Spook Street
(Slough House #4)
by Mick Herron
Books by Mick Herron
Down Cemetery Road
The Last Voice You Hear
Why We Die
Smoke & Whispers
Reconstruction
Nobody Walks
Slow Horses
Dead Lions
The List (a novella)
Real Tigers
Spook Street
To Juliet and Paul
(in lieu of a wedding present)
Copyright © 2017 by Mick Herron
All rights reserved.
Published by Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Herron, Mick.
Spook street / Mick Herron.
ISBN 978-1-61695-647-9
eISBN 978-1-61695-648-6
1. Intelligence service—Great Britain—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6108.E77 S68 2017 823’.92—dc23
2016025804
Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
So this was what springtime in London was like: the women in knee-length dresses of blue-and-white hoops; the men with dark jackets over sweaters in pastel shades. Both sexes carried shoulder bags with more flaps and fastenings than necessary, the females’ either red or black, the males’ a healthy, masculine buff-colour, and caps made an occasional appearance too, alongside headbands—let’s not forget the headbands. Headbands, in rainbow stripes, lent the women an over-eager look, as if they grasped too keenly at a fashion of their youth, though the genuinely youthful sported the same accessory with apparent unconcern. Feet wore sandals or flipflops, faces wore wide-eyed content, and body language was at once mute and expressive, capturing a single moment of wellbeing and beaming it everywhere. They were both uplit and downlit, these plastic springtime celebrants, and a piano tinkled melodious background nonsense for their pleasure, and a miniature waterfall drummed an unwavering beat, and Samit Chatterjee watched all of it through narrowed eyes, his thin features alert and suspicious.
Outside, the first working day of the year ground miserably on, heaving its bloated, hungover weight towards mid-afternoon, but inside Westacres—a cavernous retail pleasure dome on London’s western fringe—the theme was of the spring to come, though by the time it arrived the window displays would be redolent of lazy summer outings instead. In its almanac of images, on a page already turned, the new year had been represented by sledges and scarves and friendly robins, but reality made few compromises, and life this side of the windows bore little resemblance to that enjoyed by the mannequins. Here, jaded shoppers trudged from one outlet to the next, their passage made hazardous by the slick wet floor; here, the exhausted paused to rest on the concrete ledge surrounding the water feature, in which a styrofoam cup bobbed, froth scumming its rim. This fountain was the centrepiece of a hub at which corridors from each point of the compass met, and sooner or later everyone using Westacres passed by it. So naturally it was here Samit mostly lingered, the better to scrutinise the punters.
For whom he had little fondness. If Westacres was a temple, as he’d heard it described, its worshippers were lax in their observations. None of the truly faithful would dump takeaway litter in their cathedral’s font, and no one who genuinely sought to uphold their religion’s tenets consumed a six-pack of Strongbow by 9:30 a.m., then upchucked on their church’s floor. As a devout Muslim, Samit abhorred the practices he daily bore witness to, but as one of Westacres’ dedicated team of Community Regulation Officers—or Security Guards, as they called themselves—he forbore from calling down divine retribution on the unGodly, and contented himself with issuing stern warnings to litterbugs and escorting the inebriated from the premises. The rest of the time he offered directions, helped locate wandering infants, and once—he still thought about this, often—chased and apprehended a shoplifter.
There was no such excitement this afternoon. The air was damp and miserable, a tickle at the back of Samit’s throat suggested an oncoming cold, and he was wondering where he might cadge a cup of tea when they appeared: three youths approaching along the eastern corridor, one carrying a large black holdall. Samit forgot his throat. It was one of the great paradoxes of the shopping centre experience that it was imperative for profit and prosperity to get the youngsters in, but for the sake of harmony and a peaceful life, you really didn’t want them hanging around. Ideally, they should turn up, hand over their money, and bugger off. So when youth turned up in threes, carrying a black holdall, it was wise to suspect foul motives. Or at the very least, be prepared for high jinks.
So Samit did a 360-degree scan, to discover two more groups coming down the northern avenue, one of young women who appeared to find the world a source of unending hilarity; the other a mixed bunch, all saggy-crotched jeans and unlaced trainers, broadcasting the usual Jamaican patois of the London-born teenager. And towards the west was the same story, oncoming teens, any number of them, and suddenly the groups didn’t appear to be separate but a mass gathering, governed by a single intelligence. And yes, it was still the holidays, and you had to expect a high youth turnout, but . . . In case of doubt, call it in, Samit had been told. And this was a case of doubt: not just the kids, the sheer number of kids—more appearing all the time—but the way they were heading toward him; as if Samit Chatterjee were about to witness the first flowering of a new movement; the overthrow, perhaps, of this colossal temple he was here to guard.
Colleagues were arriving now, dragged along by the undertow. Samit waved urgently, and unclipped his radio just as the original trio came to a halt mid-arena and placed their holdall on the floor. While he was pressing his transmit button they were unzipping the bag and revealing its contents. And as he spoke, it started—at the same precise moment the whole crowd, dozens upon dozens of kids, milling by the fountain, blocking the entrances to shops, climbing onto the water feature’s surround; every single one of them, it seemed, stripped off their jackets and coats to reveal bright happy shirts beneath, all lurid primaries and swirls of colour, and that was when the boys hit buttons on the retro ghetto-blaster they’d unpacked, and the whole shopping centre was swamped by loud loud noise, a deep bass beat—
Living for the sunshine, woah-oh
And they were dancing, all of them, arms thrown over heads, and legs kicking high, hips swaying, feet going every which way—nobody had taken dance lessons, that was for sure, but these kids knew how to have fun, and fun was what they were having.
I’m living for the summer
And didn’t it feel good? A flash-mob, Samit realised. A major craze eight or ten years ago, rediscovered by a new generation. Samit had seen one before, at Liverpool Street: he’d been on the outskirts, longing to join in, but something—something? Teenage embarrassment—had held him back, and he could only watch as a crowd unfurled in joyous, planned spontaneity. This one, of course, was happening on his watch, so ought to be stopped, but for the moment there was nothing he could do—only dogs and megaphones could break this up now. And even adults were letting their hair down, tapping away to a summertime beat; one of them, right in the middle, unbuttoning his overcoat. And for one blind moment Samit too was washed away in the swelling joy of being alive, despite the cold, despite the damp, and he found his lips twitching—whether to smile or sing along with the chorus, living for the sunshine woah-oh, even Samit himself wasn’t sure, and he had to raise a hand to his mouth to disguise his reaction. This gesture helped shield his teeth, by which he was later identified.