“Yes, but there’s a hard copy file overlap,” she told Catherine. “The personnel records of the operatives involved predate the birth of the beast.” Which was her designation for the Service database, possibly because she regarded it as one of the signs of approaching Armageddon. “So the source records are down here with me, even if updates aren’t.”
“And that would include Stamoran’s crew.”
“The Brains Trust,” Molly said. “There were three of them. Avril Potts was a bright spark. Probably still is. Al Hawke, too. And Daisy Wessex.” Molly paused. “They’re long off-book now. But what happened to Daisy still gets talked about.”
“She’s the one who dropped off the map,” Catherine said, the detail swimming up out of nowhere. Some had a way of clinging on; the ones that said There but for the grace.
“Eighteen months or more. Until her crew found her and brought her back.”
Her crew, thought Catherine. Not the Park. The Park had washed its hands.
Molly said, “I doubt there’s an official record of that, but everything else, you’ll find on the beast.” She paused. “I realise you’re not in good standing over there, but I presume Roderick Ho doesn’t let a detail like that get in the way.”
“Roddy does wander where he will,” Catherine agreed, “when it comes to digital footpaths. On the other hand . . .”
One of the prices Molly demanded was that things be spelt out. No trailing away into ellipses allowed.
“On the other hand,” she finished, “Jackson was wondering what you might have that never found its way upstairs.”
“Was he now?”
“Apparently you’ve suggested in the past that such things happen.”
“It’s always disappointing to be reminded of one’s indiscretions,” Molly said, though what Catherine traced in her tone was not so much disappointment as satisfaction; perhaps that she was in a position to be indiscreet about such matters, or perhaps that it was Lamb who had remembered it. “But yes, such things do. Or did, back in David Cartwright’s day. It was something the old man took to doing, adding notes to old case files.”
“What kind of notes?”
“Endings.” Catherine could picture Molly, shuttered in her archive with its carefully modulated lighting, its temperature-controlled stillness, that felt like a crypt. She famously allowed no Dogs in her chambers—there was a rumour she’d once run one down in her wheelchair—but was happy to have her archive used, its pastures grazed, and Catherine could understand that she might tolerate the pencilled intrusions of a David Cartwright. For Molly had never believed that history should be preserved as it was. She believed history was still happening, and with careful tending might produce new shoots. To Catherine, that was what made it dangerous. “He liked to . . . tidy up. To seek completion where there never was any, where there’d been only the messy fog you get when operations collapse. Which they mostly do. Something an archivist appreciates, that tidy endings are for storybooks.”
“And Cartwright was a storyteller? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Perhaps I am. You know how he was in the end.”
“He had full-on dementia.”
“Yes. I don’t know how the condition develops. But I do know that during his last days at the Park, he indulged this compulsion to embellish, to speculate. Especially about operations that had ended . . . unsatisfactorily.”
“And he did that with the Pitchfork file?”
“That’s not here, remember? It’s part of the digital archive. No one can add material without authorisation.”
“But the files of those involved. The personnel files. He might have added notes to those.”
Silence fell. Here’s where the bill arrives. From Lamb’s office came the sounds of his occupation; rustlings from an urban undergrowth. The slow horses ducked when he bellowed, but for Catherine, his furtive creakings were worse. They indicated that he was up to something, but that even he didn’t know what it was yet.
Molly said, “When you’re there late at night. When he pours you a drink. Are you tempted?”
“How do you know he does that?”
“Because some habits never change.”
“I see.” It was a strange question to ask, because the answer was obvious. “Yes. Of course I am.”
“And if you gave in, what would he do? Watch you drink? Or slap it out of your hand?”
She said, “I think it would depend on what mood he was in.”
“Really? Perhaps you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
And perhaps I didn’t tell you what I really think, thought Catherine. “Maybe you’re right.”
Molly said, in a brisker tone, “Cartwright might have added material to those files, but if he did, it’s not there now. Like I said, you’re not the first person to be taking back bearings on Charles Stamoran this week.”
Catherine didn’t need to ask the follow-up question. Molly answered it anyway.
“Taverner was here late the other night. Supposedly researching some of our Cold War warriors, for a memorial service next year. But I know she had Stamoran’s file down, and his team’s, because she didn’t reshelve them as carefully as she thought she had.”
And anything that might have been added by David Cartwright—whether fantastic speculation or considered conclusion—had been removed or erased by then.
So we’ll probably never know, thought Catherine, which might be as well. When Taverner was slotting pieces together, you didn’t really want to see the completed jigsaw.
“Thank you, Molly.”
“I’d ask to be kept in the picture,” Molly replied. “But we both know that’ll only happen if Jackson so decrees.”
Because this was so clearly true, Catherine had nothing to add. Disconnecting, she went to brief Lamb before the shouting began.
Taverner said, “I had a meeting here not long ago.” She was looking out of the window at the building across the street, as if calculating a trajectory. “It went well.”
The flat was on Calthorpe Street, on an upstairs floor. A Service property, its furniture sourced from a catalogue. CC said, “Are we alone?”
“If I’d planned on having you bagged, I’d have arranged that without getting out of bed. So yes, we’re alone.”
No Dogs; no hard exits. He supposed he should be relieved. When he’d taken Al’s gun from his bag it had been with such a prospect in mind, but seriously, who was he kidding? The time it took him to unpocket the gun, they’d have read him his last rites and put a notice in the paper.
He said, “I’ve brought the recording.” On a disk: He put it on the table. “That’s it. No copies. I don’t plan to cause more trouble.”
Taverner glanced at her watch.
“Nor will I apologise. We got the shitty end of the stick, handling Pitchfork. We kept him in check best we could, but afterwards we were treated like dirt. We didn’t deserve that. We were his handlers, not his accomplices. Even if it’s true what they’ve said since, that he ended more lives than he saved.”
“There are always those who’ll pick holes after the event,” Taverner said. “And it’s easy to show the Service in a bad light. But we’re not monsters. No, let me rephrase. We’re sometimes monsters, but we have to be. To kill the bigger monsters. And we make mistakes, but who doesn’t? The royal family? The Post Office?” Her words were clipped, precise, delivered without passion. Just another debate in the office. “And we don’t own up to those mistakes for the same reason nobody else does. That once we did, we’d lose all credibility.”