“I read some stats not long ago,” Louisa said. Her job was all stats; she couldn’t avoid them. “Ninety percent of missing teens come home inside of three days.”
She was pretty sure that’s what she’d read.
“His three days are up.”
“Which is why you should be at home.”
“He said he wasn’t worried about a student loan anymore.”
“. . . Okay . . .”
Clare shot her a look. “You don’t think that’s significant?”
“I don’t think anything. I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s something we’ve talked about, the cost of a degree. I’ve told him I’ll help as much as I can, but he knows he’s going to have to take out a loan. And he’s been, well, not obsessing about it exactly. But it keeps coming up. He wants to travel, wants to go to the States, but he’s also aware that everything costs so much. But suddenly he’s saying it’s not a problem.”
Louisa didn’t know how to respond. She said, “What about his brother? You have two boys, right?”
“Andrew. He’s two years younger.”
“And he doesn’t have any idea where Lucas might have gone?”
“He says not. They fight like cats and dogs half the time. They’ll grow out of it, but . . . No. He has no idea.”
“And where did Lucas’s savings come from? Does he have a job?”
“Not during term time. But he was working over Christmas. We were in Pembrokeshire. In Wales?”
Yeah, thanks, thought Louisa.
“We go there often, family holidays. We started when Lucas was two. So we’ve made friends down there, and . . .”
The way she tailed off made Louisa wonder whether any particular friend came to mind. But not her business.
“And he was working there?”
“I know someone runs a catering business, he takes on part-time help. And it pays well. So Lucas usually does a few jobs when we’re down there. It’s cash in hand, so . . .”
She looked up once more as the door jangled again. Despite everything, it was getting on Louisa’s nerves. She said, “Clare? He’s not about to walk in. If you’re expecting him, it’s your home he’ll turn up at.”
“It’s not that, I just . . . Oh, I’m just feeling paranoid. These past few days. As if I’m being watched.”
“. . . Really?”
“I’m all over the place. It’s nothing.”
Louisa finished her coffee. She played it out for a few seconds, hunting for an escape clause. She’d come expecting a showdown, or perhaps a tearful encounter and a few shared memories. But Clare had no idea she’d been more to Min than a colleague, and her missing son was a teenager with a couple of ton in his backpack and a history of going walkabout while stoned. It didn’t feel like anything she should be getting involved with.
Her stonewalling technique might need working on. Clare said, “I shouldn’t have bothered you. Not on your weekend.”
“It’s no bother.”
“You’re right. He’ll turn up. Or he won’t. But that’s no concern of yours, is it?”
She gathered herself together and stood.
“He’ll be fine,” Louisa said. “I’m sure he will.”
“You’re sure,” said Clare. “That’s okay, then.”
“What is it you expected me to do?”
“You work for the security services,” Clare said, a bit louder than Louisa would have preferred in a crowded café. “I thought you might think of something. Not as a favour to me, or even to Lucas. But you were fucking Min, weren’t you? I’d have hoped that counted for something.”
This time, the door slammed instead of just clicking shut. But then, Clare put some shoulder into it.
Excellent Saturday morning so far, thought Louisa. But as she was in town anyway, she might as well get some shopping done.
Lech remembered the memorial as soon as he laid eyes on it. It was a shrine, almost; a drystone alcove, under a tree. There was a statue of the Virgin, of course, and vases of flowers, and saucers holding unlit candles. He wondered about lighting one, but didn’t have a match, and anyway, it wouldn’t flicker for a moment before the wind put it out of its misery. Besides, who was he kidding? He read the inscription, or started reading it, then hurried to the end, cherry-picking words: To commemorate the Polish ex-servicemen who lived here with their families from 1948–1970. Ordeal, deportation, Allied victory. And everything that followed, including, eventually, him.
He could hear shouting from the garages, horseplay, and he closed his eyes, pretending that this was a normal day, and the impulse that brought him here a Saturday whimsy. Sara would be wondering where he was. If he turned his phone on it would confirm this, with a series of irritated chirrups. But Sara, at least, believed in him—or would do, if she knew what was going on, which she didn’t. He’d explained that it was stuff, that’s all; a protocol issue; that he’d been seconded to an office near the Barbican for the time being. Even he hadn’t known what “protocol issue” meant.
The thing is, they found child porn on my laptop. So everyone’s a little tetchy. You want to catch a movie, or shall we have an early one?
Someone had stubbed out a nearly complete cigarette on the stonework, and left it nestled in a rift. He looked at it for a moment or two, then walked on.
When he ran his mind over the weeks prior to the cataclysm, one thing stuck out. He’d done a favour for an acquaintance, a Service drone called John Bachelor, who worked the milk round, nannying superannuated spooks. Just because you’d put your life on the line back in the dark ages didn’t mean you could get to Sainsbury’s on your own here and now. Spooks got old too. So other spooks who were never much cop were assigned to hold their hands, or do their shopping for them. That had been Bachelor’s role: a straight-to-DVD career. Lech had met him just once before, at the funeral of one of his grandfather’s comrades. It seemed, in retrospect, an appropriately Polish encounter; they’d spent an afternoon drinking, talking about someone neither had known especially well, who was dead. And months later there’d been a bill to pay, because Bachelor had asked a favour; that he run a name through the Service search engines; a name, it turned out, that was flagged—a person of interest. Which meant Lech was trespassing. So he’d shut the search down and waited for shit to fall from on high, which he’d expected to take the form of a finger-wagging email, or a visit from a Dog. But nothing happened. Bachelor had rung a day or so later, calling it off; whatever had sparked his need had died down. And that was it: maybe nothing of consequence, except it was the only thing out of the ordinary in the period before the shitstorm.
No way of chasing it up now, either. He was tainted twice over, a pervert and a slow horse, and doors were closing, every way he looked. Any further research, he’d have to use chicken entrails and a dowsing rod.
There was a glitter of wings as a pigeon took to the air.
Lech turned his phone on and checked his screen. Four unread texts and seven missed calls. All from Sara, who was unaware he was a hundred miles away.
As he walked back to his car, passing the shuttered huts, their barred windows, he tried to think about his grandparents again; about the lives they’d made after all they’d come through. Object lesson in overcoming adversity.
But mostly he was thinking about Slough House.
Mondays are bastards, through and through; Thursdays are waiting days, neither one thing nor the other. Fridays: everyone knows what they’re like. But this Wednesday, the day of the funeral, had stepped outside the calendar, and had no borders River could see. Dressing had been like putting on a costume for a role he hadn’t rehearsed. And the feeling in his stomach, a Sunday-night anxiety, had been with him on waking and continued to grow. It made little sense—the bad thing had already happened. Still, he felt as if he’d been diagnosed with a condition that was serious and complicated, but about which he remembered nothing. He’d just have to wait and see.