Slow Horses полностью

If he’d been expecting a blinking red light on a stylized streetmap—which he partly was—Min was disappointed. Instead, he was looking at a slightly out-of-focus but recognizable photograph of the tops of a whole bunch of trees. ‘It’s under there?’

‘Yes,’ Ho said. Then said, ‘Probably.’

Catherine Standish said, ‘Care to elaborate on that?’

‘That’s where the sat nav system registered to the car Dermot Radcliffe hired from Triple-D Cars three weeks ago was, roughly fifty seconds ago.’ He looked across the table at Catherine. ‘There’s a slight time lag.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And they might have dumped the sat nav, of course. Might have tossed it out of the window hours ago.’

Louisa said, ‘Assuming Black was the brains, they probably wouldn’t have thought of that.’

‘Let’s not underestimate them,’ Catherine said. ‘Black’s dead. They’re not. Where’s the sat nav now, Roddy?’

Ho coloured slightly, and his finger stroked the keyboard’s touchpad. An OS map sprouted on to the screen. Two more taps, and it had magnified twice over.

‘Epping Forest,’ he said.

Curly moved his boot away. Hassan pulled the handkerchief from his mouth, and tossed it as far as he was able. Then lay on the ground, sucking mouthfuls of cold damp air. He hadn’t realized how empty his lungs were. How foul it had been in that boot, with only his own stink to survive on.

He sat up, every part of his body protesting. Behind Curly stood Larry: taller than Curly, broader too, but somehow less substantial. He was holding what looked like a bundle of sticks. Hassan blinked. The world turned swimmy, then washed back into line. It was a tripod. And that matchbox in his other hand: that would be a camera.

Curly was holding something altogether different.

Hassan drew his knees up, leant forward, and pressed his hands to the cold earth. It felt reassuringly solid, and at the same time coldly alien. What did he know about the outdoors? He knew about city streets and supermarkets. He pushed himself unsteadily on to his feet. I wobble, he thought. I wobble. Here among these trees, which are so very big, I am small, and I hurt, and I wobble. But I’m alive.

He looked at Curly, and said, ‘This it, is it?’ His voice sounded strange, as if he were being played by an actor. Someone who’d never actually heard Hassan speak, but had worked out what he might sound like from a faded photograph.

‘Yeah,’ Curly told him. ‘This is it.’

The axe he was holding looked to Hassan like something from the Middle Ages. But then, it was something from the Middle Ages—a smoothly curved length of wood with a dull-grey metal head, sharpened to a killing edge. Used down the centuries, because it rarely went wrong. Sometimes the handle wore thin, and was replaced. Sometimes the blade grew blunt.

Joanna Lumley was long gone. Hassan’s inner comedian had not returned to the stage. But when he spoke again his own voice had returned to him, and for the first time in an age, he uttered the precise words he was feeling.

‘You fucking coward.’

Did Curly flinch? Was he not expecting that?

Curly said, ‘I’m a soldier.’

‘You? A soldier? You call this a battlefield? You’ve tied my hands, dragged me into a forest, and now you’re what? Gunna cut my head off? Some fucking soldier.’

‘It’s a holy war,’ Curly said. ‘And your lot started it.’

‘My lot? My lot sell soft furnishings.’ A wind stirred the woods, making a noise like an appreciative audience. Hassan felt blood run through his veins; felt fear build into a bubble in his chest. It might burst at any moment. Or might just float him away. He looked at Larry. ‘And you, right? You’re just gunna stand there and let him do what he wants? Another fucking soldier, right?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Yeah, right. Or what? You’ll cut my head off? Fuck the pair of you. You want to film this? Film me now, saying this. You’re both cowards and the BN fucking P are a bunch of fucking losers.’

‘We’re not BNP,’ Curly said.

Hassan threw his head back and laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

He said, ‘You think I care? You think I care who you are? BNP or English Defence League or any other kind of stupid fucking Nazi, you think I care? You’re nothing. You’re nobodies. You’ll spend the rest of your lives in prison, and you know what? You’ll still be nobodies.’

Larry said, ‘Right. That’s it.’

Duffy arrived full-tilt, of course. He’d never been far away. He found a waste-paper basket rolling harmlessly across the carpet, and a glass wall showing no sign that violence had been offered. But Taverner was white-faced, and judging by Jackson Lamb’s expression, that counted as a result.

Lamb said, ‘A handler never burns his own joe. It’s the worst treachery of all. That’s what Partner was doing, using Standish as a shield. That’s what you’re doing now. Maybe I am old school. But I’m not watching that happen twice.’

Nick Duffy said, ‘Partner?’

‘Enough,’ Taverner said. Then: ‘He’s been running Slough House like a private army. He’s been running ops, for Christ’s sake. Take him downstairs.’