by Mick Herron
Though maybe the fat bastard had been right. Maybe being dead was just the next thing that had happened to Andy in his short, all senses, life.
In a sudden spurt of anger, he kicked out at the nearest pile of books. Homespun bookmarks flew, snippets of Andrey’s tadpole writing on them: useless clues—Reece couldn’t decipher half, and the rest were in Russian. But it didn’t matter. Nothing he did could bring Andy back, and his best attempt so far, snagging a real-life spook from Andy’s favourite hang-out, had only resulted in a string of insults and a sitting room stinking of smoke. Everybody was a bastard. That included Andy and, probably, himself.
After a while he collected the books and set them in a pile again. The bookmarks would never find their way back to their rightful pages, so he just gathered them together and tucked them inside the top volume. Maybe, tonight, he’d set something in motion he’d never get to hear about. It was more likely, though, that all he’d done was afford half an hour’s amusement to a fat spy.
He put the empty bottles in the recycling box and the scarred yellow vest in the bin.
Then he went to bed.
The kitchen at Slough House had been fitted in the late seventies, and had undergone renovation since, inasmuch as a calendar had been hung there in 2010. That had been taken down, but the nail used to fix it in place remained, now graced by a tea towel, which had previously dangled from the one drawer knob that didn’t come away in the hand. This new assignment sometimes allowed the towel to nearly dry out, not that it was used much, but it did tend to absorb available moisture. The room’s other main advantage was that it was of a size that could almost accommodate two people without argument erupting, provided neither one was Roddy Ho.
Who, sniffing suspiciously, said, “What’s that supposed to be?”
“Focaccia.”
“It’s got bits on it.”
“It’s supposed to. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen one before. You eat enough pizza.”
“Pizza’s round.”
“You’re aware that being round is not a food group?” The bread Lech Wicinski had made the previous evening nestled in silver foil on the battle-scarred kitchen counter. “Try some. It won’t kill you.”
“I don’t want to get crumbs on my shirt.”
Lech eyed the garment in question: a green, paisley-swirled specimen Ho had buttoned to the throat. “Crumbs might improve it.”
Louisa joined them, bearing an empty mug. She looked at Ho, then at Lech, then at the bread, then at Lech again. “You made that?”
“Yes.”
“What, with like flour and stuff?”
“Flour, yes. And also stuff.”
She nodded, though not in a way that indicated she was up to speed yet. “And then what? Did you drop it?”
“Christ, what is this? I made some bread, I didn’t finish it all. So I brought the rest in. Where’s the problem?”
“It’s just, that doesn’t happen much round here.”
“Which? The baking or the bringing it in?”
“All of it,” said Louisa. “Including the part about not finishing it yourself.” She emptied the kettle into the sink and refilled it, a process Ho watched without comprehension. “Fresh water?” she said. “For coffee?” Then back to Lech: “If you’re planning on starting a bake-off, I’ll tell you now, it’ll end badly.”
“If I start a bake-off,” said Lech, “it’ll be to decide which of you lot to chuck in an oven.”
“Why bake stuff anyway?” asked Ho. “It’s available in shops. Duh.”
“I hate to say this,” said Louisa, “but the shirt has a point.”
“So you’re not a cook either.”
“Me? I can barely defrost.”
“What’s wrong with my shirt?” asked Ho.
“It looks like a frog threw up on you.”
“It’s Italian designed.”
“So’s the bread,” said Lech. “But it was made by a Pole in the East End.”
Catherine had appeared in the doorway. “What are you all doing?”
“Are you our prefect now?” Louisa asked. “Is this one of those age-flip things, and I’ve woken up back in school?”
“We should all be so lucky.”
“Anyway, the boiling kettle should be a clue,” Louisa added.
“I didn’t so much mean what are you doing as why aren’t you doing it upstairs? Team meeting, remember? Nine sharp.”
“I didn’t think he was here yet.”
“He’s not,” said Catherine. “But when did that stop him expecting everyone else to be on time? Focaccia looks good, by the way.”
“Thanks,” said Lech.
“But you do realise you’ll never hear the end of it.”
Louisa poured her coffee while Ho tried to read the label on his own collar without undoing buttons. Lech rewrapped the bread and looked like he was regretting various decisions, going at least as far back as bringing the bread in, and possibly extending to choice of career and not staying in Australia, where he’d holidayed in ’96.
“I didn’t mean anything, by the way,” Louisa said. “That crack about being back in school.”
He rolled his eyes, but she was out of the door, and didn’t notice.
Upstairs, Shirley was already in place. There were no visitor’s chairs in Lamb’s office, or none he liked anyone to sit on—the one technically so designated currently nursed a pyramid of sauce-stained Wagamama hotboxes—but one particular standing space was deemed more desirable than others, it being thought to fall within Lamb’s blind spot. The warier among them didn’t believe Lamb had a blind spot, and suspected some slow-burning mind-fuck, but Shirley was playing the odds, and had positioned herself to the left of the door, nearest the corkboard on which brittle scraps of paper had long ago been pinned, presumably by Lamb, presumably for a reason. She didn’t speak when Louisa, Lech and Roddy trooped in, and was possibly asleep, though upright. River arrived last. He didn’t speak either, but in contrast to Shirley looked like sleep was a stranger, or an enemy.
