“That’s what makes me think he found a Moscow hood and tracked him halfway across the country.”
“No. Dying doesn’t prove he found a Moscow hood. All it proves is he’s dead. And if a Moscow hood killed him, that doesn’t mean you found a thread and pulled. It means a thread was dangled, and you snapped it up.”
Lamb said nothing.
“Exactly as you were meant to.”
Lamb said nothing.
“You’ve gone quiet. Run out of funny comments?”
Lamb pursed his lips. He looked like he was about to blow a raspberry, which wouldn’t have been the first time. But instead he unpursed them, sucked his teeth, then leaned back and combed his hair with his fingers. To the ceiling he said, “Untraceable poison. Dying message. Give me a fucking break.”
Now it was Catherine’s turn to be fazed. “What?”
When Lamb looked at her, his eyes were clearer than they ought to have been, given the level of the bottle.
“You really think I’m stupid?” he asked.
Up ahead was the flat. It was the top floor of a dump held up by mould and damp, whose painted-over windows had trapped the air inside for decades, making it an olfactory museum of poverty and desperation, smells Kyril was familiar with. Most rooms were hot-beds: men coming home from work as others left for the nightshift. Communication was nod-of-the-head. Nobody cared about anyone else’s business.
Which was how The Man liked it, but Kyril was a people person. One of his strengths. So much so it could be taken for a weakness, which was why Piotr had decided Kyril couldn’t speak English this morning.
“What’s the harm? They’re civil servants.”
“They’re spooks,” Piotr had said. “Civil servants? They’re spooks. You believe that Department of Energy crap?”
Kyril had shrugged. Yes, he’d believed that Department of Energy crap. Probably not a great thing to admit.
“So I do the talking,” Piotr said.
And Piotr had been right, because if the guy was from the Department of Energy, how come he was tailing Kyril now?
Though if he was a spook, how come he was so bad at it?
There was always the chance there were others Kyril hadn’t spotted, but he figured Harper was alone, which suited him fine. Harper wouldn’t present problems. Kyril could snap him in half with one hand, and throw him in opposite directions.
That made him smile. He didn’t enjoy violence, and hoped the need wouldn’t arise.
But if it did, he could handle it.
Shirley Dander opened her eyes. The crack running outwards from a corner of her ceiling was the shape of a continent, an unfamiliar animal, a dimly remembered birthday. For long seconds she hovered inside its reach, and then she was awake, and it was just a crack.
Her skull pulsed to someone else’s beat. Whoever was playing that drum had stolen the daylight.
Risking movement, she turned her head to the window. It wasn’t dark, but only because there was a city outside, pouring its electric wash over everything. So the light bleeding through her thin faded curtain was yellow and automatic, and came from a nearby lamppost.
The bedside clock blinked at her. Nine forty-two. Nine forty-two? Jesus.
At Slough House, after giving Jackson Lamb her report, Shirley had suffered a cocaine crash. These were not unfamiliar, but generally planned for, and came with a duvet, a tray of brownies and a DVD of
“Good morning, was it?”
Marcus Longridge would not have believed the effort her grunt of reply required.
But the man would not give up. “Enjoy your trip?”
This time she managed to shrug. “Country. I can take it or leave it.”
“More a beach girl?”
“Less of the ‘girl’.”
In front of her, the virtual coalface once more. One brief taste of the outside world and she was matching faces again, like trying to play snap without a twinned pair in the deck. She’d told Lamb she’d been up all night, that tracking down Mr. B had been what she’d done instead of sleeping, but all that earned her was a toothy snarl. “You’ll be looking forward to home-time then, won’t you?” he’d said.
Marcus was still watching. “I need food,” he said. “You want anything?”
A dark room, a quiet bed, the temporary absence of life.
“Shirley?”
“Maybe a Twix.”
“Be right back.”
When he’d gone, Shirley crossed to the window. After a moment, Marcus had appeared on the street below. Instinctively she’d drawn back, but he hadn’t looked upwards; just crossed the road, heading for the row of shops. As he walked, he held his mobile to his ear.
Paranoia came with the territory. Every hangover she’d ever known—beer, tequila, cocaine, sex—had left her furtive and hunted. But even allowing for that, she’d been certain she was the subject of that phonecall.
Back in the here and now, she groaned softly. This did nothing to change the quality of the light, the pulsing of her skull, or the black pit that opened every time she closed her eyes.
