Dead Lions by Mick Herron Read Free Book Online

beneath the water.
    She said, “Black swans. I was reading about them the other day.”
    “What, they’re on a takeaway menu? That’s kind of sick.”
    “Behave. It was in one of the Sundays. It’s a phrase, black swan,” she said. “Means a totally unexpected event with a big impact. But one that seems predictable afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight.”
    “Mmm.”
    They walked on. After a while, Louisa said, “So what were you thinking back then? When you were so far away?”
    He said, “I was thinking last time we got dragged into a Regent’s Park op, someone was looking to screw us over.”
    The black swan dipped its neck once more, and buried its head in the water.
    Shirley Dander lifted her take-out coffee cup, found it cold, and drank from it anyway. Then said, “Standish?”
    “The Lady Catherine …” Marcus made a swigging gesture with his right hand. “She likes the bottle.”
    That didn’t sound right. Catherine Standish was wound pretty tight, and with her curiously old-fashioned way of dressing resembled Alice in Wonderland grown middle-aged and disappointed. But Marcus seemed sure:
    “She’s dry now. Years, probably. But if I know drunks, and I’ve known a few, she could have put me under the table in her day. You too. Sequentially.”
    “You make her sound like a boxer.”
    “Your really serious drunk approaches booze like it was a barfight. You know, only one of you’s going to be left standing. And the drunk always thinks that’ll be him. Her, in this case.”
    “But now she’s hung up her drinking shoes.”
    “They all think they’ve done that too.”
    “Cartwright? He crashed King’s Cross.”
    “I know. I saw the movie.”
    Video footage of River Cartwright’s disastrous assessment exercise, which had caused a rush-hour panic in one of London’s major railway stations, was occasionally used for training purposes, to Cartwright’s less-than-delight.
    “His grandfather’s some kind of legend. David Cartwright?”
    “Before my time.”
    “He’s Cartwright’s grandfather,” Marcus said. “He’s before all our times. But he was a spook back in the dark ages. Still alive, mind.”
    “Just as well,” Shirley said. “He’d be turning in his grave otherwise. Cartwright being a slow horse and all.”
    Marcus Longridge pushed further back from his desk and stretched his arms wide. He could block doorways, Shirley thought. Probably had, back in Ops: he’d been on raids; had closed down an active terrorist cell a year or so back. That was the story, anyway, but there must have been another story too, or he wouldn’t be here now.
    He was staring at her. His eyes were blacker than his skin: a thought that reached her unprompted. “What?”
    “What was your edge?”
    “My edge, huh?”
    “That meant they couldn’t sack you.”
    “I know what you meant.” Somewhere overhead, a chair scraped on a floor; footsteps crossed to a window. “I told them I was gay,” she said at last.
    “Uh-huh?”
    “And no way were they gunna fire a dyke for punching out some arsehole who felt her up in the canteen.”
    “Is that why you cut your hair?”
    “No,” she said. “I cut my hair because I felt like it.”
    “Are we on the same side?”
    “I’m on nobody’s side but my own.”
    He nodded. “Suit yourself.”
    “I intend to.”
    She turned back to her monitor, which had fallen asleep. When she shifted her mouse it grumpily revealed a screen frozen on a split-image of two faces so obviously not a match that the program must have been taking the piss.
    “So are you actually gay? Or did you just tell them that?”
    Shirley didn’t reply.
    On a bench at Oxford station sat Jackson Lamb; overcoat swamping him either side, undone shirt button allowing a hairy glimpse of stomach. He scratched this absently, then fumbled with the button before giving up and covering the mound instead with a black fedora, on which he then concentrated his gaze, as if it held the secret