Slough House полностью

When she opened her eyes Jane was a fuzzy rim of light, which brightened and dimmed to the beat of Sid’s heart. She crouched to be sure of being heard.

‘I could put a bullet in you now. Kill you one piece at a time. But you’re still going in that water in the end, and you’re going to die with your lungs bursting. Because that was the plan.’

‘That’ and ‘plan’ were where she kept the beat: her tool the handle of her gun, her drum Sid’s head.

Tt Tt Tt.

The world was flaring grey and white, like a washed-out flashback in a creepy movie. Sid’s head hurt, as did her knees, and everywhere between.

‘So small and harmless, so fucking wounded you looked. Holding that lump of metal as if that was your only weapon.’

Another blow. Another moment of nearby lightning. Sid felt her teeth scream.

‘And all the time that fucking knife up your sleeve.’

Sid spoke, but the words came out so thickly they might have been made of mud.

Jane shook her. ‘What?’

Sid spat. ‘He helped me on with my jacket,’ she said. ‘He let me have the knife.’

Be Villanelle. Be Lara Croft.

She’d been Sid Baker, but the old one, not the new.

‘Get on your fucking feet.’

Jane dragged her back to the jetty, her gun hand round Sid’s collar, the gun itself pressed to Sid’s ear. Sid’s feet were next to useless, and seemed to slide off the earth, but progress was made.

The walkway to the bird hide was solid and new. Halfway along Jane sent her sprawling again.

‘I should gut you like a fish. Make you eat your own entrails.’

You can borrow my knife. I left it in your lover’s head. But the words wouldn’t emerge: Sid’s throat was locked.

There ought to be birdwatchers. Crews of twitchers, awaiting the dawn chorus. But it wasn’t even early yet; was still getting late.

Then Jane was kneeling beside her, one palm flat on her back, the other pulling her hair, forcing her to look up. ‘What you’ll see when you’re dying. My face, laughing at you. And all your dead friends too.’

Sid said, ‘His jaw was soft. The knife went right through.’

Jane banged her head on the woodwork, then heaved her across it, one hand still on her collar. She forced Sid’s head over the edge. The water was high and stared back at her, an ever-folding blanket laced with sequins, reflections from nowhere. Sid could only see two inches in front of her, but the view reached all the way to life’s end. And then it was gone and her head was underwater, held there by Jane’s hand.

You’re going to die with your lungs bursting.

She tried to kick, but Jane was on top of her, one knee in her back, one hand pressing her right arm to the jetty. These sensations were happening in a different time zone. Meanwhile, Sid was holding her breath, while Hercule Poirot wheezed inside her. Tt Tt Tt, he said. Then Pp Pp Pp, and finally Qq Qq Qq. The water tightened round her head, and memories broke from the mass of her past: the shape of the bedknob on her first bed. The coat she wore on her first day at school. Something was burning inside her chest, and might swallow everything, if she let it. A piece of coloured paper on which she’d fixed gold stars and drawn a friendly horse … It would be simplest to breathe in now, and let the lake’s cool water put the burning out. She had forgotten why she was here. But all paths lead back to where they started, don’t they? The coloured paper crumpled and vanished, joined all the things she couldn’t remember yet, and then Jane’s hand released her and she almost slid into the water anyway, because that seemed the obvious move. But with what was left of her free will she pulled back, and breathing air seemed the most extraordinary event: unusual, unprecedented, worth lighting a candle for. It hurt, and her chest still burned, but for a minute she couldn’t get enough of it, and lay there gasping, staring at the clouds, while a yard away Jane, taking a break from killing Sid, was killing River instead.

When River followed the path through the trees, it led him to the lakeside he remembered from boyhood, or thought he did, though this was new: a wooden jetty, ten yards long, leading to a small hut, probably a bird hide. The jetty was low, or the lake high: either way, its elevation allowed a woman to drown Sid Baker by holding her head under water while kneeling on her back. Sid was alive because her feet were kicking, just barely. Something silver on the planking caught a random sliver of light: a gun. She’d put the gun down the better to drown Sid. This thought took a moment to process itself, and by the time it was done River was halfway there.