Free Redlaw - 01 by James Lovegrove

although nothing he said seemed unlikely. “People aren’t going to let vampires think they can kick up a fuss any time they feel like it. They won’t stand for it. You might find SHADE officers being sent in here to bash down doors and pump residents full of ash wood, simply to make a point. I really don’t think you’d want that, would you? Not least because, with me in charge, this is the first address I’d direct my officers to.”
    “So it’s threats, is it?”
    “Your own interests, like I said. That’s all.”
    Illyria nodded, giving the matter some thought.
    “Perhaps,” she said at last, “I could make a few enquiries. Grigori, for instance, would be somewhere to start. He was present at the riot.”
    “Grigori would’ve been my first suggestion,” said Redlaw.
    “If I come up with anything...”
    “I’ll drop by in the next couple of days. Do your best. I’d regard it as a personal favour.”
    “Oh, such an attractive proposition—to have the mighty John Redlaw indebted to me.”
    Redlaw half smiled. “Sarcasm?”
    “I was aiming for irony,” Illyria replied.
    “Lucky for you I’m not as judgemental as you are.” He turned towards the balcony door. “Tell your underlings to let me leave now, please.”
    “He’s coming through,” she called out, and the door unlocked and swung inward. “Until we meet again, old bean. This has been... entertaining.”
    “Not for me,” Redlaw said, with a grimace.
     
    Illyria was no longer on the balcony as he walked away from the building buttoning his weapons vest back on.
    It puzzled him that he had looked up to check whether she was.
    Annoyed him, too.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    “I was rather hoping we could settle this like gentlemen,” said Slocock to Wax. “You know, come to an arrangement over subsidised G and T’s in the Strangers Bar. Thrash out a deal without one or other of us resorting to bodyline bowling.”
    “It’s midday,” Wax said. “I never drink before evening. I have standards.”
    “Then we’ll just have to do it sober in this ratty little office of yours. Funny, I thought Cabinet ministers got grander cubbyholes to work in than the rest of us.”
    “The senior ones do. Sunless Affairs is very much a junior post.”
    “Ah well. Decent view, though. Way better than mine.”
    The Thames stretched outside the narrow windows, with Lambeth Palace and the London Eye dominating the opposite bank. A rubbish barge was chuntering by along the turbulent brown water, taking its cargo to some recycling centre, or to a dumping ground in the North Sea—Slocock didn’t much care which.
    “So, I’ve asked you nicely, Maurice,” he said.
    “And I’ve told you that Nathaniel Lambourne can go hang,” came the reply. “I turned him down in person. I’m hardly going to shift my position when his errand monkey comes calling, now am I?”
    Errand monkey . Slocock swallowed the insult, making one last effort to remain civil. “It could be the shrewdest move of your entire political career, you realise that, don’t you? The kind of decision that makes a media darling out of someone who’s—well, no offence, a dull and not especially loved MP. The kind that puts a chap in line for the highest of high office.”
    A glint came and went in Wax’s eyes, like a torch flash in the dark. This was not a rare sight in Westminster. Some hid the ambition better than others, but everyone had it.
    “Be that as it may, I simply can’t go along with what Lambourne is proposing. It’s a step too far. I can’t offer official government approval.”
    “Why not? It promises to resolve the Sunless situation more conclusively than anyone’s managed so far.”
    “But the ramifications... the possible repercussions...”
    “What are you scared of? A few hand-wringing liberals? A bleating editorial in the Guardian ? Trust me, the general public will be overwhelmingly on your side. It could even swing the election in Labour’s favour, which, let’s