‘Approval?’ Ho said. ‘Fuck, no. I just want to prove the prick wrong.’
The car came to a halt, and Hassan’s body was bounced against the boot lid. He barely noticed. Further bruising seemed immaterial.
There was, after all, worse to come.
Lamb pulled up by the bus stop opposite Slough House. One of Moody’s checkpoints, River recalled; constantly monitored for loiterers. He said, ‘So. What we doing?’
‘See any lights?’
‘Third floor.’
‘Did you leave that on?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Think.’
River thought. It didn’t help. ‘I don’t remember. You were there too. Why is it my fault the light was left on?’
‘Because I’ve better things to worry about.’
At the windows no shapes appeared; no other lights went on. The cleaners might be inside, removing Jed Moody. Or might have been and gone, and left the light on; or might not have been there at all.
And might turn up in the next few minutes.
Reading River’s thoughts, Lamb said, ‘Only one way to find out.’
‘We’re going in?’
‘You are,’ Lamb told him. ‘No point us both running the risk.’
‘And supposing I don’t get caught? What am I supposed to do?’
Lamb told him.
‘So we what, try to work out what we’d do in their position?’
‘We work out what Black’s back-up plan would have been. If the safe house was blown.’
‘But Black was the one planning to blow the safe house.’
‘Yes,’ said Catherine patiently. ‘But given that he probably didn’t tell them that in advance, they might have wanted to know if there was a back-up plan.’
‘They killed Black because they discovered he was a spook,’ Louisa said. ‘They’re hardly likely to trust his plans now.’
‘True,’ Min Harper put in. ‘But on the other hand, they’re a bunch of morons.’
‘How do we know that?’
‘Well, they joined a group called Voice of Albion. You want a definition of moron …’
‘They sussed out Black.’
‘Yeah, well, he wasn’t James Bond.’
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Catherine said.
They were in a café on Old Street: long and narrow with a counter along the window, and tables against a mirrored wall. Coffee had arrived, and breakfasts been ordered. Ho’s laptop was open, and that familiar expression was capturing him; the one where the world on his screen became more real, less irritating, than the one around him.
He said, ‘They might have offed him already. Why stick to the deadline now?’
‘For the sake of the exercise,’ Catherine said, ‘let’s pretend there’s a chance of saving his life. Otherwise we might as well go back to bed.’
Louisa said, ‘What about CCTV? I thought the UK had blanket coverage. Especially on the roads.’
Ho offered her a pained look. ‘All other objections aside, we don’t know what they’re driving.’
‘So how do we find out?’
They fell silent.
‘He’s not likely to have used his credit card,’ Min said at last.
‘But there’ll be a papertrail.’
‘A footprint.’
‘In a black op?’
‘Black ops cost. Unless Taverner’s funded it out of her own pocket, there’ll be—’
‘A footprint,’ Ho repeated. ‘Not a papertrail.’
‘Whatever.’
‘This isn’t a black op,’ Catherine said. ‘It’s off the books. Different animal entirely.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘A black op’s officially deniable. One that’s off the books never happened.’
‘So how’s the funding work when it’s off the books?’
Catherine thought for a moment. ‘I once heard about an op where a safe house was kitted out. In Walsall, I think. All the utilities, council tax, everything was on standing order. But the house didn’t exist. The money went from Budgeting into a property account, which then funded the op.’
‘Tracking that,’ Ho said, ‘would take forever.’
‘No, but,’ Louisa said. She turned to Catherine. ‘That safe house never existed. But we know one that does, don’t we?’
‘Roupell Street,’ Min said.
They looked at Ho.
‘I’m on it.’
Curly said, ‘We need to get out of the city.’
‘We should dump the car. Walk away,’ Larry said.
He’d been bottling this up, Curly could tell. Until the words felt like a winning argument:
‘We killed a spook,’ he said.
‘You killed him.’
‘He’s dead, you were there. You want to argue details?’
‘In a court of law—’
‘You what? You fucking
‘Because—’
‘You think we’ll end up in court, you’re more of a twat than those jeans make you look.’
Larry said, ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘We killed a spook. You think they’ll arrest us?’
‘What you saying?’
‘They will shoot. Us. Dead. End of. No arrest, no trial, no weaselly words about how you only watched while I cut his head off.’ Saying the words, he could feel the blood pulse through his cutting arm. It was like having an erection, right to his fingertips. ‘A pair of bullets each. Bam bam. Double tap.’
Larry was shaking.
‘So don’t even think about court. We’re not going to court. Get it?’
Larry gave no response.
‘Get it?’
‘I get it.’
‘Good.’ And now he let Larry off the hook: ‘But it’s not gunna happen anyway. We’re not getting caught.’
‘We had a spy with us. You think—’
