by Mick Herron
But useful or not, one thing Molly Doran most certainly was was out of the way. Her archive was her island, and she never came to shore. Though check-in data showed she spent more time in the building than anyone bar Diana herself, she might as well have been a ghost on wheels, unnoticed by any but the most sensitive, and dismissed as a story by everyone else. And yet eight weeks ago she’d registered a complaint; reported one of the in-house police team—the Dogs—for “unwarranted intrusion, unacceptable language and all-round arseholery,” the last of which wasn’t a recognised infringement of a house rule, but could probably be taken as character appraisal. The complaint had been investigated; an HR-lackey sent to mollify Molly, which probably ranked as the most thankless task available to that department; and a mild wigging delivered to the miscreant, in the form of an email suggesting he read up on the disability protocols outlined in the staff handbook. Thereafter, the wheels of the Park had ground on, as had, presumably, the wheels of Molly’s chair.
The Dog in question: Tommo Doyle, Damien Cantor’s “man.”
This information had come her way when Diana had looked up Doyle’s employment record on her return to the Park. Cantor’s impertinent valediction, How’s Doyle working out?, had been intended as a one-fingered salute, that was clear; Cantor was a show-off, a man-child, like most men, and clearly convinced of his own cunning. She’d checked the CCTV capture of his tourist outing, and he’d been wearing glasses and a windcheater. A disguise. No wonder Oliver noticed him. And all it was, she thought, was manspreading; he was pissing on a lamp post, marking territory. There was no shortage of such behaviour in this business, or any other; there were always men in the background, imagining they were centre stage. The newer variety, who were careful to keep their inner Weinstein on a leash; older ones like Peter Judd, who wore their chauvinism like battlefield decorations; and uncategorisable miscreants like Jackson Lamb, who probably thought the glass ceiling was a feature in a Berlin brothel. She remembered, not long back, an uncharacteristically informal conversation with Josie, who worked on the hub. It’s funny, Josie had remarked, how we always end up working round male insecurities. The Bechdel test gets flunked here on a daily basis. “Our job is tackling crises and clearing up messes,” Diana had reminded her. “That’s pretty clearly going to involve discussing men.”
It was not beyond the bounds of probability, she now thought, that whatever Tommo Doyle had been up to that pissed off Molly Doran would lead back, like an unravelled clew, to Damien smugging Cantor.
There was an alcove just inside the archive room, a wheelchair-sized cubbyhole where she expected to find Molly, but it was currently vacant, and the room silent. You could not, she thought—Molly could not—navigate her way round here without a certain amount of mayhem; the aisles were surely too narrow for a wheelchair to manoeuvre freely. There would be caution, hesitation and stop/start calculation. Except there wasn’t. What there was instead was a smooth cornering on near-silent wheels, and the sudden appearance of Molly Doran barrelling towards her, like Mr. Toad in a fury.
She came to a halt with her front wheels a precise inch in front of Diana’s toes.
“Very impressive,” Diana said drily.
“I practise a lot,” said Molly.
Diana stepped aside, and Molly executed a neat little three-point-turn which left her precisely in her alcove.
“You registered a complaint,” Diana said, once Molly was stationary.
“I most certainly bloody did.”
“About Doyle.”
“I don’t care what his name is. One of your security gorillas. I’ve told them before, and I’ll tell them again, I won’t have Dogs on my floor. Not even guide ones.”
Diana suppressed irritation. “Might I ask why?”
“You might. I don’t have any tea leaves to hand, so I’ve no idea what’ll happen next.”
“If I don’t get your cooperation pretty soon, I can sketch a fair idea of what your future will entail. If that helps.”
Molly thrust her jaw out. This was not an especially attractive look for her, though compiling a list of such looks would be a challenge: some time ago—Diana was guessing it was subsequent to the event that saw Molly consigned to a wheelchair—she had taken to making her face up in a manner only a little way short of being eligible for a clown’s patent, if such things existed, and weren’t an internet myth. Red cheeks, pale face, almost as thick as Kevlar. Her hair in tufts. A challenge to the world in general, though Diana was the wrong person to lay a challenge down in front of, unless you were prepared to see it bent in half and thrust into the nearest bin.
“They tend to be uncivil,” said Molly.
“And what form of incivility did this particular example display?”
“Trespass.”
“Any detail you want to add?”
“I found him poking around when I arrived one morning. Which meant he’d opened up and entered without my permission. Which would not, in any case, have been forthcoming.”
“The Dogs have access rights on all floors,” said Diana. “Regardless of your personal antipathy. What was he doing?”
“Just checking things out,” Molly said. “That was his story.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
She said, “He called me a crip.”
“He called you what?”
“I asked him to leave. He said he didn’t take instructions from a crip.”
“And so you reported him.”
Molly nodded.
