Obedient to his satnav’s demands, Roderick Ho left the motorway at the next exit, and immediately the world became darker, quieter, the ambient hum of the mindless traffic fading to a mosquito buzz. The exit inclined towards a roundabout from which Ho peeled off onto a minor road, its edges potholed and broken, and over which trees dangled foliage like fishermen hoping for a bite. Theoretically trees were a good thing, lungs of the planet, and Ho didn’t mind them in parks, but out here they loomed too large, the way unleashed dogs acquired extra menace. They cast their shadows as if it were only by their permission that traffic was allowed to pass beneath, and Roddy Ho felt what he’d have called a threat to his sense of self, were such terms available to him. Instead, he simply noted that they were fucking creepy, and constituted a hazard. He made a mental note to do something about them, saved it in the folder
“Slow down,” Lamb said.
“I am slowing down.”
“Well slow down faster.”
Ho came to a stop in what passed for a lay-by.
“Kill the engine.”
Silence followed, though it was only silence if you were used to city noise. The car ticked, and nature rustled. Through Ho’s open window, warm sticky air trickled in.
He couldn’t see the farmhouse they were heading for. Half a mile: Ho didn’t really have a sense of what half a mile meant. The trees lining one side of the road were just that, a line of trees. On the other, they were a wood; trees hiding behind other trees, so all he could see was darkness getting darker. He glanced in the mirror. Lamb’s face was immobile; his eyes somehow absent. Ho wanted to ask what they did next, but didn’t dare, so just sat gazing at the empty road, which turned a bend a short distance ahead, leaving him looking at even more trees.
Well, here he was, doing something. It was just that he didn’t precisely know what. But if Catherine Standish was being held prisoner in the house up ahead, however far away it was, then the something was going to involve getting out of the car, and Ho wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.
Lamb was foraging about in the footwell, and when he straightened was holding the polystyrene cup. He’d been using it as an ashtray, which at least meant some of his filth had been contained, but even as Ho watched he dumped its contents onto the seat next to him.
“Got any change?” he asked.
“. . . Change?”
“Loose coins. Any kind’ll do.”
Ho found some silver in his wallet.
Lamb put it in the cup and jiggled it, so the coins splashed against each other. Then he opened the door. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, do something.”
“. . . Like what?”
“Well I don’t fucking know, do I? Google ‘cunning plan,’ see what the internet suggests.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I haven’t decided yet. But it’ll involve fetching Standish back. I’d forgotten what it was like not having a buffer between me and you lot, and I’m not enjoying it one bit.”
“Have you got a gun?”
“No.”
“What if they have?”
“Your concern is touching. I’ll be all right.”
“But what if . . . ?”
Lamb leaned through Ho’s open window. “What if they come after you? With guns?”
“. . . Yes.”
“You’ll be fine. Getting shot’s like falling off a log. It doesn’t take practice.”
He walked off down the road and melted into the twilight as if it owned him; as if country shadows were no more foreign to him than any other kind. And Lamb, Ho reflected, belonged in the shadows—not a thought he’d formed himself, but one he remembered Catherine Standish articulating. Lamb was a creature of the half-light. The notion made Ho shudder. He checked the clock so he’d know when his twenty minutes were up, and when he looked back at the road, Lamb was gone.
Roderick Ho hadn’t the faintest clue what.
He hoped Lamb returned before it became an issue.
Douglas said, “You’re bastards, you know that?”
River partly agreed, but sometimes being a bastard was the best way of getting things done. Even slow horses know that. Douglas hadn’t wanted to cooperate, and neither of them had wanted to hurt him, but in the end it didn’t take more than a minute to work out how to open the hatchway, because the switches on Douglas’s console were neatly labelled, one reading hatch. Douglas had watched the monitors with a bitter expression as Donovan and Traynor dropped into the chamber beneath the factory floor; had snorted with disgust when they descended the ladder into the facility itself.
“This’ll all be reported,” he told them.
“Even the part where you groped my tits?” Louisa asked.
“I never—I wasn’t—”
River said, “Douglas. Keep your cool, don’t be an idiot, and you might come out of this with your job intact.”
Reaching the floor, Donovan and Traynor scanned the facility like they were used to such places.
“Is he all there is?” Traynor asked.
“Yes,” Louisa said.
“And is he going to be a good boy?”
