Louisa smiled, but kept it on the inside. Min had changed these past few months, and she was aware that she was the cause of it. On the other hand, she was equally aware that any woman would have done: Min was having sex again, and that would put a spring in anyone’s step. Like her own, his life had gone down the pan a few years back: in Min’s case, the pivotal moment had been leaving a classified disk on a tube train. His marriage had been collateral damage. As for Louisa, she’d screwed up a tail-job, an error which had put guns on the street. But a few months ago they’d stirred themselves out of their individual torpors enough to start an affair, at the same time Slough House had gone briefly live. Things had settled since, but optimism hadn’t entirely died. They suspected Jackson Lamb now had serious dope on Diana Taverner; enough that, if she wasn’t his sock puppet, she was at least in his debt.
And debt meant power.
Louisa said, “Webb’s the one River put on the floor, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m surprised he got up again.”
Min said, “You think River’s that tough?”
“Don’t you?”
“Not especially.”
She barked a little laugh.
“What?”
“You. That shoulder roll you gave when you said that.” She gave an exaggerated imitation. “Like, not as tough as me.”
“I did not.”
“Yes you did.” She gave the roll again. “Like that. Like you were on World’s Strongest Man or something.”
“I did not. And all I meant was, sure, River can probably handle himself. But he’s hardly likely to dismantle Lady Di’s lapdog, is he?”
“Depends what the lapdog did to him.”
They rounded the lake. Padding about on the grass, on feet too big for their legs, were two annoying birds neither could identify, while a short distance away a black swan glided. It looked cross.
“You okay with this?”
She shrugged. “Babysitting. Hardly high excitement.”
“Gets us out of the office.”
“When it’s not keeping us there. There’ll be paperwork. Wonder what Lamb’ll say.”
Min stopped so Louisa, her arm still through his, came to a halt too. Together they watched the swan patrol the choppy fringe of the lake, and jab without warning at something below the surface; its neck momentarily becoming a bar of black light beneath the water.
She said, “Black swans. I was reading about them the other day.”
“What, they’re on a takeaway menu? That’s kind of sick.”
“Behave. It was in one of the Sundays. It’s a phrase, black swan,” she said. “Means a totally unexpected event with a big impact. But one that seems predictable afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight.”
“Mmm.”
They walked on. After a while, Louisa said, “So what were you thinking back then? When you were so far away?”
He said, “I was thinking last time we got dragged into a Regent’s Park op, someone was looking to screw us over.”
The black swan dipped its neck once more, and buried its head in the water.
Shirley Dander lifted her take-out coffee cup, found it cold, and drank from it anyway. Then said, “Standish?”
“The Lady Catherine …” Marcus made a swigging gesture with his right hand. “She likes the bottle.”
That didn’t sound right. Catherine Standish was wound pretty tight, and with her curiously old-fashioned way of dressing resembled Alice in Wonderland grown middle-aged and disappointed. But Marcus seemed sure:
“She’s dry now. Years, probably. But if I know drunks, and I’ve known a few, she could have put me under the table in her day. You too. Sequentially.”
“You make her sound like a boxer.”
“Your really serious drunk approaches booze like it was a barfight. You know, only one of you’s going to be left standing. And the drunk always thinks that’ll be him. Her, in this case.”
“But now she’s hung up her drinking shoes.”
“They all think they’ve done that too.”
“Cartwright? He crashed King’s Cross.”
“I know. I saw the movie.”
Video footage of River Cartwright’s disastrous assessment exercise, which had caused a rush-hour panic in one of London’s major railway stations, was occasionally used for training purposes, to Cartwright’s less-than-delight.
“His grandfather’s some kind of legend. David Cartwright?”
“Before my time.”
“He’s Cartwright’s grandfather,” Marcus said. “He’s before all our times. But he was a spook back in the dark ages. Still alive, mind.”
“Just as well,” Shirley said. “He’d be turning in his grave otherwise. Cartwright being a slow horse and all.”
Marcus Longridge pushed further back from his desk and stretched his arms wide. He could block doorways, Shirley thought. Probably had, back in Ops: he’d been on raids; had closed down an active terrorist cell a year or so back. That was the story, anyway, but there must have been another story too, or he wouldn’t be here now.
He was staring at her. His eyes were blacker than his skin: a thought that reached her unprompted. “What?”
“What was your edge?”
“My edge, huh?”
“That meant they couldn’t sack you.”
“I know what you meant.” Somewhere overhead, a chair scraped on a floor; footsteps crossed to a window. “I told them I was gay,” she said at last.
“Uh-huh?”
“And no way were they gunna fire a dyke for punching out some arsehole who felt her up in the canteen.”
“Is that why you cut your hair?”
“No,” she said. “I cut my hair because I felt like it.”
“Are we on the same side?”
“I’m on nobody’s side but my own.”
He nodded. “Suit yourself.”
“I intend to.”
She turned back to her monitor, which had fallen asleep. When she shifted her mouse it grumpily revealed a screen frozen on a split-image of two faces so obviously not a match that the program must have been taking the piss.
“So are you actually gay? Or did you just tell them that?”
Shirley didn’t reply.
On a bench at Oxford station sat Jackson Lamb; overcoat swamping him either side, undone shirt button allowing a hairy glimpse of stomach. He scratched this absently, then fumbled with the button before giving up and covering the mound instead with a black fedora, on which he then concentrated his gaze, as if it held the secret of the grail.
A black hat. Left on a bus. The bus Dickie Bow had died on.
Which didn’t in itself mean much, but Jackson Lamb wondered.
It had been raining heavily when that bus reached Oxford, and first thing you’d do on stepping off a bus into the rain was put your hat on, if you had one. And if you didn’t have one, first thing you’d do was go back for it. Unless you didn’t want to draw attention to yourself; wanted to remain part of the crowd heading onto the platform, boarding a train, being carried away from the scene as quickly as possible …
He was being stared at, pointedly, by a woman who was far too attractive to be doing so out of amateur interest. Except, Lamb realised, it wasn’t him she was staring at but the cigarette he now noticed he held between two fingers of his left hand, the one he was tapping the fedora with. His right was already rummaging for a lighter, a motion not dissimilar from scratching his balls. He gave her his best crooked smile, which involved flaring one nostril, and she responded by flaring both her own, and looking away. But he tucked the fag behind his ear anyway.
The rummaging hand gave up the search for a lighter, and found instead the mobile phone he’d collected from the bus.
It was an ancient thing, a Nokia, black-and-grey, with about as many functions as a bottle opener. You could no more take a photo with it than send an e-mail with a stapler. But when he pressed the button, the screen squeaked into life, and let him scroll down a contact list. Five numbers: Shop, Digs, and Star, which sounded like Bow’s local, and two actual names; a Dave and a Lisa, both of which Lamb rang. Dave’s mobile went straight to voicemail. Lisa’s landline went nowhere; was a gateway to a humming void in which no telephone would ever be answered. He clicked onto Messages, and found only a note from Bow’s service provider informing him he had 82p in his pay-as-you-go account. Lamb wondered what fraction of Bow’s worldly goods 82p represented. Maybe he could send Lisa a cheque. He scrolled onto Sent Items. That was empty too.