Slow Horses (14 page)

‘It wasn’t an op. It was an errand.’

Which was so nearly what Duffy had told Jed Moody that it startled him for a moment.

Taverner said: ‘Our slow horses, they push pens, when they’re not folding paper. But they can be trusted with petty theft. We’re stretched, Duffy. These are difficult times.’

‘All hands on deck,’ he found himself saying.

‘That would cover it, yes. Anything else?’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry to bother you.’

‘Not a bother. Everyone has to be on the ball.’

Duffy turned to go. He was at the door when she spoke again.

‘Oh, and Nick?’

He turned.

‘There are those who’d take it badly if they knew I’d been sub-contracting. They might think it shows lack of faith.’

‘Sure, boss.’

‘Whereas it’s simply a sensible use of resources.’

‘My ears only, boss,’ he said. And left.

Diana Taverner wasn’t one to make marks on paper when she could avoid it. Jed Moody: that wasn’t much to remember.

On the wall-mounted TV, coverage continued: the orange-clad, hooded boy. For tens of thousands around the globe, he’d be the object of pity and prayer by now, and of massive speculation. For Diana Taverner, he was a figure on a board. Had to be. She couldn’t do what she needed to do, the end result of which would be his safe return home, if she allowed herself to be distracted by emotional considerations. She would do her job. Her team would do theirs. The kid would live. End of story.

She rose, gathered her paperwork, and got halfway to the door before returning to her desk, opening a drawer, and locking inside it the memory stick James Webb had given her the previous afternoon. A copy of Hobden’s own memory stick, he’d told her, made by Sid Baker. Safely delivered. Unlooked at. The interim laptop wiped. She’d believed him. If she’d thought he’d look at it, she’d have had a higher opinion of him, but wouldn’t have set him this task.

On the TV, the hooded boy sat in silence, newspaper fluttering. He’d live, she told herself.

Though even Diana Taverner had to admit, he must be scared.

* * *

Fear lives in the guts. That’s where it makes its home. It moves in, shifts stuff around; empties a space for itself—it likes the echoes its wingbeats make. It likes the smell of its own farts.

His bravado had lasted about ten minutes by his reckoning, and less than three in reality. Once that was done, his fear rearranged the furniture. He’d voided his bowels into the bucket in the corner; had clenched and unclenched until his guts ached, and long before he’d finished he’d known this wasn’t rag week. Didn’t matter how edgy these bastards thought they were, this was way past playtime. This was where policemen became involved.
We were only kidding
didn’t play in court.

He didn’t know whether it was day or night. How long had he been in the van? The filming might have been yesterday, or might have been two hours ago. Hell, it might have been tomorrow, and that newspaper a fake, crammed with news that hadn’t happened yet …

Concentrate. Keep a grip. Don’t let Larry, Moe and Curly smash his mind to pieces.

Which was what he was calling them: Larry, Moe and Curly. Because there were three of them, and that’s what his dad called customers who came in threes. When they came in pairs, they were Laurel and Hardy.

That had once been so lame: the names, and the fact that his dad used them two or three times a week. Larry, Moe and Curly this; Laurel and Hardy that. Get a fresh script, dad. But now his father’s words were a comfort. He could even hear the voice.
Right bunch of comedians you’ve got yourself mixed up with.
Not my fault, dad. Not my fault. He’d simply been walking down a lane at the wrong time.

But walking and daydreaming, he reminded himself. His mind playing its usual games, working up a piece of shtick; a comedy riff which distracted him long enough for these goons to get the drop on him … Except that was a laugh too, wasn’t it? A trio of twelve-year-olds could have ‘got the drop on him’. He wasn’t Action Man.

But they’d taken him, and doped him, and stripped him to his shorts and dumped him in this cellar; had left him for an hour or two, or three, or a fortnight, until he’d grown so used to the dark that the sudden light was like the sky ripping open.

Larry, Moe and Curly. Rough hands, big loud voices.

God, you dirty bastard
—

The stink in here
—

And then they were thrusting his new uniform at him, an orange jumpsuit and a hood for his head. Gloves for his hands.

‘Why are you—?’

‘Shut up.’

‘I’m nobody. I’m just—’

‘You think we give a toss who you are?’

