On seeing Shirley, she said, “What do you think Louisa’s up to?”
“What makes you think she’s up to anything?”
“Duh, because Lamb said she was? That she’s a big decision to make?”
“Lamb,” said Shirley, “likes to fuck with our heads. It’s what gets him out of bed in the mornings.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to think about Lamb in bed. But do you know what I do think? I think she’s leaving.”
Shirley had paid little attention to what Lamb had said, feeling only the usual relief that a meeting was over. Meetings were not among the things she was best at, and there were some things she’d never done—skateboarding came to mind—that she’d probably be better at than meetings if she did try them. But Ash had a point: Maybe Lamb hadn’t simply been sowing discontent. Maybe Louisa had something going on.
Ash said, “And if she’s leaving, it’s because she’s got somewhere to go. And I don’t mean some bank or estate agents’ or shoe shop. I mean a proper job.”
Shirley couldn’t see Louisa working in a shoe shop. “You reckon she’s going back to the Park? Because I hate to break it to you—”
“That wouldn’t be a big decision, would it? She’d do that in a heartbeat. We all would.”
Shirley said, “But none of us are going to. And Louisa won’t get a reference from the Service that’ll get her into security work.”
“Yeah, but really, she’ll need one? I mean think about it. This might not be what we signed up for, but it’s still intelligence work, isn’t it? We’re still—you know—spies. For anyone working the night shift on an industrial estate, watching the vans don’t get nicked, this’d be a career highlight.”
(“Career highlights are for other people,” had been a recent Lamb observation. “You lot have career landfills. And not the sort some idiot’s buried an old laptop in, with a fortune in bitcoin, but the stinking horrible kind, swarming with gulls.”)
“More fool them,” said Shirley.
The kettle boiled and Ash poured water into a mug, saying, “You’re hundy missing the point. Your average security company’d shit themselves to get a real-life former spy on the books. Reference or no reference.”
“Except the Park’d deny we ever worked for the Service. If we claimed we had, I mean. And . . .”
And who’s going to believe us? was what she didn’t say. Who’s going to believe you and me, that we’re spies? Even Shirley didn’t believe it half the time. She reached for the teabag tin.
“Uh, not yours,” said Ash.
“Yeah, I gave Catherine a fiver this morning?” She fished out a bag, dropped it into the cleanest mug within eyeshot, and reached for the kettle. “So if Louisa’s actually been offered a job worth having . . .”
“It’s with someone who knows her. Probably ex-Service themselves, but not Slough House. And anyway, a fiver? I gave her a tenner last week. We all did.”
“That what she told you?” Shirley shook her head sadly. “I knew she was skimming, but I didn’t think she’d be so blatant. You might be right, though. About Louisa being recruited by someone she knows.”
“And what I was thinking is, if they’ll take her, they’ll take us. Why not? I mean, I’m younger, and I didn’t fuck up the way she did. And you’re . . .”
Shirley waited.
“You’ve got bags of personality. Is she really stealing from us?”
“Catherine? Yeah, but we’re not supposed to talk about it. Lamb covers for her. He’ll pay you back. Just speak to him when no one’s around.”
“Yeah, okay. So, shall we ask Louisa, then?”
“. . . Sorry, what?”
“About who’s approached her.”
“. . . You mean . . . What, just ask her?”
“There’s a better way?”
“Well, we could follow her. Or get Ho to bug her phone or sack her emails. Or . . . yeah, no, you might be right. We could ask her.”
Weird, though.
“Shall we go together?” Ash asked, and Shirley had the sensation, strange to her, of being the adult in the room.
“Well, first I’m going to drink this,” she said. “Then I’ll probably have a wee. But yeah, okay, let’s do that.”
Though the odds of Louisa telling them anything were on a par with Lamb refunding Ash’s kitty money. Besides, Louisa had left; was on her way to Oxford to find out what River had got himself into, and was currently barrelling down the M40, enjoying not being at work, the day’s tasks postponed. And also finding space to think about her words to Lamb earlier: I’m leaving. That, it seemed, was how decisions were made; you opened your mouth and heard them happen. She should speak to HR, make it official. Talk to Devon again, and sort details out: holiday entitlement, pension arrangements—company car? That provoked a giggle. Company car . . . This from a woman who’d financed the deposit on her flat by stealing a diamond following a shootout with Russian gangsters. She was on a slippery slope. She’d have a savings account next, an investment portfolio. Start inviting friends around for dinner parties. Start having friends.
Mostly, though, what loomed large was not what was waiting but what would be left behind. At first, Slough House had felt like a temporary punishment, a proving ground where she’d redeem the desperate error that had seen her exiled from the Park. And then there’d been Min, of course, and a period during which the future had been something waiting with open arms rather than with its hands behind its back, concealing weapons. After Min died—after that, life had been a blank page on which she’d written nothing, but which she hadn’t been able to turn. Paralysed—affectless—she might as well have been at Slough House as anywhere else, and the future became something to be postponed, which she did by existing only in the present. Things were different now. Things always became different if you left them long enough. That sounded too basic a lesson to have taken her so long to learn, but you live your life in the order it happens, and here she was now; heading to Oxford, her last outing as a slow horse. Who would she miss? River, maybe Lech. She’d think about Catherine, but doubted she’d see her again. As for Lamb—well, she’d think about him, too. But in time, all of this would be fragments; the years patchworked by memory until she could no longer fit actions to places, faces to words. When she looked back on this, it would be like reassembling broken crockery. Even if the bits fitted, the cracks would remain.
But she’d keep in touch with River, if only to piss him off, a process that would almost certainly be brewing again this afternoon—whatever he was up to, he didn’t want Louisa to be part of it, that was clear. And while this was true, what was mostly pissing River off right then was the traffic snarling up the road in front of him, caused by another set of temporary lights. Cars harrumphed and spluttered like retired colonels. River had a headache coming on: not a symptom—he was fine—just a reaction to road hassle. Satnav showed the safe house on the left, a few hundred yards away; before he reached it there was a turn-off where there might be somewhere to park, so as soon as the traffic allowed he pulled into it. It turned out to be a lane running past a children’s playground towards tennis courts, and had bollards in place and stern warnings posted. He parked, thought about leaving a note under his wiper—Spy on call—and headed round the corner on foot. The safe house was one of a row of cottages weirdly placed on this main road; cars were crawling past it like a rolling surveillance mission. Little point doing a walk-by, he’d only draw attention to himself, so River ignored the drivers, stopped at the door and rang the bell. For the moments that followed he had the strange sensation of everything coming to a halt—that he’d been part of a busy flow and was now outside it; that something had happened before he’d arrived—but whatever that was about, it dissolved inside a greater frustration: that nobody came to answer the door. He rang again, then knocked loudly. Same response. He dropped to a knee and peered through the letterbox, but all he could see was a small empty hallway, and a half-open door leading into the front room. He caught no sense of movement, no trace of sound. The house felt vacant.