Slow Horses полностью

His thoughts chased backwards and forwards. A guilty conscience was the worst thing to be wearing. Climbing the stairs at Slough House, he had to fix his expression into whatever it usually was, this time of the morning: When you need to act natural, don’t think about what you’re doing. An old lesson. Think about anything else. Think about the last book you read. He couldn’t remember the last book he’d read. But whether the effort of trying to do so made him look less or more natural he never found out, because no one was interested in River’s state of mind that morning.

Roderick Ho’s office door was open, so River saw from the landing that everyone was gathered there: an unprecedented event. But at least they weren’t talking to each other. Instead, all were staring at Ho’s monitor, the largest in the building. ‘What is it?’ River asked, but hardly needed to. Stepping inside he could make out, over Ho’s shoulder, a badly lit cellar, an orange-clad figure on a chair with a hood over its head. Gloved hands held up an English newspaper, which was shaking. This made sense. Nobody ever sat in a badly lit cellar holding the day’s newspaper for a camera without feeling fear.

‘Hostage,’ said Sid Baker, without looking away from the screen.

River stopped himself from saying I can see that. ‘Who is it? Who are they?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘What do we know?’

Sid said, ‘They’re going to cut his head off.’

Not everyone had been in Ho’s office when River got there. How had he failed to register Jackson Lamb’s absence? Before long this was rectified: a heavy thump on the stair; a loud growling noise which could only have emanated from a stomach. Lamb could move quietly when he wanted, but when he didn’t, you knew he was coming. And now he didn’t so much enter Ho’s office as take possession of it; breathing heavily, saying nothing. On the monitor, the same absence of event: a gloved, hooded boy in an orange jumpsuit, holding the English newspaper with its back page showing. It took a moment for River to register that he’d reached that conclusion—that the figure was a boy.

A thought interrupted by Lamb. ‘It’s not nine o’clock and you’re watching torture porn?’

Struan Loy said, ‘When would be a good time to watch—’

‘Shut up,’ Sid Baker told him.

Lamb nodded. ‘That’s a plan. Shut up, Loy. This live?’

‘Coming over as a live feed,’ Ho said.

‘There’s a difference?’

‘Do you really want to hear about it?’

‘Good point. But that’s today’s paper.’ Lamb nodded again, approving his own deductive brilliance. ‘So if it’s not live, it’s not far off. How’d you pick it up?’

‘From the blogs,’ Sid said. ‘It appeared about four.’

‘Any prologue?’

‘They say they’re going to cut his head off.’

‘They?’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t know yet. Grabs the attention, though.’

‘Have they said what they want?’

Sid said, ‘They want to cut his head off.’

‘When?’

‘Forty-eight hours.’

‘Why forty-eight?’ asked Lamb. ‘Why not seventy-two? Three days, is that so much to ask?’

Nobody dared ask what his problem was. He told them anyway.

‘It’s always one day or three. You get twenty-four hours, or seventy-two. Not forty-eight. You know what I already hate about these tossers?’

‘They can’t count?’ River suggested.

‘They’ve no sense of tradition,’ Lamb said. ‘I don’t suppose they’ve said who the little blind mouse is, either?’

Roderick Ho said, ‘The beheading threat came over the blogs, along with the link. And the deadline. No other info. And there’s no volume on the feed.’

Through all of this, none of them had taken their eyes off the screen.

‘Why so shy?’ Lamb wondered. ‘If you’re cutting somebody’s head off, you’re making a point. But if you don’t tell anybody why you’re doing it, it’s not going to help your cause, is it?’

‘Cutting heads off doesn’t help anyone’s cause,’ Sid objected.

‘It does if your cause involves chopping people’s heads off. Then you’re preaching right at your niche market.’

Ho said, ‘What difference does it make who they are? They’re Al Qaeda, whatever they call themselves. Sons of the Desert. Sword of Allah. Wrath of the Book. They’re all Al Qaeda.’

There was another late entry: Jed Moody, his coat still on. ‘You’ve heard?’

‘We’re watching it now.’

Kay White started to say something, but changed her mind. In a more cruel mood, everyone present would have marked this down as a first.

River said, ‘So what do we do?’

Lamb said, ‘Do?’

‘Yes. What do we do?’

‘We get on with our jobs. What did you think we did?’

‘For Christ’s sake, we can’t just act like this isn’t happening—’

‘No?’

The short, sharp word punctured River’s balloon.

Lamb’s voice became flat and unimaginative. The boy on the monitor, the hood on his head, the newspaper he held—it might have been a screensaver.