And even if nothing happened in Birmingham, this didn’t make the journey a waste of time. She’d screwed up last night. Ho could have been killed, and, whatever anyone felt about Ho, Slough House had seen enough death. Besides, if Ho had been whacked, what would that say about her own abilities? She’d been there to protect him. So today she was going the extra mile: call it penance. Also, she’d closed River down when he’d suggested Shirley was missing Marcus, and she felt bad about that too. Maybe it was time to start probing. Maybe, instead of bouncing off each other like spinning tops, she and Shirley could do each other some good.
So she said, ‘You never talk about Marcus.’
Shirley proved her point by not replying.
‘I know what it’s like to lose someone close.’
‘And when you talk about them, do they come back?’
It was Louisa’s turn not to say anything.
Shirley said, ‘How long has this gum been in there anyway?’
‘Longer than the sunglasses.’
Shirley spat it into her hand. Then her face brightened. ‘Yellow car.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to play any more.’
‘No,’ said Shirley. ‘I just didn’t want to lose.’
A sign told her: fifteen miles.
When a police officer, Emma Flyte had never fallen into the trap of thinking cops and villains two sides of a coin, closer in outlook than a civilian could understand. She preferred to hold to a more fundamental verity: that villains were arseholes who needed locking up, and cops were the folk to do it.
Here on Spook Street, the option of arresting the bad guys wasn’t open to her.
If it had been, Jackson Lamb would have been on her list. She didn’t care that he used to be a joe – didn’t buy into that whole romantic notion of the bruised survivor of an undercover war – and wasn’t impressed by his apparent determination to bully or alienate everyone around him. She simply thought him a bastard, and the best way of dealing with bastards was to cut them off at the knees. And even Lamb himself, deluded ringmaster that he was, would have to agree that over the last hour or so, he’d provided her with a sharp enough axe to do just that.
Emma pulled back her hair, tied it with an elastic band. Anything less utilitarian – even the most basic of scrunchies – and she’d get sideways looks from male colleagues, who seemed to think any hint of decoration meant she was playing the gender card. That these same men wore ear studs and sleeve tattoos didn’t figure in their calculations … She was in her car, though hadn’t yet turned the key. Hadn’t yet figured out her next move.
She hoped it hadn’t showed, back in Slough House, but rage was sluicing through her body. Being cuffed like a prisoner; fed tea from a cup in someone else’s hands – what she really wanted was to bang heads together; corral the slow horses and have each of them hobbled. Boiled down into glue.
But …
But she didn’t much care for the bigger picture either.
The Standish woman was right: Claude Whelan had his hands full, and wouldn’t appreciate the mess she’d made of locking down Slough House. And Taverner would be less than no help: she’d happily accept any ammunition that could be used against Lamb, but she wasn’t the type to waste ammo, and if she could bring down Emma with the same round, she’d do precisely that. Emma had
Besides. There was always the possibility Lamb was right. And whatever she’d said back there about Waterproof, about how the old ways no longer applied in Regent’s Park, she had the feeling that if the Abbotsfield killings turned out part of a cataclysmic self-inflicted wound, then anyone who knew about it would soon wish they didn’t.
She drummed her thumbs on the steering wheel. The day was packing its bags and tidying up; would be drawing the curtains before long. Whatever she was going to do, she’d better get on with it.
There was a phrase she’d heard bandied about: London Rules. Rule one was cover your arse …
What she really hated about reaching this conclusion was knowing Lamb would expect her to do just that.
Thank God she had at least one ally in this dog-eat-dog universe. Before starting the car, she reached for her phone, and called Devon.
Catherine said, ‘Happy now?’
‘You know me. Like Pollyeffinganna on Christmas morning.’
‘I’m guessing Santa brought you mostly coal,’ she said.