Diana looked around. They were the only people there, which would probably have been true at most times. The secrets Molly kept didn’t burn with urgency; they lay like mantraps in overgrown patches of woodland. Long forgotten, most of them, but not yet rusted shut. When she looked back at Molly, the other woman’s expression was a familiar one; it spoke of an extra layer of knowledge you hadn’t drilled down to yet. Slappable, really, though that wouldn’t be politic. Better to probe a little deeper. There weren’t many options.
She said, “You think he was blowing smoke.”
“Not at the time,” said Molly. “At the time, I saw red. Big man, seen some action by the look of him. Could have thrown me, chair and all, from one side of the room to the other.”
“And strong men aren’t bullies. Weak ones are.”
They both knew an exception to that rule, of course, but he was a study all to himself.
“But later, when I thought about it,” Molly said, “after that moron from HR came to pacify me, it occurred to me, that’s why he’d rolled the insults out. To stop me wondering what he’d really been doing.”
“You’ve checked for missing files?”
Molly didn’t bother to laugh. “I’ll do that, when I have a decade to spare.”
“And all he’d need was a phone,” Diana finished. Ten minutes on his own in here, he could walk away with a hundred years of history in his pocket.
It was her own fault, or could be made to look like it was, which came to the same thing. Until a few months back, Head Dog had been one Emma Flyte, whose departure Diana had much enjoyed arranging once she’d come into her kingdom. Following this, there’d been a minor exodus from the ranks, three or four of Flyte’s colleagues feeling the need to move on too. It wasn’t a huge issue. Replacements were found. And as the Dogs were frequently recruited from ex-forces personnel, a former SAS officer with private security experience would have been seen as a good fit.
She left Molly and took the lift back to the hub, her mind simmering. Josie was at her office door, the overnights in her hand: reports of incidents that had come in during the dark hours. “Bullet points?”
“Nothing too troublesome. Surveillance updates on the Manchester lot, mostly.”
“I don’t need to see them. I do need some coffee.”
“Ma’am.” Josie was about to head off, but remembered some
thing. “Oh, and a suspicious death. Horrible really. A fire in a shipping container.”
“Christ. Immigrants?”
“No. Just the one victim.”
“We’re not the police force.”
“He used to be Park,” said Josie.
Catherine Standish refilled Lamb’s bucket several times that morning: he didn’t always drink tea, but when he did, it was an Olympic performance. Her first few visits he was occupied, which is to say, in one of his waking trances: unshod feet on his desk, hands clasped across his belly, open eyes directed at the ceiling. She knew better than to attempt communication. The fourth occasion, he glared at her as if reading her mind. This being so, she spoke it.
“You might have backed them up a bit.”
“Oh, shut up. I told Taverner not to fuck with my joes. She probably won’t. But having them tailed by her L-plate muppets isn’t full-on fuckery. More like heavy petting.” He hefted his mug. “Besides, I told them about it, didn’t I? And I don’t imagine Dander will shrug it off.”
Catherine let that sink in. Then said, “Somebody might get hurt.”
“I’m pleased you’ve grasped the essentials.” He took a magnificent slurp of tea. “Besides, Taverner’s heart’s not in it. She’s up to something, and it’s not going well.”
“And this is a cause for rejoicing? We’re all on the same side, remember?”
“Jesus, have you learned nothing? When they tell you to take it one day at a time, that doesn’t mean do a memory wipe each morning.” He set the mug down. It couldn’t possibly be empty yet. “If we were all on the same side, we wouldn’t have to watch our own backs.”
“We can’t watch our own backs. We have to watch each other’s.”
“That, sir, is arrant pedantry,” Lamb said, in a fair approximation of Winston Churchill. “Up with which you can fuck right off.”
He was impossible in this mood, which was something it had in common with all his other moods.
Catherine said, “What do you mean, Taverner’s not going well?”
“I mean she might have made a mistake.”
“In picking on your crew?”
“Christ, no. That’s a no-brainer. No, it’s what she said last night, then pretended she hadn’t. She’s worried about something, and as she has no personal life, it’s something to do with the Park.” He squinted at the ceiling. “And off-book, or she’d not be worried. Anything in-house, she can blame on someone else.”
“You think she’s running a black op?”
“Last time she tried that, heads rolled. Well, not rolled exactly. But definitely sat on a tabletop looking alarmed.”
“Thanks for the memory. What do you plan to do?”
“I plan to have a big lunch and a long nap,” said Lamb. “But send Ho up first. Don’t see why I should be the only one making an effort.”
The hotel was just off Kingsway, and was a discreet and mildly shabby concern, the kind of place where you might bring a hooker, but only if you were classy enough to pay for the whole night. Peter Judd collected his key at reception and asked if there was a kettle in the room. He gestured to the plastic bag he held, which was all the luggage he carried. “I’ve brought my own biscuits,” he said, in a tone of self-congratulation that implied that walking into a supermarket, grasping the general concept, and successfully walking out with a purchase was an achievement on a par with Prince Charles posting a letter by himself.
