It was Al who’d found her, after months of searching. Avril had done her part, ruling avenues out. Daisy wasn’t using a credit card, wasn’t on an electoral roll. Driving licence, medical records, council tax; none of the usual snags had checked her fall. The more she looked, the more Avril feared that one of two scenarios were in play; either Daisy had deliberately taken on a new identity, shedding her old existence like a peeled eggshell, or, more frighteningly, had no plan, no design; had simply lost her hold on the everyday. In which case she could be anywhere—lost in the gaps that appear between stable lives—and would be impossible to find, because every gaze would pass through her.
But not Al’s. He found her in a settlement on London’s western edge; a reservation erected in the liminal space under a flyover, between two slip roads. There were caravans, and a heartbreaking attempt at homesteading had been made, with wire fencing marking out territories. A pair of cars, looking like collateral damage from a hot rod movie, were parked nose to tail, and from the rear window of one a pole extruded, a flag tied to it, though it hung too limply to be identified. There were dogs, because there were always dogs, and the air tasted of metal and ancient barbecue.
That same night, they’d gone to fetch her home, CC too, because it would have been a crime not to include him. It had been a straightforward affair, complicated slightly by the dogs. The encampment numbered eleven hostiles, not counting children, because on enemy territory every warm body is a hostile. The men were in their thirties or forties, allowing for some rough journeys, and had made the fundamental error of assuming that CC and Al were what they appeared to be, and Avril herself their harmless accessory. That had been the last occasion on which she had used a handgun, and while she regretted shooting two dogs, she did not regret it very much, not after opening the caravan where Daisy had been kept. They had taken cash with them, all they could rustle together, in case that proved the simplest solution, and in the end Al had tucked a ton into the shirt pocket of the camp leader as he lay on the ground, nursing a leg that wouldn’t ever work properly again. And then they had brought Daisy back into the world.
In the years since, the old Daisy had poked her head round the door, but she still had long stretches of silence. Her voice, like her frame, was frailer than before, like a dandelion being blown. But she had taken young Sid Baker down in a single fluid movement, and dandelions don’t do that.
CC was in his car now, starting up the engine. And there was Al, watching from a different corner: Oh you big hunk of man. He would still put himself between them and the slightest danger, she knew. Danger, these days, was younger and faster than him, but that wouldn’t stop him. Even if Daisy weren’t here, he’d act the same.
The car pulled away. She checked her phone: The tracker was transmitting. That CC hadn’t noticed them showed how distracted he was, which in turn suggested that whatever his meeting with Taverner had been about, it hadn’t included a mindfulness break. Daisy had appeared now too, on the corner behind Al, and as the pair crossed the road towards her, Avril had the sense they say comes with your last moments; not so much that she saw her life flashing before her eyes, but more that she felt it behind her, all its pent-up force propelling her into whatever would happen next.
After the pub, Catherine alone returned to Slough House. It was approaching the violet hour, and traffic was dusty and boisterous: Crossing the road she spent three minutes on the median strip while cars, vans, buses and a trio of wide, expensive motorbikes kicked up a northbound fuss. Looking at Slough House’s windows, she thought them dark and wretched. Why did thoughts like that occur?
Over the road at last, and round the back, and up the stairs. Lamb was in his room, his door open, his feet malevolently planted on his desk, his attention fixed on the landing even if his gaze was aimed elsewhere. Lamb could look at a ceiling the way an artist studied a canvas. You knew that whatever he was seeing, it wasn’t a blank empty space.
“All fucked up in bed, are they?”
“They’ve gone home, yes.”
“Yeah, right. But you can’t keep away.”
Any more than he could. She entered his room, leaving the door standing wide; she brushed the visitor’s chair on which ash had settled, and pulled it across to the desk so she could sit facing him. The smell of alcohol was in the air: It might have followed her across the road, except, of course, it hadn’t; it had been waiting here. A finger-smeared glass sat on the desktop, a healthy measure weighing it down. Healthy might not be the word. Lamb was holding a cigarette, which counted as one of his vital signs; a surer indication than a heartbeat that he was still among the living. It was unlit.
River once described Lamb as a coiled sponge. That was his current mode. At any moment, without warning, he might not do anything.
She said, “This isn’t like you.”
“What isn’t?”
“Not to care when Taverner’s up to something.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care much when anyone’s up to something. Or when they’re not.” He’d found a match, and struck it expertly against his thumbnail. The head broke off and fizzed into the air like a model comet. “I thought you’d have noticed that by now.”
“You care when a joe’s in trouble.”
“These Brain Salad bed-blockers are not my joes.”
“Why not give Taverner a call? Let her know whatever she’s planning is no longer as secret as she thinks it is.”
“Sloth, apathy, lack of interest . . . A whole misogyny of reasons.”
She couldn’t help herself. “Miscellany.”
“Piss off, woman.”
She shook her head wearily. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”
“Then I’m in good company. Even Graham Norton’s not as funny as I think I am. And he’s a regular fucking caution.”
She stood long enough to grind out the very small fire that had begun to take hold of the carpet, then resumed her chair. “You think it’s a good idea to let Taverner run another off-the-books op? Given that the last one nearly got River and Sid killed?”
“No, I think it’s a good idea to notice that when Taverner runs an off-the-books op, people nearly get killed.” He struck another match, off the desk this time, and successfully lit his cigarette. “Except when they actually get killed. So no, what I think should happen is everyone should do what I told them to do in the first place, and fold their fucking arms. Then whatever goes tits up’ll be someone else’s grief.”
“You think they’re useless.”
“And you think they can redeem themselves. But only because you’ve not been keeping score.”
“All they want is to keep some old spooks out of harm’s way.”
“Yeah, what could go wrong?” He reached for his glass and drained about half its contents. It didn’t seem that he found any pleasure in the action, or dismissed any pain.
She said, “Just now, over the road. Discussing what to do. For once they were all on the same side. Do you know how good that felt? You rot in here all day long, drinking that and smoking those, and you don’t care that they all feel like they’re in purgatory. I swear, I worry Shirley will self-harm just to ease the boredom. At least just now, they looked like they were alive.”