‘No, I think they’re a bunch of fucking losers.’ He came closer. ‘But they’re my losers. Not yours. So I’ll do this thing, but with conditions attached. Moody disappears. Baker was a street victim. Anyone who’s with me tonight is fireproof. Oh, and you’re everlastingly in my debt. Which, you’d better believe, will be reflected in expense sheets evermore.’
‘We can all come out of this covered in glory,’ she said, unwisely.
But Lamb rejected the seven or eight probable rejoinders; simply shook his head in mute disbelief, and looked again at the canal’s surface where broken shards of light bobbed in quiet disarray.
‘I have a photograph,’ Hobden said. ‘It shows you throwing a Nazi salute, with your arm round Nicholas Frost. He’s forgotten now, of course, but he was a leading light in the National Front at the time. Stabbed to death at a rally a few years later, which is just as well. He was the sort who gave the right a bad name.’
A long moment later, PJ said, ‘That photograph was destroyed.’
‘I can believe it.’
‘So destroyed it might be said never to have existed.’
‘In which case, you have nothing to worry about.’
The various PJs who’d so far been present—the urbane, the bumbly, the vicious, the cruel—melded into one, and for a moment the real Peter Judd peered out from the overgrown schoolboy, and what he was doing was what he was always doing: weighing up who he was talking to in terms of the threat he posed, and assessing how that threat might cleanly be dealt with. ‘Cleanly’ meant without repercussion. If the photograph still existed, and was in Hobden’s possession, the consequences would be potentially catastrophic. Hobden might be bluffing. But that he even knew of the photo meant PJ’s needle had edged into the red.
First, neutralize the consequences.
Deal with the threat later.
He said, ‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to get the word out.’
‘The word?’
‘That this whole set-up, this supposed execution, is a fake. That the Voice of Albion, who’ve never been more than a bunch of streetfighters, have been infiltrated by the intelligence services. That they’ve been made the vehicle for a PR exercise, and they’re not going to come out of it well.’ Hobden paused. ‘I don’t care what happens to the idiots. But the damage they’re doing to our cause is incalculable.’
PJ let that
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t got contacts. The right word from you, in the right ear, will get a lot further than mine will.’ His voice became urgent. ‘I wouldn’t involve you if I could deal with this myself. But like I said. They’re not my
‘It’s probably too late already,’ PJ said.
‘We have to try.’ Exhausted suddenly, Hobden wiped a hand across his face. ‘They can say it was a joke that got out of hand. That they never had any intention of spilling blood.’
There was commotion outside; voices calling down the stairs.
‘I’ll be right up,’ PJ called. And then: ‘You’d better go.’
‘You’ll make the call?’
‘I’ll see to it.’
Something in his glare dissuaded Hobden from taking it further.
Lamb left. Taverner watched until his bulky shape merged with the larger shadows, and then for another two minutes before allowing herself to relax. She checked her watch. Two thirty-five.
A quick mental calculation: the deadline—Hassan’s deadline—had about twenty-six hours to run.
Ideally, Diana Taverner would have played that string out longer; waited until every TV screen in the land was running a clock before she set the rescue wheels turning. But tonight would have to do. And anyway, the bright spin she’d put on it—that this was not a last-minute rescue, but a controlled, panic-free operation—would work fine. Never any danger. That’s what the report would conclude; that Five had everything under wraps from the start. So, come morning, Hassan would be safely home; Taverner’s agent would be out from deep cover; and she herself would be accepting congratulations, watching the Service’s cachet skyrocket. And as a bonus, there was no chance of Ingrid Tearney getting back from DC in time to steal her glory.
But it was no great comfort that matters now lay in the hands of Jackson Lamb. Lamb was worse than a Service screw-up; he was a loose cannon, who’d wilfully slipped his moorings. When he’d asked if she knew why he was at Slough House, he’d been threatening her; asking if she knew what he’d once done. If things went screwy tonight, Lamb wouldn’t leave it to the Dogs to clean things up. He’d wipe the slate himself.
In which case, a contingency plan was advisable.
She fished her mobile out of her pocket; called up a number. It rang five times before being answered. ‘Taverner,’ she said. ‘Sorry to disturb. But I’ve just had a very strange conversation with Jackson Lamb.’
