, he realized. That was an odd feeling. He couldn’t recall the last time a woman had tried to get him to even smile.
Wasn’t going to work though. ‘It was nothing,’ he repeated. ‘Just some corrupted files.’
‘Weird form of corruption, translating everything into pi.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘Sounds more like some kind of security scrambling.’
‘Look, Sid, it was nothing important. And even if it was, it’s none of your business.’
Judging by the look on her face, it would be a while before she attempted to put a smile on his again.
‘Fine,’ she said at last. ‘Fine. Excuse me for breathing.’ She stood abruptly, and her chair toppled backwards. ‘And speaking of breathing, this room still stinks. Open a bloody window, can’t you?’
She left.
Instead of opening the window, River looked out of it again. The traffic hadn’t noticeably shifted. He could stand here the rest of the day, and that sentence wouldn’t need changing.
It’s not going to happen, River. That boy is not going to get his head chopped off on camera. Not tomorrow, not any other day.
He hoped she was right. But he wasn’t banking on it.
But the police found Hassan safe and sound.
It turned out there’d been a partial witness to the abduction; from her bedroom window, a woman had seen some lads ‘rough-housing’—her word—at the end of the lane opposite, then they’d all bundled into the back of a white van, a Ford, and headed east. She’d thought nothing of it at the time, but the news reports stirred her memory, so she took her snippet of information to the local cops. There were traffic lights in the direction the van had gone; over-hanging cameras monitored the junction. A partial number plate had been captured. This fragment was swiftly disseminated the length and breadth of the country; every force in the land matched it against recorded sightings of white Ford vans on motorways, in city centres, on garage forecourts. After that, it was only a matter of time. But it was a peculiar stroke of luck that broke the case wide open and brought armed-response cops bursting into Hassan’s cellar; it seemed that a local homeless man had.
Hassan opened his eyes. Darkness stared back. He closed them again. Armed-response cops burst in. He opened them. No they didn’t.
He hadn’t known time could crawl so slowly.
And hadn’t known this, either: that fear could take you away from yourself. Not simply out of time, but out of your body. Sitting in a hood and jumpsuit, like a patient in a surrealist’s waiting room, his grasp on the here-and-now slipped away, and that shrill voice at the back of his mind popped up, the one that delivered all his best riffs. Shaky, but recognizably his own, and trying to pretend none of this was happening; or that it had happened, but was now safely over; was now, moreover, material for the most scrotum-tightening stand-up routine ever. All those other hostages—the ones who’d spent years chained to radiators—they wrote their books, they made their documentaries, they hosted radio shows. But how many of them took it open-mic?
‘Let me tell you about my hood.’
Pause.
‘No, really. My hood.’
And then they’d get it, his audience; they’d get that he meant hood, the thing they’d put on his head. Not his ‘hood, where you couldn’t leave your car out overnight.
But that was as far as the shrill voice got. Because it wasn’t over. The stink was too foul for it to be over: the vomit, the shit, the piss; everything that fear had shifted out of its way when making space inside him. He was here. He didn’t have an audience. He’d never had an audience; every open-mic night at the Student U he’d been there, head full of material, stomach full of knots, but he’d never dared take the stage.