It was threatening rain, though, so he caught a bus.
When Lech Wicinski received the word he hadn’t the faintest clue what it meant, but his carefully composed reply –
‘I just got a strange text.’
‘“Blake’s grave”? Me too. It means get there, now.’
‘Why? Do you think Lamb knows?’
‘Knows what?’
For fuck’s sake.
‘… Knows we just beat up a civilian. And stole his stuff.’
‘Oh, that.’ Shirley fell silent. ‘But why would he want us at Blake’s grave? When he could just bollock us in his office in the morning?’
A bollocking, Lech thought. He was thinking more along the lines of police, arrest, trial, imprisonment. Shirley’s more relaxed approach was likely drug-addled lack of perspective, but on the other hand might be based on experience. What happened earlier probably wasn’t the first time a slow horse had walked away from someone else’s wreckage. He’d heard rumours: about politicians, scaffolding, tins of paint. Mind you, that sounded a lot more accidental than thumping a civilian with a sap then stealing his money. So presumably Shirley hadn’t been involved.
He said, ‘So what does getting to Blake’s grave usually entail?’
‘You mean, what does it mean?’
‘… Yes, okay. That.’
‘Means some shit has hit a fan. And we’re all about to get spattered.’
‘Then why so cheerful?’
Shirley said, ‘Well, it beats an early night.’
So Blake’s grave, Lech interpreted, was the Slough House equivalent of the Park’s Apocalypse Protocol, in which all agents got out of the building and off the map, to regroup at various locations around the city. For Slough House, of course, only one rendezvous point was required. Otherwise, the slow horses would simply be several groups of a single person each, which was pretty much what they were the rest of the time.
The protocol also demanded you went dark: no phone, no vehicle, no watchers on your back. So Lech took batteries and SIM card from his phone. If Slough House had gone tits up, he’d better not paint himself bright colours. On the other hand, if this was Lamb’s idea of a wind-up, he wanted the wherewithal to Uber himself home afterwards, so instead of leaving the parts behind he put them in his pocket. Then he checked himself in the mirror, as he always did now – still a mess; those scars will never heal – and left the flat at the same time that Shirley, still in Shoreditch, ordered a vodka for the road. It would take her, like, five minutes to get to Bunhill Fields? Ten, max. And she knew it was an emergency shout, that three-word text, but really: what kind of emergency could it be? And if it was a really big one, she’d need another vodka inside her.
She was still keyed up from earlier. Playing it over in her head, they’d been lucky, her and Lech; him that she’d turned up at the right moment, when the guy in the black mac had been about to make his face a bigger mess than it already was, and him and her both that nobody had come in while they were dragging a stunned body into the cubicle. Two strokes of luck: maybe this was an end to her jinx run. Maybe this time she could partner up without having to pencil in an expiry date.
Not that her last partner had been her best friend or anything. In fact, when you got right down to it, it was possible he hadn’t even noticed they were partners.
And why did it matter whether she had a partner anyway?
The thought was one she’d been pushing away for as long as it had been creeping up on her. Her relationship history was back on an upward keel – she’d recently made it to a six-day anniversary – and it wasn’t like she was desperate to share an office again. It was more that, when it was her turn, she didn’t want to be bleeding on a hillside on her own, in the snow. She wanted somebody with her, holding her hand or saying her name. Not that she was superstitious. Shirley had no plans to die soon. But planning had nothing to do with it, as her late colleagues would no doubt testify. Or Blake, for that matter. She doubted he’d picked out his grave in advance. One day you’re wondering what to do at the weekend; the next, your weekend’ll never come.
But if Lech was going to fill the current vacancy, it was probably best she didn’t go into too much detail.
She finished her drink, left the glass on the bar. The pub was half full, and she didn’t feel eyes on her as she went, but waited in a shop doorway for two minutes anyway, checking the pavements, one hand on the window to steady herself. That last vodka: maybe not a great shout. But legend had it that being drunk caused double vision, and she wasn’t even seeing one person following her, let alone two, which made her both sober and untailed. She gave it another minute, long enough for a few deep breaths and a peculiar dance-like motion involving shaking her limbs very loosely, then stepped out onto the street. Five minutes; ten max. She’d probably get there first.
‘Where is everyone?’ asked Louisa.
‘I was wondering that myself,’ Catherine said.
