“Before the hearing. This is evidence, Dick. It might be evidence.”
The man should listen to himself. There was desperation in his voice; a whiny, needling pitch to make any listener flinch.
Pynne signalled for a refill, and while it was coming pulled the alarm from his pocket. He set it on the bar. “You should know, I just pressed this.”
“Jesus, man—”
“So it’d be best all round if you left now.”
For a moment, it was a toss-up: Wicinski was going to throw a punch; Wicinski was going to make one last plea. In the end, the coin dropped nowhere. The man just shook his head, said “Fuck you,” and got up to go.
“Lech?”
Wicinski paused.
“I’m not saying I believe you. But I’ll do the right thing.”
Wicinski remained motionless for another half-second, then nodded, and went out the door.
Pynne put his unpressed alarm back in his pocket as his G&T arrived.
I’ll do the right thing, he thought, but that didn’t involve running stray names through spook channels. Not after having disappointed Di Taverner once today already. The last thing she’d said to him after this afternoon’s fiasco still rankled: “Seriously, Richard, just go home now.” He had some distance to make up there; to shred that memory, or take a hammer to its hard drive.
And now he had Lech Wicinski to deal with too. But that was okay. That was one problem he could fix.
He was halfway down his glass already. Definitely needed that. Seeing it off with one grand swallow, he nodded a farewell to the barman, and followed Taverner’s final instruction at last.
Catherine Standish, too, was homeward bound. She had stayed late at Slough House, unsure, as so often, whether the work she was engaged in demanded prolonged attention, or whether her delayed departure had been a form of self-punishment. Being the last one out, locking up behind her, provoked a raw awareness, one she usually held at bay. But walking through the rank little yard into the alley, she couldn’t help but think: This. This was more than her workspace, it had become her life, a life now dwindled to a series of dull tasks which, because of her meticulous wiring, she performed to a standard beyond anyone’s expectation, after which the usual weary journey home to the usual empty flat. A decade ago, fifteen years, this was a better future than she might have had call to expect. But twenty years ago, thirty, and it was a ruin of a life, stripped of ambition and hope. A vision of it granted to her then would have rocked her firmament. Might have driven her to drink.
She left the Tube a stop early, called at the Wine Citadel, and bought a Barolo. An understated label, of which she approved. A good wine spoke for itself. It went into a plastic bag, and should have been an anonymous weight in her hand, but somehow wasn’t. There was something about a full bottle, the way it responded to gravity, that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. It was like carrying a big brass key, which would open the biggest door ever heard of.
It was cold on the street—not long now, and this weather would have its way with her bones. She’d creak on waking, slow to a crawl on frosty pavements. There were so many things age could do to you; so few you could do in return. In the end, she supposed, you just stayed on your feet as long as you were able, then took the rest lying down.
Her apartment block was set back from the road, shielded by a hedge; its lobby, when she reached it, was empty and chill. Her heels clacked on its tiles. If she dropped her plastic bag its contents would shatter, and the floor become swampy with cinematic blood . . . The image made her tighten her grip. Some losses were more unthinkable than others.
And then the lift, and its slow rise; and then her own floor, with streetlight streaming through the window at the far end. Her key already in her hand. Her next automatic gesture already in motion.
As soon as she opened the door, she knew the flat was not empty.
She stepped into her sitting room with her coat on, her bag hanging from her hand. The corner lamp was on a timer, and performing its usual magic; throwing its glow at the rows of bottles, allowing them to beam back fractured light, so the room became the inside of a genie’s lantern. This light spoke of blood, and stained the air with a ruby mist. Walking into it, she felt as if she were stepping underwater, and the two possible outcomes of such an action—that she would drown; that she would float—remained in perpetual tussle. This was where she lived, the edge on which she balanced. And its one enduring comfort was, she balanced there alone.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I believe the kids call it chillaxing,” said Lamb. The heating had come on, but he wore his coat; his shoes were puddled on the carpet in front of him. He wasn’t drinking, oddly enough. He was cradling a bottle, though; looked as if he were nursing it, one meaty hand wrapped around its label. She recognised it regardless—a Montepulciano; a low-end choice, but a parent doesn’t judge.
“Leave now,” she said. “This moment.”
“You’re miffed because I didn’t bring a bottle.”
“This is trespass. This is the worst—”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t find the words; they were all trapped behind glass, which was only to be broken in the event of emergency. And while this felt like one of those, she was unable to reach out and perform the required damage.
Something changed; a shift in the light. It was Lamb’s phone, she realised. Lamb’s phone was resting on the arm of his chair—her chair—and it had just winked out, fading into sleep. Which meant he’d been using it within the last few minutes.
Lamb, using his phone. That might be the strangest thing of all in this strange moment.
He said, “No, really, take your coat off. Make yourself at home.”
“You have no right to be here. None at all.”
“Well Christ, I know that. I used a stolen key, for fuck’s sake. That was a clue.”
“I could call the police.”
“Yeah, they’ll think they’ve caught a smuggler.” He waved an arm: it didn’t matter which direction. There were bottles, full bottles, stacked against each wall. They were lined along the bookshelves; parading on the mantlepiece. They were in battle formation on the coffee table, prepared to fend off boarders. “Or are you opening an off-licence?”
“I haven’t drunk.”
“I know.”
“You think I wouldn’t be able to hide it?”
“Maybe for the first half hour. But second bottle in you’d be under a trucker, we both know that.”
“And you’re here to save me?”
“Fuck, no. I’m here to push you over the edge.” He lobbed the bottle he’d been cradling at her and instinctively she dropped the bag and let the airborne missile fall into her arms. The bag hit the carpet with a thud. No damage done.
Lamb plucked another from the stack next to his chair. “Bouchard père et fils,” he read. “Yeah, that’ll rinse the taste of derelict from your gums.”
“And that’s your party trick, is it?” she said. “You’re going to throw bottles at me until I crack and open one.”
“Hey, they’re your bottles. I’m just the middleman.” He glanced around. “Hope you got a discount for bulk. You could buy a house for what this cost. I mean, in Sunderland. But still.”
She walked into her kitchen, trembling. She took her coat off and hung it on a chair: it slid to the floor, and she let it. She grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap. Drank. Refilled it. Drank again.
What had she been planning? She didn’t know. It was madness, to surround herself with this temptation; madness, but a kind of security too. The possibility of a single glass would always hover over her; might be enough to lead her to the cliff. But this—the Aladdin’s cave she’d wrought—was something else, beyond mere temptation. It was the promise of absolute carnage. Lamb was right: two bottles in, there’d be no bottom to the depths she might fall. The life that had dwindled to a series of dull tasks would look like paradise over her shoulder. So why was she flirting with destruction? She heard a bass rumble, and returned to her living room. Lamb had succumbed to one of the coughing fits that had plagued him lately. Red-faced, sweating, he was bent double, one meaty hand covering his mouth, the other curled into a fist and thumping the arm of the chair. He might have been wrestling with demons.