Slow Horses by Mick Herron

that too, if the phrase didn’t have disturbing connotations.
    Wh—where?
    He hated himself that he’d said that. ‘Where’s the bucket?’ As if he’d been asking about the amenities in a guest-house. As if he’d been grateful.
    Who were these people? And what did they want? And why him?
    That’s where you piss. Shit. Whatever.
    They were going to keep him here long enough he’d need to take a crap?
    The thought buckled him at the knees. Crying took it out of you. He sank to the cold stone floor.
    If he hadn’t kicked the chair over, he’d have sat on it. But the task of putting it back on its legs was beyond him.
    What do they want from me?
    He’d not spoken aloud. But the words crawled back to him anyway, from the edges of the room.
    What do they want?
    There were no answers handy.
    A single lightbulb lit the cellar. It dangled, shadeless, three feet or so above him, and he became aware of it now mostly because it went out. For a few seconds, its glow hung in the air, and then it too went wherever ghosts go in the dark.
    He thought he’d felt panic before, but that was nothing to what he felt now.
    For the next moments he was entirely inside his own head, and it was the scariest place he’d been. Unspeakable horrors hid there, feeding on childhood nightmares. A clock struck, but not a real one. It was a clock he’d woken to once aged three or four, that had kept him awake the rest of the night, terrified that its tick-tick-ticking was the approach of a spindly-legged beast. That if he slept, it would have him.
    But he’d never be three or four again. Calling for his parents would have no effect. It was dark, but he’d been in the dark before. He was frightened but—
    He was frightened but alive, and angry, and this might be a trick; a rag-week stunt pulled by the cooler kids on campus.
    Angry. That was the thing to hold on to. He was angry.
    ‘Okay, guys,’ he said out loud. ‘You’ve had your fun. But I’m tired of pretending to be scared.’
    There was a tremor in his voice, but not much of one. Considering.
    ‘Guys? I said I’m tired of pretending.’
    It was a prank. A Big Brother -influenced routine he’d been made the butt of.
    ‘Guys? You’re pretty cool, okay. You think. But you know what?’
    He couldn’t see his own tied hands as he raised them to the level of his face, and extended both middle fingers.
    ‘Sit and spin, guys. Sit. And. Spin.’
    And then he set the chair on its feet once more, and sat, hoping that his shoulders didn’t betray how ragged his breathing was.
    It was important that he get himself under control.
    The thing to do was not lose his head.

Chapter 4
    Earlier that evening, River had joined the commuter shuffle from London Bridge; by eight, he’d been on the outskirts of Tonbridge. A phone call on the move had been the only notice he gave, but there was no sense he’d caught the O.B. on the hop: supper was a pasta bake, and a big salad that hadn’t come from a bag.
    ‘You were wondering if you’d find me with a tin of beans in front of the telly.’
    ‘Never.’
    ‘I’m all right, you know, River. At my age, you’re either alone or dead. Either way, you get used to it.’
    River’s grandmother had died four years ago. Now the Old Bastard, as River’s mother called him, rattled around the four-bedroomed house on his own.
    ‘He should sell the place, darling,’ she’d said to River on one of her vanishingly rare visitations. ‘Get himself a nice little bungalow. Or move into one of those residential complexes.’
    ‘I can see him going for that.’
    ‘It’s not all daytime TV and abuse these day. They have,’ and she’d waved her hand airily; her standard semaphore for trivial detail, ‘ regulations .’
    ‘They could have Commandments,’ River told her. ‘It wouldn’t tear him from his garden. Is it his money you’re after?’
    ‘No, darling. I just want him to be unhappy.’
    That might have been a joke.
    After they’d eaten, River