by Mick Herron
So Ho was uninterested in Shirley and Marcus’s chattering, and the office above theirs was empty, because Harper and Guy weren’t yet back. If they had been, it’s likely that one would have knelt with an ear to the floor, and relayed each word to the other. And if River Cartwright had been in there, instead of in the room above Ho’s, he might have done the same: it would have relieved the boredom. Which he should have been used to but it kept recurring, like a week-old insect bite that wouldn’t quit. Though if that analogy were to ring true, River now thought, he’d have to be wearing boxing gloves too: unable to scratch; just rubbing away without effect.
Until a few months ago he had shared this room. Now it was his alone, though a second desk remained, equipped with a PC that was newer, faster and less battered than River’s. He could have commandeered it, but Service PCs were user-specific, and he’d have had to log a request for IT to reassign it; a thirty-minute job that could take eight months. And while he could have short-circuited the process by asking Ho to do it, this would have involved asking Ho to do it, and he wasn’t that desperate.
He drummed an off-beat rhythm with his fingers, and studied the ceiling. Exactly the kind of pointless noise that could draw a returning thump from Jackson Lamb, meaning both shut up and come here. The fact that there wasn’t much to do didn’t stop Lamb dreaming up tasks. Last week he’d sent River out collecting takeaway cartons: River had plucked them from bins, gutters, car roofs; had found a trove in a Barbican flowerbed, chewed by rats or foxes. Then Lamb had made him compare them with his own collection, the fruit of six months’ afternoon snacking: he’d become convinced that Sam Yu, frontman of the New Empire next door, was giving him smaller cartons than everyone else, and was “working up the evidence.” Borderline Lamb: he might have meant it, might have been taking the piss. Either way, River was the one up to his elbows in bins.
For a while, a few months back, it had looked like things were changing. After years of squatting upstairs, happily dumping on the poor saps below, Lamb had appeared to be taking an interest; at the very least, had enjoyed putting the screws on Lady Di Taverner at Regent’s Park. But the mould was showing through again: Lamb had grown bored with excitement, preferring the comfortably unchanging days, so River was still here, and Slough House was still Slough House. And the work was the same grunt-work it had always been.
Today was a case in point. Today, he was a typist. Yesterday he’d been a scanner-operator; today the scanner wouldn’t work, so today he was a typist, entering pre-digital death records onto a database. The deceased had all been six months old or younger, and had died while rationing was still enforced: prime targets for identity theft. Back then, you worked this by taking names from gravestones; a less innocent form of brass-rubbing. Birth certificates were then claimed lost and copies sought; after that, you simply traced the life the infant might have led, with all its attendant paperwork: national insurance number, bank account, driving licence … All of the details that built up a person could be faked. The only thing real was the person. But anyone who’d actually done this would be collecting a pension by now. Any sleepers using the names River had found could have called themselves Rip van Winkle instead. So it was just makework for the slow horses, plugging gaps in a history book, nothing more. And where was Jackson Lamb?
Sitting here wouldn’t answer that. Having risen without consciously deciding to, River went with the flow: out of his office, up the stairs. The top floor was always dark. Even when Lamb’s door was open, his blinds were drawn, and Catherine’s office, at the back of the building, sat in the shadow of a nearby office block. Catherine preferred lamps to overhead lighting—the only trait she shared with Lamb—and these didn’t so much dispel the gloom as accentuate it, casting twin pools of yellow light between which murkiness swarmed. Her monitor gave a grey glow, and in its wash, as River entered her room, she seemed a figment from a fairy tale: a pale lady, hoarding wisdom.
River plonked himself on a chair next to a pile of vari-coloured folders. While the rest of the world pursued a digital agenda, Lamb insisted on hard copy. He’d once toyed with instigating an employee-of-the-month award, based solely on weight of output. If he’d had a pair of scales, and an attention span, River didn’t doubt he’d have done so.
“Let me guess,” Catherine said. “You’ve finished what you were doing, and want some more work.”
“Ho ho. What’s he up to, Catherine?”
“He doesn’t tell me.” She seemed amused that River thought he might. “He does what he does. He doesn’t ask my permission.”
“But you’re closest to him.”
Her expression wavered not one inch.
“Geographically, I mean. You take his calls. You manage his diary.”
“His diary’s empty, River. Mostly he stares at the ceiling and farts.”
“It’s a captivating picture.”
“He smokes in there too. And it’s a government office.”
“We could make a citizen’s arrest.”
“We might want to practise on someone smaller.”
“I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Oh, I offer it up.” Fear flashed in River’s eyes. “Joke? He’d drive a saint to suicide, anyway. Frankly, whatever he’s up to, I’m just relieved he’s somewhere else.”
“He’s not at the Park,” River said. When Lamb was at the Park, he made sure everyone knew it. Probably hoping someone would break, and ask if they could come too. “But something’s up. He’s been weird. Even for Lamb.”
