The domino-collapse of the shelves had been halted halfway, where the crates had blocked their fall. Getting that far was a scramble over tumbled boxes, files, a snowdrift of paper; not an easy journey to undertake without a lot of noise. When Louisa tripped on a length of wood River risked looking back. Their view of the doorway was obscured by the fallen cabinet, but Donovan had hauled himself upright, gun at the ready. Horatio at the bridge, River thought, pulling Louisa to her feet. He couldn’t remember what had happened to Horatio. He got to be a hero, but that was true of a lot of dead folk.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” Short sharp answer. “Run.”
They’d reached the back half of the room, where the crates were still in ordered rows; crates containing God only knew what. More documents, more relics of a covert history. Conscious of being in a narrow aisle, a straightforward target for anyone at either end, they took it at a gallop, and had almost reached the far doors when they heard the first shots. River dived for cover; Louisa kept moving, throwing herself into a dive at the last moment, hitting the doors, sliding through them, head and shoulder first. The doors swung shut behind her. She rolled onto her back. A Black Arrow stood over her, a truncheon in his hand. He raised it to bring it down upon her. She, in turn, raised the gun in her hands, the gun she was only half-sure was empty, and pointed it at his face.
“Don’t,” she said.
“. . . You don’t either.”
“I won’t. So long as you drop that and go.”
He hesitated a moment longer, probably weighing the truth of her words more than he was his own chances. Then he sagged at the knees slightly, let the truncheon drop to the floor, and made for the doors. He opened them just as River pushed through from the other side, and for a moment the two stared at each other in crazed horror. Then the Black Arrow was gone, back inside the chaos of the storage room.
“I knew there was one behind us,” said River.
“Yeah, well. You were right.”
“Nice bluff.”
“If I was bluffing,” she muttered, holding the possibly empty, possibly not gun two-handed as they headed down the corridor, towards Douglas’s room, and its hatchway to the world.
“It was Duffy.”
“
“Nick Duffy.”
“Nick Duffy, Head Dog?”
“Jesus, Shirley, how many ways you want to say it? It was Nick Duffy, Head Dog. Either he’s gone way off reservation, or we’ve walked into a mop-up.”
She had severed his bonds with the jagged half of a CD (“Lucky you found that.” “Yeah. Lucky.”), and the first thing Marcus had done was grab his cap and peel his revolver free. He felt happier with a gun in his hand. Less happy thinking about the possibility this was a mop-up.
Shirley said, “Those Black Arrows aren’t Service issue. They’re not trained and they don’t bounce.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
They ran for the cover of the skip, ran in a half-crouch, expecting to be fired upon. But no shots came.
“You tipped the light onto the van,” he said, stating the obvious.
“It’s what Nelson would have done.”
“That was smart.”
“For a cokehead, you mean?”
“Wanna bet?”
She grinned.
“That’s Duffy’s gun?” Marcus asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Which way did he go?”
“Not sure. I was avoiding tumbling debris.”
He peered round the edge of the skip, towards the block bordering the railway line.
Shirley said, “If it’s a mop-up, it’s a half-arsed one. Like I said, these Arrows are strictly part-time. And they don’t have guns.”
“Some do,” Marcus said. “Duffy did. And that kid in the van was shot.”
“Well, okay, some do. But most of them have scattered. Should we take the other light down?”
Marcus looked at it, twenty yards away. “It’s aimed at that building.” The factory. “At that hole in its wall.”
“Must be where the entrance is. Wanna take a look?”
“What I want,” Marcus said, “is to find Duffy.”
“Separate ways?”
“Be careful.”
They bumped fists, and split.
•••
Lamb walked away from the pumps, round the side of the 24/7—DVDs, overpriced groceries, and pornographic magazines wrapped in coloured plastic—and lit his cigarette leaning against the free air dispenser. He checked his phone for messages: nothing. Which meant that whatever Cartwright and Guy were up to, either they hadn’t finished yet, or it had all gone fine, or it had all gone badly wrong.
Gonna be a lot of empty desks at Slough House in that case.
He was unsurprised when Catherine Standish appeared behind him.
“They’ll be okay,” she said.
He put his phone away. “Who will?”
“Sean Donovan’s an angry man,” she said. “But it’s not us he’s angry with.”
“Yeah, he’s already killed one man today. Remind me not to piss him off.” He dropped his cigarette and immediately produced another. “He gave you booze, didn’t he?”
Catherine turned her gaze on him, her face expressionless.
Lamb said, “I could smell it, soon as I came through the door.”
“I’m surprised you can smell anything, the fags you get through.”
