by Mick Herron
Waiting, holding a polystyrene coffee cup, and shaking his head: “Jesus wept.”
Ho wound down his window. “What?”
“If you have to ask,” Lamb told him, “you wouldn’t understand the answer. Would it make you feel like a lackey if I sat in the back?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.” Lamb squeezed into the rear, spilling not very much coffee as he did so. “Why does it smell of cheese?”
The evening was darkening at last; one or two streetlights had popped on; others remained dormant, either on a different schedule or broken. The home-goers on the pavements had given way to pleasure seekers, heading into the Barbican for an event, or drifting towards bars on Old Street. Roderick Ho checked his rearview and caught Lamb on one of his fishing expeditions, hands emerging from both pockets; one clutching a cigarette, the other applying his lighter.
Lamb said, “Keep your hair on. It’s one of those e-cigarettes.”
“No it’s not,” Ho pointed out.
“It’s not?” Lamb examined the burning end suspiciously. “Crap. I’ve been ripped off.”
Ho cut his grumbled protest short when he realised Lamb had spotted the parking permit on his windscreen. “It’s cover,” he said.
“Cover,” Lamb repeated.
“And a safeguard against identity theft.”
Lamb’s laughter was two parts cough. He exhaled so much smoke he resembled a damp bonfire. “Identity theft? Trust me, kid. You couldn’t give yours away.”
Ho scowled.
Behind him, Lamb settled back and closed his eyes. Something erupted from his lips—the beginning of a snore or the end of a chuckle, hard to say—but after that he fell more or less silent while Roderick Ho, guided by satnav, drove them through and then out of the city, towards where Catherine was being held, or where they hoped she was being held.
“Diana,” Tearney said.
“I was just leaving.”
“Of course, my dear. Absolutely no need for you to stay late.”
“It’s already after—”
“But I was wondering whether you’d signed off on the invoices for the Data Removal people.”
Data Removal, rather than simply removal: these people were, after all, specialists, even if the end result was that boxes had been taken from one place to another.
Dame Ingrid followed Diana into her office, whose lighting automatically came on; a cool blue which approximated to spring sunshine, though caused the hairs on the back of one’s neck to prickle; a sensation Ingrid ascribed to an excess of electricity in the air, as if it leaked out through ill-fitting sockets. Strange how those hairs kept up their work, stoking creepy feelings, when the hair on the rest of her head had parted company with her when she was in her teens. No completely satisfying reason had ever been put forward for this, though Dame Ingrid would reluctantly admit that that was less a failing of medical science than an indication of her own disinclination to be, in the circumstances, completely satisfied.
Diana Taverner ran a word search without sitting down, frowning slightly as she bent over her screen, watching a jumble of folder-names weave in and out of themselves, none of them yielding the information she sought. “It’s somewhere here.”
“No hurry, my dear.”
She had learned long ago that the best way to fluster a subordinate was to assure them there was no need to hurry.
While waiting, Dame Ingrid gazed through the office’s glass wall at the kids on the hub; “kids” being the term regardless of age and experience. Loyalty had brought them to work here, though loyalty was an infinitely variable term; it began with a commendable desire to serve queen and country; could ascend to the even more virtuous heights of swearing fealty to the head of their Service, but at its worst could degenerate into a no-questions-asked desire to please their immediate superior, in this case Diana Taverner. If more than luck was involved in today’s sudden reversal of fortune, then whatever it was was likely to have its roots in this department: Ops. Of course, Diana was more than capable of implementing skullduggery on her own, but if it turned out she’d suborned her crew into helping with the dirty work, there’d have to be a purge. Which was fine: a good purge never hurt anyone. Well, except for those it hurt, but that was rather the point.
All of which was jumping the gun. If there’d been more than luck involved, she needed to know why, and what the endgame was.
“Here you go.”
The abruptness with which she spoke suggested that Diana Taverner was keen to be on her way. So Dame Ingrid waited a moment longer, lost in contemplation, before saying, “Ah, good. Yes. Would you print it out for me? I do find screens a nuisance, don’t you? At our age?”
Diana ate that one, but didn’t enjoy it. Two seconds later, the printer on the shelf behind her burped into life, and she handed the product to Dame Ingrid.
Who, after a moment or two’s study, said, “Expensive.”
“It was a problem,” Diana said. “It’s been solved. Anyway, I thought Finance were pleased? Didn’t you say so this morning?”
“I may have sweetened their response for the benefit of the gentlemen present,” Tearney said. “We girls have to look out for one another.”
“We certainly do.”
Dame Ingrid folded the invoice, glanced through the glass wall at the kids again, then said, “Does the name Sean Donovan mean anything?”
“Should it?”
“It’s a simple question, Diana.”
“I can have him checked out—”
“Personally. Do you have any personal knowledge of Sean Donovan?”
“The name rings a vague bell,” Taverner said. She adopted a thinking-about-it expression, swiftly replaced by one of dawning comprehension. “Didn’t he sit on a joint intelligence committee years back? Carrying bags for the MoD?”
