‘Assassinate a populist leader,’ said Coe.
The maroon blazer gave him the edge, thought Dennis Gimball, admiring himself in the full-length mirror. Anyone could wear a suit. Anyone did, mostly. But it took style to carry off a less conventional look, and in this business, style was at a premium. How many politicians were remembered for what they wore? Not counting Michael Foot, obviously. He shifted to a profile, slid his hand between buttons three and four, and puffed his chest out. He’d look good on a five pound note, he decided. Hell, he’d look good on a stamp.
He hurriedly withdrew his hand when Dodie entered the room. Not hurriedly enough, though.
‘Were you posing, dear?’
‘Just … scratching.’
‘Well you’d better not do that in front of the cameras. Not either of those things.’
‘One is supposed to pose for cameras.’
‘There’s posing and posing.’ She eyed him critically: not the man himself, but the figure he cast in the mirror. He was carrying a few too many pounds, which was okay for politics. But if it all bottomed out and they ended up on Strictly, he’d need supervision. ‘Did you listen to the news?’ she asked. ‘There’s been another bomb.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Nobody hurt.’
‘Oh God. Well, no. I mean, good. Where? When?’
‘On a train,’ Dodie said. ‘I’ll get the news desk to email the details. When you’re asked about it, which you will be, sound like you know more than you’re saying. As if high-level intel crosses your desk.’
Because these were also rules: sound like you know more than you can say; act like you’ll do more than you intend. And when campaigning, lie your head off – the referendum’s other great legacy.
Dennis nodded and was about to reply when his phone rang. Unknown number. He frowned, prepared to get dusty if it was a cold-caller.
It wasn’t.
‘Speaking … Oh. Oh. When, now? … I’m not sure I have time … Oh. Oh. Well, in that case, yes then. At the flat, yes. Yes.’
He disconnected, slightly cross-eyed, which tended to happen when he was puzzled. Dodie had spoken to him about it, but it was difficult to train someone out of an unconscious physical reaction. Electric shocks might work.
‘What?’ she said.
‘That was Claude Whelan,’ he said.
‘Claude … Claude Whelan? MI5?’
He nodded.
‘What did he want?’
‘He wants to talk,’ her husband said.
‘There you go,’ said Lamb. ‘Soon as a people’s pin-up gets whacked, we’ll know we were right.’ He leaned back further, and shuffled his feet on River’s desktop. Items fell to the floor. ‘Wake me when that happens.’
River said to Coe, ‘That’s it? A populist leader?’
Coe shrugged. ‘There’s always one.’
‘It’ll be Zafar Jaffrey,’ Shirley said. ‘Has to be.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s the nearest thing to a popular politician in years.’
‘Populist,’ said Coe.
‘Same difference.’
‘Yeah, no, it really isn’t,’ Louisa told her.
Catherine said, ‘If everybody talks at once, we’re not going to get anywhere.’
‘Are you their nursery nurse?’ asked Flyte.
‘No, why, are you their new stepmum?’
Lamb said, ‘Well, this is going well.’ He swung his feet to the floor, with an agility that surprised no one bar Emma Flyte. ‘But I’m overdue for a Donald. You lot squabble amongst yourselves.’
He stole Catherine’s newspaper on his way out.
‘… Donald?’ Flyte looked disturbed, more at Lamb’s expression than his sudden departure from her custody.
‘Trump,’ Louisa explained.
‘Thank God for that. I thought he meant Duck.’
‘Dennis Gimball,’ said Catherine.
‘Are we still doing rhyming slang?’
She ignored that. ‘If I was looking for a populist leader in the current climate, he’s who I’d choose.’
‘Sooner you than me,’ Louisa said. ‘I wouldn’t vote for him with a bargepole.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting I approve of him,’ said Catherine. ‘More that, if I was planning on assassinating somebody in that cat-egory, he’d be top of my list.’
‘I’d kill Peter Judd,’ said Shirley. ‘Or Piers Morgan.’
‘Morgan’s not a populist leader.’
‘Whatever.’
River said to Coe, ‘Exactly how many stages were there to this blueprint?’
Coe didn’t look up. He spread his hand out on his desk again instead, and seemed to draw inspiration from the number of fingers he could see. ‘Five.’
‘Five,’ River repeated.
‘I think.’
‘You think?’
Coe shrugged.
‘Because it’s kind of an important detail.’
‘Yes. But I didn’t know that at the time.’
‘So this was just, what, some random memo that crossed your desk?’
‘It was something that came up when I was researching something else. I wouldn’t have remembered it at all if it hadn’t been for the penguins.’
River said, ‘Well, now you have remembered it, can you give us a clue as to what the fifth stage might be?’
‘Hey! Spoilers,’ said Shirley.
Everyone stared at her.
‘Well, we haven’t had the assassination yet.’
‘The general idea is, we might try to stop that bit,’ Louisa explained.
‘You’re all crazy,’ Flyte said.
‘We prefer the term “alternatively sane”.’
‘If any of this is even remotely likely,’ Flyte continued, ‘you need to inform the Park.’
‘Yeah, right,’ River said. ‘Excuse me, Park, but our team gave one of your secret documents to some bad guys, and they’re busy running rampage with it up and down the country. Can you imagine how that’ll go down? And let me emphasise, we’re already not popular.’
‘It isn’t about popularity.’
‘No, but it is about who’s left standing. And trust me, Di Taverner will dismantle Slough House brick by brick first opportunity she gets. And this, if you’re still unsure, would count as one of those.’
‘Taverner isn’t in charge. Whelan is.’
‘You keep telling yourself that.’
‘You’re starting to sound like your boss,’ Flyte said.
‘He didn’t say “fuck” enough,’ Louisa pointed out.
‘Who didn’t?’ And this was Lamb back, of course. He could always be trusted to enter a conversation at its most awkward point.
‘Your mini-me here,’ Flyte told him. ‘He’s picked up your habit of twisted thinking.’
‘Has he? Because I’m not sure I’ve ever put that habit down.’ Lamb did put himself down, though: heavily, on River’s chair once more. ‘What do you suppose they’re doing with Ho?’
‘I imagine they’re trying to discover what connects him to the Abbotsfield killers,’ Flyte said.
‘Yeah, I didn’t think they’d invited him round for tea and Jaffa Cakes. What I meant was, what’s the current protocol for debriefing squashy bodies? Will they be plugging him into something, hitting him with something, or injecting him with something?’
Catherine murmured words. Nobody heard what they were.
‘None of those are standard practice,’ Flyte said after a moment.
Lamb said, ‘Yeah, right, nor is pissing in a lift. But it happens. So which one is it, and how long will it take? Bearing in mind that Ho hasn’t been trained not to reveal things under pressure.’
‘And that he knows fuck all about anything,’ River muttered.
Flyte said, ‘The first thing they’ll do with him is nothing.’