. . . each with different ideas about what to do next, no wonder Slough House was a mess—anyway, yes, here Louisa was outside Nob-Nobs, and there was nothing doing with the front doors, which were locked, so River took charge, trying to impress Sid, because men always think the way to impress women is to be slightly more of a dick than they actually are, suggesting they pair off and circle the building, and after pointing out that seven didn’t divide into pairs Louisa stepped off on her own before she could be partnered with Roddy, heading down an alley by the side of the club the same way you’d enter Slough House, wondering if this was how her story was doomed to play out, forever re-enacting spaces she was familiar with, and then stopped wondering that and wondered instead if this was another colossal waste of time, and if the slow horses, as usual, were just looking to fill the void where their jobs used to be, back when they felt useful . . .
CC’s heart was beating irregularly, skipping, then banging hard. He told himself this was normal, then adjusted: normal for me. The gun in his pocket, swinging heavily against his ribs, was a more reliable measure. Age might be paddling in his wake, but he was rowing the boat.
But if he were his own handler, the instruction he’d give would be
“Afterwards . . .” he had said to her.
“No harm will come to your friends,” Taverner said.
There were lines you could read between, and others whose gap swallowed you whole.
“And it’s not as if you’re being robbed of years.”
He had thanked her for her certainty.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve been told you might wobble on for another decade. But your medical history indicates otherwise. And this way, your comrades enjoy a happy ending. Or avoid an unhappy one. Hardly a win-win, but in the circumstances, the best you can expect.”
The irregular beat, then, needn’t be a concern.
The nightclub, Nob-Nobs, was where he’d been told it would be, and even as he determined that, his new phone buzzed.
They found Cartwright’s car on a side street, where it was a toss-up as to whether it would be ticketed for a parking offence or towed away for being fly-tipped, and walked from there to the main road, where there was a garage on a corner, a nightclub on another, and a row of bars and retail premises on the facing pavement. Then Big Dog went one way and Little Dog the other. Seven times out of ten such uncoordinated canvassing got you nowhere, but the other three times you got lucky. That had been Big Dog’s experience, and he’d been doing this longer than Little Dog. They’d give it ten minutes; after that, well, no way would Cartwright remain unfucked-up for long. The odds on that went so far past maths, they became religion. Ten minutes. They went their separate ways.
. . . instead of, like now, finding some makeweight mission that had them feeling still in the game, but she could sit and bemoan her fate or find a way into this building, so she skipped down the alley, ignoring the first door because it would clearly be locked, turning the corner at the end, passing a double door secured by padlock and chain, and came to a fire escape, its metal struts and handrails a Meccano construction in the fading light, but presumably these things were assessed by Health and Safety so up she went, the structure creaking under her weight, which was a cheek—she wasn’t a hippo—and debris on every landing suggesting the stairs were used as a breakout space, cigarette ends, empty vape tubes, the scraggy end of joints, plastic cups, a pair of boxer shorts, and a stray lyric swam into her mind, something about smoking cigarettes and staring at the moon, and then she was focused again, checking each door until she came to one that opened, that had had its tenon taped over to prevent it locking, which was maybe a clue as to why the club had folded, and she slipped through this door and was inside the building . . .
