by Mick Herron
“Not . . . exactly.”
Lamb stared, and it seemed to Whelan his yellow eyes became tinged with red. “You’re not fucking telling me you’ve let him go.”
“As we’ve established,” said Whelan, “the full story is not one we want becoming public knowledge. And he still has comrades out there, don’t forget. If we . . . wrap a black ribbon round his file—”
“Or put a bullet in his head.”
“—we can be sure it’ll come back to haunt us.”
“And having him alive means it won’t?”
“We do what we can,” Whelan said. “But we’re at the mercy of events. This is one huge mess we’re dealing with. It’s not possible to clean it up. The best we can hope for is to . . . minimise the repercussions.”
“So he creates fucking havoc trying to keep his story secret, and we end up doing his job for him? He’ll be wanting a sponsorship deal next time. Where is he now?”
“He slipped the leash about ten minutes after hitting the street.”
“There’s absolutely no part of this in which we come out looking good, is there?”
“Not really, no.”
“Plus ça bloody change. I swear to God I’d defect, if there was anywhere worth defecting to these days.” He emptied his glass.
Whelan took another sip from his own, then set it down, still mostly full, on Lamb’s desk. “Other business,” he said. “I’ve set the wheels in motion for Longridge’s death-in-service payment. Five years of salary, tax free. It should come through by the end of the week. Beginning of next at the latest. You might want to let his wife know.”
“Five years,” said Lamb.
“Standard terms.”
“Except Longridge was operational.”
“He was what?”
“What I just said. Operational. As in, on an op.”
Whelan said, “As I understand it, Slough House is deskbound.”
“But I have managerial discretion. Says so somewhere, I can’t be arsed to find the paperwork. Anyway, I sent Longridge and Guy out on the streets yesterday afternoon, and until such time as I sign off on his field report, his status remains operational. Doesn’t look like he’s going to be doing any typing anytime soon. Therefore . . . ”
“Seriously?”
“He qualifies for the active agent increment. Ten years, not five. Or his family does. Money won’t work where he’s gone.”
Whelan shook his head. “That’ll never get through Legal. I barely accept it as English myself.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s not going through Legal. Sign off on it in the morning, and pass it on to Finance. Lady Di’s still letting you sign things, right?”
“Lamb, I have every sympathy. You lost an agent. But the active increment only applies to joes in the field, and with the best will in the world—”
“See, the thing is, shut the fuck up. Let me explain why. Moira Tregorian—remember her? She’s the superannuated dinnerlady you sent over here, day one of your reign—she spent a lot of time with old man Cartwright yesterday, and gave me what I assure you was a very thorough debriefing. I’ve got pissed in less time than it takes her to finish a sentence. Anyway, one of the details she shared was his recitation of the names of the knights of the round table, which he launched himself upon on account of having lost his marbles, and this got her worrying about where she’d heard the name Galahad lately.” Lamb leaned back. “Ever heard Moira Tregorian trying to remember where she first heard something? It’s like, you can fuck off and read Lord of the Rings, and when you come back she’s still talking. Anyway. Long and short of it is, she still can’t remember. But I’ve got a fair idea. Want me to go on?”
Whelan found that he was holding his whisky tumbler once more; had frozen in the act of delivering it to his mouth. He said something which didn’t work, so cleared his throat and said it again. “There’s no need.”
“Ah, what the hell. We’re both men of the world. You were Galahad when you were over the river, right? She didn’t know that, but it took me thirty seconds to find out. And took my boy Ho not much longer to trawl through the duty-books for the nights Tregorian was duty officer. And guess what? There you are. Galahad, calling in a Collect request.”
“I’ve heard enough, Lamb.”
“Word is, you’re a happily married man. Making a Hollywood musical of the fact, let alone a song and dance. So how come you needed rescuing from the clutches of the Met, Claude? After they’d picked you up for kerb-crawling way out in London Fields? Quite the regular, apparently, trawling for tarts every night. Watching but not buying—always worries the working girls, that. Thought they might have a headcase on their hands.” Lamb leered. “So. Things not so rosy in the bedroom? Lovely wife a little icy where it matters?”
Whelan said, “Claire—she—it’s been some years since—look, none of this is your business, none of it. We have a very special marriage.”
“Just not a particularly active one.”
“Shut up! How dare you! What could you possibly know about . . . Just, just shut up. That’s all.”
Lamb said, “None of my business. That’s right. Or wasn’t, up until the moment you learned of your elevation to First Desk, and started worrying Tregorian might do some nasty maths—you know, putting two and two together. Not hard to square whichever Dog came round to prise you from the Met’s grasp—nothing like a promotion to ensure loyalty—but you can’t bribe a gossip, can you? Or you can, but it does no fucking good. Best thing is, get her out the way before any pennies start to drop. Bit unfair, some might call it, but that’s life in the big leagues, eh, Claude?”
“You’ve made your point.”
“Good. So anyway, Tregorian’s retiring—medical grounds. Post-traumatic bed-wetting, or whatever the PC term is. Seems all those bodies round the place have put her off coming back. So you can add sorting her pension out to your to-do list.” Lamb smiled a crocodile smile, every bit as fake as its tears. “Then she’s off both our backs.”
