by Mick Herron
“I can only suppose he’s looking for confirmation of whatever pet theory he’s adopted.”
“And we have no idea what that is?”
“Something military, I’d imagine. How important can it be? This is junk material. He might be researching a screenplay for all we know.”
“I do enjoy levity in its right place. Which does not include when I’ve just been fucking compromised by the head of my own security service.”
Diana Taverner knew enough not to respond to this.
Judd worked his way through a train of thought, carriage by carriage. At last he said, “Tearney will let Donovan get away because then I’m well and truly on her hook. As far as she’s concerned, my scheme backfired and left one man dead and a mentalist with his hands full of Service secrets. The fact that they might as well be toilet paper’s neither here nor there, because the press’d lap it up either way. So all I can do is kiss her arse and pretend I’m enjoying it.” He slapped the bench with the rolled-up paper, frightening a pair of pigeons into flight. “If, on the other hand, she finds out the tiger team was your idea, she’ll skin you slowly and feed you to spiders. So I might be in her pocket, but you’re in mine, Diana. Which means my interests are yours. I trust you’ll keep that in mind.”
“Depend on it,” she said.
Without warning, he reached out and clasped her right breast with his free hand. He squeezed hard. “If I thought this was all part of some game you’re playing, I’d be very disappointed. I hope you appreciate that.”
He’d expected fear, or at the least alarm. What he didn’t expect was her hand on his crotch, and a reciprocal squeeze.
“Are you sure?” she said. “You don’t feel disappointed to me.”
The returning pigeons fluttered away again at Judd’s raucous, earthy burst of laughter.
Chicken baguette. It wasn’t much to ask.
But Marcus had been gone forty-five minutes, and it looked like lunch would have to be an office daydream: one of those brief reveries where you remember what it was like, last time you’d had something decent to eat. The past few weeks, supper had been whatever Shirley could scrape out of the fridge, eaten standing up. Drink: she was okay for drink—she couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t had one of those. But food, she pretty much relied on getting something solid into her at lunchtime, which meant a local sandwich or a full-on takeaway. Unless Marcus came back with something pretty soon, she was going to faint with hunger.
Okay, so they’d been out earlier. But ice cream didn’t count.
Bloody Marcus. He was supposed to be doing this: she was supposed to be watching.
Find out where the Grey Books are, Lamb had said, waving a pudgy hand, as if evaporating the difficulty involved.
Like she had the inside track on where the Service kept its crap.
Shirley scrabbled around her desk drawer for a while, unearthing the used envelope she scribbled her passwords on from a snowdrift of credit card receipts and flyers for DJ nights. The Service intranet was a bland blue screen with a royal seal in the centre: she clicked on this, supplied her ID number and password (“inyourFACE”) then navigated to a staff list with direct email and extension numbers.
So far so good.
The Queens of the Database were her first bet: they knew everything, and more besides. Shirley didn’t know for a fact they spent their downtime trawling through personnel folders for dirt, but you had to figure. Unfortunately they took most other aspects of having signed the Official Secrets Act to heart, which meant even the one she thought she’d had a good relationship with, back when they worked in the same building—the one with the cheekbones, and eyebrows so fine they disappeared in a good light—wasn’t prepared to let her know something as basic as information storage facilities.
“More than my—”
“Jobsworth. Yeah, I know.”
“—Sweet thing. Are you having a torrid time over there? I hear Slough House positively reeks of disappointment.”
Shirley’s password drifted into mind as she broke the connection.
She went to the kitchen in the hope of finding something loose in the fridge, but River Cartwright was there, so theft wasn’t on the agenda. He was holding himself in a painful fashion, but then he’d been given a seeing to by the Dogs—never a happy experience, Shirley gathered.
“How far did you get?” she asked him, genuinely interested.
“Archive level,” he told her. He was drinking a glass of water, maybe checking for leaks.
“That’s whatsername, right? The old bat with the wheels?”
“Molly Doran.”
Shirley remembered the name, though had never encountered the lady. Another of those Service legends dimly whispered about; the subject of semi-thrilled speculation. She stalked back to her PC still hungry, an imp dripping mischief in her ear—she had a wrap of coke in her bag, so tightly tied it resembled a scrap of paper. Nothing like a snort to drive away hunger pangs. Plus, it would sharpen her up nicely; give her an edge . . .
But Jesus, no. No. She’d turned up at work slightly glassy once or twice: who hadn’t? But she wasn’t going to turn a teatime break into a launch pad, for God’s sake. She sipped water from the unsmeared side of the glass on her desk, and felt it all the way down. That would do for now. It would have to. She found Molly Doran’s number on the staff-list, and called it.
Heading back from the kitchen, River paused at Louisa’s open door to watch her gazing intently at her PC, head unmoving. In the rare moments he saw her—actually saw her, as opposed to being aware of her presence—he was struck by how much she’d changed her appearance since Min’s death: different hair, different clothes, as if she were systematically erasing the person she’d been. If he knew her better, he’d have talked to her about that. But this was Slough House.
He was about to move on when she spoke, her eyes still fixed on her screen.
“Was it true what Lamb said?”
“Sounds unlikely. Which bit?”