Lamb’s weirdness would pass for normality in other people. His phone had rung, and he’d answered it. He’d had Ho unfreeze his browser, which meant he’d been online. In fact, he’d given the impression of having a job to do.
“And he hasn’t said a word,” River said.
“Not one.”
“So you’ve no idea what’s lured him onto the streets.”
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Catherine said.
River studied her, an old-fashioned creature whose pale colouring spoke of an indoor life. Her clothes covered her wrist to ankle. She wore hats, for god’s sake. He guessed she was fiftyish, and until the business last year he hadn’t paid her much attention; there was little in a wall-hugging woman her age to interest an uptight man of his. But when things had turned nasty she hadn’t panicked. She’d even pointed a gun at Spider Webb—as had River. This shared experience made them fellow-members of a select club.
She was waiting for him to respond. He said, “Tell?”
“Who’s Lamb send for when he needs something?”
“Ho,” River said.
“Exactly. And you know how sound travels here.”
“You heard them talking?”
“No,” Catherine said. “That’s what was interesting.”
Interesting because Lamb was not in the habit of modulating his tones. “So whatever it is, it’s not for the likes of us.”
“But Roddy knows.”
It was also interesting that Catherine called Ho Roddy. Nobody else called Ho anything. He wasn’t someone you engaged in casual chat, because if you didn’t come with broadband, you weren’t worth his attention.
On the other hand, he currently possessed information River would like to share.
“Well then,” he said. “Let’s go talk to Roddy, shall we?”
“Nice,” said Min.
“Best you can do?”
“Spectacular, then. Better?”
“Much.”
They were on the seventy-seventh floor of one of the City’s newest buildings; a great glass needle that soared eighty storeys into London’s skies. And it was some room they were in, a huge one, yay metres long and woah metres wide, with floor-to-ceiling views to north and west of the capital, and then the wide space beyond, where the capital gave up and the sky took over. She could spend days in here, Louisa thought; not eating, not drinking; just taking in as much of the view as she could, in every weather, and all types of light. “Spe
ctacular” didn’t come close.
Even the lift had been a thrill: quieter, smoother and faster than any she’d known.
Min said, “Cool, wasn’t it?”
“The lift?”
“At Reception. The plastic cops.”
The security guys, who’d checked their Service ID with what Min had interpreted as awe and envy. Louisa thought it more the look state kids aimed at their public school counterparts: the age-old enmity of yobs v toffs. A long-time yob herself, she savored the irony.
She laid her palm against the glass. Then rested her forehead there. This brought a delicious feeling of safe vertigo; set a butterfly fluttering in her stomach, even while her brain enjoyed the view. Min stood by, hands in pockets.
“This the highest you’ve been?” she asked.
He gave her a slow look. “Duh, aeroplane?”
“Yeah, no. Highest building.”
“Empire State.”
“Been there, done that.”
“Twin Towers?”
She shook her head. “They were already gone when I was there.”
“Me too,” he said.
They were quiet for a while, watching London operate way below, thinking similar thoughts: of a morning when people in a different city had stood at greater heights, enjoying similar views from different windows, not knowing they’d never put their feet on the ground again; that the threads of their future had been severed with box cutters.
Now Min pointed, and following his finger she saw a speck in the distance. An aeroplane: not one of the liners leaving Heathrow, but a small, buzzy machine, ploughing its own furrow.
Min said, “I wonder how close they get?”
“You think it’s that important?” Louisa said. “This mini-summit? Big enough for a … replay?”
She didn’t have to specify what it would be a replay of.
After a while, Min said, “No, I guess not.”
Or it wouldn’t have been entrusted to them, Regent’s Park audit or not.
“Got to do it properly, though.”
“Look at all the angles,” she agreed.
“Else we end up looking bad even when nothing bad happens.”
“You think this is a test of some kind?”
“Of what?”
“Us,” she said. “Finding out if we’re up to the job.”
“And if we pass it, we get back to Regent’s Park?”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
This many people had made the return journey from Slough House to the Park: none. They both knew that. But like every slow horse before them, Min and Louisa hid secret hopes their story would be different.
At length she turned and surveyed the room. Still yay metres long and woah metres wide, it took up about half of the floor; the separate suite, also currently vacant, enjoying the views south and east. There was a shared lobby area where the smart lifts arrived; a third, the service lift, lay behind the stairwell, which was a vision of eternal descent. It passed floors and floors of high-end corporate offices, only some of which were yet occupied: the list in the folder Webb had provided included banks, investment companies, yacht salesmen, diamond merchants, a defence contractor. The tower’s lower third was a hotel, its grand opening scheduled for the following month. She’d read it was fully booked through the next five years.