Whelan stared at him for what felt like a long time, though it didn’t discomfit Lamb. At last he said, “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“What will it take to get you off my back?” He glanced around the office. “A desk at the Park?”
Lamb said, “Well, I’m glad we’ve had this little chat.” He dropped his cigarette into a mug of ancient tea, where it briefly disappeared, then bobbed to the surface, alongside several others. “I’ll expect to hear from Finance in the morning. Leave the door open, would you? I like a through draught.”
Whelan didn’t move.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Lamb. “That last bit meant fuck off. Didn’t they teach you subtle over the river?”
“They taught me lots of things,” Claude Whelan said at last. “I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.”
He drained what was left in his tumbler and placed it on Lamb’s desk. Then he left. This time, he took the stairs swiftly.
When the door downstairs slammed shut Catherine Standish appeared from the room opposite Lamb’s, and crossed the landing in her usual quiet manner.
“Do you reckon that last bit was a threat?” Lamb said.
“He certainly hoped you’d think so.”
“Huh.” He leaned across to pour the last of the whisky into the glass Whelan had been using, then pushed it nearer Catherine.
She sat.
He said, “If he survives another month of Diana Taverner, I’ll maybe start to take him seriously. Until then, he’s just a mouth in a suit. I’ve had bowel movements that worry me more.” He reflected a moment. “Quite recently, come to think of it.”
“A topic for another day,” said Catherine. “That was a good thing you did. For Cassie, I mean.”
“Who’s Cassie?”
“Marcus’s wife.”
Lamb said, “I just like fucking with Finance, you know that.”
“He didn’t say anything about Patrice.”
“No, well, they’re probably still cutting him up. Wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions about cause of death just because he’s got a few holes in him.”
Catherine picked up the tumbler and held it in front of her, using both hands, as if it were a chalice. Lamb’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything.
She said, “You stopped Shirley from making him talk.”
“Uh-huh. Missing fingernails or water-filled lungs might have made ‘self-defence’ tricky to pull off.”
“You’re aware there’ll be abrasions where we cuffed him?”
“That would account for him being so cross and dangerous when he got loose. Necessitating extreme measures.”
“Lamb—”
“For fuck’s sake. He killed an agent, not to mention an ex. You think anyone’s going to care he got his ticket punched? When they’ve finished with his body they’ll burn it and dump the ashes. Nobody’s going to be issuing warrants.”
“And what about Coe?”
Lamb said, “Yeah, Coe, you know, I think he might work out.”
“He shot an unarmed man, Jackson! Who was tied to a radiator!”
“Okay, so whoever coloured him in went over the lines. But he was doing a job. You think I was going to watch that French punk taken away in a Black Maria? When I’ve got a joe plastered over a wall downstairs?”
“So you were letting him do your dirty work? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“A good boss provides opportunities for personal growth and development. I think we were all winners, on the day.”
“Lamb, this isn’t a laughing matter. Coe needs arresting or he needs help. One or the other.”
“I don’t care. I’m losing staff at a rate of knots here.”
She said, “You once told me it didn’t matter about staff leaving. That there’d always be other fuck-ups to take their place.”
“I like it when you talk dirty. Are you going to drink that?”
“Isn’t that why you gave it to me?”
“Force of habit.”
Catherine said, “Yes, I’m aware of how habits work, thank you.”
To prove she wasn’t the only one who knew that, Lamb lit another cigarette. He inhaled, removed it from his mouth, and addressed his next question to it, rather than to Catherine. “So. Are you coming back?”
“Are you asking?”
“I just did.”
“No, you asked whether I was or not. That’s different from asking if I will.”
Lamb said, “It’s a good job you’re on the wagon. I hate to think what crap you’d come up with drunk.”
Catherine raised the glass to her lips and breathed in. She smiled a little, though to herself rather than at Lamb. Then she put it back on the desk.
Lamb retrieved it, and poured its contents into his own.
She said, “Shirley’s a mess. So is Roddy. God knows what state River’s in. And Coe . . . Well, we’ve covered Coe. He’s either PTSD or a psychopath. It would serve you right if I left you to it.”
“I’d lock ’em in a room and let ’em fight for the gun.”
“There’s always Louisa, of course. She’s pretty reliable.”
“Well, it’s a sliding scale, isn’t it?” said Lamb. “Least fucked-up employee of the week. We should have a plaque.”
“I’ll make a note,” said Catherine. Then she rose and crossed the landing to her own office, from which she emerged a moment later wearing her coat.
She made little noise on the staircase, well used to its repertoire of squeaks and groans. Even the back door behaved for once, and she exited Slough House with little effort and less noise.
A few moments later, the heating went off.
And a chill descends on Slough House, as chills are wont to do; a chill accompanied by a series of gurgles and bangs as the ancient boiler begins its nightly ordeal of sucking warmth from the air. From the top floor, this process sounds like the rattling of old tin bones, and nowhere are bones rattled more fussily than in Jackson Lamb’s office. He listens to his radiator die its death, and smokes a last cigarette, and drains a final glass. And then he rises, leaving his lamp to cast its weary glow on an empty room; he wrestles himself into his raincoat, and trudges down to the next landing, his heavy tread coaxing maximum complaint from each stair.
