Lamb nodded complacently. “Good to know I’m not forgotten.”
“Oh, your memory lingers on. Like herpes.” Duffy nodded towards the nearby building. “No way are you getting inside, so whatever you were after, put it in a memo. Lady Di’ll be thrilled. And now, as I’m one of the good guys, I’ll give you a lift to the nearest taxi rank. But only if it’s on my way home.”
Lamb clapped his hands, once, twice, three times. Then again, and then some more. He kept this up until any humour in it was long since gasping for breath, and only then said, “Oh, sorry. You were finished?”
“Fuck off, Jackson.”
“Maybe later. After you’ve taken me into the Park.”
“Were you listening?”
“Every word. See, we could do this your way, but then I’d have to walk back from the taxi rank and do things less subtly. Which means making a fuss, and, oh yeah, fucking up your career.” He produced his cigarette packet, examined its empty recess, then tossed it onto the back seat. “Up to you, Nick. I haven’t fucked up anyone’s career in months. It’s fun, but the paperwork’s shocking.”
Duffy was facing the road, as if the car were moving, and the way ahead had grown complicated.
“If you didn’t already know you’d screwed up, we’d be on the move.” Lamb reached across and patted Duffy’s hand, which had grown whiter since his grip on the steering wheel had tightened. “We all make mistakes, son. Your latest was signing off on Rebecca Mitchell without doing the full-court press.”
“She was clean.”
“Yeah, you established she was a virgin. Which maybe she is, but she didn’t use to be. Not back when she was playing spin-the-bottle with a pair of likely lads from, where was it? Oh yeah, Russia. And she just happens to mow down Min Harper, who’s babysitting some visiting goon from, oooh, where was it again? You really want me to fill in the gaps?”
“Taverner was happy with the report.”
“And I’m sure she’ll continue to be. Until somebody holds it to the light and points out the cracks.”
“Don’t you get it, Lamb? She was happy. With. It.” He tapped the words out on the steering wheel. “Told me to wrap it in ribbons and file it away. So it’s not me you’re screwing with, it’s her. Good luck with that.”
“Grow up, Nick. Whatever order she gave, you’re the one carried it out. So if anyone gets thrown to the wolves, guess who it’ll be?”
For a moment they sat in silence, Duffy still tapping out unspoken words on the wheel. Then the tapping grew disjointed, faltered, stopped, as if the words were trailing away even in his mind. “Christ,” he said at last. “My mistake was answering the phone after midnight.”
“No,” Lamb said. “Your mistake was forgetting Min Harper was one of mine.”
They got out of the car, and headed for the Park.
Long before the journey was over every nerve in River’s body was screaming for release. He felt like a tambourine, rattled to someone else’s rhythm.
Moult, too, looked like he’d been fed through a wringer. Every five minutes he had to pause and rest. Earlier, approaching the clubhouse, they’d had to drop from sight when a patrol passed. That didn’t happen now. Moult knew the patrols’ routine, that was clear. Whoever he was, he knew what he was doing.
As to where they were going, he was keeping that to himself.
Pausing, he scratched his scalp through his hat and everything shifted, as if his head had slipped off its axis. He caught River watching, and grinned an evil grin.
“Nearly there.”
“Records.”
Duffy had grown paler now they were inside; wore a tight expression suggesting he might soon spring a leak and deflate into an empty, angry bag. “Records,” he repeated.
“That’s still downstairs, right?”
Duffy jabbed the lift button as if it were Lamb’s throat. “I thought your boy Ho was working on an archive.”
“Yeah, well, he might not have done as much as he likes to pretend.”
Some floors down—but some floors above the lowest—they stepped into a blue-lit corridor. A door hung open at its far end, and the light streaming through it was warmer, library-like. Some of it was blocked by a squat, suspicious shape: a woman in a wheelchair; quite round, with a messy cap of grey hair, and a face powdered to clownish white. As they approached, her expression changed from suspicion to pleasure, and by the time the two men reached her, she had opened her arms.
Lamb bent down for her hug, while Nick Duffy looked on as if witnessing an alien landing.
“Molly Doran,” Lamb said, when the woman released him. “And not looking a day older.”
“One of us has to keep in shape,” she said. “You’ve gotten fatter, Jackson. And that coat makes you look like a vagrant.”
“It’s a new coat.”
“New when?”
“Since I last saw you.”
“That’s fifteen years.” She released him and looked at Duffy. “Nicholas,” she said pleasantly. “Fuck off. I won’t have the Dogs on my floor.”
“We go wherever we—”
“Ah-ah.” She waggled a short fat finger. “I won’t. Have. The Dogs. On. My. Floor.”
“He’s just going, Molly,” Lamb assured her. He turned to Duffy. “I’ll be here.”
“It’s the middle of the—”
“Waiting.”
Duffy stared, then shook his head. “He used to warn me about you. Sam Chapman did.”
“He had a few things to say about you too,” Lamb said. “Once he’d run the numbers on Rebecca Mitchell. Here.” He produced the pill bottle he’d taken from Katinsky’s office. “Get this checked out while you’re at it.”
Whatever Duffy had to say in reply was lost as the lift doors closed.
Lamb turned to Molly Doran. “How come they’ve got you on the nightshift?”
“So I don’t frighten the youngsters. They take one look at me, see their future, and piss off to the City instead.”
“Yeah, I thought it would be something like that.”
Her wheelchair, which was cherry-red with thick velvet armrests, had the turning-circle of a doughnut. She spun it on the spot and led Lamb into a long room lined with upright cabinets which were set on tracks like tramlines, so they could be pushed together when not in use: one huge accordion structure, each row containing file after file of dusty information, some of it so ancient that the last to consult it had long since faded to dust himself. Here were Regent’s Park’s older secrets. Which could all be stored on the head of a pin, of course, if the budget were there to squeeze it into shape.
Upstairs, the queens of the database ruled their digital universe. Down here, Molly Doran was the keeper of overlooked history.
In a cubbyhole was Molly’s desk. A three-legged stool sat to one side, but the space in front was left free for Molly’s wheelchair. “So. This is where you’ve ended up.”
“As if you didn’t know.”
“Social calls. Never really been a people person.”
“I don’t think either of us were cut from that cloth, Jackson.”
She wheeled herself into her customary place. “It’s okay. It’ll take your weight.”
He lowered himself onto the stool, glaring at her upholstered chariot. “All right for some.”
She laughed a surprisingly bell-like laugh. “You haven’t changed, Jackson.”
“Never seen the need to.”
“All those years undercover, pretending to be someone you’re not. I think they drained you of pretence.” She shook her head, as if remembering something. “Fifteen years, and here you are. What do you need?”