“And you’ve had no contact since?”
“We didn’t exactly have contact then. He was just another uniform, one with hands-on experience of tackling insurgency.”
“I see.”
“Why do you ask? Is there anything I should know?” She indicated her team. “Anything we should be doing?”
Dame Ingrid subjected her to a long abstracted stare, as if she were trying very hard to remember something, and Diana happened to be in the way. It was a technique that could drag information from the most unwilling subordinate, but in this instance Diana maintained an expression of very slight concern mingled with willingness to help which at no point lapsed into speech. At length, Dame Ingrid shook her head. “No, my dear. His name came up, that’s all.” She waved the sheet of paper. “I’m sure this is fine. As you say, it’s a problem solved. Short-term cost, long-term benefit.”
“As per the brief.”
“Material up to Virgil level, correct?”
“Up to and including. Again, as per the brief,” said Diana. “Is there a problem, Ingrid? You look alarmed.”
“Alarmed? Of course not. I’m sorry to have kept you, Diana. Enjoy your evening.”
The corridors were quiet now. Even the clacking of her own heels sounded disjointed to her ears, as if slightly out of synch with her legs.
Back in her office she sat, not at her desk, but in the armchair in one corner, next to which was a low coffee table. It was where she sat when she took a gin and tonic of an evening: a quiet reward for a day well spent. Where she sat when preparing for her occasional public appearances, gingering up a phrase or two to be tweeted and tittered about in equal measure. And it was where she sat when she needed cover; when her desk felt too exposed.
There was a general belief among her staff, Dame Ingrid knew, that she was unaware that the current security codes were based on Thunderbirds, but it suited her to be underestimated in matters of no consequence. She was certain that the majority of her staff regarded her as pen-pusher-in-chi
ef. She was also certain that the brief handed to Diana Taverner did not include relocating files classed Virgil, since Dame Ingrid had long determined that second-level secrets formed the perfect hiding place. Scott was where the sexy stuff hid: the cloak-and-dagger material that was any Service’s Crown Jewels. Virgil, for the most part, concealed data only of interest to a devoted number-cruncher with a fetish for budgetary matters: how much was spent on upgrading software, or subsidising the canteen, or replacing carpets. So, if Dame Ingrid had any black secrets hidden among the Service archives, Virgil was where they would be nesting.
And any keen Ingrid Tearney watcher knew that, far from being a mere pen-pusher-in-chief, she had black secrets.
After a while, she produced her mobile from her bag.
Nick Duffy answered on the first ring.
“There’s been a change of plan,” she said.
River didn’t drop more than a foot or so, landing on the cement floor with enough of a bump to remind every last bone of the debt he owed Nick Duffy. A thought filed away for later.
He called up to Louisa. “Okay.”
She followed, landed with more grace, and immediately played her torchbeam around the chamber. Up and down the walls blue and red cables ran in banded clumps, disappearing at floor and ceiling. In the middle, a wheel-shaped handle set horizontally on a concrete block looked like it would open a sewer.
“What’s that?” River asked.
“Some kind of drain?”
“No, what you’re holding.”
“A torch.”
“I can see that. Why’s it shaped like a pig?”
“. . . It just is.”
“Okay.”
“It’s the torch I keep in my glove compartment, all right? If I’d known we’d be exploring, I’d have packed more appropriately.”
“Fair enough,” said River. “Point it over here a moment.”
He’d found what looked like a fuse box on the wall, held shut by a metal clasp.
Louisa held the beam steady while River tugged at the clasp, which looked at first like it was going to defeat him. But when it gave, the box’s door swung open to reveal a remarkably pristine-looking rotary-dial phone.
“You or me?” he asked.
“You do it.”
He reached for the receiver, but before his hand got there, the phone rang.
She’d heard once of a long-distance hiker, way before the days of e-readers, who’d carried a novel over the Alps, tearing out and discarding each page as he read it, to lighten his load. There was a lot to be said for that. For a baggage-free existence, each moment of your story jettisoned as soon as done; your future pristine, undiluted by all that’s gone before. You’d always be on the first page. Never have to turn back, relive your mistakes.
Here in the hot room, Catherine had grown mildly delirious, but not so much that she couldn’t appreciate this for what it was. It was ever so slightly like being what people called “drunk.” Amateurs, that is; those who’d never really been drunk a day in their lives—and anyone who’d only been drunk a day hadn’t come close to being drunk.
The bottle still sat on its tray, barely camouflaged by the sandwich, the apple, the flapjack, the water. These, she had mentally discarded. The colour of the sky through the window told her it had been a full day since she’d stepped onto the street to hear a ghost’s whisper: Catherine? Like most things, this whole episode could have been avoided by minute adjustment. If she’d turned, like any good spook should have done, and headed back into Slough House the moment Sean Donovan appeared, this wouldn’t be happening. One word from her to Charles Partner, and the wheels of the Service would have ground into action. That was the advantage of being close to the man at the top. When there was trust between you, a simple word got things done.