“All our rooms are provided with full amenities,” he was assured.
“I’m very glad to hear that,” he said. “Whatever it means. Could you ring when my guest arrives?”
Which happened within the hour.
His guest was a man in early middle age, running to fat, and with sweaty jowls which weren’t shaved too closely; less a style statement than lack of care. His hair hadn’t been washed of late, and his shirt was too snug a fit for bystanders’ comfort, so God knew what wearing it felt like. He looked round the room suspiciously before venturing inside; stood with the door hanging open behind him, like an exit strategy for dummies. Judd, who had arranged the two available armchairs in the centre of the room, was pouring boiling water into a teapot. “Put wood in hole,” he said, in a comedy accent. “That’s what you northerners say, isn’t it?”
“I’m from Hertfordshire.”
“Yes.” He carried the teapot to a small table on which he’d already placed two teacups and the now opened packet of biscuits. “I didn’t put them on a plate,” he said. “I assumed you don’t go for airs and graces.”
The man had closed the door at last, and at Judd’s invitation took one of the two chairs.
“So,” said Judd, taking the other. “Desmond Flint. Flinty. I presume your nickname comes from adding a Y, rather than from your unyielding nature?”
Flint just stared.
“Well, it cuts down on imaginative effort, I suppose,” said Judd. “Forgive me if I appear ill at ease.” He was as ill at ease as a cat in a basket. “At Oxford I quite often encountered those who, ah, identified as working class. But what they meant was, they went to only a minor public school. Do you take milk? There are little tubs.”
“Why am I here?”
“To tell me what you’re doing. What you think you’re doing. With the, ah, you know. The Yellow Vests.”
“And why the hell should I do that?”
“Because there’ll be something in it for you.”
Flint kept staring a moment longer, then shook off whatever grim spell he’d fallen under. His words, when they came, were greased by familiarity.
“It’s the will of the people being frustrated over and over. These past few years, we’ve seen it happen time and again, election promises broken, Parliament dragging its feet before acting on what the people want. What they demand. These politicians, they’re the servants of the people, right? So how come they get to decide what orders they do and don’t carry out? All that has to come to an end. And that’s what we’re doing. Bringing it to an end.”
Judd waited until Flint was done, then clapped politely. “You know what I like most about that? It’s that you said sweet fuck all.”
“I was explaining—”
“No, you were saying words. But don’t get me wrong.” He lifted the teapot and began pouring. “That’s all you need do right now. Say the words and make the noises. Nobody’s really listening, they’re just tapping along to the beat.”
“I’m listened to.”
“No. You’re noticed, that’s all. But that’s nothing to worry about at this stage. There’s a fine line between political notoriety and political respectability, and that’s where you’re balanced. A good starting point for a career.”
“If I was interested in political respectability, I’d have stood for election. And a fat lot of good that would have done.” Flint picked his teacup up, but put it down without drinking from it. “We all know the system’s rigged to favour establishment voices. Of which you’re one, by the way. So why should I be interested in anything you have to say?”
“Because I’ve been there and walked away from it,” said Judd smoothly. “I know what it’s like to occupy one of the great offices of state, and what it’s like to feel dissatisfaction—disillusionment—with the process.” He oozed sincerity. “I spent most of my life believing I could do good within the walls as they currently stand. But I came to recognise that there will always be those who will do everything in their power to maintain the status quo, even when that so obviously favours such a small section of society.”
“Fuck off.”
“Yes, that’s a good point. Do help yourself to a biscuit.” He did so himself, and went on, “You know, I don’t get told to fuck off half often enough, given the bullshit I spout. On the other hand, I’m in PR now. If I weren’t spouting bullshit, I’d not be doing my job.”
“
What do you want?”
“To see how far I can push you.”
“In what way, push?”
“Up the greasy pole. To the summit. Any metaphor you care to employ. A metaphor is when you describe something as if it were something else.”
“Fuck off again.”
“See? We’re getting along famously.”
Flint took a biscuit. “There were rumours you had no choice but to go. All sorts of mischief going on behind the scenes.”
“That’s primarily what scenes are for, old man. To cover up what’s going on behind them. And the fact that you don’t know that underlines how much you need me on your team. As for my departure from frontline politics, the truth? Yes, I was aiming for the top, and was prevented from reaching it. But that was then and this is now. And things are changing. In your own small way you’re helping bring that about, though it would be happening anyway. It might be wise not to forget that.”
“There’s change coming, you got that part right. Massive change. And long overdue.”
“Well now. Let’s not overestimate its impact. When the establishment crumbles, you know what’ll replace it? The establishment. There’ll be new letterheads printed, that’s all. And what I’m offering you is the opportunity to climb on board. You might as well. If not you, it’ll be someone else.”