Ho said, “It’s like, thirty miles . . . ?”
“Thank you, Mr. TravelApp. Just drive the fucking car, will you?”
Ho started the engine. “Where to?”
“Where do you think?” Lamb snarled. “Slough House.”
Halfway to the factory wall, Shirley took fire, two bullets ringing off the brickwork ahead, and she veered away, coming to a crouch underneath the surviving klieg light, whose frame afforded imperfect cover. For a minute she waited for another burst, and when it didn’t come she removed the silencer from Nick Duffy’s gun, rolled out into the dark, and fired at the sky.
The shots that returned came from the pile of metal fencing to her left.
Huddled on the ground she aimed, fired, three, four times. The bullets bounced off the fences with a firework display of noise, each ricochet a carillon . . . She paused then loosed another volley. When the noise at last faded, its echoes ringing off the walls around, she heard someone running for the safety of the nearest building.
“Chicken,” she muttered.
On her feet again, she ran for the factory, and the jagged tear in its corrugated-iron wall. Before going through, she turned for a moment, and surveyed the wasteground. Nothing moved, that she could see. However many Black Arrows there’d been, most were probably back out on the streets, hastily constructing alibis. There were only so many gunfights you could have in London before someone called the police. Sooner or later, there’d be sirens wracking the evening.
She took a deep breath, smiled another secret smile, then froze as she felt a gun barrel pressing into her neck.
Then: “Shirley?”
“. . . Fuck.”
The gun withdrew and Louisa came through the hole in the factory wall, followed by River.
“Fuck,” Shirley said again. “You guys okay?”
“What are you doing here?”
“This and that.”
“Marcus with you?”
“Well, duh. Yeah, he’s over there somewhere.” Shirley waved her gun at the building on the far side. “Chasing after Nick Duffy.”
“After who?” Louisa said.
But River was already away.
A train hurtled past, headed for London, its passengers tired, hungry, irritable, alert, eager, excited or happy, depending, but none paying much attention to the derelict buildings briefly to their left, with dead windows, spray-tagged walls, and an armed man hunting another on its shadowy ground level.
Marcus, arms rigid, sissy gun in a two-handed grip, and Nick Duffy nowhere to be seen.
Grit underfoot betrayed every movement, but still he moved between the pillars with as light a tread as possible. From here he could see the breezeblock-and-wire wall keeping the railway line at bay, the yellow digger parked against it, but he couldn’t see Duffy. Duffy was either lighter of tread than he was, or stood stone still in the shadows. Or had doubled back, and was out on the streets; stuffing his fancy silk balaclava into a pocket and hailing a cab.
The time for silence had probably passed.
“Duffy?”
No response.
“I’m gonna make it easy for you, Duffy.”
No response.
Marcus could feel sweat on his neck, and tension in his thighs. It had been a long time since he’d been here: in the dark, expecting trouble. A long time since he’d been as near death as he had been three minutes ago. And he couldn’t remember death ever wearing the face of a former colleague.
“Step out now, hands up, and I won’t shoot you dead.”
No response.
The sweat was welcome, and so was the tension, because they reminded him he was alive. All those days spent chasing money down various machines, across countless counters: cards and horses and numbers on a wheel. All he’d been doing was looking for a door to kick down. All he’d wanted was someone to be on the other side.
“I’ll kick the living shit out of you, but I won’t shoot you dead.”
Half a brick came out of nowhere, bounced off a pillar and spun into the dark.
Marcus turned and nearly fired, but didn’t.
Control.
“That was fucking pitiful,” he said. Revolving slowly, covering all angles. “Makes a difference, doesn’t it? Me not being shackled on the floor, I mean.”
No response.
“Mind you, you couldn’t even manage that, could you?”
This time, the brick hit his head.
He staggered back, but kept his grip on the gun, and when Duffy hit him waist height, a classic rugby tackle, fired three times, each shot punishing the ceiling. Then he was on the ground, Duffy on top of him, Duffy’s fist about to pound his face.
