“Moult?”
But Moult had stepped out of River’s line of vision, and all he could hear was feet tracking over rough ground.
“Moult!”
Then not even that.
As carefully as he could, River moved his head to face the sky again. He took a deep breath and bellowed and at the same time arched his back, as though the same rage was trying to burst through his stomach. The trolley rattled, but the clothesline bit deeper, and River’s bellow became a scream that soared into the branches above, then howled around the broken walls surrounding him. And when it was done he was still secured in place, flat on his back on a trolley in the dark. He was nowhere near escape, and there was no one near to hear him.
And time, he’d come to realise, was running out.
Behind its powder, laid thickly as butter on bread, Molly Doran’s face was immobile. Even once Lamb had finished she remained silent for upwards of a minute. Then: “And you think it was him. Katinsky. All those years ago, you think he was the one took Dickie Bow.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s waited all these years to make his second move.”
“No. Whatever the plan was then, it was rendered obsolete by the end of the Cold War. No, he’s up to something else now. But Dickie Bow came in handy.”
“And the cicadas? They’re real too?”
“The best disguise for any network is if the opposition think they’re ghosts. Nobody went looking for Alexander Popov’s cell, because we thought it was a legend. Like Popov himself.”
“Who Katinsky invented.”
“Yes. Which to all intents and purposes,” Lamb said, “means that’s who he is. Nikolai Katinsky is Alexander Popov.”
“Oh Christ, Jackson. You’ve raised the bogeyman, haven’t you?”
Lamb leaned back. In the soft light, he looked younger, possibly because he was reliving ancient history.
Molly let him think. The shadows over the stacks had grown longer, here in this sunless cellar, and experience told her this was her mind playing tricks; adjusting her surroundings to the rhythms of a normal day. Outside, morning was coming. Regent’s Park, never entirely asleep, would soon be shaking off its night-creeps, those spidery sensations that occupy buildings when they’re dark. The day shift would have been alarmed to learn of their existence.
When Lamb stirred, she prodded him with a question. “So what’s he up to, then? Popov?”
“I don’t know. Don’t know what and don’t know why now.”
“Or why he grouped his network in Upshott.”
“That either.”
“Dead lions,” Molly said.
“What about them?”
“It’s a kids’ party game. You have to pretend to be dead. Lie still. Do nothing.”
“What happens when the game’s over?” Lamb asked.
“Oh,” she said. “I expect all hell breaks loose.”
His mobile phone was in his pocket.
As information went, this was on a par with a knowledge of penguins’ mating habits: partly a comfort, partly a puzzle, but of no real practical value. The puzzle part was wondering why Moult hadn’t taken it. But either way, it might as well have been lodged in a branch of the tree above him.
He’d stopped struggling, because this only brought pain. Instead, he was sorting through everything he knew, or thought he knew, about what Moult was up to, and however far and wide his speculation ranged, it always returned to the same point: the sacks of fertiliser he’d found stacked on the trolley in the hangar.
Why had Moult even taken him there, if it housed secrets he wanted to keep? And if Catherine’s information was accurate, and the village was packed with Soviet sleepers, where did Moult fit in anyway? Though as light seeped into the sky, these questions faded into the background, and the image of those sacks of chemical fertiliser took their place.
Fertiliser, which, under the right conditions, acted exactly like a bomb.
And which River had last seen stacked next to an aeroplane like so much luggage.
Lamb went out for a smoke, but on the pavement remembered he’d finished his last cigarette earlier, so walked to the tube station and bought a packet at the 24-store. Back near Regent’s Park’s front door he lit a second from the stub of his first, and gazed up at a sky that was lightening by the minute. Traffic was now a constant hum. Days began like that now; a gradual accrual of detail. When he’d been younger, they’d started like a bell.
Nick Duffy appeared again, as he had earlier. He emerged from a parked car, and joined Lamb on the pavement.
“You smoke too much,” he said.
“Remind me what the right amount is?”
Across the way, trees stirred as if troubled by bad dreams. Duffy rubbed his chin. His knuckles were scraped red.
He said, “Every month she gets a cheque. Once in a while, a little job to do. Providing bed and board to someone passing through under the radar. Or being a post office, or an answering service. All low-key shit, the way she tells it.”
“Until Min Harper.”
“She got the call late. Whoever it is used the code she responds to. Bring your car, underground garage round back of Edgware Road.” Duffy had slipped into telegraphese, to spare himself unnecessary words. “Two of them plus, her words, a drunk bloke they’re carrying.”
“She ever see them before?”
“Says not.”
He paused again. Then told Lamb what Rebecca Mitchell had told him, eventually: that one of the pair had smashed Min Harper’s head against the concrete floor of the garage, while the other had backed Rebecca Mitchell’s car up. The next part had been like a kids’ game: balance the man on the bicycle, smack the car into him. Once they’d made sure his neck was broken, they’d loaded bike and body into their own car, and moved the scene somewhere else.
When he’d finished, Duffy stood staring at the trees, as if he suspected their rustling was a secret conversation, and what they were talking about was him.
Lamb said, “It should have been picked up.”
“They took photos. Laid the body and bike out the way they fell in the garage.”
“Still should’ve been picked up.” Lamb threw his cigarette away, and sparks burst. “You did a half-arsed job.”
“No excuses.”
“Damn right.” He wiped his face with a hand smelling of tobacco. “Was she keen to talk?”
“Not so much.”
Lamb grunted.
After a while, Duffy said, “He must have seen something he wasn’t supposed to see.”
Or someone, thought Lamb. He grunted again, then went back through the big door.
This time, stepping out of the lift, he was met by an overgrown boy in a sweatshirt with Property of Alcatraz stamped on it, and glasses with heavy black frames. “You’re Jackson Lamb?” he asked.
“What gave it away?”
“The coat, mostly.” He shook the pill bottle Lamb had given Duffy earlier. “You wanted to know what this is.”
“And?”
“It’s called Xemoflavin.”
“Right. Wish I’d thought of reading the label.”
“Basic research tool,” the kid said. “Name aside, it’s a whole lot of not much. Aspirin, mostly, in a sugarshell coating. Orange, if it matters.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Lamb. “They sell it on the internet.”
“Bingo.”
“As a cure for?”
“Liver cancer,” said the kid. “Doesn’t work, though.”
“There’s a surprise.”
The kid dropped the bottle into Lamb’s waiting hand, pushed his glasses up his nose, and stepped into the lift Lamb had vacated.
Lips pursed, Lamb wandered back into Molly Doran’s space.
She’d made herself more tea, and sat nursing it in her alcove. Steam rose in thin spirals and disappeared in the upper dark.