Free Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron Page A

what Downey thinks or knows. Or thinks he knows. If we’ve got the child, he’ll come looking for her.’
    ‘This is what passes for a strategy?’
    ‘He’s gamed it every which way. There’s a lot of things Downey might do, but not if we’ve got the child. He’ll put her first. Until he’s found her, he won’t even think about going –’
    Oh, fuck .
    Going what?’ C asked politely.
    ‘Public.’
    ‘Public. Fine.’ C pulled his chair out and sat down. ‘Read the papers this morning, Howard?’
    ‘Glanced at them, sir. Been a bit busy.’
    ‘Anything grab your attention especially? Any minor events worth musing over? Like an impending fucking war, for instance?’
    ‘Sir.’
    ‘Fasten your mind on this, Howard. The country is prepared to take up arms to prevent Downey from going public. That isn’t an option. If you’re expecting your career to last longer than your hair did, don’t even think about mentioning the possibility. Got that?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Right. What are you doing with the child?’
    ‘We’re working on it.’
    ‘Well, work faster. Is Axel staying out in the open?’
    ‘For the time being.’
    ‘Good. Maybe we’ll all get lucky and he’ll be hit by a truck. After he’s sorted out Downey.’ C stood up again. ‘Are you still here?’
    Howard crawled to the door.
    ‘And, Howard? Remind Crane he’s not running a private war out there. If he can’t keep his brother on a leash, maybe it’s time you found him a job he can manage. Like checking ID at the car pool. Tell him that, will you?’
    Howard closed the door behind him without a sound, then ran a finger round his shirt collar. The finger came away wet.
    Waiting for the lift he swore fluently, obscenely and without repeating himself for just over a minute, not a single emotion showing on his face. There was a price to be paid for this, though at that moment Howard couldn’t recall if it were cancer or heart disease. One of those. You couldn’t bottle such fluency up and not have it go rotten. On the ground floor he smiled politely at the woman on Reception, who thought him something in forensic accounting, and walked out into groggy sunshine still harbouring violence in his heart. Made a right bollocks of this one, haven’t you? Yes, sure, fine. From an office high above the mess, it all looked pretty easy. Down at street level, you worked with what you had. And if that included the Crane brothers, you thanked Christ they were on your side, and let them get on with it.
    He would walk back across the park, he decided. If he could just cross the road in one piece, he’d walk across the park.
    Howard hated being in this position, of having to defend the indefensible. The first he’d known of Crane’s explosion, it was already over. And putting the fix in after the event was like making jelly in a sieve, so maybe that bastard with the view should come down here and see what real life looked like. A lot of traffic, all trying to go different places at once. All of it meeting in the middle, so what you got was smoke and noise.
    At the corner, the green man told Howard it was safe to cross. Howard trusted green men about as much as he did any other kind, but crossed anyway. In the park it was a little cooler, a little calmer: there was a whisper of wind tasting less like exhaust fumes and more like something born of nature. Howard walked between flowerbeds Londoners had used as litter bins, past litter bins in which Londoners had been sick, and wondered again what to do about the girl.
    It shouldn’t have happened this way. Even Amos Crane – wolfishly protective of his younger sibling – admitted that, in a field situation, he’d not have chosen Axel’s method. It hadn’t allowed for total control. It demanded too much of a fix. But Amos believed in fate, too, and in the girl’s survival saw something that went beyond tabloid whimsy: he saw the makings of a game plan. The girl, as he put it, was still on the