‘Unless Ho’s been targeted because of what he is,’ said Shirley. ‘One of us.’
‘Ho’s a lot of things,’ Louisa said. ‘But “one of us” is not the first that springs to mind.’
‘You know what I mean. It’s funny, sure, because it’s happening to Ho, and he’s such a tit he doesn’t even know it. But what if whoever’s after him thinks it’d be simpler to plant a bomb in the building? Or storm in with a shotgun? Have you forgotten what happened last time?’
Louisa said nothing. Last time Slough House ended up in the crosshairs, it was Marcus who’d paid the price. And if she and Shirley had anything in common apart from pariah status, it was that they’d both cared for Marcus.
The kettle boiled, pluming steam into the small room. She brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, and poured hot water into her mug. Shirley still wasn’t going anywhere, and Louisa was starting to feel a tug of compassion for her. When Min Harper had died, Louisa had had nobody to talk to. Marcus and Shirley hadn’t been lovers, but they’d been the closest thing to partners Slough House had to offer. The grief Louisa had felt, Shirley was going through now. Not the same – no two feelings were ever the same – but close enough that Louisa could almost reach out, almost touch it.
But once you started breaking down those walls, there was no telling what might come crawling through.
She looked in the fridge, found the milk. Added maybe half a teaspoon of it to her cup. Funny how you always stuck by your own rules of tea-making, even when the bag you were using was full of flavoured dust, and the water tasted tinny.
Shirley said, ‘So what I was wondering,’ then stopped.
Louisa waited. ‘What?’
‘… Nah. Forget it.’
‘Shirley. What?’
‘Maybe I’ll keep an eye on him a bit. Ho.’
‘You’re gonna watch Ho’s back?’
‘Well. Yeah.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Just in case. Case it happens again, you know?’
Jesus.
‘And that’s what you were wondering?’ Louisa said. ‘Whether I think that’s a good idea?’
‘I was wondering if you wanted to help,’ Shirley mumbled.
‘Spend my free time watching Roderick Ho,’ said Louisa. Just releasing that thought tainted the air, like a fart in a crowded lift.
‘Just for a day or two. Not long.’
Louisa sipped her tea and decided it would have tasted a whole lot better if, instead of adding half a teaspoon of milk, she’d gone and hidden in her office until Shirley had left the building.
‘You’re basically going behind Lamb’s back, you know that, right?’
‘You have an objection?’
‘Well, not a moral one,’ said Louisa. ‘I just wouldn’t want to be you when he finds out.’
‘What makes you think he’ll find out?’
‘Experience.’ She remembered the shunt and crash she’d heard earlier. It wasn’t that she didn’t think something had happened, involving a car. She just didn’t think what happened had been what Shirley thought had happened. ‘Look, Shirley.’ And she didn’t feel great about saying this, but said it anyway: ‘I get it that you’re worried. I just don’t think you need be. What happened last time, Marcus and everything, that was bad, sure. But that was just us getting caught up in bigger events. Nobody’s targeting us. Why would they?’
‘You think I’m a flake,’ said Shirley. ‘A cokehead flake.’
Well, yeah, basically.
‘No,’ said Louisa. ‘It’s not that.’
‘Yes it is. So fuck you anyway.’
But she said it quietly, and didn’t look close to grabbing the teaspoon and attempting to gouge Louisa’s eye out. So again Louisa thought: this anger management course seems to be working. Who knew?
‘Yeah, okay,’ she agreed. ‘Fuck me.’
She carried her rubbish tea out into the hallway, but before she could enter her office, River called from his.
‘Louisa? Come see this.’
He was watching something on YouTube, it looked like; some amateur video, anyway. J. K. Coe was at the other desk, and didn’t look up when Louisa entered. That was par for the course. He spent most of the time on Planet Coe: must be lonely up there, but at least the air was breathable, or he’d have choked to death by now. But what was River looking at?
‘Holy Christ,’ she said.
‘It was posted about forty minutes ago.’
The video showed a blurry mass of people running from what must have been an explosion of some sort. Whatever it had been, it had happened on the other side of a glass pane, which was now spattered and mottled with blood and what looked like fur or maybe feathers.
‘Who … what was it? What died there?’
‘Penguins,’ said River. ‘Some bastard lobbed a pipe bomb into the penguin enclosure at Dobsey Park. That’s near Chester. Fourteen of the little buggers died. Most of the rest will too, probably.’
The bomb had landed in the pool, and half the colony had dived in after it. Curious little beasts, penguins, and now half of them were dead.
‘Do they know who …’
‘Not yet.’ River switched browser. The BBC front page was scant on facts but had a screenshot from someone’s iPhone of the carnage, which looked like a butcher’s backroom. Bits of penguin here and there. What looked like an intact flipper. Penguins were funny on land, ballet dancers underwater, but mostly mince once you applied brute physics.
Shirley had joined them. Her face squashed in horror. ‘God. That’s fucking horrible.’
‘“The Watering Hole”,’ River read. ‘That’s what they called the penguin enclosure. Sounds more like somewhere for elephants and gazelles and things, doesn’t it?’ he asked, displaying more zoological knowledge than Louisa was aware he possessed.
J. K. Coe looked up from his desk and stared at them for a moment. Then his gaze clouded over, and he looked out of the window instead.
Louisa felt bad. Twelve dead in Abbotsfield, and now this. She looked at Shirley, whose expression had set into one of sorrowful disgust. It was spooky really, inasmuch as the Shirley she was used to would have been punching holes in the wall by now. Not that she was especially fond of penguins, as far as Louisa was aware, but any opportunity to kick off was usually seized upon.
Before she could stop herself, she said, ‘Shirley reckons we should keep an eye on Ho.’
‘What, watch his back?’
‘That kind of thing.’
‘After hours?’
‘The only harm he’ll come to here is from us.’
‘You know he goes clubbing, don’t you?’
‘I figured.’
‘With, I can only assume, like-minded people. People like Ho.’ He paused. ‘We’ll want hazmat suits.’
Shirley said, ‘That means you’re game?’
‘Nothing better to do,’ River said. He looked at Louisa. ‘You too, yeah?’
Louisa shrugged. ‘Okay, why not? Count me in.’
4
WHEN THE QUESTION AROSE, which it often did in interviews, Dodie Gimball had her answer down pat: ‘Oh, make no mistake. It’s Dennis wears the trousers in our house.’ And this was mostly true, but what she never added was that he also, on occasion, wore a rather over-engineered red cocktail dress he’d bought her for her fortieth, along with various items of her lingerie that he was scrupulous about replacing when accidents happened. It was a harmless peccadillo – in her dating years Dodie had exclusively enjoyed beaux from public school, so hadn’t batted an eye when Dennis’s little foible came to light. At least he had no interest in putting on a wetsuit and having her walk on him in stilettos, which not one but two old Harrovians had suggested as an after-hours treat. (They’d been in the same year.) And say what you like about the system, it did grace its pupils with a smattering of the classics, a bulging address book and a knowledge of which fork to use. State education was for chemists and the grubbier sort of poet. Though she was still a trifle miffed that Dennis had chosen her fortieth birthday gift with his own pleasure in mind.