Lamb stared for a while, then said, ‘That was hurtful. Tact’s just something that happens to carpets far as you drunks are concerned, isn’t it?’
‘I did miss something,’ Catherine said, unperturbed. ‘You had Emma Flyte locked to a chair while this happened.’ She sipped tea. ‘That’s going to look good on the report.’
‘Nah, that plays in our favour. If she’d called it in soon as we loosed her, we’d be neck-deep in Dog shit by now. We’re not, or no more than usual. Which means she kept it to herself, which means she took my point. Anyone who knows what’s going on needs to keep their head down. This one’s toxic.’
‘They’re all toxic, Jackson.’
He looked at her sharply, but she was staring into her tea, as if expecting to find leaves there, as if expecting them to offer answers.
Her phone buzzed, and she checked the incoming text. ‘Louisa and Shirley are heading back.’
‘A grateful nation sighs its relief.’
‘Claude Whelan’s a sensible man, you know. Bypass Lady Di, take this straight to him. He’s not going to have us all buried in some black prison somewhere just because we know more than we should.’ She sipped tea. ‘They don’t really have troublesome agents taken care of any more. If they did, you’d not have lasted this long.’
‘Depends how much trouble they cause. But let’s wait and see what the Fantastic Four have to report before making any decisions. I mean, I don’t wipe my arse before taking a dump, do I?’
‘I’d rather not speculate.’
Lamb sneered, then, having brought his arse to mind, scratched it vigorously. ‘Could be worse, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s not as if one of our lot actually killed the bastard, is it?’ And then he stopped scratching. ‘What was that?’
Someone had just entered Slough House.
Roderick Ho was enmeshed in a dream in which Kim – his girlfriend – was explaining that the various credit card refunds she’d asked him to arrange had been a ploy, to allow her to amass enough cash to buy him a present. This went some way towards explaining her phenomenally poor luck in her online dealings, whereby one retailer or another was forever deducting funds from her card without the promised goods showing up. It was the act of a gentleman to put such matters right, particularly if the gentleman in question (the Rodster) had the ability to wander untrammelled behind the world’s digital mirror, moving numbers from one place to another as the mood took him. Even so, he felt a very specific kind of pleasure wash over him at the news. Indeed, if the watch she then presented him with hadn’t been a small octopus, he might have remained in the dream longer. As it was, it wrapped tiny boneless tentacles around his wrist and emitted a strange kerthunk noise, which, as Ho opened his eyes, coincided exactly with the opening of the door.
The new arrival was kind of a babe.
After wiping his drool-plastered lips with the back of his hand, then wiping the back of his hand on his T-shirt, Ho gave her his second-best smile, the one involving an ever-so-slightly raised eyebrow. No point unleashing full gamma force at Moment One. You have to earn that shit. And it looked like she was going to play the hard-to-get game, because she remained stony-faced as she folded her arms and leaned against the wall. She was blonde and taller than Roddy, but only by the usual four inches or so, and he recognised her now, because she’d been caught up in that mess earlier in the year, when Roddy had heroically climbed out of a window to avoid being shot. It was Emma Flyte, Head Dog. Hot dog, come to that. He’d Google-Imaged her once or twice, on the off-chance, but all he’d found were a few newspaper shots from her time in the force. She’d probably purged her online biography. That was cooclass="underline" he liked them mysterious.
She said, ‘This Kim. Your girlfriend.’
Roddy nodded apologetically. It was as well she knew up front he was unavailable.
‘Let’s start with her,’ said Flyte.
River Cartwright was taut as a tennis racquet.
‘Christ on a bike,’ he said.
‘I’ve often wondered about that,’ said J. K. Coe. ‘What kind of bike?’ he added.
‘Are you insane?’
Coe looked out of the window. They were heading back to London, River driving as if Ho’s car were made of glass: every limit observed, every rule of the road adhered to. Not the time to be a bat out of hell, not when half the country’s law enforcement and most of its media would be focusing on local activity.
Before getting into the car Coe had called a news site: anonymously, from his pay-as-you-go. An alley in Slough; a man dead. Then he’d dismantled the set, tossing battery, phone and mangled SIM card onto the hard shoulder once they were under way.
‘That was a serious question,’ River said. ‘Are you insane?’
‘They used the word “troubled”. And “distressed”. Nobody ever said “insane”.’ Coe pursed his lips at the memory. ‘And these were experts,’ he said.
‘Because you not only act like a fucking psycho, you’re starting to rack up a score. What do we do now?’
‘I think we stay on the motorway.’
‘… Are you finding this funny?’
‘No,’ said Coe, though his tone suggested: Well, maybe a bit.
A police car flashed past in the opposite direction; then another, and another. River had the feeling he was driving into the heart of a storm, from which these vehicles were being hurled at great speed. The thought of what awaited them at journey’s end made him want to slam the brakes on. On the other hand, what lay behind needed intervening distance, fast.
It might be wise, he thought, to concentrate on driving for the time being.
‘See your phone?’ said Coe.
‘Why?’
‘News.’
River fished it from his pocket and tossed it at Coe, hoping it might take his eye out or something.
‘PIN?’
River told him.
Coe went online and looked at Twitter. ‘There you go.’
There were already seven tweets hazarding, announcing, speculating about what had happened in Slough. An eighth appeared. Then more. It seemed a self-propelled process, like watching facts being established through sheer weight of numbers.
‘And how does that help?’
‘I think the more confusion the better, don’t you?’
As a guiding principle, thought River, not necessarily. Though under the circumstances, maybe it was for the best.
Coe had more colour in his cheeks than River remembered seeing before; the hood of his hoodie was pooled around his shoulders and his earbuds were loose round his neck. Once before he’d killed someone: had the same thing happened then? River had the horrible feeling it might have.
He said, ‘We talked about this. Didn’t we? You said you weren’t going to kill anyone.’
‘I said I wasn’t going to shoot them.’
‘This isn’t the time to split hairs.’
Coe said, ‘I didn’t do it on purpose.’
‘You dropped a tin of paint—’
‘Knocked.’
‘—must weigh God knows how much—’
‘It shouldn’t have been left on the scaffolding.’
‘—from a height of like forty feet—’
‘I’d say thirty.’
‘—onto a man’s head.’
‘In my defence,’ said Coe, ‘if I’d been aiming for him, I’d have missed.’
‘That’s not really a defence, though, is it? More an admission of guilt.’