Back upstairs, he looked in on Harper and Guy’s office, but they weren’t back. “Meeting,” Harper had said when River asked, which might have meant a meeting, or might have meant they were taking advantage of Lamb’s absence to do whatever they did these days: a walk in the park, a movie, sex in Louisa’s car. Park, though … They couldn’t have gone to Regent’s Park, could they? The thought stilled him, but only for a moment. It didn’t sound likely.
In his own room, he spent five minutes reacquainting himself with the database of the dead and another ten staring out from behind the window’s worn gilt lettering: WW Henderson, Solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths. There were three people at the bus stop opposite, and as River watched a bus arrived and took them all away. Immediately someone else arrived, and began waiting for the next bus. River wondered how she’d react if she knew she was being watched by a member of the Intelligence Service. Wondered, too, what she’d make of the notion that she almost certainly had a more exciting job than his.
He wandered back to his computer, where he entered a fictitious name and dates on the database, thought for a bit, then deleted them.
Catherine knocked and entered. “You busy?” she said. “This can wait.”
“Ha bloody ha.”
She sat. “Lamb wanted a Service personnel file.”
“Ho doesn’t have access to those.”
“Very funny. File was on an occasional from the eighties. A man called Dickie Bow.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Real name Bough, but his parents were stupid enough to call him Richard. I take it you’ve never heard of him.”
River said, “Give me a moment.”
He leaned back, mentally refocusing on an image of the O.B.—Old Bastard, an epithet bestowed by River’s mother. He’d been largely raised by the O.B., whose long life had been dedicated to the Intelligence Service, and much of whose long retirement was spent doling out its highlights to his only grandson. River Cartwright was a spook because that’s what his grandfather was. Not had been: was. Some professions you never gave up, long after they were over. David Cartwright was a Service legend, but the way he told it, the same held true for the lowliest bagman: you could change sides, sell your secrets, offer your memoirs to the highest bidder, but once a spook you were always a spook, and everything else was just cover. So the friendly old man trowelling his flowerbeds with a silly hat on remained the strategist who’d helped plot the Service’s course through the Cold War, and River had grown up learning the details.
Which mattered. This, the O.B. had drummed into him before he was ten. Details mattered. River blinked once, then again, but came back with nothing: Dickie Bow? A ridiculous name, but not one River had heard before.
“Sorry,” he said. “It means nothing.”
“He was found dead last week,” she said.
“In suspicious circumstances?”
“On a bus.”
He clasped his hands behind his head. “The floor’s yours.”
“Bow was on a train to Worcester, but it was cancelled at Reading because of signalling problems. The bus was taking passengers from there to Oxford, where the trains were okay. At Oxford everyone got off, except Bow. This was because he’d died en route.”
“Natural causes?”
“So the report says. And Bow’s not been on the books for a while. So not what you’d call an obvious candidate for assassination, even if he’d ever done anything important.”
“Which you’re sure he hadn’t.”
“You know what personnel records are like. Secure stuff’s redacted, and anything more sensitive than a routine drop-and-poke is secure. But Bow’s file’s an open book barring some drink-related incident near the end. He did a lot of toad work. Cash for info, mostly gossip. He worked in a nightclub, so he picked up a lot.”
“Which would have been used for blackmail purposes.”
“Of course.”
“So revenge isn’t out of the question.”
“But it was all a long time ago. And like I say, natural causes.”
“So why’s Lamb interested?” River mused.
“No idea. Maybe they worked together.” She paused. “A note says he was a talented streetwalker. That doesn’t mean what it sounds like, does it?”
“Happily, no. It means he was good at shadowing people. Following them.”
“Well, then. Maybe Lamb just heard he’d died, and got sentimental.”
“Yes, but seriously.”
Catherine said, “Bow didn’t have a ticket for his journey. And he was supposed to be at work. I wonder where was he going?”
“I’d never heard of him until two minutes ago. I doubt my speculations are worth much.”
“Mine either. But it’s got Lamb off his arse, so there must be something to it.” She fell silent. To River, her gaze seemed to turn inward, as if she were looking for something she’d left at the back of her mind. And he noticed for the first time that her hair wasn’t entirely grey; that in the right light, might even look blonde. But her nose was long and pinched, and she wore hats, and it all added up to a kind of greyness, so that was how you saw her when she wasn’t there, and after a while became the way you saw her even when she was. A sort of witchiness that might even be sexy in the right circumstances.
To break the spell, he spoke. “Wonder what kind of something.”
“Assume the worst,” Catherine said.
“Maybe we should ask him.”
Catherine said, “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
It wasn’t such a good idea.
A few hours later, River heard Lamb whomping up the stairs like an out-of-breath bear. He waited a while, staring at his monitor without seeing it. “Maybe we should ask him.” Simple enough while Lamb was elsewhere; a different proposition with him on the premises. But the alternative was to sit looking at reams of indigestible information, and besides, if River backed down, Catherine would think him chicken.
She was waiting on the landing, eyebrow raised. Sure about this?
Well, no.
Lamb’s door was open. Catherine tapped, and they went in. Lamb was trying to turn his computer on: he still wore his coat and an unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth. He eyed them as if they were Mormons. “What’s this, an intervention?”
River said, “We were wondering what’s going on.”
Puzzled, Lamb stared at River, then plucked the cigarette from his lips and stared at that instead. Then returned it to his mouth and stared at River again. “Eh?”
“We were—”
“Yeah, I got that. I was having a what-the-fuck moment.” He looked at Catherine. “You’re a drunk, so wondering what’s happening’s a daily experience. What’s his excuse?”
“Dickie Bow,” Catherine said. Lamb’s crack didn’t visibly affect her, but she’d been in the business a while. She’d been Charles Partner’s PA while Partner had run the Service; had filled that role until finding him dead in his bathtub, though her career had been interrupted by, yes, being a drunk. Along the way, she’d picked up clues about hiding emotions. “He was in Berlin same time as you. And died last week on a bus outside Oxford. That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it? Tracing his journey.”
Lamb shook his head in disbelief. “What happened? Someone come round and sew your balls back on? I told you not to answer the door to strangers.”
“We don’t like being out of the loop.”
“You’re always out of the loop. The loop’s miles away. Nearest you’ll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel. I thought you were aware of that. Oh god, here’s another one.”
Marcus Longridge had appeared behind them, carrying a manila folder. “I’m supposed to give this to—”