They’d slapped him down on the chair. Thrust a newspaper into his hands. From noises they made, words they said, he suspected they were setting up a camera. He was crying, he realized. He hadn’t known this could happen to adults: that they could cry without knowing they’d started.

‘Stop moving.’

Impossible advice. Like
stop itching
.

‘Keep still.’

Keep still …

He kept still, tears rolling under his hood. Nobody spoke, but there was a hum that might have been their camera; a scratching it took a while to identify: it was the newspaper’s pages, rustling as he shook. And he thought: that’s not enough noise. He should scream. He should swear his head off, let these bastards know he wasn’t scared, not of lowlife chickenshits like them; he should shout, scream and swear, but didn’t. Because there was part of him saying
If you swear they might not like you. They’ll think you’re a bad person. And if they think that, who knows what they’ll do?
Advice this little voice kept squeaking while newspaper rustled and camera hummed, until at last one of the comedians said, ‘Okay,’ and the humming stopped. The newspaper was snatched from his hands. He was pushed from the chair.

On landing he bit through his lip, and that might have been the moment he let fly. But before he could make a sound there was a heavy head next to his, breathing a filthy message into his ear that arrived with the hot stink of onions, blasting its meaning deep inside his brain, and then the men were gone and he was swallowed by the dark. And the little voice in his head breathed its last, for it had arrived at a true understanding of what was happening, and that it didn’t matter what kind of person they thought he was, or whether he swore or meekly followed orders, because everything that he could be to them had slotted into place long ago. The colour of his skin was enough. That he didn’t share their religion. That they resented his presence, his very existence; that he was an affront to them—he could swear, or get down on his knees and give each of them a blow job: it didn’t matter. His crime was who he was. His punishment was what they’d already decided it would be.

We’re going to cut your head off.

That’s what the voice had said.

We’re going to show it on the web.

That’s what it said.

You fucking Paki.

Hassan wept.

Chapter 6

The dreadful pub across the road served food of sorts, and its sprawl promised undisturbed nooks. River’s lunch break was early enough to qualify as a late breakfast, but Slough House was absorbed by the morning’s news, and he didn’t suppose anyone would notice. He needed to do something which didn’t involve paperwork; he wanted a taste of what Spider Webb might be doing. He booted up his laptop and plugged in the memory stick. This was technically a criminal act, but River was pissed off. There are always moments in a young man’s life when that seems reason enough.

Ten minutes later, it seemed a lot less than that.

The bacon baguette he’d ordered sat ignored; the coffee was undrinkable filth. Cup to one side, plate to the other, laptop in the middle, he was working through the files Sid had stolen from Hobden. Except she couldn’t have, River decided. She couldn’t have, unless—

‘What you doing?’

River couldn’t have looked more guilty if he’d been caught with kiddie porn.

‘Working,’ he said.

Sid Baker sat down opposite. ‘We have an office for that.’

‘I was hungry.’

‘So I see.’ She eyed his untouched baguette.

‘What do you want, Sid?’

‘I thought you might be getting drunk.’

‘And?’

‘And I didn’t think that was a clever move.’

Closing the laptop, he said, ‘What’s happening?’

‘Ho says it’s a loop.’

‘I didn’t spot that.’

‘You’re not Ho. He says it’s running at thirty-something minutes, seven or eight.’

‘Not live, then.’

‘But this morning. Because of—’

‘Because of the newspaper, yeah, I got that. What about a location?’

‘Ho says not. They’ve bounced the transmission off PCs stretching halfway round the globe. By the time you’ve traced the next in the chain, it’s thirty machines ahead of you. This is Ho, mind. GCHQ might have a better shot.’

‘Too complicated to be a hoax?’

Sid said, ‘Until we know who the kid is, and who’s got him, nobody’s ruling anything out. But with the whole world watching, we’ve got to treat it as real.’

He leant back. ‘That was rousing.
We?
’

She flushed. ‘You know what I mean. And none of that answers my question, anyway. What are you doing here?’

‘Missing a pep-talk, apparently.’

‘Do you ever give a straight answer?’

‘Do you?’

‘Try me.’

‘How much research did you do on Hobden?’

Her eyes changed. ‘Not much.’

