She was breathing okay, despite the rough landing; felt clear-headed, despite these mad few minutes. And her cop instincts were kicking in, undamaged by her years as Top Dog. Whatever was going on here, the boy was at its centre.
She pulled free of Louisa. “Go.”
“Be careful.”
Emma nodded, but Louisa was already off, running in a crouch, as if fearful of snipers.
A pair of black-gloved hands appeared on top of the wall, and Emma dropped behind a gravestone. Scuff marks in the snow should have betrayed her: in the daylight they’d be a neon arrow. But there wasn’t even any moon; just a faint silvery hint behind the clouds. And if he was moving fast enough—
He was.
Was almost past her before she was ready, oblivious to the tracks on the path. There was no gun in sight; he must have tucked it in a holster, but that was an observation made in movement. Already, she’d uncoiled like a jack from its box, using the headstone to propel her as if kicking off in a pool, but even then only just caught his leg below the knee. Enough to send him sprawling, but his heel clipped her forehead as he fell, causing lights to go on suddenly. She pulled back before his foot could catch her again, this time deliberately, and was upright first. If he hadn’t been reaching for his gun he’d have tipped her over while she stood one-legged, but that crucial second was all it took for her to bring her other foot down on him, a sudden memory—where did this come from?—of a brick crashing into her riot-shield one hot day in Tottenham. That same feeling of resistance. This time, Emma was the brick. He rolled with the blow, and wherever his gun was it was going to take close personal contact to relieve him of it, and she didn’t think she’d broken him quite. Better to quit while she was ahead. All of this had taken moments, like an edgy edit in an action film. Louisa and Lucas had disappeared through the gate. She took off after them, shrugging herself into her black coat, which swirled behind her like a vampire’s cloak; the drops of blood on the snow crumbs from an interrupted feast.
The first task of snow is to make everything new; its second, to make the same scene creak with age. By early Saturday morning London’s snow was loosening its grip, sliding from rooftops with the noise the wind makes catching a parachute. On the roads gritters had left rusty scattershot patterns in their wake, and grey lumps had formed where tyres had pulverised drifts. Noises, too, were returning to normal, the streets’ acoustics adjusting themselves. Every footfall was helping return the city’s streets to their unadorned state, while yesterday’s snowflakes learned the lesson London offers all who settle there: that while all are unique, most appear identical, both before and after being trodden on.
Catherine Standish noticed all these things, and none of them, on her way to Slough House. They were background music, winter’s tune, and she’d heard it before. On the tube people appeared chirpier, in the manner of those who’d survived an unexpected seizure, but these too she blanked out. There weren’t many of them anyway. It was early; it was a weekend. She wouldn’t be heading to work herself if half of Slough House weren’t in joe country. Most of the night she’d lain awake, wondering whether her own wobble—her months’ long teeter on the lip of sobriety—had foreshadowed a greater tumble, and she’d arrive at work to find each office shrouded in black crêpe, the house disintegrating. She wasn’t one for omens, but Lamb appeared to think bills were falling due. And if he wasn’t always as right about things as he thought he was, there were times when his bullish nature guaranteed the outcomes he expected, as though the world knew better than to thwart him when his blood was up.
The image arrested her. Her last sight of Lamb’s blood had been on a mottled handkerchief on his desk top, the souvenir of a coughing fit.
A chest infection. That’s what he’d said. He was taking antibiotics. Catherine thought about that for a while, then thought about Lamb at a doctor’s surgery, and scratched the image immediately. Thought about him talking to a Service quack, and scratched that too. Thought, instead, about him self-diagnosing and acquiring under-the-counter meds from a contact in a pub: that ticked the right boxes. He’d been smoking himself into the grave for as long as she’d known him—it was basically a race between the fags and the booze—and maybe he was right, maybe this was an infection, and drugs would clear it up, but you never knew. It should not be possible to live like Jackson Lamb and avoid consequence. But that was a thing about life: it had been known to favour bastards.