Outside the kitchen, he pauses. The offices here are doorless now, and he can see into Louisa Guy’s room, with its recently scrubbed and disinfected patch of carpet the approximate size and shape of Dead Sam Chapman. He does not know, but would not be surprised to learn, that Louisa is asleep already, early as it is; he suspects she has achieved some semblance of peace these past few months, and in those circumstances, sleep would be his own drug of choice. To the other side lies River Cartwright’s room; now JK Coe’s room too. Sleep is probably not on Cartwright’s immediate agenda, but then, thinks Lamb, Cartwright has some fairly radical new information to absorb; that, for instance, he owes his birth, his very existence, to the messianic schemes of one mad spook, just as he owes his lifetime since to the handed-down dreams of another. For Lamb has no doubt that David Cartwright has slipped past the point of no return; has embarked on an irrevocable descent into mental twilight, haunted by the realisation that what he helped sow across the Channel years ago has bloomed in carnage-colours on his own doorstep. How the younger Cartwright will come to terms with this—if he ever does—is, as Catherine Standish recently observed, a topic for another day; whether the older Cartwright will be brought to book for his ancient sins, Lamb wastes little time contemplating. He has been a joe most of his working life; is still a joe whenever the lights go out. And one thing joes learn quickly is that those who write the rules rarely suffer their weight.
As for Coe, Lamb meant what he said earlier to Standish: that JK Coe might work out—though, for Lamb, “working out” might not indicate as positive an outcome as that phrase usually conveys. Might be useful to Lamb would be another way of putting it, not always an unmitigated delight to those so designated. But whatever his future holds, at this precise moment JK Coe, too, is casting his eyes around an empty room; in his case, the sitting room he has spent little time in this past year or more, ever since the evening he spent here naked and petrified, at the mercy of a dangerous man. There hasn’t been a night between that one and this that Coe hasn’t stared wide-eyed at the dark, wondering what torment it holds, but for some reason he feels he might sleep dreamlessly tonight. And gazing round, he decides that come the weekend he will rearrange the furniture, or perhaps heave it down to the pavement for locals to pillage, and replace it all. And he spreads his hands in front of him, splays them wide, and sees very little trembling. The music in his head is not quite silent, but his fingers at least are resting.
Another flight of stairs. There are stains on these walls which are highly mysterious even to Lamb; stains that seem to arrive of their own accord, and yet own the appearance of having been there always. He is aware that his slow horses occasionally harbour similar thoughts about himself.
On the next landing, he pauses again. One of the rooms here is Roderick Ho’s, and Ho’s whereabouts, activities, hopes, dreams and desires have only ever concerned Lamb when Lamb is busy thwarting one or other of them. So it doesn’t matter to him that Ho is currently explaining to Kim—his girlfriend—that he was unable to carry out the favour she wanted because of something that came up at work; or that, when she petulantly suggests that he has misrepresented his talents to her—that he is, in short, little more than an unreliable fantasist—Ho’s response, babes, is to close his eyes and replay in his mind what never happened: his sudden emergence from his hiding place, his overpowering of the lone gunman, his bringing Marcus back to life . . . Little light finds its way through his c
losed lids, though some small part of a tear squeezes out. But no matter.
The other room is Marcus and Shirley’s, now Shirley’s alone. It smells fresh, because a painter has been, but the painter has plied his trade very much in the ethos of Slough House, which is to say, with little enthusiasm and less care. It is true that the wall behind what was Marcus’s desk is now whiter than it has been in years, but only the middle section has been repainted, leaving even the most casual onlooker to wonder what has been painted over, and even to imagine that this freshness hides an undercoat of dubious quality. Something not quite eradicable, of a morbidly stuccoed texture, and lingering effect.
But Lamb won’t spend his days staring at this wall. That will fall to Shirley Dander, who is out clubbing now; has hit the dance floor unfashionably early, and to everyone watching appears to be celebrating something marvelous; flailing her limbs in an uncoordinated mess of ecstasy, just violent enough to prevent anyone getting close, and piercing her fraudulent joy. She is a dervish tonight, a priestess in her own brand-new religion, and the object of her adoration is fury. For Shirley is not managing her anger; she is allowing it to take root, and will nurture it within, and when the time is ripe, will cut it loose.
Lamb knows none of this, of course. But he can guess. He can guess.
A final dog-legged set of stairs. Now he is at the back door, which sticks—it always sticks—as if reluctant to see him leave, but leave he does, with a grunt and a roll of the shoulder. Locking it behind him, he stands in the mildewed yard, looking up for the few brave stars London has to offer. But none are shining on Slough House. Instead, a feeble light stains the window of his own office, some storeys above; a light kept mostly in check by the ever-drawn blinds, but managing still to press itself against the grimy glass. For a moment, Lamb is transfixed by what his room—his lair—his life—looks like from the outside, but this passes. Then, with his collar turned up, he leaves the yard, and no one sees him go.
