Lamb was in his office, unshod feet on his desk, his socks looking like someone had glued the contents of a puncture repair kit onto a dish-rag. One of his eyes was closed, but the other tracked her movements as she entered the room, giving her the feeling of having wandered into a reptile enclosure. The smell, too, was perhaps not dissimilar. He didn’t speak as she laid several days’ worth of emails in his in-tray—he preferred them printed out: you can’t rip up a screen—but before she was safely through the door again he said, “What’s pissing you off now?”
“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Yeah, stroll on. I can read you like a . . .”
“Book?”
“Election flyer.”
“Nobody reads election flyers.”
“My point exactly. So save me the bother and say what’s drunk your lunch.”
She said, “This place is a war zone. They’re all at one another’s throats. And I’m sick of trying to keep the peace.”
“So let ’em tear each other apart. Slough House, it’s pretty much our mission statement.”
“They’re people, not lab mice. Damaged people. We can’t just let them bite chunks out of each other.”
Lamb rolled his eyes, both open now, heavenwards. “Are you there, God? It’s me, Jackson. Got one of your do-gooder types here, meaning well and causing trouble.”
“I’m not the one—”
“You’ve been here long enough, you should know what brings this lot together. Grief, pain and shit-the-bed clusterfucks. You want them putting on a united front? Be careful what you wish for.”
“I’ll go, shall I?”
“Thought you already had. Oh Christ, what now?”
What now was Louisa, coming in as Catherine exited. “You asked what Taverner had River doing.”
“I know I did. Your job’s to provide answers, not restate questions.”
“He’s in Oxford. And he’s asked Lech where the local safe house is.”
“So maybe he’s after a freebie dirty weekend. Show young Baker round the ivory spires, then take her up the Woodstock Road.” He adopted a pious expression. “Not that I approve of either fornication or freeloading, but really, Guy, if this is jealousy-driven cock-blocking, I hoped for better from you. Cartwright’s made his choice. Deal with it.”
“There’s never been anything between me and River.”
“If you say so.”
“And what business is it of yours anyway?”
“It’s an admin thing. Any staff fraternisation, which is like workplace incest with added frotting, I have to write it up for the Park.” He adopted his muggins-here expression. “I don’t get paid extra for that. It’s one of the burdens of rank.”
“You write it up?”
“Well, Standish does. Amounts to the same thing.” He reached inside his shirt to palpate his belly for a satisfying few seconds, and when he withdrew his hand it was holding a cigarette. “Not that I’m opposed in principle, you understand. I mean Cartwright, I’m pretty sure that ship’s sunk, but if you’re planning on resurrecting your love life, go for it. I’m a great believer in getting back on the bike.” He studied his cigarette for a moment, then put it in his mouth. “In this scenario, you’d be the bike. I hope that was clear.”
“I’d appreciate a little less commentary on my private life,” Louisa said, after a long pause.
In his plumpest tones, Lamb said, “I do apologise. If I have a failing, it’s that I care too much. Always been my Achilles tendon.” He frowned. “Unless I mean elbow.”
“Can we get back on track? River’s in Oxford, he’s up to something and he won’t say what. You wanted me to step in to whatever it is he’s doing. So I’m going to Oxford to help him. Okay?”
“I’m all for the hands-on approach, but I can’t help wondering if he’s not beyond help. We already know he’s for the chop, plus there’s the whole post-traumatic stress bollocks.” He was rummaging around his desk, looking for a lighter. “You ask me, the best you’ll be able to do for him is pat him on the head a little.” He mimed the action, to be sure she got it. “If you can reach his head, that is, with him curled up in the faecal position.”
“Foetal.”
“As I just explained, he’s probably shitting himself.” A lighter came to hand, and he clicked at it vigorously. “But sure, yeah, why not. Take a day’s leave.”
“It would count as work,” Louisa said. “It would actually be work.”
“Get Standish to sign you off.” The lighter flared into flame and he torched the end of his cigarette. Then tossed the lighter over his shoulder, where it hit the wall with a bump and dropped into shadow. “And send me a postcard. No, write me a postcard, saying exactly what’s going on, then call me up and read it out to me.”
“Woodstock Road.”
“Wicinski can find you the number.”
He could and did, and had already phoned River, while attempting to extract some basic information, like: What are you up to? But River wouldn’t say, though he did at least remember to offer thanks. Then programmed the address into his satnav: It wasn’t far from the college, or at any rate was on the same road. The program promised roadworks if he attempted the direct route so he headed out to the ring road, mentally repeating Lech’s question as he did so—what was he up to? Chasing down Stam, to find out why he’d lied about what was in the box-safe. And also, to discover what had actually been in the box-safe; his grandfather’s final secret, which was River’s own legacy.
In his last days, the O.B. might have thought a plastic toy from a cornflakes carton a secret worth preserving. He had lost his grip on his former realities. When River visited him at Skylarks, the home he’d been moved to when home itself grew strange, his talk had been of boys’ own derring-do, the details dredged from a mishmash of school days stories and gung-ho war films. All his life, River had listened to the old man talk. Never before had he wanted the flow of words to dry up. Now, skirting Oxford with the post-lunch traffic, he remembered something his grandfather had said years back, when he still controlled the narrative; words that seemed freighted with hindsight, a warning that hadn’t been heeded because there were no precautions you could take against growing old, no tradecraft that would keep you out of senility’s clutches. Old spies can grow ridiculous, River.
He’d meant if they hung on too long. Old spies outgrow their covers; their sleeves become tattered and worn. They forget which lies they’re meant to tell, which truths they ought to conceal, and that was without the added pain of dementia, of cells fraying and losing their connections, of neural networks decaying into leaderless chaos. Once, his grandfather had haunted Molly Doran’s archive, secretly adding conclusions to the unfinished stories collected there. In the end, conclusions were beyond him . . . Best to tune out gracefully, and accept retirement’s package of slip-ons and slacks and slow movements. Better the boredom of the afternoon nap than to stay on the road too long and end up a laughing stock. Old spies can grow ridiculous. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.
River wondered what the O.B. had hidden in his box-safe; wondered what Stam, another superannuated spook, might be up to, and wondered what Sid was doing, and this time called her, but after three rings went to voicemail again. Then he thought about trying Louisa and apologising for being a bastard, which brought to mind what she’d asked earlier, about whether he was on a job for Taverner. What had that been about? If old spies grow ridiculous it was because young spies wove their lives into knots, forever making cat’s-cradles out of straightforward lengths of string. No wonder there was so much pent-up rage in Slough House, an observation which summoned images of Shirley, who right then was rousing herself from a post-lunch torpor and pondering a raid on the kettle. Given her long-standing and devout refusal to contribute to the kitty, out of which teabags, milk and coffee were purchased, such expeditions were fraught with the possibility of conflict. Good. She paused for a moment, wondering how a worksheet had appeared on her desk, then headed for the kitchen, hoping for an unattended teabag, and found Ash boiling water in her usual manner of addressing such tasks: as if it were below her pay grade, and God only knew how it had fallen to her.