by Mick Herron
He said, “Hello.”
. . . That was weird.
“You feeling all right?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why?”
“No reason. Can you trace Catherine’s phone?”
“No.”
“I thought you could do that. GPS. Whatever.”
“I can, but only if it’s on. And it’s not on.”
“You already tried? Was that your idea?”
He shrugged.
Marcus was standing behind her now; Shirley too. Marcus said, “You didn’t find her, then.”
Shirley said, “We didn’t find Cartwright either.”
“I can tell,” Louisa said. “Here, you missed a bit.”
She touched her upper lip, and Shirley rubbed her own, obliterating a smudge of ice cream. She scowled at Marcus. “You could have said.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Ho was watching all this as if it were taking place behind bars. Louisa said to him, “How about River’s phone?”
He shrugged again, sulkily this time. “I’d need his number.”
Louisa read it out to him off her own.
Ho said, “Have you got everyone’s number in there?”
“No.”
Shirley nudged Marcus.
Ho’s fingers started salsa-ing across his keyboard.
Louisa walked to the window. Same view as from hers, but lower down. She thought: when I joined the Service, this was not what I was expecting. The same view every day, with minor variations.
For a while last year that had seemed less important, but like everything else, this had turned out a false reprieve. Life’s cruellest trick was letting the light in, just enough so you knew where everything was, then shutting it off without warning. She’d been bumping into the furniture ever since.
Back in her flat, replastered into a section of wall behind her fridge, was a fingernail-sized uncut diamond, booty from a heist she’d helped derail. She had no idea how much it was worth, but couldn’t see that it mattered much.
Min, you stupid bastard, why did you have to die?
And then she shut that thought off because there was nowhere it could lead her that would do anyone any good.
Ho finished tapping. “Cartwright’s blocked,” he said.
“What do you mean, blocked?”
“His phone’s on, but he’s somewhere that’s scrambling the signal.”
“Like somewhere with thick walls?”
Marcus said, “No, like somewhere with the ability to fuck with GPS.”
“Golly,” said Shirley, who’d been Comms in her pre-Slough House life. “Wonder where that might be?”
The room he’d been locked in was underground; its only window one-way, and that from the other side. From where River stood it was a mirror. About a metre square, it threw back at him the room’s blankness and his own oddly calm exterior. Inside his chest his heart thumped like a little drummer boy: all beat and no tune.
The minutes he’d been counting down were long gone, and their deadline history. These men have poor impulse control . . . Soon they’ll be loosening their belts. He watched his reflected hands curl into fists. He’d made more than one poor choice this morning. Principally, he should have stayed on the bridge and dropped the man off it. Whatever happened to Catherine would have happened anyway, but at least he’d have wiped the smirk off that chancer’s face.
And why didn’t I do that? he asked himself.
He’d have sat, but there was nowhere to sit. The room was bare; a cube, near enough. There was no handle on the door. There was no visible light fitting either, though the ceiling emitted a steady bluish glow, which lent his reflection an alien cast. Alien, except he belonged here. It was where he’d willed himself, as much as if he’d offered his wrists to Lady Di half an hour ago. Lock me up, he should have said. I’m here to steal, and I don’t have a prayer.
There were protocols, and even a slow horse knew them. Slow horses, after all, underwent the same training as any other kind. Threats to fellow officers, actual physical danger, required immediate, official response: the line of command in River’s case ran upstairs through Slough House and onto the desk of Jackson Lamb. Who, for all his faults—and that wasn’t a short list—would walk through fire for a joe in peril; or make someone walk through fire. By ignoring that, River had stepped across the chalk line, and by bluffing his way into the Park, he’d made things worse twice over.
So they took you in, they trained you up, they prepared you for a life you’d be expected to risk when the occasion demanded, and then they locked you in an office with a view of a bus stop, and made you pour your energy, your commitment, your desire to serve into a sinkhole of never-ending drudgery. Of course he’d gone off reservation. He’d been ripe for it, and whoever had fingered him for this morning’s fun and games had known it from the beginning.
Had they also known he’d screw up?
River leaned against a wall, hands on his head, fingers laced, and wondered what his grandfather was going to say. The Old Bastard had steered the Service through the Cold War without ever actually taking the helm—the real power, he’d told River more than once, lay in having one hand on the elbow of whoever was in charge. If not for the O.B. he’d have been out on the pavement after the King’s Cross fiasco. But not even his grandfather could protect him this time.
The door opened without warning, and Nick Duffy came in carrying a plastic bucket seat.
Duffy was in charge of the Service’s internal police; the Dogs as they were called. The position was more akin to enforcer than executive, and the Dogs were kept on a pretty long leash, so Duffy’s role basically meant he could bite whoever he liked, and not expect more than a tap on the nose. The way he slammed the chair down, and the angry squeak its legs made scraping along the floor, suggested he was in a biting mood. The grim smile he summoned for River confirmed it. Other than the chair he’d brought nothing into the room with him, but when he straddled it backwards, the hands he gripped it with were calloused at the knuckles.
