Jackson Lamb and the bad spies of Slough House are caught in a deadly battle between MI5’s secret past and its murky future in this gripping, hilarious, and heartbreaking thriller by Mick Herron.“Old spies grow ridiculous, River. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.” Or so David Cartwright, the late retired head of MI5, used to tell his grandson. He forgot to add that old spies can be dangerous, too, especially if they’ve fallen on hard times—as River Cartwright is about to learn the hard way.David Cartwright, long buried, has left his library to the Spooks’ College in Oxford, and now one of the books is missing. Or perhaps it never existed. River, once a “slow horse” of Slough House, MI5’s outpost for demoted and disgraced spies, has some time to kill while awaiting medical clearance to return to work, and starts investigating the secrets of his grandfather’s library.Over at the Park, MI5 First Desk Diana Taverner is in a pickle. An operation carried out during the height of the Troubles laid bare the ugly side of state security, and those involved are threatening to expose details. But every threat hides an opportunity, and Taverner has come up with a scheme. All she needs is the right dupe to get caught holding the bag.Jackson Lamb, the enigmatic and odiferous head of Slough House, has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault. But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all make it home, there’ll be a reckoning.
So many things can break a head, it’s quicker to list the things that can’t. A banana. A cuttlefish. One of those balloons party entertainers twist into sausage dogs.
Front offside wheel of a Land Rover Defender, though. Definitely top half-dozen.
He had pictured this many times, witnessed it twice. It was a swift end with a slow build-up; the seemingly never-ending moments while the subject lay there, head between concrete and rubber. Bound, but not gagged—denying a man his last valedictions would be cruel. Also, there was the possibility of funny shit being said. But it was best to keep the arms and legs wrapped, and to hold the subject down, which meant allowing someone else to control the car . . . Which was fine. Up close and personal was how he liked to witness this: the full melon effect.
Which didn’t come near the reality, of course. Just letters and syllables.
Putting things into words was always a disappointment.
Being there, though. Getting so close to the subject, you were sharing his final moment. The concrete petrol-patched and gritty; the tyre smelling of—well, tyres, but also of everything else: of dog shit, blood and feathers; of the rain on the streets, and stinking tar; of beer and chemicals and fistfights after closing time, and the wrong sort of music choking up the jukebox. Everything cascading at once, round and round. And your eyes on the subject’s, and his on the tyre, so close he’d be breathing in the tread, which was where evidence would be left, because no hose was going to clean that wheel. All that panic; the rat-trapped memories scuttling about; the fine detail stored in the brain’s grey matter—it would all be crushed like salt, crammed into the criss-cross pattern of the rubber, and left there so everyone would know what traitors get: the revving of an engine after midnight, and a close-up of their own misdeeds. They get that last second where they’re thinking this can’t be happening, and they keep right on thinking that until it happens. And then they get whatever comes next, hellfire or radiance, or just the endless silence on the wrong side of a closed door.
Take your man Stephen Regan. Little gobshite, due a nutting if anyone was: dobbing in names, scratching the wrong backs. Never buying his round. Acted like a big man but he squealed like a kitten at the last, crying for Jesus and shitting himself on the damp concrete. It had been a duty to turn that sack into landfill. Also, there’d been the matter of seeing what it looked like, this manner of dying, and what’s life about if not satisfying the itch? Though every itch came differently, which meant soon you were craving the next. Which was Bernard Docherty. If Stephen had been a crybaby, Bernard had been all balls and no forgiveness; a roaring boy who’d gone to his maker with both fists clenched. Aye, Bernard had been special, which was why they’d been friends once, back in their youth, stealing cars together the way they might have scrumped apples if they’d been different people, somewhere else. But it was all history now, either way.
