The O.B. had spent his retirement years in Kent, but would be buried in London, as Rose had been. The memory of that day was one River kept sealed, and he and the old man had rarely talked of it. But it had been there in their silences; in the gaps between the stories his grandfather told. When River arrived at the house unexpectedly, he had sometimes felt he was interrupting a conversation; that even now, with Rose in her grave, the pair shared secrets. Not all spies’ partners knew the truth, that their other half lived on Spook Street. But Rose had always been in the know. She’d held the door open between her husband’s different addresses, allowing him to step into the light when the day’s dark deeds were done.
But all that was long ago. For the last year of his life, his grandfather’s conversations had had no anchor, and whether he’d been talking to Rose, who was absent, or River, who was not, made no difference; he would drift with the prevailing current, his conversation spinning into eddies or battering invisible rocks. All his life, River had heard tales from the old man’s past, the failures, the victories, the stalemates, and he had learned to read between the lines enough to tell which was which. But no longer. The scraps he heard now were remnants from a shot memory; tattered flags blown by conflicting winds. You’d need a map to know which side the old man had been on. Which might have been the last secret he needed to impart to his grandson; that in the end, all lines blurred. That no day had firm borders.
But but but. This day had come.
So had his mother.
He hadn’t been sure she’d turn up. Their phone conversation, the day the O.B. died, had been one of tortured small talk, “So apart from that, how are you?” being his mother’s most memorable contribution. She was currently ‘wintering’ in Brighton, a term he’d only heard her use in Mediterranean contexts before, and he wondered if she were lowering her ceilings; whether the comfort the late Mr. Dunstable left her in had begun to leak at the seams. He hoped not. River hadn’t lived with his mother since he was seven, when she’d left him at her parents’ door, and his fading memories of the life they’d shared were scrappy and unfulfilled. Until lately, when he’d thought about those years, the context had been one of bad parenting, but now he thought about how unhappy she must have been, how desperate. He didn’t think she’d survive another taste of that. He was pretty certain he wouldn’t survive hearing about it.
So it was a relief when she arrived at St. Leonard’s in a taxi she’d evidently hired on the south coast: evidence of economy measures—travelling by train, or, God forbid, coach—would have indicated not merely penury but a character transplant. He’d seen enough of that with the O.B.
He’d been waiting at the roadside end of the gravel drive, next to the eight-foot hedge that shielded the chapel from view. Once she’d waved her car off she hugged him, and he felt for a moment that life could have been different. But only for a moment, and only until she spoke.
“How did you get to be so big?” she complained. “Having a son your size. It’s very ageing.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”
“I don’t suppose it’s entirely your fault.”
There were times he could admire his mother’s self-absorption: it was a rare example of her showing total commitment. “You decided to come, then.”
She looked around. She was holding a single lily wrapped in cellophane, and now the hugging was done she resumed a two-handed grip on it, as if it were an assault weapon. “Where is everyone?”
“The service doesn’t start for forty-five minutes.”
“You said eleven sharp!”
“And it’s quarter past now,” he explained. “Which is why I lied.”
Cruel as it was to deprive Isobel of her big entrance, he felt he had enough to cope with already.
“I suppose you think that was clever.”
He kind of did, but could see it wasn’t an argument he’d win in a hurry. “I wasn’t sure how long you’d be able to stay. And I thought you might want a chance to talk.”
“I think we both know where you get your deviousness from.” She stroked his cheek. “It’s a good job you inherited some of my charm along with it.”
That was another debate he wasn’t about to get involved in.
She tucked her arm through his. “Come on, then. Let’s look at the final resting place. Plot, I should say. Yes, in his case, definitely a plot.”
He’d give her that one, though he was pretty sure she’d worked it out on the journey. But he was glad, even so, that she was here, and they walked round the side of the chapel together.
“Wonder if he’ll jump in the grave.”
“This isn’t Hamlet.”
“Does that happen in Hamlet?” said Lamb. “I was thinking of Carry On Screaming.”
They were in the back of a taxi, Lamb taking up seventy percent of the available space, and Catherine wishing the day over. She didn’t like funerals—who did?—and hadn’t known David Cartwright in any meaningful sense. Once or twice long ago she’d encountered him, or taken minutes at a meeting he’d attended; and much later, she’d had the brief keeping of him while River feared his life was at risk. He’d been lost to dementia by then, and if it were true that such conditions reveal the secret self, David Cartwright had been mostly cunning and fear, the two sides of his nature entwined and snapping at each other like fox cubs. She shook the memory away; pictured, instead, the bottle she’d buy on her way home, then squashed that thought too. Sitting next to Lamb, your secrets weren’t safe. He had a way of seeing inside your head, and holding what he found up to the light, for his amusement.
She just hoped he wasn’t going to talk about death the whole journey.
“So when you cop it,” he said, “how’d you want to go? Buried, cremated or eaten by cats?”
“I don’t keep cats,” she said.
“You don’t have to. Crafty bastards, cats. They’ll find a way in.”
“Can we talk about something else?”
Lamb cast her a malevolent look. “Why not? Heard any good jokes lately?”
“If life’s taught me anything, it’s that we won’t find the same things funny.”
It had also taught her that when she least wanted Lamb’s company, she’d end up in the back of a cab with him. Like those cats he thought crafty bastards, he responded to being shunned by singling you out for attention. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Here’s a good one. Guess how our new recruit pissed on his chips?”
Lech Wicinski. Catherine had assigned him to Roderick Ho’s office; both Louisa and Shirley had space, but Shirley could be volatile on days ending with -y, and Louisa had made it clear she didn’t want to share. It was like wrangling teenagers. But as to how Wicinski had blotted his copybook, Catherine didn’t know and didn’t want to. Apart from anything else, mere blots didn’t warrant Slough House. Most recruits had set fire to their copybook, shoved it through First Desk’s letterbox, then tried to douse the flames by urinating through the slot.
She said, “Disciplinary files are supposed to be sealed. You’ll have HR on your case if you start talking about your team’s misdemeanours.”
“Really? I never knew that.” He considered for a moment. “Good job I’m the soul of discretion, or things could have got embarrassing.”