The Secret Hours

by Mick Herron

That’s the real art of politics, Ms. Fleet. Knowing when the next fuck-up’s due. And arranging for a human sandbag to be standing in the way.” Afterwards, she recognised this as the key moment in their conversation, the point at which he revealed his outlook. Always decide who’s to blame before anything goes wrong. It makes the subsequent investigation much simpler

Late in the night, at an hour when crocodiles still roamed the streets, he had come to the realisation that his life contained nobody prepared to put time and effort into making him feel uncomfortable.

“You have the Service’s gratitude for doing the job you were paid to do.

the sofa to collect it. He felt bruised all over. Nobody told you what a drag it was, getting older. Or at least, people did tell you, but you ignored them, because they were old.

It was possible that such small nightmares were themselves ways of stress-testing a fledgling’s mental resilience, but equally likely that they were the consequence of an organisation outgrowing its resources.

He found a box of matches, and plugged the cigarette into his mouth. “Well, pardon me all the way to fuck and back. But just to make sure we’re on the same page, I’m the one in charge and you’re the visitor, right? Or did I get out of bed the wrong person this morning?”

treachery might strike, or from what quarter. This is true whatever the time, but especially true after dark, since how we act in the light of day is largely for other people’s benefit, but what we do in the secret hours reveals who we really are.

“Otis,” he said, “has many good qualities. Failing to be a loudmouthed dick is not always one of them.”

Which they took in the same small park, because sometimes days make patterns, laying your footprints ahead of you like tracks in the snow.

“And what did this tiger do to you?” “He hanged my sister.” “. . . Oh.” “Yes, oh. They haven’t yet designed a card for the occasion, so words can be hard to find.”

“Christ on a fucking bicycle. He’s got teeth. What else do you need to know?”

“It’s a plan, not a fucking toaster,” said Miles. “It doesn’t come with a guarantee.”

Happiness takes on a different shade in the light of its consequences.

But any way you looked at it De Vries wasn’t the first businessman, and wouldn’t be the last, to grow rich exploiting his fellow man’s weaknesses.

rather than grieving a lost future, she was building a different one in the only place it would be allowed to flourish, but these days she knew she’d been wrong about that; that she was strong, and always had been, and could have conquered worlds, chairbound or not. She’d settled for the tiny queendom of her archive instead. Well, we are all diminished by our wrong choices,

No: the Establishment didn’t need protecting, because the Establishment always won. It just wasn’t always the same Establishment, or not at first.

When dealing with the rich, it was tactful to allow them to set their own parameters. Many—most—were irredeemably parsimonious but didn’t enjoy being reminded of the fact.