Slow Horses (16 page)

‘He drives a car?’ somebody asked.

‘It was a present from his father,’ Taverner said.

She waited, but that seemed to satisfy him.

‘The snatchers call themselves the Voice of Albion.’

Now Leonard Bradley leant forward, his face creasing into that mask of perplexity he liked to wear when about to pick holes in somebody’s case. ‘You’ll forgive me—’

She waved him ahead, like a driver might a friendly bus.

‘I thought there’d been no actual contact with these
snatchers
. But you’ve identified them already? That’s smart work. Very smart.’

One or two murmurs of assent met this.

Diana Taverner said, ‘There’s been no contact, no. That’s to say, they’ve not made any demands or identified themselves in relation to this particular, ah, episode.’

‘But you’ve been keeping tabs on them.’

‘That’s well within our remit, I think you’d agree.’

‘Absolutely. Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.’

Down the table, Roger Barrowby made a clucking noise with his tongue.

Barrowby was usually called the Barrowboy, a nickname he detested and pretended to revel in. He had thinning sandy hair, a prominent chin, and a habit of pressing the tip of a finger to its central dimple, as if trying to encourage it back into his jaw. But he appeared to have done something about his dandruff.

‘Roger!’ Leonard Bradley’s tone couldn’t have sounded heartier at a barbecue. ‘You have an interjection? An objection?’ You could have cut the bonhomie with a knife. Taverner wondered why they hated each other.

‘An observation, Len. Merely an observation.’

‘Care to share?’

Barrowby said, ‘Bloody lucky, that’s all. We have a watching brief on a bunch of original thinkers, just as they’re attempting a coup? I mean, how often does that happen?’

Despite herself, Taverner smiled at ‘original thinkers’.

Bradley said, ‘We could argue about gift horses and dental plans. But perhaps Diana has a view?’

‘Watching brief is pitching it high,’ Diana said. ‘They’re one of seventeen groups on the radar right now, which is also a bit high, but there’ve been murmurs something like this was on the horizon. And—’

‘Excuse me?’

Barrowby again.

‘
Murmurs?
’

She’d have answered, but knew there was no way this was getting past the assembled ex-handlers, who provided a chorus:

‘Not our remit, Roger.’

‘Not even close.’

‘Intelligence gathering’s outside the sphere of this committee.’

‘Of course,’ Barrowby agreed. ‘But if we’re paying for supper, we get to glance at the menu, surely?’

‘We’ll check the books when the financial year closes,’ somebody else said. ‘But how Operations shells out the booty is their game.’

Bradley was nodding. ‘We get to taste the sausages, Roger,’ he said, ‘if you’ll allow me to pursue your metaphor. But we don’t get to watch them being made.’

Barrowby raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Diana. Forgive me. You heard
murmur
s. You allocated resources. Fair enough. It looks like you, or perhaps Ms Tearney, made a wise,
operational
, decision.’

Leaving unaddressed the degree to which Ingrid Tearney had been involved, Diana went on: ‘Like I say, not a watching brief. That is, we weren’t actually keeping them under surveillance, otherwise this caper wouldn’t have got off the ground. And that, I’d agree, would have been
bloody
lucky. As it is, I’m confident we can roll this up in short order.’

‘Before they chop young Hassan’s head off,’ Leonard Bradley said.

‘Precisely.’

‘Well, there’s no need to spell out the public relations aspect, is there? The half of the country that’s not watching this yet will be glued to it by suppertime.’ He glanced at the papers in front of him. ‘Voice of Albion, eh? I’d be more impressed if there was any chance these halfwits had actually read Blake.’

Silence greeted this.

He said, ‘Our friends in blue?’

‘We haven’t released the details, the Voice of Albion connection,’ Taverner said. ‘We will if necessary, but I’m confident that by this time tomorrow, we’ll be able to present them with the whole package.’

‘The boy was snatched in Leeds city centre?’ someone piped up.

‘Not quite the centre. Headingley.’

‘Don’t they have CCTV? I was rather under the impression one couldn’t cross the road without being a reality TV star.’

‘It appears that the traffic monitoring system was off air for six hours last night, from a little before midnight until a short while ago. Routine maintenance, we’re told.’

‘Bit of a coincidence.’

