“You? Retired?” Lamb reached for another crouton, and this time put it in his mouth. “I’ve read more convincing lies on the side of a bus.”
“Maybe not entirely retired. But a mentoring capacity, you know?”
“‘Mentoring’? I have no fucking clue what that means.”
“No, well, there’d be little point in you trying to pass your skills on, Jackson. For a start, nobody’s sure what they are. And for another, they don’t mesh with current values, do they?”
Lamb spat the crouton into his hand. “For somebody who reckons they’re out of the game, you sound a lot like someone keeping score. Here, do you want this back? I’ve hardly touched it.”
Martin indicated a napkin, neatly folded beside an unused place setting. Lamb placed the soggy crouton on top of it.
“All things considered,” he said, “I’d sooner have a stroke.”
“A popular opinion, I’m sure. How did you find me, by the way? And don’t say Regent’s Park pointed a finger. The Park these days, it’s a kindergarten. Our generation could march past in full colours, they’d think we were an outing from a care home.”
“Speak for yourself. I walk past Regent’s Park, alarms go off.”
“It’s the same all over, mind. Broadcasting, light entertainment, even the clergy. It’s like we handed the world to the young.”
“Well,” said Lamb. “They’re cheaper, and they don’t rape the help as often. But hark at me interrupting. Please, continue talking shite.”
“I was simply making the point that being a dinosaur has its advantages. I’ve got used to not being recognised.”
“So you fell into a habit,” said Lamb. “Congratufuckinlations. That the sort of thing you teach your mentalists?”
“I think you mean mentees. But you make your point. You didn’t wander in here by chance.”
“Didn’t have to. An old friend marked your card a long time ago. And she never throws cards away.”
Understanding dawned. “Molly Doran,” said Martin. “How is she?”
“Well, her legs haven’t grown back, if that’s what you were wondering.”
“It happened in Berlin, didn’t it? Her accident. If that’s what it was.” Martin reached for his glass of water. “And she’s still at the Park. I didn’t know that.”
“They keep her in the basement.” A cigarette had appeared from somewhere, and Lamb was using it as a prop, balancing it on one finger; staring at its filter rather than looking at Martin. “And she owes me some favours. So I took her the name Peter Kahlmann, which is one that Lech Wicinski mentioned, and what do you know? Up you pop like a teenager’s dick. Because you’ve used the name before.” He let the cigarette drop into his palm. “That was careless.”
“Once only,” said Martin. “In ’93, it was. Visiting DC.” He shook his head. “She must have quite some database.”
“If by that you mean brain, yeah. Having fewer extremities helps. Less distance for the blood to travel. So Wicinski pins a tail on your old cover, and suddenly his laptop turns into a seventies DJ’s to-do list, which means nobody cares about what else he might have been looking at. And when he reaches out to have his findings double-checked, someone uses his face for needlework practice. You know what that sounds like to me, Martin?” He opened his palm. The cigarette had vanished. “It sounds to me like someone wanted to keep the focus away from the name Peter Kahlmann. In case anyone found out it was actually you.”
Martin laid his knife and fork together on his plate, in the accepted semaphore for completion. He said, “Sometimes we play nasty. Even the youngsters have to find that out.”
“Nice that there’s a moral attached. He’s got a face like a walking Parental Guidance sticker. Or did have, I should say.”
Martin paused. “What happened to him?”
“He finished the job you started,” said Lamb. “You like this place?”
“It has a pleasing pre-war feel.”
“Yeah. It opened in 2014. Are you ready for the bill or what? This thing’s not gunna smoke itself.”
On the street there was slush in the gutters, but the snow had mostly disappeared. Lamb lit his cigarette before they were out of the door. He took up a lot of pavement space, but Martin Kreutzmer, well versed in body language, could read between his lines: Lamb was deliberately moving large; making it implausible, to the casual observer, that he might ever move in any other fashion.
The churchyard opposite, a lunchtime haven for office workers, was empty because of the cold and the damp. As they circled it, Lamb halfway through his smoke already, Martin said, “I had heard about Slough House, but I hadn’t realised it would be so . . . insalubrious.”
“Uh-huh,” said Lamb. “It’s kind of grubby too.”
“Not the crowning glory I’d have expected, a career like yours.”
“Is this you making a pitch, Martin? Because you’ve all the panache of a schoolboy virgin.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’re taking me to the Park. So I wondered if you had some other kind of deal in mind.”
He hoped so, certainly.
You don’t fuck with Lamb’s joes.
“Besides, I’ve been reading fairy stories in the paper. Bodies burned in barns, that sort of thing. I suspect the Park has other things on its mind than whatever a semi-retired spook has been doing, even if he’s been doing it in London.”
That, anyway—or something like it—was what he’d planned to say, but he’d barely reached the word barn before he had another stroke. All feeling left him momentarily, and then came back again, focused on one small spot below his left lower rib. Lamb was holding him upright and lowering him onto one of the empty benches. A taxi sounded its horn, angry at some pedestrian infraction. Birds scattered. He managed to suck air into his lungs, and his vision cleared.
Lamb said, “You may have touched a sore spot there.”
It was implausible that he might move in ways that weren’t large and clumsy. But appearances were deceptive. It opened in 2014. The point Lamb had been making.
Lamb said, “You were burning a barn too, weren’t you, Martin? In a manner of speaking. To destroy evidence, or distract attention. Which is itself evidence, because it means you’re up to something and you don’t want anybody to know what it is. And you’re not worried about the Park. Bunch of kindergarteners, right? No, you’re worried what they’d say back home, which means you’ve gone over the edges, and when they discover what a bad boy you’ve been, well, your future might start looking as insalubrious as mine.”
He could feel the dampness of the bench seeping into his bones.
“They don’t even know about the stroke, do they? But they’ll find out.”
He thought about the sheer pleasure he’d taken in running Hannah.
“And then you’ll get to know what being out to grass feels like.”
The pain had subsided to a burnt-out filament. He said, “It’s nothing, Lamb. You’d laugh if I told you. It’s fun and games, that’s all.”
“I don’t care what it is. But you’ve run up a bill, and I’m calling it in.”
“I’m sorry about your joe. But I didn’t kill him.”
“It would be best if you didn’t talk about my joes right now.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to get a message to someone. He used to be on your books.”
“My books?”
“The BND’s. I don’t really care whose fucking books they are, Martin, I just need to know you can still reach them from the shelf.”
“I carry weight, Jackson. More than you do, judging by your address.”
“We’ll talk about my problems once we’ve established whose bitch you are. You going to be my messenger boy? Or do I burn your playhouse down?”