He had thought the execution would happen down in that cellar.
But it happened in the kitchen.
The house was on a terrace that had seen better days, most of them pre-war. The upstairs windows were boarded over and those at ground level thickly curtained, with no light showing. A water stain spattered its façade.
Lamb said, in a harsh whisper, ‘Hands up who hasn’t been drinking tonight?’
Min and Louisa exchanged a look.
‘Here.’ Lamb handed River Moody’s gun, the .22. ‘Point it anywhere near me and I’ll take it off you.’
It was the first time River had been on a public street with a weapon. It should have weighed more.
He said, ‘You think they’re in there?’
Because the house didn’t simply look asleep. It looked dead.
‘Act as if they are,’ Lamb said. They’d driven straight past the house; had parked twenty yards down. Min and Louisa had been right behind them; now all four were crouched beside Lamb’s vehicle. River glanced at his watch. If Lamb’s estimate had been right, they had five minutes before the achievers turned up. Seven, if you wanted to be strictly accurate.
‘We’re going in?’ he asked.
‘We’re going in,’ Lamb said. ‘You and me. You can do the door.’ This last to Louisa. ‘There’s a jemmy in the boot. And you watch the back.’ Min. ‘Anyone comes out, don’t let them see you. But don’t lose them. All clear?’
All was clear. Months of waiting for a real job to do: they weren’t about to pass it up.
‘Okay. Don’t anyone get shot or anything. It goes on my record.’
Louisa fetched the jemmy, and they approached the house in a line; Min walking straight on by, heading round the corner to watch the back. At the door, Louisa slipped the jemmy in at latch height like a born housebreaker. She leant on it hard, and the door splintered open. And then Lamb was moving faster than a fat man should, wielding an H&K in a double-fisted grip. He snapped to the right two steps in, kicked open a door that led to an empty room. ‘Armed police!’ he shouted. River took the stairs in three bounds. It was dark; no tell-tale strips of yellow painting the doors’ outlines. He entered the first room fast and low; spun 360, gun outstretched. ‘Armed police!’ Nothing. Just a pair of mattresses on the floor, and an unzipped sleeping bag curled like a sloughed skin. There was a shout from downstairs. He backed out, kicked open the second door: same story. Another shout: Lamb calling his name. The last door was a bathroom. He pulled the light-cord. A green stain blossomed beneath one of the bath taps, and a shirt hung from the shower rail. It was damp. Lamb shouted his name again. River ran downstairs.
Lamb was silhouetted at the end of the hallway, looking at something on the kitchen floor. His gun was in his hand, but his arm hung by his side.
River said, ‘Upstairs is clear.’
Lamb said, ‘We need to go.’
His voice was ghoulish. Warped.
Louisa Guy approached River from behind. She was holding the jemmy in a two-handed grip. ‘What is it?’
‘We need to go. Now.’
River moved closer and stepped through the kitchen doorway.
The body sprawled across the kitchen floor had once been taller. Now it lay in a pool of gore, around which a fat bluebottle hummed busily.
Behind him, Louisa said, ‘Oh sweet Jesus.’
On the kitchen table sat a head, raggedly removed from its owner.
River turned and pushed past Louisa. He barely made it out before throwing up into the gutter.
They crossed the black river in a blue car, red memories staining their minds. Enough blood staining their cuffs and their shoes to render them bang to rights at a glance, let alone after forensic study.
The one driving said, ‘Did you have to …’
‘Yes.’
‘He was …’
‘He was what?’
‘I just …’
‘You just what?’
‘I just wasn’t ready for it.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘No, well, he wasn’t either, was he? But guess what? Makes no fucking difference. He’s just as fucking dead.’
He was. He was dead. They’d left his head on the kitchen table.
How much deader could he get?
Chapter 12
‘Phones. Now.’
Dumbly, they fumbled for their mobiles.
‘Where’s Harper?’
He was arriving at a trot. ‘What happened?’
‘Your phone,’ Lamb said.
‘My phone?’
‘Now, damn it!’
Min Harper fished out his mobile phone; added it to the three Lamb was holding; watched in horror as Lamb dropped all four down the storm drain at his feet.
‘Okay, go. Fetch Ho, Loy and White. I’ll get Standish.’
All of this, to River, like a dream sequence; voices booming in and out of focus; the nearest streetlight swimmy. He felt empty-legged, like a wind might knock him over, and didn’t want to look back at the house with its still-open door, with its kitchen, with its table on which sat a severed head. If a head could sit. If a head could sit.
‘For fuck’s sake, Cartwright, don’t do this now.’
River said, ‘I’ve seen him before.’
‘We’ve all seen him before,’ Lamb said.
Louisa Guy ran a trembling hand through her hair. Min Harper touched her elbow, and she shook him off.
‘He was one of us, Cartwright. He was a slow horse. Now get moving. Get the others. Don’t go home.’
River glanced at Min and Louisa, and read their expressions accurately. ‘We don’t know where they live.’
‘Give me strength.’ He rattled off addresses: Balham, Brixton, Tower Hamlets.
‘Then where?’
‘Blake’s grave. Soon.’
They left in separate cars.
A bare minute later, two black vans arrived, and figures piled out.
‘A spook.’
‘But …’
‘But fuck all. He was a spook. End of.’
He made a chopping motion with one hand.
In both their minds, a head fell to the floor.
‘I’m …’
‘You’re what?’
‘I’m just …’
‘You’re scared.’
‘You killed him.’
‘We killed him.’
‘I didn’t even know you were gunna do that.’
‘Did you think this was a game?’
‘But it changes everything.’
‘You’re a nancy. Nothing’s changed.’
‘Nothing’s changed? We killed a copper—’
‘Spy.’
‘Spy, copper, what’s the difference? You think they’ll let this lie? You think they’ll—what?’
Because Curly had thrown his head back and screamed in mirthless laughter.
Diana Taverner was in her office. It was shortly after three, and the hub was mostly empty; only a couple of the kids hunched over a console, coordinating surveillance of an animal rights group. She’d just put the phone down. The tactical ops squad—‘the achievers’—had gone into the house near Waterloo; it was empty, save for a body. They’d cut his head off. The good part, if you could call it that, was that he’d been dead before that happened.
A fingerprint scan was on its way, but she already knew whose the body was. It wasn’t Hassan Ahmed’s, so it had to be Alan Black’s. Her agent. Jackson Lamb and his crew were nowhere. Her earlier worst thoughts, about things going even more wrong, had come to pass. It was as well she’d set a back-up plan in motion.