Clown Town полностью

But Lech said, “Catherine, if you ever fly to the Caribbean to fall off the wagon I’ll come with you.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Shirley said, “Yeah, well, I won’t.”

“No one asked you to.”

“Too fucking expensive.”

Lech said, “Were you looking for us?”

She sipped her tonic water: ice and lemon? Please. “Yes. I thought the nearest pub was a good starting point.”

Though she couldn’t deny, it might have been an equally promising finish line. Ice and lemon, please, and a shot of gin to give it heft. There were days and days and days when she never thought of taking a drink. And there were other days when people died, and you were left to carry the weight of that: It would help to be floating when you shouldered it. It would ease the burden.

This is my fault.

Her fault because it was always her fault, whatever it was on any given occasion. But her fault, too, because it was actually her fault; her fault for having encouraged the debacle at the nightclub, or at any rate, not having discouraged it. Had she made an objection, enthusiasm would have dwindled, Lech or Shirley or someone pointing out that shielding Peter Judd from possible harm was not just outside their remit, it was antithetical to the common good. They could all have been sitting here now—Louisa and Ash too—drinking in the news of Judd’s death. And how would Catherine have felt about that? Causing—not hindering—being complicit in—the death of a notorious public figure, versus having Louisa and Ash on either side, warm and breathing? Maybe that would pass for a conundrum to a moral philosopher. To Catherine, it was no choice at all.

But here’s a harder question, the alcoholic asked herself. Given the choice, who would you rather had lived; Louisa, whom you’ve known for years, or Ash, with her whole life ahead of her? Whose mother would you rather write the letter to? The incomplete letter, sitting on her desk at Slough House?

It was not true that she had no answer to this. But it was true that the answer tasted like poison, and when she raised her glass to her mouth, her dull tonic water burned her lip.

Shirley was talking to her. “Does Lamb want us? Is that why you’re here?”

Said with a flicker of hope.

Catherine said, “No. He doesn’t. And let’s keep it that way.”

Lech and Shirley exchanged a look. “What?”

“I know what you’re like. What you’ve always been like, all of you. You’re going to be looking for a way to join in.”

“And?” said Shirley.

“And don’t. That’s all. I don’t know what Lamb’s got in mind, but whatever it is, you need to keep well clear.”

“He told us what he was doing,” Lech said. “He’s calling a truce.”

“He said he was going to burn her . . . flipping house down. Does that sound like a truce to you?”

“It’s a start,” said Shirley.

“One that ends with the neighbourhood in flames.”

“We’re here, we’re having a drink, we’re surplus already,” Lech said. “We don’t need you telling us to keep our heads down.”

“You know where he was before he arrived at the . . . hanging gardens?”

“Lamb? No.”

“He went to see Devon Welles.”

“We met him,” said Shirley.

“He used to be a Dog,” said Lech.

“More than that. He used to be the Dog in charge of Taverner’s home security.”

“Ah,” said Lech. “You think he’s actually going to burn down her house?”

“He can barely light a cigarette without someone finding him a lighter,” said Shirley.

“Yes, but that’s the thing about Lamb,” said Catherine. “When he wants a thing done, he can always get someone to do it for him.”

“Which in this case is River and Roddy,” said Lech.

“Yeah,” said Shirley. “What could go wrong?”

Here’s a funny thing: If you put on a high-vis jacket, you became invisible. It was one of those what-do-you-call-’ems: a parasite, paraglide, paradox. Roddy, who had funny bones, could have got a whole set out of this if he had a mind to—he’d watched enough Netflix specials to know how it was done—but right now he had other eggs to fry: two cameras to render inoperative, and it was fast creeping up on eight o’clock. Notting Hill was aflurry with pedestrian life, plus the usual amount of traffic; everywhere you looked there were people in motion, and not one of them paying attention to a neon-jacketed bod hefting a tyre jack, because those very details made him look like a working man, someone on his way to attend to something; one of the unsung heroes of the city, whose daily grind kept London’s wheels turning. A closer look would have dispelled that impression, sure—this was Roddy Ho, not some semi-schooled muppet who couldn’t get a proper job—but to anyone with their mind on other things, a man in a high-vis jacket, even a Roddy Ho in a high-vis jacket, was perinatal, perineal, peripheral to events. Roddy could climb a lamppost unseen, he could smash-and-grab a jeweller’s unnoticed, let alone take out a camera. He was the invisible man, without the bandages. He’d even dispensed with the one protecting his tattoo: The hummingbird was ready to fly.