Spider Webb must have called in favours, or opened some classified folders, to secure the suite for his meeting, a few weeks hence. Any part of town, a space like this commanded respect. This high up, it demanded awe. Kitchen and bathrooms aside, it was a single room, designed for business; its centrepiece a beautiful mahogany oval table big enough for sixteen chairs, which, if it hadn’t been larger than Louisa’s entire flat, she’d have coveted. But like the view, the table belonged to the moneyed. This wasn’t supposed to factor into her motivation, but still. Here they were, the pair of them, and they’d be ensuring the safety of some hotshot whose pocket change equalled twice their joint salaries.
Forget it, she thought. Not relevant. But couldn’t help saying: “Kind of flash for a discreet meeting.”
“Yeah, well,” Min said. “Don’t suppose they’ll have anyone peeping through the windows.”
“How do they clean them, do you think?”
“Some kind of hoist? We’d better find out.”
That was just for starters. They’d need an itinerary; where the Russian was staying, and the route from there to here. Who was catering. Drivers. They’d need to study Webb’s notes and do extra digging, because Webb was trustworthy as a snake. And they’d need sweepers to check for bugs, and maybe a techie to provide interference, though she doubted parabolic eavesdropping was possible. The nearest high building was a dwarf by comparison.
Min touched her shoulder. “We’ll be fine. Jumped-up Russkie oligarch is all. Coming over here. Buying our football teams. It’s babysitting, like Webb said.”
She knew. But Russkie oligarchs weren’t the most popular breed on the planet, and there was always the possibility something would go wrong. And underneath that, a very faint glimmer of possibility that everything would go right.
It swam into her mind again that this could be a test. And alongside it swam a creepier notion: What if a successful outcome resulted in a single ticket home; a desk at Regent’s Park for one of them but not the other? If it were hers, would she take it? If it were Min’s, would he? He might. She couldn’t blame him. She might too.
All the same, she shrugged his hand off her shoulder.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing. We’re at work, that’s all.”
Min said, “Sure. Sorry,” but there was nothing snarky in his tone.
He wandered towards the doors, through which lay the lifts, the other suite, the stairwell. Louisa, in his wake, veered off into the kitchen. It was spotless, unused, gleaming, and fully equipped with a fridge that was restaurant-sized, but empty. Fixed to the wall was a friendly red fire extinguisher; next to it, behind a glass cover, a fire blanket and a small axe. She opened bare cupboards, closed them again. Returned to the big room and its windows, through which she could now see an air-ambulance, seemingly stationary over Central London, though possibly swinging like a randy divorcee from the point of view of those it carried. And she thought again of the black swans, and the huge and improbable events they’d lent their name to. It was only afterwards you knew you’d encountered one. The helicopter was still hovering there when she went to find Min.
Ho didn’t like having his space invaded. Especially not by River Cartwright, who was one of those who ignored the likes of Roderick Ho except when he needed something only the likes of Roderick Ho could provide. Technological competence, for instance. Competence was generally beyond Cartwright. For a while, Ho had used a CCTV still of the King’s Cross chaos as a screensaver, until Louisa Guy suggested River might break his elbows if he found out.
But Catherine Standish was with him, and while Ho didn’t precisely like Standish, he couldn’t put his finger on a reason for disliking her. Since this put her in a select category, he decided to see what they wanted before telling them he was busy.
River made a space on the spare desk, and perched on its corner. Catherine pulled out a chair and sat. “How are you today, Roddy?”
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. She’d called him that before. He said to River, “Don’t move my stuff.”
“I haven’t moved anything.”
“My stuff on the desk there, you just rearranged it. I’ve got everything sorted. You put it out of order, I won’t be able to find it.”
River opened his mouth to make a number of points, but Catherine caught his eye. He changed direction. “Sorry.”
Catherine said, “Roddy, we were wondering if you could do us a favour.”
“What sort of favour?”
“It involves your area of expertise.”
“If you want broadband,” Ho said, “maybe you should just think about paying for it.”
“
That would be like asking a plastic surgeon to do ingrown toenails,” Catherine said.
“Yeah,” said River. “Or getting an architect to wash your windows.”
Ho regarded him suspiciously.
“Or a lion tamer to feed your cat,” River added.
The look Catherine flashed him indicated that he wasn’t helping.
“The other day, in Lamb’s office,” she began, but Ho wasn’t having it.
“No way.”
“I hadn’t finished.”
“You don’t need to. You want to know what Lamb wanted, right?”
“Just a clue.”
“He’d kill me. And he could do it, too. He’s killed people before.”
“That’s what he wants you to think,” River said.
“You’re saying he hasn’t?”
“I’m saying he’s not allowed to kill staff. Health and safety.”
“Yeah, right. But I’m not talking killing killing.” Ho turned back to Catherine. “He’d kill me on a daily basis. You know what he’s like.”
“He doesn’t need to find out,” she said.
“He always finds out.”
River said, “Roddy?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Whatever. A few months ago, we did a good thing. Yes?”
“Maybe,” Ho said, suspiciously. “So what?”
“That was teamwork.”
“It was kind of teamwork,” Ho admitted.
