But that was all white noise. What mattered was the impossibility of it: child porn, on Lech’s laptop. Which only he used. Which he was responsible for: security, contents, the lot.
“So I’m going to have to ask you, and this is formal, it’s being recorded, I’m going to have to ask you the obvious. Did you do this, Alec? Did you download this?”
“I—no! No, of course I bloody didn’t.”
“And has the laptop been in your possession for the past week?”
“It’s been in my possession for the past year. But I haven’t been downloading bloody—Jesus, Dick, child porn? I’m engaged to be married, for God’s sake!”
It sounded like a hastily concocted alibi. Men with wives, fiancées, partners—men with lives didn’t do that sort of thing. Didn’t use illegal pornography. Except for the ones who did, of course, but Lech wasn’t one of them.
Dick said, “If it’s an error, an integrity issue—I mean integrity of the system, obviously—if that’s the case, then it will all get sorted out. But in the meantime, there’ll need to be an investigation, and while that’s underway, you can’t be on the premises, I’m afraid.”
Escorted out of the building, as if he’d been caught stealing paperclips.
He turned off the road at the sign for Northwick Park.
The same morning, back in London.
Louisa, who lived out on the fringes, never came into the city at the weekend, except on those few occasions which demanded it—a date, shopping, being bored; call it every other Saturday max, or three a month at most—and yet here she was, Soho, like a mindless tourist; one among a million, even in this cheerless weather. She was wearing her new white ski-jacket, and if it didn’t do much for her figure she’d been glad of it walking from the Tube, with London’s air a refrigerated warning. There’d been talk on the radio of a Siberian front on the way. They’d made it sound like a wartime manoeuvre.
The café windows were grey with condensation, and ghosts streamed past in an unbroken flow. Louisa wrapped both hands round her Americano, and the door opened and closed, opened and closed, and by her watch the woman should have been here ten minutes ago. If she finished her coffee, she thought. If the woman hadn’t turned up by then, game over.
It wasn’t like Louisa wanted to be here in the first place.
Is that . . . Is this Min Harper’s office?
Something like vertigo had swamped her.
Mr. Harper doesn’t work here anymore.
She’d been leaning against what had been Min’s desk, something she had watched him do time without number. He liked to stand when on the phone; he’d had restless bones. Sitting at a desk wasn’t what he’d joined the Service for. Her neither. But their careers had been derailed; Louisa’s because she’d screwed up a surveillance operation that put dozens of handguns on the streets; Min because, in what had since become an accepted classic, he’d left a disk stamped Top Secret on the Underground. If there’d been other people to blame, their lives might have felt easier. As it was, both were crippled by shame and self-loathing, which was probably the igniting factor in their love affair. Which had been their business alone, she reminded herself now. Min’s marriage had already been over.
My name’s Clare Addison. That’s my name now, I mean. But I’m Clare Harper as was . . . Min was my husband.
What Louisa figured was, it was some kind of twelve-step thing. Clare Harper was looking for licence to move on. And part of that process was facing Louisa Guy, with whom her late husband had spent the last year of his life.
She finished her Americano and thought: there’s not enough tequila in the world. Forget about coffee: not enough tequila. She didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to be here. But she didn’t leave, despite the deal she’d made with herself.
How old would the children be now? She’d never even met them . . . Fifteen, she decided. Sixteen? That would be Lucas. She couldn’t remember the younger one’s name. George? No, she was associating.
“Hello?”
Hadn’t even noticed the door opening again.
“Oh. Yes.”
“You’re . . . ?”
“I’m Louisa, yes.” She stood. “And you must be Clare.”
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
“No, that’s okay.” There was a moment where nothing was happening; just two women, paralysed by meeting. Louisa forced her way past it: “Can I get you a coffee?”
“Oh . . . A latte. Thank you.”
First contact survived, Louisa rejoined the queue, and like a spy studied Clare Harper in the mirrored wall. Except not Harper: Addison. Either way, she was about Louisa’s age, a little older; so call her thirty-nine, or thirty-eight and three quarters for solidarity’s sake. She was a brunette, her hair tapered close to the neck but longer in the front, a style Louisa had tried herself a couple of years back, but didn’t entirely get on with. Wearing jeans and a loose green sweater, which in other circumstances Louisa might have asked where it came from. She didn’t think, though, that they were about to become best buddies. She thought they were here so Clare Addison could stomp on her a bit before moving on. But Louisa wasn’t here to be anyone’s bunny, or even to talk about Min: she was here to say Yes, that was me. Give Clare Addison a face to go with the name, just like Louisa herself had one now. Closure worked both ways.
When she returned to the table, Clare was sitting, hands clasped in front of her. Louisa said some words: she wasn’t sure what—have you come far?; something like that. Clare was nodding, or shaking her head, and Louisa noticed tight lines around her mouth, the way her eyes flickered left to right, as if she were expecting somebody else. The tension seemed unnecessary. Whatever was going to happen, the worst was in the past. Wounds healed.
She made to say more words, useful ones this time, but Clare was already speaking.
“You worked with Min, right? At this place—Slough House?”
“That’s what they call it.”
“It’s where they assigned him after he messed up that time.”
“Yes,” said Louisa. She didn’t understand why the woman was going the long way round. What did she want, a day-by-day account of their affair? Because screw that. She was prepared to offer sympathy, but wasn’t about to bare her soul. “Clare, I don’t know how much Min told you about me, or about Slough House, but you have to understand there are some things I can’t talk about.”
“He didn’t tell me much. Just that it was a punishment posting, which I’d already worked out. And he didn’t talk about his colleagues at all. That’s why I rang his old number. I didn’t know who to ask for, otherwise.”
“You didn’t . . .”
“He talked about your boss, a dreadful man. Is he still there?”
“Oh yeah.”
“But I couldn’t remember his name.” Clare’s eyes became still at last, and she focused on Louisa. “And you were in the same office? On the next desk?”
“It’s an old-fashioned set-up,” she heard herself saying. “Not open-plan or anything.” Her voice faded away at the impossibility of putting Slough House into a modern office context. “He didn’t talk about any of us? His colleagues?”
“We weren’t together long, after he was posted there. He was in such a state. He couldn’t believe he’d messed up so bad.”
“No . . .”
“He heard about it on the radio, you know. On Today. An item about a classified disk being found on the Tube. They were onto the weather before he realised it was him they were talking about.”