Louisa tried to catch his eye, but he wasn’t having it. This wasn’t especially unusual, but there was an energy to him, a voltage, which was. Slough House didn’t recharge batteries, it sapped power. It’s as if there were negative ley lines, special coordinates where forceless fields met, sucking all spirit from whoever stood there, and Slough House was slap bang on that junction. Whatever had River twitching, it wasn’t the prospect of a day at work.
A door banged; not the one from the yard, but the toilet on the floor below. So Lamb had floated in and up several flights of stairs without fluttering a cobweb on the way. It was unnerving to picture him doing this, like imagining a tapir playing hopscotch. The smell of stale cigarettes entered the room a moment before him, and the slow horses made way for it, then Lamb, by shuffling to either side. He arrived among them shaking his head in wonderment. “What a dump.”
Louisa looked round: the moist walls, the grim threadbare carpet, the print of a foreign bridge which made you want to hurl yourself off it. “You’ve only just noticed?”
“I meant back there,” said Lamb. “That’s going nowhere first flush.” He threw himself into his chair, which, one happy day, was going to respond by disintegrating into a hundred pieces. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I was up late comforting a gay American dwarf.”
They stared.
“What? I can’t have a social life?”
“It’s more that you don’t usually apologise,” Catherine said.
“Well, how often do I fall into error?” He tossed something at Shirley, which she unwisely caught. It was a paper tissue, unnaturally heavy, starting to split. “Get rid of that, will you?”
“. . . You’re nearest the bin.”
“I didn’t want it in my nose, you don’t think I want it in my bin, do you?” He loo
ked round at the assembled team. “Remind me, what the fuck are you doing here?”
Shirley slipped out, suppressing a gag reflex, while all present mentally erased the blind-spot theory.
“Updates,” said Catherine.
“Ah yes. Team updates. So glad we can share these moments. Means I don’t have to rely on the obituary columns for giggles. So.” He placed his palms on his paunch and smiled benignly. “Time to share. And this is a safe space, mind. No one’s going to point out what a dickhead you are. Who’s first?”
Louisa said, “I was followed yesterday evening.”
“Congratulations. Did you shag him in his car or take him home?”
“He tagged me on the Central Line and stayed with me to Oxford Street. I busted him in a sports shop. And he legged it.”
Lamb surveyed the assembled company. “You see, this is what happens when you leave your contact details on toilet walls.”
“He was Park.”
“Ah, keeping it in the family. And we know this because . . . ?”
“Because he got the same text we all got at 6:59 p.m. yesterday. One of those HR messages, checking their alert system’s working.”
You are receiving this text to ensure your contact details are up to date. Reply ICON to acknowledge receipt.
Lamb’s eyes narrowed. “I thought we were wiped from Service records. This kind of spoils the magic.”
“Contact details are on the deep-level data sets,” Ho said.
“Yeah, I heard some jabbering there, but I won’t pretend I followed it.”
“We’ve been over this,” Lech said. “It’s our personal records that have been wiped. Names, photos, active history, operational involvement, all that. The deep-level stuff, which is anonymised—like our employee numbers and bank details—that data’s still on file. Else we wouldn’t get our salaries, for a start.”
Lamb looked pained. “You get salaries? I thought the whole point was to demoralise you.”
“We don’t get much.”
“Just as well. If they paid you what you were worth, you’d owe them money.” He returned to Ho. “That new, is it? The palsy-pattern shirt?
“Paisley,” said Roddy.
“If you say so. Makes you look a spastic either way.” He leaned back and put his feet on his desk. Somehow he’d managed to shed his shoes. “So. Everyone got the same text message, right?”
“Including you,” said Catherine.
“Seriously?” He scrambled about in his pockets, theatrically going through most of them before finding his mobile back in the first one he’d checked. Then they waited while he turned it on. “Well, heartbreak make me a dancer. Seems I’m no better than the rest of you.” He dropped the phone, and went on, “Okay then. One little slow horse went to market, and it turned out she had a trainee spook on her heels.”
“What makes him a trainee?”
“You spotted him, didn’t you? What about the rest of you?” He pointed at Shirley, who’d slunk back in and was visibly trying to disassociate herself from her own hands. “What were you up to last night? No, let me guess. You were jiving the small hours away. Anyone watching you?”
“I’m always watched in night clubs.”
“Yeah, they’re worried you’ll steal people’s drinks.” He paused. “No, hang on, you’re the lush,” he said to Catherine. “I get you confused. Have you thought about wearing badges?”
“To make your life easier? That’s not going to happen,” said Catherine. “And no, I wasn’t followed last night.”
“You sure about that?”
“I just said so.”
“Ah, the wonders of sobriety. What it must be to have total recall of every passing second.” He looked at Louisa. “And she could have given you lessons back in the day. Had a thing about sailors, if I remember rightly. A big thing. She’d have gone down on the Titanic given half a chance.”
