He didn’t seem to be. They’d passed another mosque, unless they were going in circles, and it was the same one.
‘How big’s this fucking place anyway?’
‘London?’ Larry said. ‘Pretty big.’
Curly glanced across, but he wasn’t taking the piss. He looked like he was hanging on by his fingernails, frankly.
Like someone a policeman would stop, to check he wasn’t going to stroke out at the wheel.
‘Thought you were following the signs.’
‘I thought you were pointing them out to me.’
‘Is there a map anywhere?’ Then answered his own question, pulling open the glovebox, finding nothing but hire-agreement papers and a couple of manuals.
‘There’s that,’ Larry said.
‘What?’
‘That.’ He pointed.
The penny dropped.
Curly said, ‘Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.’
Letting himself through the door, River paused. A dim glow from the third floor reached him like a ghostly presence, but he heard nothing. Which might mean he was alone. Or that anyone else in the building was being very quiet.
Well, he could hang by the back door wondering. Or go up and find out.
He took the first set of stairs slowly, part wary, part weary. His body was feeling the hours it had put in: surges of adrenalin; shocking sights. It took it out of you.
But this wasn’t over. And he experienced another rush at the thought of what Taverner had done to him.
The second flight came easier; by the time he was on the third he was almost hoping there’d be someone here—one of the cleaners; one of the Dogs. A few hours ago, he’d gone quietly. This time he wouldn’t.
But there was nobody there but Jed Moody, cold and dead on the landing.
Passing him, River went up to Lamb’s office. A shoebox sat on the desk, as Lamb had promised. River did as instructed, then carried the box downstairs.
Back on Moody’s landing, he knelt by the body. He supposed he ought to care that the man was dead, but what he mostly felt was the strangeness of it; that Moody, like River, had been a counter in a boardgame played by other people. Only for Moody, the game was over. Snakes and ladders were one thing. A staircase was deadlier.
He’d had a gun, though, and needn’t have been the one removed from the board. If he’d been prepared to use it, maybe River would be crouching next to a dead Min Harper or Louisa Guy, and Moody would have been in the wind, Lamb’s flight fund in his pocket.
But Moody hadn’t wanted to shoot them, so maybe there was loyalty between slow horses after all. They weren’t friends, or hadn’t been friendly, before this long night started. But Moody hadn’t been able to bring himself to shoot them.
Shoot another one, anyway. Though shooting Sid had been an accident.
For one reason or the other, River allowed Moody another second’s peace.
Then he stripped the corpse.
‘Legends never die,’ Catherine said. ‘They wouldn’t be legends otherwise. When a joe’s deep cover, long-term, they get the works. Passport, birth certificate, everything. Credit cards, library cards, all the stuff you fill your wallet with.’
‘Sure.’
‘We know that.’
‘And it costs.’
Ho rolled his eyes. He’d been involved in more conversation this morning than the past two months, and it was already sounding familiar. ‘We established that. Your point?’
‘They do it on the cheap.’
‘Thank you, superbrain. So they what, picked up some knock-off ID down the market? Maybe Oxfam—’
‘Shut up, Ho.’
‘Yeah, shut up, Ho. How do you mean on the cheap, Catherine?’
She said, ‘They use one that already exists. Did Black ever go undercover?’
This was more like it. Now they had guidance.
‘Turn left in one hundred yards.’
Larry said, ‘She’s that posh bird.’
‘They’re all posh birds.’
‘You know the one I mean.’
‘You know something? I don’t. I really don’t. And I really don’t care.’
It was five, which meant they’d been lost for an hour, and there was no noise from the boot. Curly wondered if the Paki had fallen asleep, or died: from a heart attack or something. Like cheating the hangman. He wondered what difference it would make if they had to do it with him already dead, and decided: not so much. Moe had been dead, and taking his head off had been a serious business. The world would sit up and take notice, either way.
He laughed, a sudden sharp bark that startled Larry, who veered and nearly clipped a car on the verge … Little things mattered. Clip a car, trigger an alarm, get stopped by a policeman up the road: step out of the vehicle, sir, and what’s that on the back seat?
And what’s that banging from the boot?
But Larry recovered, and there was no sideswipe, no alarm.
‘What’s so funny?’
Curly had forgotten. But the insight remained; that it only took a moment for things to unravel. One mistake could spoil everything.
So forget the deadline. Find somewhere safe, and just do it.
Do it, film it, fade away.