But it was the fact that he was wearing a tracksuit that gave River most cause for concern.
Tracksuits were what you wore when things might get messy.
As mornings go, Dame Ingrid’s hadn’t been a bad one. Pulling Diana Taverner’s tail was always a useful exercise, and sounding her out afterwards had nicely muddied the waters. It was always a good idea to make a predator think you’re more vulnerable than you are. When Peter Judd made his inevitable move to stamp his newfound authority onto the Service, Dame Ingrid would at least know where on the battlefield Taverner would be. She’d be right behind Ingrid, looking for her weak spot.
It used to be simpler. There was the Service, and there were the nation’s enemies. 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. A bit like school, but with fewer rules. Nowadays, though, in between monitoring the nation’s phone calls and scanning the latest whistle-blower’s Twitter feed, geopolitics barely got a look-in. If asked to list the greatest threats to the nation’s security, Ingrid Tearney would start with ministers and colleagues. Working out precisely where Ansar al-Islam came seemed little more than academic.
But you worked with what you had. Dame Ingrid was a great believer in occupying the here and now: if the Great Game had deteriorated to the status of the Latest App, so be it. So long as there was a podium for the winner, she knew where she wanted to end up.
On her desk was the usual collection of documents for signing: the minutes of the morning’s meeting; various reports from various departments. A memo on top, suggesting she ring Security, had appeared while she’d been out of the room. Security meant
internal, so whatever had just happened, it probably wasn’t a threat to the nation. She rang downstairs anyway; was put through to the Kennel—the inevitable in-house name for the Dogs’ office—and given a twenty-second summary of an off-site agent’s incursion into the Park.
“And where is he now?”
“Downstairs. Mr. Duffy’s talking to him.”
It was a frequently regretted state of affairs, being talked to by Mr. Duffy.
She said, “Is there any obvious reason for—what was his name?”
“Cartwright. River Cartwright.”
“Any obvious reason for Cartwright’s presence?”
“He’s Slough House, ma’am.”
“That’s context, certainly. I’m not sure it’s a reason. Okay, let’s let Mr. Duffy deal with it. Have him call me when he’s done.”
Cartwright, she thought. Grandson of, if she wasn’t mistaken.
She shook her head. Probably nothing.
She’d barely picked her pen up before the phone rang again.
•••
Nick Duffy said, “Every morning I wake up and think, who’s going to mess with my karma today? Because there’s always someone. Job like mine, you rarely get the chance to sit back, read the papers and watch the clock till opening time.”
For a moment River had thought Duffy was going to mime the sitting-back part of that, but the older man knew what he was doing. He tilted the chair slightly was all, then let its legs slam back down. River didn’t blink. This was pantomime. So far, Duffy hadn’t said anything he’d not have said a hundred times before.
“No, because there’s always someone got his tit in a wringer, and it’s Muggins here has to pry it free. Left your Service card in the pub? Let’s have Nick sort it out. Unwise conversation with an over-friendly reptile? Let’s see if Nick can’t smooth over the traces. Shagged the wrong bit of spare at the embassy disco? Don’t worry, Nick’ll throw a fright into her minder. You know the type of thing. We have a code for it in the Dogs. We call it the Really Dumb Shit.”
Hoping to short circuit this, River said, “Am I under arrest?”
“So usually, see, I’m just a glorified au pair, making sure everything’s tidied away nicely, no lasting ramifications, no nasty surprises in the tabloids. But what do we have today? Something special. Somebody’s ambled into the Park on my watch, and thinks they can take the Really Dumb Shit onto a whole new level.”
“Because if I am, I get a phone call, right?”
“And this is a serving agent, I’ll grant you, but one with less security clearance than we give the janitors round here. Because the janitors get up close and personal with some nasty crap.” He shifted position suddenly, and River knew he was changing gear. “Whereas you, Mr. Cartwright, of Slough House, Barbican way, the most classified information you’re privy to is whether the fifty-six bus is on time or not. And you’re only allowed to share that if you get written permission from a superior. Which would be just about anybody, yes? Correct me if I’m wrong.”
River said, “So I don’t get a phone call.”
“Of course you don’t get a fucking phone call. You’ll be lucky to get a blindfold.”
“Because it would be handy to have my phone back. There’s something on it you need to see.”
“What I need and what you think I need are likely to be very different things, Cartwright. Let’s see if I’ve got the order of events straight. You waltz into the Park without authorisation. You drag Ms. Taverner out of a meeting, spout crap about Mr. Webb, a colleague who might be incapacitated but, unlike you, remains an officer of good standing—”
“He wasn’t standing last time I saw him.”
Duffy paused. “You’ve been buddying up to Jackson Lamb for too long. That wasn’t funny and doesn’t help.”
River said, “I came here for a reason.”
