Slough House by Mick Herron

Her morning turned out shorter than she’d planned. Wearing her fur-lined coat against a biting wind, she’d been heading for a team meeting at the new facility, a granite complex on the city’s edge. If it looked like the local headquarters of an insurance company, that was fine. Some things hid best in the open.

The sky was grey but unthreatening. The streets, their usual city-selves.

Driving in wasn’t encouraged. There was a regular shuttle, though, twice an hour, looping through the inner suburbs, and she’d pass a pharmacy on the way to her stop. She needed bath salts. Three times a week, days were full-on physical: 15K in the morning, then gym-work, then four times across the lake—twice in a boat, twice in the water—then another 15K. You needed long baths afterwards . . . Yesterday she’d dozed off in the tub, its lapping a sense-reminder of the movement of the lake, into which, rumour had it, leeches had once been poured, to keep swimmers on their mettle. But she’d never encountered one. This was a relief. Even the thought of leeches gave her the creeps; the way they were jelly, and mostly mouth. The way, if you stepped on one, it would burst like a blood-filled balloon.

Seriously, she thought: sooner this hunter on my tail than one of those nightmares fastened to my skin.

Because she’d spotted him now. Should have done sooner, but she was no more than fifteen seconds off the beat; an allowable laxity, even by the standards of her department. Already, she was re-mapping her route, and the first detour was here: through the indoor market, a vast amphitheatre where chickens hung from hooks and sacks of vegetables formed battlements along the aisles. These were too narrow for a follower to remain hidden, though he did his best: when she paused to examine a tray of ducks’ eggs, the passage behind her remained empty save for an elderly woman on sticks. But he was somewhere back there, in a black leather jacket; a little noticeable for pavement-work, which was a neat double bluff.

And the nature of her task was clear—another test. She had to ditch her tracker before reaching the shuttle-bus stop. Because you could swim a hundred laps of the lake, run more K than there were minutes in the hour, and none of it would count if you couldn’t shake a shadow on a city street. And if you led the shadow home, well . . . She’d heard of a department made up of failures: losers assigned to a dead-end desk, spending the rest of forever in a mist of thwarted ambition. You only got to mess up once. This was harsh but—until it happened to you—it was fair.

But it wasn’t going to happen to her.

On her last job, in a foreign city, she had been the hunter. This felt curiously similar. Exiting the market, she crossed the road in the wake of a woman wearing a grey jacket and matching skirt and followed her into a lingerie shop on the opposite pavement: female territory. They were the only customers. Outside, the leather-jacketed man loitered, pretending to study his phone. She’d bottled herself in but forced him to reveal himself, and once that dawned on him, he’d have little choice but to give up. Which ideally would happen in time for her to catch the shuttle.

So what was to stop her simply tapping on the window and waving at him?

“. . . Excuse me?”

The woman was addressing her.

“Is he following you? Outside? In the leather jacket?”

She thought: okay, let’s see where this leads. There were clues for future behaviour in allowing situations to play themselves out.

“He is, yes.”

The woman had quick dark eyes. “A stalker . . . ?”

“He’s been following me since I left home.”

“Shall I call the police?”

She was already reaching for a phone.

“No, I . . . No. He’s an ex-boyfriend. Last time I called the police, he came round later and beat me up.”

It was shaky, but didn’t need to stand up in court.

The sales assistant was watching from behind the counter. “Is there a problem, ladies?”

The woman in grey said, “There’s a troublesome man. Outside.”

The assistant expressed no surprise. This was a lingerie store.

“So we wondered, is there a back way?”

“It’s not really for customers.”

“But we’re not customers, are we? We’re victims of a man hanging round your shop.”

It was sweetly said, but with a menacing undertone.

“Well . . .”

But it was a surrender, and a graceful one.

“Of course. Maybe now, while his back’s turned.”

For the man in black was facing the street, his head cocked phonewards.

She checked her watch. She could still make the shuttle. And this would be more satisfying than simply tagging him, and telling him he was busted . . . As they were ushered towards the goods entrance, the woman in grey beamed at her, as if this were an adventure. Something to share with the team: members of the public can be a resource.

When the door closed behind them and they were alone in an alleyway thronged with wheelie-bins, she said, “Thanks.”

The woman in grey said, “My pleasure,” and stepped forward to envelop her in a hug.

It might have been imagination. But that would have meant everything else was unreal too; not just the sudden stiletto-shaped pain in her heart, but the intake of breath that the whole world took. The woman in grey lowered her to the ground then stepped away smartly, leaving her to grasp, in her final moment, that this had not been a test, or, if it were, it was one in which failure cost more than she’d expected. But that was a brief epiphany, long over by the time news of her death had been composed, encrypted, and sent hurtling through the ether to arrive in a busy room half the globe away, where it was delivered by an earnest young man to an older woman, who wore her authority as she might an ermine gown: it kept her warm, and people noticed it.

She took the tablet he offered, read the message on its screen, and smiled.

“Smiert spionam,” she said.

“. . . Ma’am?”

“Ian Fleming,” said Diana Taverner. “Means ‘Death to spies.’’’

And then, because he still looked blank, said, “Google it.”