“About you visiting Webb. In hospital.”
River said, “Not sure you could call it visiting. Wouldn’t he have to be aware of it to count as that?”
“But you go.”
“. . . Yeah.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
She said, “He’s the reason you wound up in Slough House. More to the point, he’s the reason for that mess last year. What happened to Min. And you’re taking him flowers?”
Her voice cracked on the closing word.
River said, “I know all that. You think I don’t? He’s a backstabbing bastard, no question. I sometimes wonder if I’m only there to see if he’s dead yet.”
“That’s a punchline, not a reason.”
Now was the moment to leave, he thought; back to the safety of his room. He could ease into his chair, dose himself with aspirin, and hope they’d iron out his wrinkles before he was called upon to do anything energetic. But he couldn’t, not while she was refusing to look at him. He’d always thought her borderline difficult, by which he meant she didn’t take crap. Which in turn, he realised, meant he shouldn’t offer her any.
“No . . . Yes, okay. It’s not a reason.”
“So why do you do it?”
“I talk to him. About this.” This being Slough House. They both knew that. “About what it’s like, day after day . . . About the gap between where we were and where we’ve ended up.” He let that hover for a while. She didn’t reply. He said, “I doubt he hears me. But if he does, he’ll get it. I mean, Christ. You think this is bad? He can’t even see out the window.”
She redirected her gaze at last, and subjected him to a full quarter-minute’s silence.
“So anyway,” he said at last. “It’s not like I cheer him up. Other way round, if anything.”
He wasn’t entire
ly sure that was the whole truth of it, but it felt as near as he could get.
After a while, Louisa said, “Got any painkillers?”
“I’ve got some aspirin. Want some?”
She shook her head, reached into her drawer, and tossed a packet at him. “Try those. They’re stronger.”
He caught it. “Thanks.”
She looked back at her screen.
River returned to his office.
Marcus left the Boris Bike at the baths and caught the underground back, and even the tube stalling at Farringdon—signalling problems: these were often caused by heat, when they weren’t caused by cold, or by things being wet, or dry—couldn’t ruin his mood. He circled Smithfield, popped into an Italian deli for a chicken baguette, then headed up to Slough House, ringing home to tell Cassie he’d be late, he had a work thing on—an established code.
“You haven’t had one of those for a while.”
She didn’t know about Slough House. She knew he’d been transferred, but not what that meant. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell her.
“Yeah, well. It’s not the kind of thing you schedule far in advance.”
“Be careful.”
“Always. Kiss the kids for me.”
He felt coordinated—one up on the world. This morning’s blues were someone else’s soundtrack.
Sometimes, sitting at his desk, Shirley grumbling at her keyboard next to him, Marcus would zone out, reliving former glories with the crash squad. “Kicking doors down” was how Shirley referred to it. Which was accurate, up to a point, but left out how you never knew what was going to be on the other side, pointing a gun or strapped in a Semtex vest. In fairy tales, when you were offered a choice of doors, there was generally a tiger behind one of them. That was why it was best to kick them down. Even the thought of it made his muscles tense, and his grip on the baguette tightened—Way to go, he thought. Turn up with a peace offering that he’d mangled into paste. But with luck, Shirley would be too hungry to care.
Which was what he was thinking when he realised he’d been coasting on automatic; that instead of rounding the alley to the back of Slough House, he’d just entered the bookie’s again, where the roulette machine still wore its demonic grin, daring him to take one step further—to come on in and kick its door down.
Marcus could still feel the weight of his wallet in his jeans pocket, its new thickness filling him with confidence that his world had turned a corner.
Okay, you bastard, he thought. Bring it on.
Molly Doran said, “My my. Two in one day.”
“Yeah, Cartwright said he’d spoken to you.”
“And how is the young man? He’s back at . . . ‘Slough House’?”
“Walking a bit crooked, but he’s okay.”
“How unexpected. I imagined he’d have had rather a business of it, explaining this morning’s antics.”
Shirley was bored already. “He has a knack for getting off lightly. Anyway, reason I called—”
“Not simply a social call, then.”
Well, duh. Who did that?
But Molly Doran was a kidder, it seemed. “I’m sorry. The novelty of encountering two of Jackson’s protégés has made me rather skittish. Do carry on.”
“It’s about some files.”
“Oh dear. Are we going round this particular mulberry bush again? Perhaps Jackson could just call me himself and explain what he’s up to.”
“No, he doesn’t do that. Anyway, this isn’t about him, it’s just a general query. About information storage?”
“You know, I always encourage junior officers to approach me if they have questions, but only in the certain knowledge that they’re not actually going to do so. Couldn’t you address your problems to the, ah, Queens of the Database?”
“Yeah, they’re not that helpful? It’s a simple question. I just need to know where the Grey Books are.”
“The Grey Books?”
“The whackjob dossiers. The nutcase notes.”
“I’m aware of what they get called. I’m just not sure why you feel the need to ask me.”
“Well, you’re a document shuffler yourself,” Shirley couldn’t keep from saying. “I thought you might know.”
There was a lengthy pause.
“Prolonged exposure to Jackson evidently has its drawbacks,” Molly said drily. “I suppose, like him, you eschew most official communications?”