‘We’re looking into it. Or the police are. But I don’t think Albion have that sort of reach. You’ll find a printout of their homepage in the folder, if you want an idea of the clout they wield.’

There was a general rustling of pages.

Bradley glanced up. ‘“Natoinal purity”,’ he noted with distaste. It wasn’t clear whether it was the concept or the spelling which pained him.

‘We’re not dealing with the sharpest pencils in the box,’ Taverner agreed.

‘Can’t you trace them through the site?’ Barrowby asked.

She said, ‘Now, there they have shown nous. The proxy’s in Sweden, where they treat client privilege very seriously. Getting their details will take a while. More than the deadline allows. But let me repeat, I have every confidence that this crew will be under wraps before the deadline becomes an issue.’

Then Bradley did that thing with his hand again, and said, ‘Let me say on all our behalf—behalves?—that we’re grateful to Diana for a remarkably full picture drawn in a remarkably short time. And that we’ll be equally grateful for hourly updates, leading to a swift and happy conclusion.’

There was a knock on the door, and Tom entered, a folded sheet of paper in his hand. Without a word, he handed it to Diana Taverner, and left.

Taverner unfolded it, and read it in silence. Her expression betrayed not the slightest clue as to whether the information it contained was new to her, confirmation of something already suspected, or an out-of date report on weather happening elsewhere. But when she looked up, the atmosphere shifted.

‘This is fresh. There’ll be copies in a moment.’

Bradley said, ‘Perhaps you might …’

She might. She did.

‘People, it would appear this isn’t the random snatch we’d thought.’

New information demanded at least as much action as discussion. It was Diana Taverner’s role to leave to see about the action, and everybody else’s to get the discussion under way. Or almost everybody’s. She was halfway to the lift when the Barrowboy caught her—almost literally: she turned to find him reaching for her arm. The look she bestowed upon him would have stuck six inches out the back of a more sensitive man.

‘Not a good time, Roger.’

‘When is it ever? Diana, this new information.’

‘You know as much as I do.’

‘I doubt that. But either way, it doesn’t change anything, does it?’

‘You think? Not even a little?’

‘What I meant was, you seemed confident enough before this apparent bombshell went off. Who he is doesn’t make your job harder.’

‘“Apparent”?’

Each vowel was its own icicle.

‘Poor choice of word. All I meant was, you’ve an asset in place, yes? You don’t get Mozart-grade info from random phone-grabs or lists of dodgy loan applications.’

‘It’s nice to hear from an expert, Roger. Remind me, where was your finest hour? Beirut? Baghdad? Or the bar at the Frontline Club?’

But it washed off him. ‘I only meant, that’s the stuff they do over at Slough House.’ He barked a self-appreciative laugh. ‘Hoping to bore the deadweights into jumping ship. This is higher grade. So. You have an asset.’

She jabbed the lift button with an index finger. ‘Yes, Roger. We have an asset. That’s how intelligence gathering works.’

‘But he didn’t know this latest twist?’

‘If he knew everything he wouldn’t just be an asset, Roger. He’d be Wikipedia.’

‘So how close to the action is he?’

‘Pretty close.’

‘Handy.’

‘Some might say so. Others call it foresight.’

‘Well, there’s foresight and foresight, isn’t there? Not much credit in reading the runes if you laid them out in the first place.’

‘That’s right up there with
apparent
, Roger. Are you trying to tell me something?’

The lift arrived. Before its doors were fully open she was inside; pressing the button for floor level. Pressing it three times, in fact. Someday they’d invent a button which made things happen faster the more you pressed it.

‘Nothing really, Diana. Just that it might be an idea to be careful.’

The doors didn’t quite cut off his coda:

‘Swimming with sharks, that kind of thing.’

Swimming with sharks, she thought now, crushing her cigarette underheel. She checked her watch. It was fifteen seconds short of one o’clock.

He approached from the east, and even if she hadn’t pulled up his records earlier, before making the call, she’d have recognized him. At Regent’s Park they called them slow horses, and half the fun had been letting the slow horses know it. So it became self-fulfilling: when Slough House met Regent’s Park, it was always clear who was wearing the boots. And here he came, approaching her with a slow horse’s determination, as if reaching the finishing line meant the battle was won. When, as anyone with breeding knows, coming first is the only result that matters.

