Happily, this time he provided it.
It was the day before the summit, and Arkady Pashkin had arrived. He was in the Ambassador on Park Lane. The traffic outside was an angry mess, a fistfight continued by other means; in the lobby, there was only the trickling of water from a small fountain, and a polite murmur from the reception desk, whose guardians had been drawn from the pages of Vogue. Wealth had once fascinated Louisa Guy, the same way the flight of birds had: the attempt to comprehend something eternally out of reach could be dizzying. But three weeks since Min’s death, she observed how the rich live as a series of security details. Shots fired outside would reach the lobby as corks being popped. Someone mown down by a car would be lost entirely; wouldn’t be countenanced by the purified air.
Behind her, Marcus Longridge said, “Cool.”
Marcus and Louisa had been paired. She didn’t like it, but it was part of a deal she’d lately made. This deal was apparently with the Service, or more particularly Spider Webb, but in fact was one she’d made with reality. The hard part was not letting on how much she’d been prepared to give away. What she’d wanted was to stay on the job; specifically, on the assignment she and Min had been handed. What she’d been prepared to give away was everything.
Pashkin was in the penthouse. Why would anyone imagine otherwise? The lift made less noise than Marcus’s breathing, and its doors opened straight into the suite, where Piotr and Kyril waited, the former smiling. He shook hands with Marcus, and said to Louisa, “It’s good to see you again. I was sorry to hear about your colleague.”
She nodded.
Kyril remained by the lift while Piotr led them across the large pale room, which was thickly carpeted and smelt of spring flowers. Louisa wondered if they pumped scent in through vents. Pashkin rose from an armchair at their approach. “Welcome,” he said. “You’re the Energy people.”
“Louisa Guy,” Louisa said.
“Marcus Longridge,” Marcus added.
Pashkin was in his mid-fifties, and resembled a British actor she couldn’t put a name to. Of average height but broad-shouldered, he had thick black hair left deliberately vague; sleepy eyes under heavy brows. There was more hair on his chest, easily visible beneath an open-necked white shirt, which was tucked into dark-blue jeans. “Coffee? Tea?” He raised an eyebrow at Piotr, who was hovering. Had she not known him for a goon, Louisa would have assumed him a butler, or the Russian equivalent. A valet. A man’s man.
“Nothing for me.”
“We’re fine. Really.”
They settled on easy chairs arranged round a rug that looked a hundred years old, but in a good way.
“So,” Arkady Pashkin said. “Everything is ready for tomorrow, yes?”
He was addressing them both, but speaking to Louisa. That was apparent.
And fine by her.
Because on that bad bad night when Min Harper had died, Louisa had felt she’d fallen through a trapdoor; had suffered that internal collapse you get when the floor disappears, and you’ve no idea how far away the ground is. It should have surprised her afterwards, how swiftly she’d assimilated the fact of Min’s death; as if, all this time, she’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. But nothing surprised her any more. It was all just information. The sun rose, the clock spun, and she conformed to their established pattern. It was information. A new routine.
Except, ever since, she’d had an ache at the hinge of her jaw; intermittently, too, her mouth would flood with saliva, repeatedly, for minutes at a time. It was as if she were weeping from the wrong orifice. And when she lay in the dark, she feared that if she fell asleep her body would forget to breathe, and she’d die too. Some nights she’d have welcomed this. But on most she clung to the deal instead.
It was the deal that stopped her falling further, or at least promised a survivable landing. The deal was the branch growing out of the cliffside; the open-topped truck parked below, bearing a fresh load from the pillow factory. It was in Regent’s Park that it had come to life. This was four days after Min’s death, and the weather had perked up, as if in consolation. There were interview suites on the Park’s upper floors where they enjoyed watercooler moments rather than waterboarding incidents, and this one had comfortable seating, and framed posters from classic movies on the walls. It had been kitted out since Louisa had last been here, and even if everything else in her life had felt normal would still have rung strange. Like returning to school and finding they’d turned the sixth form into an aromatherapy centre.
James Webb did sympathy like he’d studied the textbook. “I’m sorry for your loss.” An American textbook. “Min was a fine colleague. We’ll all miss him.”
She said, “If he was that fine, he’d not have been at Slough House, would he?”
“Well—”
“Or gone cycling through heavy traffic pissed. In the rain.”
“You’re angry with him.” He pursed his lips. “Have you talked to anyone? That can … help.”
What would help more would be to plant her fist in the middle of that mouth. But she’d learned the hard way what others expect from grief, so she lied: “Yes. I have.”
“And taken leave?”
“As much as I need.”
Which had been a day.
His gaze turned towards the windows. These overlooked the park across the road, and because it was mid-morning there was a lot of pre-school traffic out there: women, prams, toddlers exploring grass verges. A car backfired and a flock of pigeons erupted, swam a figure eight through the air, and resettled on the lawn.
“I don’t mean to sound insensitive,” he said, “but I have to ask. Are you okay to continue the assignment?”
He had lowered his voice. This was theoretically a griefmeeting, but they were alone, and she’d known he’d bring up the Needle job.
“Yes,” she said.
“Because I can—”
“I’m fine. Angry, okay, I’m angry with him. It was a stupid thing to do, and he ended up—well, he died. So yes. Angry. But I can still do my job. I need to do my job.”
She thought she’d pitched that right—with the right amount of emotion. If he thought her a zombie, that would be as bad as thinking her hysterical.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He looked relieved. “Well. Okay then. That’s good. It would be, ah, awkward to have to rejig …”
“I’d hate to be an inconvenience.”
Spider Webb blinked, and moved on. “Keep me abreast of developments, then.” A phrase from another textbook; one with a chapter on how to let subordinates know the meeting was over.
He walked her to the door. There’d be someone outside to take her downstairs, repossess her visitor’s badge, and see her off the premises, but these signs of exile, which once would have loosed bees in her mind, were irrelevant. She was still assigned to the Needle job. It was a done deal. That was all that mattered.
As he held the door, Webb said, “You’re right, though.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Harper shouldn’t have been on the road after drinking. It was an accident, that’s all. We looked into it very carefully.”
“I know.”
She left.
Perhaps, she thought, as she was guided downstairs; perhaps, once this was over, and she’d found out why Min had died, and killed those responsible, she’d come back and throw Spider Webb through that window he enjoyed looking out of.
It depended on her mood.
While Kelly showered River pulled boxers and a shirt on, then roamed the bedroom, collecting clothes. Some, it turned out, were still downstairs. Well, she’d only come round for coffee. In the sitting room he found her shirt; also her shoulder bag, a bulky thing which had shed its load across the floor. He uprighted it, returning to its recesses her mobile, her purse, a paperback and her sketchpad, but he leafed through the sketchpad first: the nearby treeline, the road as it left the village, a group gathered on the patio behind the pub. She wasn’t good at faces. But there was a nice study of St Johnno’s, and another of its graveyard, each headstone a pencil-shaded stubbiness around which long grass wilted; and several aerial studies of the village—Kelly Tropper flew. The last page was strange, not so much a sketch as a design: a stylised city landscape, its tallest skyscraper struck by jagged lightning. Scribbled-over words had been scrawled along the bottom edge.