If eschew meant what she thought it did, Shirley probably did, yes.
“You really ought to check your inbox, young lady.”
And Molly Doran was gone, her voice replaced by the windless vacancy of a dead connection.
She had kind of a bite to her, that one. Maybe, Shirley thought, she’d chewed her own legs off.
Which had got her nowhere, except she might as well check her inbox, just in case that was a clue. But when she looked there was nothing there bar the latest all-Service newsletter circulated by HR: in-house transfer possibilities (slow horses need not apply); health-and-safety; promotions and retirements. Shirley had never encountered anyone who opened these, let alone read them. This was a personal first.
And there it was, under Miscellaneous Information: recent info-storage issues have now been resolved . . .
If Marcus had been there, she’d have raised a palm for him to slap, or at the very least to deposit a chicken baguette in; as it was, she had to settle for a quick victory lap round her desk—you go, girl, she told herself. inyourFACE. It felt like a natural high, making up for all the bullshit of her personal life these past few weeks, and as soon as that thought occurred to her, she knew she should have kept it at bay longer; should have enjoyed the moment for what it was, rather than taken it as consolation for the bad stuff . . . There wasn’t anybody back home she could share this with later. There wasn’t even Marcus, now, to high-five or fist bump. Jesus, this switch in mood; it was sudden as gravity. She sat down, read the email again, tried to recapture the sense of achievement, or at least of blind stupid luck. But it was gone. You couldn’t fake that sort of high.
Luckily, there were other kinds you could rely on.
Judd watched Diana Taverner leave the small park, enjoying the sway of her hips, and the way she paused briefly at the gate, giving him an extra second or two to study the goods. It was important to treat women with respect, but crikey, he was looking forward to rattling her bones—so much so it was politic to remain seated for a while. Last thing he needed was some citizen journalist bagging a shot of him in this state. Unrolling the paper he spread it on his lap as an extra precaution, and tried to concentrate on the matter in hand: Dame Ingrid Tearney. All outward appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, her Dameship currently had his dick in her handbag, a situation he couldn’t allow to continue—one word from her to Number Ten, and he’d be out on his ear before you could say reshuffle. Disloyalty was the one political sin you couldn’t survive being discovered committing; though of course, without it, your career would be one long tug at your forelock. That’s what made public life such a balancing act. Which, let’s face it, was why it was so exhilarating.
It’s not so much that you have to go waltzing across the occasional minefield, my boy, some old fart had told him, his first week in the House. It’s that you’ve got to do it with a smile on your phiz.
Yes, well, anyone who didn’t have a game face for the plebs didn’t deserve their vote in the first place, was Judd’s view. Not that he’d say it out loud, of course—always important to stress that. Never say “plebs” out loud.
These ruminations having calmed him somewhat, he felt able to get to his feet.
Heading for the gate, he called Sebastian, his chief scout and bottle-washer—the ghost in his machine, you might say. Some of the bottles Seb had washed over the years weren’t the kind you put out for recycling—more the sort yo
u buried at night, in landfill—but his admittedly rather limited range of solutions had seen his master safely over a number of minefields in the past. You never could tell when the need to impose such a solution might arise. And Judd didn’t plan to be caught with his trousers down a second time.
Maybe it was that phrase that triggered it, but while waiting for Seb to answer, Judd experienced an almost physical memory of Diana Taverner gripping his crotch, her tone as calm as if she were choosing an avocado. You don’t feel disappointed to me. Ha! He hadn’t felt that much innocent pleasure since choosing Clash tracks for all eight of his Desert Island Discs. He’d afterwards learned that an old Trot in the Isle of Dogs had literally had an apoplectic fit while listening. Which just went to show you couldn’t please everyone.
It’s said of Churchill that he’d catnap in an armchair with a teacup in his hand, and when he dropped off the noise of the cup hitting the floor would wake him. He claimed this was all the rest he needed. Jackson Lamb was much the same, the difference being he used a shot glass rather than a teacup, and didn’t wake when it fell. Catherine would sometimes find him in the morning, sprawled on his chair like a misplaced squid, the air smelling like water from a vase of week-old flowers.
That was his condition when the slow horses, minus Marcus, gathered on his landing at the appointed hour.
River put a finger to his door, which hung ajar, and pushed it just enough to give them a view of Lamb’s corpulent slumbers. A stray piece of paper, marooned on his desk, fluttered with each meaty exhalation.
Shirley said, “Shall we wake him?”
She seemed unnaturally bright; her volume a touch awry. On the other hand, Lamb had told them they’d gone live: maybe, Louisa thought, this was just what Shirley was like, with the prospect of action looming.
“Where’s Marcus?” she asked.
Shirley shrugged. “Went for a bagwich. A sandwich. Baguette sandwich.”
Louisa and River exchanged a glance.
Ho said, “He said five. He’ll be mad if we don’t go in.”
“After you,” River suggested.
Way down below the back door scraped open and slammed shut, and they all thought Catherine. But it was Marcus, stomping up the stairs as if they’d done him personal injury. He arrived at the top to find the others huddled there like a praetorian guard.