At the bench, he treated her to a look half aggressive, half defensive, like a wronged lover, and then curled his lip at the bench itself.

She said, ‘It’s not real and it’s quite dry.’

He seemed dubious.

‘For God’s sake. This is a useful bench. You think we’d let a gull crap on it?’

Jed Moody sat.

Out on the water the shag was halfway through another circuit, while near Bankside Pier a street-preacher had staked out an imaginary pulpit, and was haranguing passers-by. Everything normal, in other words.

Taverner said, ‘I’m told you reached out last night.’

‘Nick’s an old friend,’ Moody said.

‘Shut up. You told him Jackson Lamb was running an op, that he’d sent one of your junior colleagues on a data-snatch. That this wasn’t anything Slough House does, and that if it was, it should be you doing it.’

‘It’s true. I spent six years—’

‘Shut up. What I want to know is, how did you find out about it?’

‘About what, ma’am?’

She’d been focused on the buildings on the far bank, but now turned to face him. ‘Don’t for a moment imagine we’re having a conversation. When I ask for information, you give it. You don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you don’t dream about telling anything but the truth. Or you’ll find there are colder, deeper things than this river, and I’ll take pleasure in burying you in one of them. Clear?’

‘So far.’

‘Good. Now, I gave Lamb a specific instruction about a specific job. I don’t remember telling him to let you know about it. So, how did you find out?’

He said, ‘There’s a bug.’

‘There’s. A. Bug.’

It wasn’t exactly a question. So Moody didn’t exactly answer. He just swallowed, hard.

‘Are you seriously telling me you planted a
bug
in Jackson Lamb’s office?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sweet Jesus.’ She threw back her head and laughed. Then stopped. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ she said again.

‘It wasn’t …’

‘Wasn’t what? Wasn’t something that could get you, what, thirty years? Given the climate?’

‘Have you any idea what it’s like?’

But she was shaking her head: not interested in his prepared outburst. He might be frustrated, thwarted, feel he’d been made to carry the can for a Service balls-up. But the fact was, he’d never have made it out of his current pay grade. If you needed a walking definition of foot soldier, a glance at Jed Moody’s file would do it.

‘I don’t care. All I want to know is, how come the sweeps didn’t pick it up? Oh, no. Don’t tell me.’

So he didn’t.

‘You do the sweeping.’

He nodded.

‘Set a thief to catch a … Christ. What else do you lot get up to over there? No, don’t even start. I don’t want to know.’

True to her earlier forebodings, Diana Taverner fished her cigarettes out again. She offered the pack to Moody. He’d already produced a lighter, and with one big hand shielding the flame, lit them both. For a brief moment, membership of the twenty-first century pariahs’ club united them.

He said, ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping. Well, I was. But not for anybody else. I used to be one of the Dogs. Lamb’s got me running background checks when they get a new waiter next door. Not because he thinks anyone’s about to post an asset there. He’s just taking the piss, and doesn’t care if I know it.’

‘So why not quit?’

‘Because it’s what I do.’

‘But you’re not happy.’

‘Nobody’s happy at Slough House.’

Taverner concentrated on her cigarette, or pretended to, but had good peripheral vision, and was studying Jed Moody. He’d probably been handy once, but the drink and the smoking had put paid to that, and it was a safe bet that exile had sealed the downward spiral. These days, he probably guilt-splurged at the gym; seven-hour workouts making up for lost weekends. He’d keep kidding himself this was working. Whenever the truth looked like breaking in, he’d have another drink, and light another smoke.

‘Not even Lamb?’ she asked.

Rather to her surprise, he gave her a straight answer: ‘He’s a burn-out. A fat, lazy bastard.’

‘You ever wonder why he’s at Slough House?’

‘What good would he be anywhere else?’

That wasn’t quite so straight. The one self-evident fact about Lamb being allowed to run his own little kingdom—even from a crackpot palace like Slough House—was that he must know where bodies were buried. Moody didn’t want to raise that with Diana Taverner. Which meant, she surmised, that Moody was treading round her with caution. Which was exactly how she preferred it.

Moody’s cigarette had burned to the filter. He let it fall from his fingers, and it rolled into the crack between two paving stones.