Except Charles Partner was dead, having emptied his head in a bathtub. Her boss now was Jackson Lamb, and stirring him into action required more than trust.
She had mentally discarded the water, the flapjack, the apple, the sandwich, because this was not their fight. In the struggle for control of the room, there was only herself and the bottle of wine. And for some reason this was no longer on the tray, but had managed to spirit itself across the space between them, like a spooky puppet in a horror film, and now nestled in her hand.
Well, that was fine. If there was to be a struggle, it made sense that she kept a tight grip on herself; and keeping a tight grip on the bottle too underlined the symbiotic nature of their relationship. The bottle held the key to her past; all those pages she’d tried to throw away, she could re-read every last one simply by unscrewing its cap and draining its contents. Of course, in allowing her to do that the bottle would be giving up its own future—becoming nothing more than an empty vessel—but that was the nature of co-dependency: one of you had to die. Look at Charles Partner.
She was upright on the bed, her back against the wall. The bottle felt comfortable in her hand, its contours moulded to fit, and the seal on its cap was such a flimsy thing, so very ripe for twisting . . .
All those evenings in Jackson Lamb’s office, watching him punish much larger bottles: that should have been the sterner test. Instead, here she was, on her own, and in danger of falling. Which was starting to feel not so much like falling, but simply relaxing; subsiding into who she’d always been, despite her efforts to convince herself otherwise.
It wasn’t such a very grave betrayal, was it?
She cocked her head and listened, as if expecting the voices to return and whisper the answer in her ear. But nothing happened. A far-off car changed gear somewhere, and that was all. The room seemed to grow a shade darker. But this always happened to rooms, this time of evening. There was nothing to be read in that. It was simply another moment to tear off and throw away.
Almost involuntarily, Catherine twisted the cap and broke the seal.
The voice was electronically treated, and sounded the way a dustbin might.
“Hold your service card up in front of you.”
“I can’t see a camera,” River said.
“You don’t need to see a camera. The camera sees you.”
Behind him, Louisa rolled her eyes.
Fishing his card out, River held it up at eye-level. Despite the receiver tucked to his ear, this felt like having a conversation with a ghost.
In the same electric monotone, the voice recited his Service number.
“Okay,” River said. “I believe you. There’s a camera.”
“Your card’s not biometric.”
“Yeah, they didn’t get around to renewing ours yet.”
Or ever.
“River Cartwright,” the voice said. “Now the woman.”
River moved aside, still holding the receiver, and Louisa showed her card to the empty space above the phone.
In River’s ear, the voice recited numbers again, then said, “Louisa Guy. But her hair has changed colour.”
“Your hair’s changed colour,” River told her.
“Yeah, that happens.”
The voice said, “Where is Slough House?”
“. . . Is this a quiz?”
“Where is Slough House?”
“Aldersgate Street.”
“You’re not from the Park.”
“No,” he said patiently. “We’re from Aldersgate Street. We need to consult the records that were moved here last month.”
Silence.
“You know which records I’m talking about?”
“I wasn’t told this was happening.”
“Yeah, but you were probably told it might,” River said. “At an unspecified time in the future.”
Silence.
“This is that unspecified time,” River said.
“You have authorisation?”
“Verbal.”
“I can�
��t let you in without seeing written authorisation.”
Louisa, leaning in close so she could hear, said, “You’ve seen our cards. They check out with what’s on your screen, right?”
“Except I’ve never heard of Slough House.”
“No, well, you wouldn’t. You’re hired help.”
River gave her a warning nudge, and said, “Slough House is need-to-know. I can’t say any more over an open line.”
“This isn’t an open line.”
“Yeah, okay. But you’re familiar with the protocol.”
“. . . I did a course,” the voice said.
“He did a course,” Louisa murmured.
“If our cards were fakes, you’d already have sounded the alarm. We all know you haven’t done that. So let us in, okay?”
Louisa leaned in again. “This is an important mission we’re on. It’s Scott-level. Okay?”
“. . . Scott level?”
River said, “Not on the phone. Let us in, we’ll explain everything.”
There was a pause, a not-quite-silence, during which the speaker’s breathing was translated into the same electronic-dustbin whisper. And then the click of a connection being broken.
And then another, louder, grating noise, as the wheel-shaped handle on the concrete block behind them, released from its hidden locking mechanism, shifted upwards an inch or two.
Lamb gazed with dismay at fields on both sides of the motorway; thankfully disappearing into gloom now, they still covered more of the near distance than was acceptable. Dotted among them were houses; sometimes in small bunches of four or five; more often set by themselves, surrounded by open spaces.
“You’d better be right about this,” he told Ho. “If you’ve dragged me into this godforsaken wilderness on a fancy goose chase, you can say goodbye to your annual bonus.”
This particular stretch of godforsaken wilderness was six lanes wide and medium-busy.
Ho said, “I get an annual bonus?”
“No. Weren’t you listening?” Lamb was visibly toying with lighting another cigarette, though possibly even he had started to notice that the air in the car was barely this side of toxic. “God, look at it. There are folk living out here have probably never seen a taxi.”
