Slough House полностью

There’d been a tourist, a year or two back, who’d been separated from his party in the underground, and it was three and a half days before they found him. It was so nearly a classical myth, it wasn’t even funny. Lech was starting to recognise the feeling. He turned into Subway 4 – St Luke’s/Clerkenwell – passed the public toilets and turned left, up the slope, beneath its pedestrian bridge, and arrived for the fifth time at the plaza, with its trees and benches and flowerbeds, its ranks of e-bikes. The rain was holding off still, and there were fewer people. It was that lull between the end of the working day and the start of a weeknight’s drinking; less frantic than the weekend version, but not without its panicky framework. Sometimes you clung onto the edges of a day because what went on in the middle ate away at your soul. Sometimes it was the other way round. Lech shook his head, dispelling the notion that his days held no safe places, and kept walking: past the appalling mural, stags and druids, and back down the stairs into the half-light.

And there he was again.

First time Lech noticed him he’d been wearing a grey mac. He was now wearing a black one, but its lapels were open enough that Lech could see the grey lining: a reversible, a swift and handy costume change. He’d been wearing specs earlier too, and wasn’t now. Didn’t matter. Lech had his number. Kept it to himself, though; didn’t let it show in change of pace or curl of lip as he reached the central area and looped back towards Subway 3: Moorgate and Old Street West (South Side). He was starting to feel as if he could draw the colosseum freehand, and people the result with sasquatch figures, lumpen and drooling.

He climbed the stairs, waited a full two minutes, then headed for the slope and walked back down. Give his tail time to start wondering if he’d got lost in the surrounding streets.

The crowd was thinner. Still no sign of Shirley, and he was now about eighty per cent sure she’d been playing him, and would spend the rest of the week, or maybe her life, laughing herself sick whenever she passed him on the stairs: sucker spent an evening circling Silicon Roundabout. He supposed that meant he’d have to retaliate, which would no doubt lead to massive escalation. Well, everybody had to die sometime. When he passed the central pillar he spotted his tail again, his mac black side out, and without pausing to study him, Lech registered relief in his body language. Good good. He thought he’d messed up, and allowed Lech to get away. For now – for the next minute or so – he’d overcompensate by keeping him in sight, or that was the theory.

Lech remembered that feeling, those moments during training when you knew you’d screwed up, and wondered if this was the one that would tip the balance; lead to the brief interview where you were thanked for your time, and assured that there were plenty of avenues that someone with your talents might usefully explore. Landscape gardening or life insurance. Maybe something in IT. But Regent’s Park wasn’t in your future, or a subject you’d ever talk about again. Sign here, please.

To this kid here, that probably felt like the worst of all possible outcomes. But trust me, thought Lech, as he walked back along Subway 4 – trust me – that’s not the worst that can happen.

Instead of reaching the end and heading streetwards, he turned into the public toilet.

The tapping paused, as if a reply were expected. When none came, it started again.

And perhaps, if she stayed very still, this would stop happening. But that was frightened-animal thinking; the instinct that freezes a rabbit in a road. This rarely causes cars to disappear.

The study curtains were open. She’d tried the windows the day before, hoping to let the room breathe, but they were locked, and she hadn’t found a key. An image of throwing herself through them came and went, a scene from a film, which in real life would leave her in bloody rags on the lawn.

And she couldn’t call River. Her phone was in the cottage in Cumbria, or that was where she’d last seen it. When you went dark, your phone was the first thing you ditched.

Can’t call for help; can’t dash for safety.

This was what got rabbits killed.

She’d been padding about in socks, but her trainers were under the O.B.’s chair. Relinquishing the globe she crawled across to reach them, pulling them on and lacing them up in a supine position. Wearing them gave her a small measure of comfort; an extra protective layer. Tt Tt Tt said the bullet. As well as being the voice of Poirot it was the voice of reason, it seemed. Eager to remind her that any notion of safety was balls.

The tapping paused.

Sid risked a look at the window from behind the bulk of the chair. She saw nobody; just the waving shadow of a tree: goodbye. It might have been her heart playing tricks.

But it happened again.