“We’re supposed to be the fucking Intelligence Service,” Lamb pointed out. “Okay, you’re seconded. I don’t get a say in the matter, do I?” The wolfish grin which accompanied this carried a promise of happier days, when he would have a say in the matter, and would say it loud and clear. “Which leaves me with this crew.”
“I’ll do it,” River said again.
“For Christ’s sake, this is MI5, not a kiddies’ playground. Operational decisions don’t turn on who says bagsies. I decide who goes.” Lamb counted them off from the right. “Eenie meenie minie mo.” At mo, his finger rested on River. He moved it back to Shirley. “Meenie. You’re it.”
River said, “I was mo!”
“And I don’t base operational decisions on children’s games. Remember?” He pressed eject, and the CD drawer slid open. He tossed the disc in Shirley’s direction, and it sailed through the open door. “Butterfingers. Pick that up and watch it again. Then go find Mr. B.”
“Now?”
“No, on your own time. Of course now.” He looked round. “I could have sworn the rest of you had jobs to do.”
Catherine arched her eyebrows at River, and left. The others followed, with visible relief, leaving only Ho and River.
Lamb said to Ho, “I might have guessed Cartwright would want to continue the discussion. But it beats me why you’re still here.”
“It’s my office,” Ho explained.
Lamb waited.
Ho sighed, and left.
River said, “You were always going to do that, weren’t you?”
“Do what?”
“All that crap about putting the kettle on, fetching your lunch. It was a wind-up. You need us. Somebody has to do your leg-work.”
“Speaking of legs,” said Jackson Lamb, and raised his so they stuck out horizontally, then farted. “I was always going to do that, too,” he pointed out. He put his feet back on the ground. “Doesn’t make it any less effective.”
Whatever you thought of Lamb’s act, nobody ever accused his farts of lacking authenticity.
“Anyway,” he went on, unperturbed by his toxic gift. “If it hadn’t been for Standish, we wouldn’t have gone all round the houses. Don’t like being out of the loop, for Christ’s sake. Can’t blame it on the rag at her age. Unless pickling herself in booze all those years had a preservative effect. What do you think?”
“I think it’s pretty strange you’re so sure Bow was murdered when the post-mortem said his heart gave out.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, but I’ll let it pass. Here’s another one.” Lamb folded his right leg over his left. “If you wanted to poison someone without anyone finding out, what would you use?”
“I’m not really up on poisons.”
“Hallelujah. Something you’re not an expert in.” Lamb had this magic trick: he could produce a cigarette out of almost nowhere; out of the briefest dip into the nearest pocket. In its opposite number he found a disposable lighter. River would have protested, but smoke could only improve the atmosphere. It was improbable Lamb was unaware of this. “Longridge hasn’t brought my lunch yet. I hope the sorry bastard’s not forgotten.”
“So you do know his name.”
He regretted that as soon as he’d said it.
Lamb said, “Jesus, Cartwright. Which of us does that embarrass more?” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, and the coal glowed orange, half an inch long. “I’ll be in late tomorrow,” he said. “Stuff to do. You know how it is.” A thin cloud of tobacco smoke turned his eyes to slits. “Don’t break your neck down the stairs.”
“Up the stairs,” River said. “Ho’s office, remember?”
“Cartwright?”
River halted in the doorway.
“You don’t want to know how Dickie Bow died?”
“You’re seriously gunna tell me?”
“It’s obvious, when you think about it,” Lamb said. “Whoever killed him used an untraceable poison.”
Untraceable poison, thought River Cartwright.
Jesus wept!
On the tube, an attractive brunette sat next to him, her skirt riding up as she did so. Almost immediately they fell into conversation, and, getting off at the same stop, hesitated by the escalator to exchange numbers. The rest followed like tumbling dice: wine, pizza, bed, a holiday; first flat, first anniversary, first child. Fifty years later, they looked back on a blessed existence. Then they died. River rubbed an eye with a knuckle. The seat opposite became free, and the woman moved into it, and took the hand of the man next to her.
From London Bridge River went on to Tonbridge, which his grandfather inhabited as if it were a territory annexed after a lifetime’s battle. The O.B. could wander to the shops; pick up paper, milk and groceries; twinkle at butcher, baker, and post office lady, and none of them would come within a mile of guessing that hundreds of lives had passed through his hands; that he’d made decisions and given orders that sometimes had altered the course of events, and at other times—more crucially, he’d have said—ensured that everything remained the same. He was generally thought to have been something in the Ministry of Transport. Good naturedly, he took the blame for deficiencies in the local bus service.
What enormous things must have happened, River sometimes thought, to make sure that nothing ever changed.
After eating they sat in the study, with whisky. A fire blazed in the grate. Over the years, the old man’s chair had moulded itself to hold him like a hammock; the second chair was getting the hang of River. As far as he knew, nobody else ever used it.
“You’ve something on your mind,” he was told.
“That’s not the only reason I come to see you.”
This was dismissed for the irrelevance it was.
“It’s Lamb.”
“Jackson Lamb. What about him?”
“I think he’s lost his mind.”
The O.B. liked that, River could tell. Liked anything that offered the opportunity for psychological spelunking. And especially liked it when River bowled him a full toss: “An insight based on your rigorous medical training.”
“He’s turning paranoid.”
“If he’s only just done that, he’d not have survived this long. But you’re saying he’s surpassed himself. How’s this particular paranoia manifesting?”
“He seems to think there’s a KGB wet squad at large.”
The O.B. said, “Well, on the one hand, the KGB doesn’t exist any more. And the Cold War’s over. We won, if you’re keeping score.”
“I know. I Googled it.”
“But on the other, Russia’s President used to run the KGB, who are now the FSB by the way, and they may have changed the letterheads but they wear the same old boots. As for untraceable poisons, that’s what the KGB’s ‘Special Office’ was all about. The poison factory. Back in the ’30s a goon called Mairovsky, Mairanovsky, something like that, spent his whole career dreaming up untraceable poisons. Got so good at it they had to kill him.”
River looked down at his glass. He only ever drank whisky with his grandfather. Maybe that made it a ritual. “You’re saying it’s possible.”
“I’m saying that any time Jackson Lamb’s worried about an old-time-Moscow-style op being run in our back yard, I’d pay attention. The name Litvinenko not ring bells?”
“Not for being untraceably poisoned.”
“Quite. Because that was a black flag operation. You think they couldn’t have made it look an accident if they’d wanted?” This was a favourite O.B. trick; turning your argument against you. Another was not giving you a chance to regroup. “Who’s the victim?”
“Name of Bough. Richard Bough.”
“Good Lord. Dickie Bow was still alive?”
“You knew him.”