‘The watering hole’. At Regent’s Park he’d have had to back his assertions with hard evidence or statistical probability. In Slough House, all he’d had to do was convince Jackson Lamb. But then, Lamb had done his time behind the Wall, and could still read the writing on it. People talked about Spook Street – life in the covert world – but Lamb had served down the dismal end, where your instincts stayed sharp or you suffered, and he recognised the truth when he heard it. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t a fat bastard, just that he was a fat bastard you dismissed at your peril.
None of which indicated that Coe would be proved correct here and now, or that Guy and Dander would strike lucky in Birmingham. Zafar Jaffrey and Dennis Gimball were just examples of the kind of target the template advocated: there’d be others, the deaths of whom would cause a tremor through the body politic, and various levels of grief, stress and rejoicing. There’d be angry mobs on streets, and bottles uncorked in dining rooms. It would all go on for days, and the headlines would stoke up outrage, and when the time came for these clowns to reveal whose strategy they’d been applying, the house of cards would be ready to collapse.
It didn’t matter who they were, he thought. Russians, Chinese, Cornish secessionists. Their identity barely mattered against the point they were making: that the target nation, always so eager to squat the moral high ground, had designed its own destruction.
And then he wondered what Dennis Gimball was doing down below; weaving round the scaffolding; scurrying along the alley to where the wheelie bins were gathered.
There was a decent number of people in attendance: fifty-two, more than she’d have expected. Then again, the last time Louisa had attended a public forum on local issues was never. Jaffrey was talking, outlining what might be challenges, might be opportunities – he was big on proclaiming that it all came down to attitude – and she had to admit he had something. Call it charisma, because people usually did. Whatever it was, it was striking that he could be bothered to turn it on in a local library, uncovered by media; and that he seemed to genuinely care about what he was saying, and so far hadn’t dodged any questions, which ranged from residents’ parking issues to the possible fate of the library itself, which was looking at closure. Louisa should feel worse about that, but she was already mentally ticking it off her spreadsheet: at least she’d be spared having to study the lending stats for its terrorism section.
As for the crowd, she wasn’t expecting a killer to erupt from its midst. It would include a police officer: plain-clothes, probably not armed – the country might have been in a heightened state of tension since Abbotsfield, but that had been indiscriminate violence, and there was nothing to suggest politicians were in greater danger than at any time in the recent past. But Jaffrey had a national profile, and he was a Muslim: there were always going to be those who saw either as inflammatory. A police force with one eye on its reputation would keep the other on its local heroes, so the crowd included a police officer, which she guessed was either the Asian woman in the front row – petite but handy-looking, if you knew the signs – or the bulky man doing his best not to look bored a few seats to her left. There was also a pair who might be from Jaffrey’s own team among the audience: young, male and female, very watchful, very engaged. At first sight, Louisa pegged them as the two most likely, and her heart had accelerated. But when the male half got up to help an elderly woman with her bag, she’d relaxed. Terrorists came in all shapes and sizes, but helping the aged wasn’t the standard package.
Outside, she hoped, Shirley was keeping her eyes open, though more than likely she’d sloped off to find food by now. She’d half a mind to pop out and check, but it didn’t seem worth the bother: Shirley would do what Shirley did, and was unlikely to appreciate commentary. So here Louisa was, and she had to pause to remember precisely why. Back in Slough House, this had felt like a plan worth pursuing; here and now, it seemed like it had been a good way of getting out of Slough House. Trouble was, she was now in Birmingham, a two-hour drive home, with Shirley beside her, doubtless smelling of chips.
Never let anyone tell you it’s not a glamour profession, she thought.
Jaffrey was growing animated – Brexit, and its effect on local manufacturing – and Louisa settled back, but kept an eye on the door. People would burst in soon with guns, and try to kill this man. It didn’t seem likely. Nor was she clear on what she was supposed to do about it if they did.
But she supposed that would resolve itself, should the situation arise.