‘But enough to find out where he has breakfast.’

‘That’s not tricky, River.’

‘You don’t usually call me River.’

‘I don’t usually call anyone River. It’s not an everyday name.’

‘Blame my mother. She had a hippy phase. Did Lamb tell you to keep the job quiet?’

‘No, he told me to blog it. It’s on bloody stupid questions, dot gov, dot UK. My go. How much do you know about Hobden?’

‘Hotshot reporter back in the day. Firebrand leftie, moved right as he got older. Ended up doing why-oh-why columns for the little-England press, explaining why the country’s problems are all down to immigration, the welfare state and some bloke called Roy Jenkins.’

‘Labour Home Secretary in the sixties,’ Sid said sweetly.

‘History GCSE?’

‘Google.’

‘Fair enough. Anyway, it’s all standard retired-colonel stuff, except he had a few national newspapers to sound off in. The occasional pitch on
Question Time
.’

‘Beats holding forth at the vicar’s garden party,’ she said. ‘So that’s Robert Hobden, then. Angry young man to irritated old fogey in twenty years.’

‘A common trajectory.’

‘Except his was more severe than most. And when it turned out he was a fully paid-up member of the British Patriotic Party, that was his career shot to pieces.’

‘The nation’s last defence, as their website has it.’

‘Made up of those who thought the BNP had gone soft.’

River found he was enjoying this. ‘And who weren’t going to let a newfangled thing like political correctness get in the way of the old-time virtues.’

‘The direct approach, I think they called it,’ Sid said.

‘Paki-bashing is what they called it,’ River said.

‘You’d have thought he’d try to keep that quiet.’

‘Hard to do when the membership list turns up on the internet.’

And now they shared a smile.

River said, ‘And that was the end of an almost-glorious career.’ He remembered his grandfather’s words. ‘Not because of his beliefs. But because there are some beliefs you’re supposed to keep under wraps if you don’t want to be excommunicated.’

All of this from an hour’s web-research, on getting home last night.

‘Did the Service really leak the list?’

River shrugged. ‘Probably. Didn’t Lamb give any hint?’

‘I’m not supposed to discuss it.’

‘You’re not sup
posed
to be in the pub.’

‘He gave no hint. No.’

‘You’d say that anyway.’

‘I’m sure that must be frustrating for you. You know, this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had?’

A record they’d broken twice today.

‘Did you really read
Ashenden
?’ he asked.

‘As in, the whole thing?’

‘That answers that.’

‘I do pub quizzes. I know the titles of a lot of books I’ve never read.’ Her focus shifted to his laptop. ‘What are you doing, anyway? Still on those transcripts?’

Before he could answer she’d reached out and turned the computer, opening its screen. The page of numbers he’d been staring at stared right back at her.

‘Pie,’ she said.

‘You’ll have to ask at the bar.’

‘Funny ha ha.
Pi
.’

‘I know.’

She scrolled down. ‘To what looks like a million places.’

‘I know.’

He turned the laptop back round, and closed the file. There were fifteen on the memory stick, and he’d only opened seven, but all contained nothing but pi. To what looked like a million places.

He’d bet his uneaten bacon sandwich that the remaining eight were the same.

Sid was waiting. She raised an eyebrow.

‘What?’

‘So what are you doing? Memorizing it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’

He folded the laptop shut.

‘Do you usually spend your lunchtimes in the pub?’ she asked.

‘Only when I want privacy.’

She shook her head. ‘Pub stands for public. Clue’s in the name.’ She checked her watch. ‘Well, you’re still among the living. I’d better get back.’

‘Did you really copy Hobden’s files?’

It was something the O.B. had told him.
A lot of questions go unanswered because nobody thinks to ask.

‘We’ve been through that.’

‘Tell me again.’

She sighed. ‘He’s a man of habit. He has coffee at the same café every morning. First thing he does is empty the contents of his pocket on to the table. Which includes his memory stick.’ She waited, but he said nothing. ‘I caused a fuss by spilling some coffee. When he went off to fetch a cloth, I swapped his stick for a dummy and loaded it on to my own laptop. Later, I swapped it back.’ She paused. ‘The laptop’s the one you delivered to Regent’s Park.’