“I’m sure you did. But I don’t fucking care. You were found in a restricted access area, and according to Molly Doran you were planning on putting your hands on a classified file. A very classified file. You know the penalty for breaches of the Official Secrets Act?”
“I didn’t breach the Act.”
“Attempted breach. You know the penalty? They’re not going to have you picking up litter, Cartwright. This isn’t some ASBO offence. You’re a member of the Service, a fuck-up member right enough but you carry a card and you’re on the books. Which makes what you did not some petty offence; it puts it into the realm of treason. What were you planning on doing with the file? That’s what I need to know. Who were you planning on selling it to?”
Lamb had taken his shoes off and his office smelled of socks, which was the fourth worst thing Louisa remembered it smelling of. She took a breath, stepped across the threshold and told him what Ho had just told her.
“He’s back at the Park?” Lamb considered this for a moment. “That’d make his grandad proud, if he was still alive.”
“He is still alive, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but finding out Junior’s been arrested’ll probably kill him,” Lamb said reasonably.
“What makes you think he’s been arrested?”
“If his phone’s blocked, it means he’s downstairs. And if he’s downstairs, it’s not because they’ve opened the dungeons to the public.”
Louisa, remembering tales she’d heard of below-stairs interrogations at the Park, wondered what the hell had River done to wind up there. And how he had managed it so quickly. It was only a couple of hours since they’d both been in the kitchen, making coffee. He’d asked her where Catherine was. And Catherine was still nowhere.
She said, “It’s not a coincidence.”
“What, him and Standish both going AWOL? I doubt it.”
“So what do we do?”
“I do what I always do. And you do whatever you were doing yesterday.” With dexterity surprising in one so large, Lamb raised his right foot and rested it on his left knee. He began massaging it roughly. “Census project, right?”
“So we all just carry on as normal.”
“As if you were normal, yes. Nothing like ambition.” He grabbed a pencil from his desk, and began using it as a scratcher, working it between his toes. “Are you still here?”
“What’ll happen to River?”
“When they’ve finished stripping the flesh from his bones, I expect they’ll send him back. He’ll only make the place untidy otherwise.”
“Seriously.”
“That wasn’t serious? Which part of it did you find funny?”
“You’ve got two joes missing, and you’re just going to sit there making holes in your socks?”
“None of you are joes, Guy. You’re just a bunch of fuck-ups who got lucky.”
“This is lucky?”
Lamb’s lip curled. “I didn’t say what kind of luck.”
He tossed the pencil back onto the desk, where it kept on rolling until it dropped off the other side.
Louisa said, “We’re not joes, no. But we’re your joes. You know that.”
“Don’t get carried away. This is Slough House. It isn’t Spooks.”
“You’re telling me. It’s barely Jackanory.” She took a step into the room. “But you think something’s happened to Catherine, or you wouldn’t have sent me round to her flat. And whatever River was up to has to have something to do with that. So no, I’m not going back to the census project. Not until you tell me what you’re going to do about it.”
It was dark in Lamb’s room, as usual; he’d closed the blinds and turned his low-wattage desk lamp on. This sat on a pile of telephone directories, long since rendered obsolete, and the shadows it cast mostly confined themselves to floor level, where they crawled about like spiders. The ceiling sloped and the floorboards creaked, and such things as he’d hung on the walls—a cork notice board on which clipped coupons faded to
brittle yellow dustiness, like the corpses of pinned moths, and a smeary-glassed print of a bridge over a foreign-looking river, which had almost certainly come from a charity shop—served to underline the general creepiness. It wasn’t a cosy atmosphere he aimed for, and the look he directed at Louisa now underlined that fact.
“I think you’re forgetting who’s top banana round here.”
“No. I’m just reminding you that you are.”
She was expecting one of his leers, or perhaps a raspberry, or even a fart—there’d been indications in the past that he could deliver these at will, unless he was just unusually lucky with his timing. But instead Lamb put his foot heavily on the floor, and leaned back in his chair so far it audibly strained. In place of his usual repertoire of grimaces, his face seemed blank, lineless almost; a passive mask behind which she could sense his thoughts rolling around themselves.
At last he said, “I’ll make a call,” with all the enthusiasm of one preparing to tote a barge, or lift a bale.
Louisa nodded, remaining where she was.
“It’s a phone call, not a shag. I don’t need someone watching to make sure I’m doing it right.”
That wasn’t an image Louisa wanted in her head. She left him to it, but didn’t close the door on her way out.
“What were you planning on doing with the file?” Duffy said. “And who were you planning on selling it to?”
“I wasn’t going to sell it.”
“Course not. Going to keep it for a little bedtime reading, right?” Duffy stood and pushed the chair, which fell flat on the floor. “Rub one out while rummaging through the PM’s little secrets.”
“Does he really have secrets worth rubbing one out to?”
Duffy paused in front of the mirror, pretending it was a mirror. He ran a hand through his cropped hair, maybe checking for bald patches. Or perhaps making secret hand signals to whoever was on the other side.
He said, “What’s really funny is you finding this funny.”