Real Tigers (Slough House, #3)

by Mick Herron

Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.

You either cleaned up other people’s messes or you didn’t—and that was the class system for you, right there.

It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you that kills you.

control is key. Control the environment, control your opponent. Most of all, control yourself.

The op was the op.

These changed identity every so often, depending on who’d been elected, deposed or assassinated, but by and large the boundaries were clear: you spied on your foes, kept tabs on the neutrals, and every so often got a chance to fuck up your friends in a plausibly deniable way.

Victory,

was about ensuring your opponent never

again put head to pillow without thinking with hat...

London was more than one city.

All our problems would melt away if we could sit peacefully in a room.

Thuggery run riot in the kitchens of the rich.

Because the standard liberal whine that the rich were cushioned from life’s harsh realities was laughable ignorance: the rich created those realities, and made sure they kept on happening. That was what kitchens were for, along with prisons, factories and public transport.

You could spend too much time in the world. Every so often you needed to check out, and if you could do that somewhere with live ammunition, so much the better.

For a baggage-free existence, each moment of your story jettisoned as soon as done; your future pristine, undiluted by all that’s gone before. You’d always be on the first page. Never have to turn back, relive your mistakes.

The bottle held the key to her past; all those pages she’d tried to throw away, she could re-read every last one simply by unscrewing its cap and draining its contents.

Of course, in allowing her to do that the bottle would be giving up its own future—becoming nothing more than an empty vessel—but that was the nature of co-dependency: one of you had to die.

After a triumph like that, she was due a victory parade, not a relapse.

“Don’t look for people. Look for movement.” It was like one of those children’s puzzles: you stare at a picture of a tree until you can make out the squirrels.

That’s the trouble with going freelance. You can’t always keep the talent on the straight and narrow.”

if you open enough doors, you’ll eventually find a tiger.