Still interesting, then. Not orderly yet.
Roddy had put the pieces back in the bin, or most of them. He was on the case now. And there’d be no stopping the Rodster, now he was back in the game.
Anyway, that had been yesterday. This morning, Wicinski had sat drinking black tea, scowling and reading another letter, pages long. You could almost feel sorry for him, if that was your bag—up to the moment, anyway, that he scrumpled the pages, tossed them into the wastebasket, and stormed out the room like a monkey with a rage on.
Ho waited, but he didn’t storm back.
The pages had all landed cleanly in the basket, so props for that, but seriously, Roddy thought: the dude had looked undignified, stamping out. Gotta have respect for yourself, he thought, getting down on his knees by the bin. Gotta keep your standards up, as he started rifling through it.
He pulled out the first page, uncrumpled it.
Blank.
Odd.
He pulled out another, did the same thing.
Blank.
. . . What was Wicinski, some kind of fucked-up origami artist? Was that why he’d been sent to Slough House, for wasting paper? It took all kinds, Roddy would be first to admit, but seriously: this was weird shit and he didn’t like it.
Another one.
Blank.
And then another. It wasn’t until he got to the seventh sheet that Roddy found one with actual words on, and this rocked him back on his haunches a second, while he took them in.
Fuck you, you little snoop.
Now what the hell was that about?
But before he could decipher it there were other pages to uncrumple, so he plunged his hand back into the bin, touched something solid and snap—Roderick Ho screamed as pain ate him from the fingers up, Jesus, what just happened? He pulled his hand clear, throbbing in agony, and when he saw through a curtain of tears what was dangling from it, another puzzle joined the cryptic message he’d just uncovered.
Why the hell had the stupid bastard thrown away a perfectly good mousetrap?
It was funny, Louisa Guy later thought, how unused she’d become to the sound of a phone. Not a mobile, obviously, but a landline, which, with its limited repertoire, was like something from a black-and-white movie, in which phones were sturdy works of art, all rotary dials and clumsy black receivers. The two in her office weren’t like that, were grey push-buttons, but stilclass="underline" it was months since her own had uttered a peep, let alone the one on the unused companion desk. She hadn’t been expecting it. Apart from anything else, that desk belonged to a dead man.
The dead man was Min Harper.
The day, not halfway done, had already offered surprises, but even when new things happened in Slough House, they felt like old things. There’d been a text from River, bad news, but news that had been coming for a while, and no reply she could make could prevent its arrival. And then the new guy, Lech—Alec?—had been in the kitchen earlier. He’d looked the way any slow horse did the first few days; like someone had slapped him with a shovel. Last week, he’d been at Regent’s Park, and now he was here, and the distance between the two was the kind that, if you stared into it, it stared back. Nothing she could do about that even if she’d wanted to—and there was reason to feel wary around new intake—but her inability to do anything for River Cartwright maybe softened her a bit, enough to offer advice. Not because the new guy was about to step into deep shit, but because even shallow shit got everywhere if you didn’t watch what you were doing.
So she said, “Not that one.”
“. . . Huh?”
“Not that mug.”
He’d been reaching for Clint Eastwood, which wasn’t going to make anyone’s day if Roderick Ho found out.
“Your office-mate gets touchy if other people use his stuff.”
“. . . Seriously?”
“Famous for it.”
“Talk about anal.”
“. . . Yeah, a word to the wise? Don’t say that in front of Lamb. He’ll take it as an invitation.”
Which was enough to be getting on with. Any more would count as spoilers. So she just added, “Good luck,” and carried her coffee to her office. On the way she heard a shriek from Ho’s room and wondered what that was about, but not enough to go and find out.
And twenty minutes after that, the phone had rung.
For a while—five rings—she stared at the offending instrument, its drring-drrings churning the office air. Wrong number? She hoped so. In the animal centre of herself, was certain that no good would come of picking up. Until, from somewhere overhead, a familiar note of irritation, Will somebody answer that fucking phone?, so she stood at last, crossed to the other desk, and lifted the receiver.
“. . . Henderson’s.”
“Is that . . . Is this Min Harper’s office?”
Something inside Louisa uncurled and shivered.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Harper doesn’t work here anymore,” she said. The words, her tone of voice, came laced with black crêpe.
“I know, I know . . . I just . . .”
Louisa waited. It was a woman’s voice, about her own age, far as she could tell. Unsure of herself. Min had been dead a while. Louisa was over it, in the way you got over a childhood illness; some part of you would always be weaker, but you’d never get ill in the same way again. That was the theory, anyway. And whether it was true or not, Min wasn’t coming back.
“Could you tell me why you’re calling?” Louisa found herself reaching for a pen, like anybody else, in any office anywhere. A pen, a pad, the usual tools. “Let’s start with who you are.”
“My name’s Clare Addison. That’s my name now, I mean. But I’m Clare Harper as was.”
Louisa’s pen made no mark on the paper.
“Min was my husband,” the woman said.
With power comes responsibility, along with the opportunity to stick it to those who’ve annoyed you on your way up. Diana Taverner wasn’t gauche enough to have compiled an actual list, but like any competent First Desk, her mental envelope had several names scrawled on the back of it.
First Desk . . . Even thinking it made her smile.
When Claude Whelan had opted for retirement rather than one of the alternatives on offer—among them, the chance to be taken outside and shot—there’d been no obvious candidate for the role; or none that had survived Diana Taverner’s vetting, which in at least one instance had come close to being the surgical procedure its name suggested, rather than the background check that protocol required. A potentially messy business, but as the individual in question had attended the same prep school as Oliver Nash, and had, on two occasions, attempted to flush Oliver Nash down a toilet on the grounds that Oliver Nash was a sneak and a drongo and a tool, and as Oliver Nash was now Chair of the Limitations Committee, which was responsible for putting a list of potential appointees for the role of head of the Service in front of the Prime Minister, the whole thing was a rare example of the Old Boy Network paying off in a woman’s favour, and could be cited as progress if it weren’t, obviously, never to be spoken of again. But as it was, everything had worked out to the satisfaction of all important parties, these being Taverner herself and Oliver Nash. Taverner had been put forward as the only available candidate in the circumstances, and the newly appointed Prime Minister—herself a needs-must choice, though she appeared to be the only person in the country unaware of the fact—had bestowed her blessing, and Taverner now held the office from which lesser talents had conspired to keep her for too long. And yes, of course she had a mental list of those awaiting retribution, and if some were currently off-limits, that situation would resolve itself in time. For now, she’d make do with those within reach. Hence this morning’s treat: an audience with Emma Flyte, Head Dog.