“As finished as you say, you know what? These guys have no jurisdiction over me.”
“No, but there are two of them.”
“I’ll explain I’m a civilian.”
“They’ll find out anyway. Once they run your card.”
“Louisa, Sid’s missing. If you think I’m going to sit here while those clowns fiddle with their buttons, you’re on the wrong channel.” He opened his door.
“Just don’t hit anyone.”
“I hardly ever—”
“Just don’t.”
She watched him get out of the car and walk towards the Dogs, one of whom was on his phone, the other awaiting instructions. Both regarded River with the amused contempt of tourists approached by a juggler. Louisa shook her head and looked at her own phone. She had a text from Devon: I don’t mean to hassle. But had any thoughts yet? Yes, so why hadn’t she let him know them? She keyed Okay. I’m in, deleted it, thought some more, then rekeyed the exact same words. Then deleted them. When she looked up, River was punching the young Dog in the face.
“Of course you did that,” she said.
The other Dog was reaching into his jacket for something, far more quickly than those words suggest, when River leaned into him, hooked a foot behind his ankle, and then the Dog was on the ground and River was running to the car. “Change of plan,” he said, climbing in, starting the engine.
“This is a plan?”
The Dog jumped aside as River swerved past, loose stones scattering. He lost a wing mirror to the no parking sign and hit the main road to a fusillade of complaint. Louisa, seatbelt secured, nevertheless had a hand on the dashboard to inhibit her departure through the windscreen and suppressed a yelp as he turned right, avoiding collision with a Deliveroo scooter by a weasel’s whisker. Louisa caught a glimpse of a face turning white, and then they were up the road, the playing fields to their left giving way to houses, driveways, a succession of sculpted hedges and pebbled drives. She said, “Drop me anywhere. I can walk from here.”
“He was basically asking for it,” River said, meaning the Dog he’d punched.
Her phone rang, and when she answered Lamb said, “On a scale of one to ten, how fucked-up is your afternoon? Asking for a friend.”
“Yeah, turns out River’s not on a job for Taverner after all.”
“I worked that out. Ask me how I worked that out.”
“How did you—”
“Because I am a senior officer of His Majesty’s Intelligence Services, with responsibility for a department manned, sorry, personned, by wetbrains. And when a pair of half-arsed fuckwits from said department crash a safe house, attract the attention of the local woodentops and bring the wrath of the Service’s trained poodles down upon their heads, I get woken up and told all about it. Is Cartwright behind the wheel?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him to undo his seatbelt and head for the nearest concrete wall at eighty-five.”
“Is that Lamb?” asked River, who wasn’t doing eighty-five, but only because the bus in front wasn’t either. “Does he know where Sid is?”
Louisa blanked him out, because she hated having two conversations at once. “We’ve had a little difficulty, but nothing that can’t be worked out.” Admittedly, working it out might involve scrubbing the internet. They were probably on footage shot by fifteen different mobiles. “Normal harmony will soon be resumed.”
“Yeah, I can hear the horn section from here. Could you dicksplain to young Vin Petrolhead that the reviews of his latest misadventures ruined my nap? He’d better hope he’s killed attempting a wheelie, because what I have in mind for him will be more protracted.”
“I’ll let him know. Yellow car.”
“What now?”
“Nothing. Where’s Sid Baker?”
There was a moment’s silence. “What’s she got to do with it?”
“I’d explain, but I have no bloody clue.” River was on the wrong side of the road, causing an oncoming driver to veer into the bus lane while blasting a terrified fuck you on her horn. Somewhere behind them was the Dogmobile, its big black-tinted presence a demonic avatar. She hoped River cooled down or wised up soon. She didn’t want her last thought to decorate this particular windscreen.
She said, “We don’t know where Sid is. Her phone was in that house.”
Lamb hung up.
River queue-jumped four cars by climbing the luckily unoccupied pavement and joined the big roundabout just in time to miss ending both their stories under sixteen wheels of Norwegian logistics.
Catherine was on one of her periodical search-and-swoops, excavating paperwork placed on Lamb’s desk for his signature that had migrated—unsigned—to unexpected places: beneath his desk, behind the coat stand, into a carrier bag containing stray items of laundry that hung on the back of his door. Whether he arranged this to amuse himself or irritate her wasn’t worth dwelling on. The two outcomes were so nearly synonymous, any difference had long ceased to matter.
Lamb, meanwhile, was at his desk, having just come off a call, and was staring at his ceiling, his expression suggesting either deep thought or indigestion. He had recently both farted and removed his shoes, which put Catherine in the uncharacteristic position of being eager for him to light the cigarette he was playing with, instead of rolling it between the fingers of his right hand: a slow, stately process that threatened to mesmerise her. So much so, it was with a start that she noticed he was no longer focused on the ceiling but watching her, his upper lip curled. “You’re getting warmer,” he said.
“It would make my life less difficult if you didn’t play games with official documentation.”
“Make it less entertaining, you mean.”
“You think I enjoy this?”
“Course you do. I can read you like a . . .”
“Book?”
“Parish newsletter.”
“They’re used for kindling.”
“Now you get it. Of course you enjoy this, because otherwise what’ll you do? Sit in your room and not drink? I tried that once. Longest ten minutes of my life.” He tucked the cigarette behind his ear and reached for his phone. “Plus, it gives you the opportunity to do what you do best. Which is stick your neb where it’s not invited. I’ll put this on speaker, shall I? Save you bursting an eardrum.”
She made to leave, but he extended a shoeless foot to impede her passage. Whoever he’d called had answered. He said, “Did I thank you for the Talisker?”
“You grunted. I assumed that was as good as I’d get.”
Catherine recognised Diana Taverner’s voice.
Lamb said, “I was speechless. Not every day someone gives me Talisker. Which in retrospect should have got me thinking harder. I’d have been just as happy if you’d refrained from poncing fags off me. So why a bottle of Talisker?”
“Do you have to keep saying ‘Talisker’?”
“Products don’t place themselves.”
She sighed. “Did you call just to play games? I gave you the Talisker in return for the favour I asked. That you’d find out who made the complaint about my so-called threatening terminology. Which you still haven’t done, by the way. Though I’m guessing you’ve drunk your fee.”
“We both know you don’t give a donkey’s arse who’s grassed you up to HR. More to the point, HR don’t either. If they wanted to pull you up on your managerial style they’d have found a hundred reasons by now, starting with the way you wipe your feet on your PA every morning. No, that was the excuse you made to get me to come running so I’d hear all about Cartwright getting canned, in the expectation I’d pass the happy news on to Cartwright myself.”
“Getting you running anywhere would take more than an excuse. I’d need death threats and an angry dog.”