London Rules полностью

Tina, though, wasn’t, or wouldn’t be much longer. Tina wasn’t her real name anyway. J. K. Coe just found it easier to compose these letters if they had an actual name attached; for the same reason, he always signed them Dan. Dan – whoever he was – was a deep-cover spook who’d moled into whichever group of activists was currently deemed too extreme for comfort (animal rights, eco-troublemakers, The Archers’ fanbase); while Tina – whoever she was – was someone he’d befriended in the course of doing so. There was always a Tina. Back when Coe had been in Psych Eval, he’d made a study of Tinas of both genders; joes in the field were warned not to develop emotional attachments in the group under investigation, but they always did. You couldn’t betray someone efficiently if you didn’t love them first. So when the op was over, and Dan was coming back to the surface, there had to be letters; a long goodbye played out over months. First Dan moved out of the area, a fair distance off but not unvisitable. He’d keep in touch sporadically, then get a better offer and move abroad. The letters or emails would falter, then stop. And soon Dan would be forgotten, by everyone but Tina, who’d keep his letters in a shoebox under her bed, and Google-earth Albania after her third glass of Chardonnay. Rather than, for example, dragging him into court for screwing her under false pretences. Nobody wanted to go through that again.

But, of course, joes don’t write the letters themselves. That was a job for spooks like J. K. Coe, whiling away the days in Slough House. And lucky to be doing so, to be honest. Most people who’d shot to death a handcuffed man might have expected retribution. Luckily, Coe had done so at the fag-end of a series of events so painfully compromising to the intelligence services as a whole that – as Lamb had observed – it had put the ‘us’ in ‘clusterfuck’, leaving Regent’s Park with little choice but to lay a huge carpet over everything and sweep Slough House under it. The slow horses were used to that, of course. In fact, if they weren’t already slow horses, they’d be dust bunnies instead.

Coe cracked his knuckles, and added the words be able to save a bit to his letter. Yeah, right; Dan would save a bit, then meet an Albanian girl, and – long story short – never come home. Meanwhile, the actual Dan would be undercover again, on a different op, and the ball would be rolling in a new direction. On Spook Street, things never stayed still. Unless you were in Slough House, that is. But there was a major difference between J. K. Coe and the other slow horses, and it was this: he had no desire to be where the action was. If he could sit here typing all day and never have to say a word to anyone, that would suit him fine. Because his life was approaching an even keel. The dreams were ebbing away at last, and the panic attacks had tapered off. He no longer found himself obsessively fingering an imaginary keyboard, echoing Keith Jarrett’s improvised piano solos. Things were bearable, and might just stay that way provided nothing happened.

He hoped like hell nothing would happen.

The car smeared Roderick Ho like ketchup across the concrete apron; broke him like a plastic doll across its bonnet, so all that was holding him together was his clothes. This happened so fast Shirley saw it before it took place. Which was as well for Ho, because she had time to prevent it.

She covered five yards with the speed of a greased pig, yelling Ho’s name, though he didn’t turn round – he had his back to the car and his iPod jammed into his ears; was squinting through his smartphone, and looked, basically, like a dumb tourist who’d been ripped off twice already: once by someone selling hats, and a second time by someone giving away beards. When Shirley hit him waist-high, he was apparently taking a photo of bugger-all. But he never got the chance. Shirley’s weight sent him crashing to the ground half a moment before the car ploughed past: went careering across the pedestrianised area, bounced off a low brick wall bordering a garden display, then screeched to a halt. Burnt rubber reached Shirley’s nose. Ho was squawking; his phone was in pieces. The car moved again, but instead of heading back for them it circled the brick enclosure, turned left onto the road, swerved round the barrier, and went east.

Shirley watched it disappear, too late to catch its plate, or even clock the number of occupants. Soon she’d feel the impact of her leap in most of her bones, but for the moment she just replayed it in her head from a third-party viewpoint: a graceful, gazelle-like swoop; life-saving moment and poetry in motion at once. Marcus would have been proud, she thought.

Dead proud.

Beneath her, Roddy yelled, ‘You stupid cow!’

The internet was full of whispers.

No, River Cartwright thought. Scratch that.

The internet was screaming its head off, as usual.