He produced a cigarette out of nowhere, a lighter from the same place, and lit the one from the other. Then he stared at the lighter for a moment before tossing it over his shoulder and pointing at Lech Wicinski. “You planning on letting those facial pubes cover the art on your cheeks? Or is your electric razor on the fritz? No offence.”
“I’m Polish,” Lech said. “Not German.”
“Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Did you make the bread, by the way?”
“. . . Yes.”
“Needs more garlic.” Lamb belched. “So, any nasty eyes tracking your private pleasures last night? Or were you too busy playing the old ham banjo to notice?”
“I’m not sure,” said Lech. “There might have been someone.”
“Well, that opens a world of possibilities. Care to elaborate?”
“Heading home, on the bus.” He shrugged. “It might have been nothing. But I got off a stop early just in case.”
“That’d put the fear of God into them. Anyone surrender?”
“Nobody followed me home from there.”
“Probably too scared. You’re very quiet.”
This to River Cartwright.
River said, “Nothing to report.”
“No pitter-patter of spooky footsteps trailing your moves last night?”
“They’d have had to be fast. I was driving.”
“Oh, of course, you have a car now. Spending the inheritance. What did you go with? Let me guess. An Aston Martini.”
“Something like that,” said River.
“And where were we tooling about?”
“Nowhere special. Just putting it through its paces.”
Lamb stared, but said no more.
The smoke from his cigarette was thicker than usual, unless there was a local mattress fire. Eyes were starting to water; throats beginning to itch.
“You haven’t asked me yet,” Roddy said.
Lamb sighed. “Okay, Donkey Kong. Anyone pinned a tail on you lately?”
“No.”
“Well, that was a fruitful exchange.” His cigarette between his lips, Lamb slid both hands down his trousers to rearrange his underwear. That accomplished, he removed the cigarette and tapped the ash into the nearest mug. The entire tube fell off the filter. He looked bitterly at what was left for a moment, then dropped that into the mug too. “So. Either the rest of you are too dozy to notice that the Park’s keeping tabs, or it’s only happening to the scarlet woman. Or she was making it up on account of being terrified she’ll end up a spinster bag lady, with no man paying attention. That about sum it up?”
“Or, strange as it may seem, it was a coincidence,” said Catherine.
“Ah, thank you. We can always rely on you to play devil’s asparagus.”
“Avocado,” she said automatically. Then: “Advocate. Damn it, you’ve got me doing it.”
“He ran when he realised I’d clocked him,” said Louisa. “It was no coincidence.”
Lamb shifted his feet to the floor, carefully enough that only a few things were knocked from his desk. “No. Because if it was it would be two coincidences, on account of it happening at the same time as we’ve been rubbed out of the Service database.” He looked at Lech. “Rubbed out in the technical sense, that is. Not your area of expertise.”
Lech’s look, his posture, his reddening neck; everything bar his actual voice invited Lamb to go fuck himself.
“Have you raised this with the Park yet?” Catherine said. “Dare I ask?”
“Our refugee status? No, I haven’t. On account of I prefer to know what Taverner’s up to before I ask her about it, and I haven’t worked out what that is yet. Too busy. Some of us have lives outside the workplace, you know.”
“Comforting gay American dwarfs,” said Shirley.
“Glad someone’s paying attention.”
“Or is it dwarves?”
“There was only one of
them,” said Lamb. “His friend’s dead.” He farted in a brisk, businesslike fashion. “Anything else? God, look at you all, lined up like a choir at a hobo funeral. About as confidence-inspiring as a Spanish motorway.”
“Nothing like rallying the troops,” said Catherine.
“I have something,” said Ho.
Lamb glared. “Pubic lice? That would explain the fidgeting.”
“I know when our records were removed.”
“Well, fuck me merrily on high. Actual information.” He leaned back. “Come on then. Amaze us.”
“First week of January. The fifth.”
“How do you know?” said River. “If the records aren’t there, they can’t tell you when they were deleted.”
Ho adopted the superior look cats give mortals. “I checked for when the personnel database was updated, outside the regular back-ups. Then looked to find each time an update happened with no new material added.”
“How can you—”
“It gets smaller.”
“Which meant something was deleted,” Louisa said.
“Yeah, duh.” Ho interlaced his fingers importantly. “Administrator activity’s logged. But you have to know where to look.”
“And that’s why we keep you,” said Lamb. “I’d known there was a reason, beyond my famously charitable nature.” He beamed round at the rest of them. “See? Being a dickless no-mates pays off in the long run. Okay, Austin Powers, as a reward, you can keep your shirt on. I’d been going to make you eat it.”
“And what use is that?” said Shirley. “Knowing the date it happened?”
“Difficult as this will be for you to understand,” said Lamb, “knowing things is better than not knowing things. Think of it as the difference between having a cocaine baggie in your pocket and not. I hope this helps.”
Shirley managed not to check her pockets, but it was a close-run thing.