‘This infinite patience of mine,’ Welles said. ‘It’s only an act. You do realise that?’
‘I’m gonna hypothesise,’ said Lamb. ‘So pay attention at the back. You served with Flyte, didn’t you? Or at any rate, came into the Service on her coat-tails. She’s Whelan’s blue-eyed girl, or was until this afternoon. Because let’s face it, if she’d done her job right, my little bunch of never-weres would have spent the day sitting on their hands, and Five would have had Dennis Gimball wrapped in cotton wool. As it is, an MP’s been whacked and the Park has egg all over its Oxbridge chops, so Emma Flyte’s brilliant career looks set to hit the buffers any moment. Which means you’ll be out too. That’s why you want to hush up what happened here this afternoon. You’re covering your arse.’
Welles looked at the others, one by one, then returned his gaze to Lamb. ‘And you’re now going to give me a lecture on ethical behaviour?’
‘Nah,’ said Lamb, tapping ash into his own lap. ‘Ethical behaviour’s like a vajazzle on a nun. Pretty to picture, but who really benefits?’
‘Mr Lamb’s colourful imagery aside,’ said Catherine, ‘cover-ups are never a good idea. Look at Watergate.’
‘People always say that,’ Lamb told her, ‘but they never ask what was really being covered up at Watergate. That shit got out, you’d see fireworks.’
‘It’s safest to assume he’s kidding,’ Catherine told Welles, ‘and move straight on.’
‘That was my plan.’ Welles turned to Lamb. ‘From what Flyte told me, you had a whole lot of speculation this afternoon, and not an ounce of evidence. If she failed to report back on that, it’s hardly an error of protocol. She might as well report on gossip in the supermarket.’
‘Sadly,’ Lamb said, ‘it’s possible Flyte didn’t paint you in on the whole picture. By which I mean how we knew what we know. Are you still in the room?’
This last to J. K. Coe, who nodded.
‘Just checking. Tell the nice man about the pretty piece of paper.’
But before Coe could speak, Welles said, ‘I know about the document. Like I told you, Flyte gave me all the details.’
Lamb narrowed his eyes. ‘She really does trust you, doesn’t she?’
‘Get over it. If that paper even exists, it doesn’t prove anything. I could write down a list of targets—’
There was more noise, more commotion. Louisa and Shirley returning; the latter entering the room first.
‘Did you eat all the Haribo?’
Lamb threw something at her, which she caught gratefully, but turned out to be the wrappings from a takeaway. He then nodded at Louisa. ‘Congratulations. Your guy’s still alive.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Of course, there’s the teeniest possibility he had Gimball whacked,’ Lamb went on. ‘Which complicates matters, as you might imagine.’
‘Shirley and I still win,’ she said. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Devon Welles. And you’re Louisa Guy.’
Louisa straightened her hair. ‘Yeah.
River looked at her, then at Welles, and rolled his eyes.
‘Which makes you Shirley Dander,’ Welles continued. ‘So the gang’s all here.’
‘Apart from Roddy,’ Catherine said.
‘Round about now we usually have a singsong,’ Lamb said. ‘But in the circumstances, let’s press on, shall we? You could write down a list of targets. The village. The watering hole. And so on.’
‘And claim it came from Service files, yeah. So what? It’s fake news.’
‘Unless they’ve got something else up their sleeves,’ River said.
Louisa said, ‘What do you mean, he might have had Gimball whacked?’
‘Well,’ said Lamb, ‘that depends on how much we trust the Chuckle brothers here. Coe’s little eyes are all sparkly, you notice, and that’s never a good sign. So either he and Cartwright slipped in a knee trembler somewhere between here and Slough, or something else lit his candle. But’ – and here he turned to Welles once more – ‘I digress. I’m almost certain you weren’t finished.’
Welles said, ‘So all we need do is agree that you all spent the afternoon safely in lockdown. And everything’s tidy.’
‘Yeah, not really,’ said Lamb. ‘Because you wouldn’t need to be here for that to happen, would you? Flyte could have said all that herself. But she’s somewhere else, which I’m guessing means she’s tracking down that piece of paper it would be so easy to fake.’
‘The Watering Hole paper,’ Coe said.
‘Thank you, boy wonder. And if she’s doing that, it’s probably because she’s wondering exactly the same thing I am.’
‘How come they knew about it,’ said Louisa.
‘We know how they knew about it,’ said River. ‘They honey-trapped Ho. Remember?’
‘Funnily enough, yeah,’ said Louisa. ‘But not really what I was getting at.’
‘But thanks for the mansplanation, Cartwright,’ Lamb said. He looked at Louisa. ‘Mansplaining is when a man tells a woman something she already knows in a patronising, condescending manner,’ he said, slowly and clearly.
‘Thanks.’
‘Do you need me to repeat that?’
‘No, I’m good.’
‘Excellent.’ He turned to Welles. ‘We can pretend all we like that we know nothing about what’s happening, but once the Dogs have finished with Ho, that’s not gonna wash. Meanwhile, the big question is, how come these clowns knew the Watering Hole paper existed in the first place?’
‘Oh, right, yeah,’ River muttered.
‘So we can stick our heads up our arses and pretend it’s not happening, like you suggest,’ Lamb continued, ‘or we can walk back the cat and see who we’re really up against. Ideally before they move on to the next stage in their schedule.’
Welles looked round the room. Everyone was staring at him, except Coe and Shirley Dander, the former of whom was focused on his shoes and the latter peering hard into the gloomier corners of the room, possibly trying to locate the missing Haribo.
He sighed and said, ‘So just what is the next stage?’
Everyone turned to J. K. Coe.
Who said, without looking up, ‘Seize control of the media.’
Shirley made a scoffing noise. ‘Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.’
‘They’re right on schedule so far,’ Louisa said.
‘So what, they’re gonna hijack the BBC?’
‘Well, it worked for Graham Norton.’
‘If you’ve finished amusing yourselves,’ Welles said, ‘do you have an actual suggestion to make?’
Lamb shifted his weight from one buttock to another, and everyone in the room bar Welles flinched. But when he spoke it was without intestinal accompaniment. ‘Yeah, I suggest you put your thinking cap on. You need to come up with a story.’
‘For what?’
‘For getting me into the Park,’ Lamb said. ‘For some reason, they don’t much like me over there.’
10
DARKNESS HAD FALLEN OVER Regent’s Park when news of Dennis Gimball’s death broke: the darkness would roll away in time, but news once broken remains forever unfixed. Claude Whelan was heading out the door: a fresh shirt, dinner with Claire; neither seemed a lot to ask. But all he had time for was a brief dalliance on the steps; a few deep breaths holding the summery tang of leaves from the park opposite. Heading back in, summoned by his beeper, he encountered, inevitably, Diana Taverner, also on her way to the hub. Despite the hour and the punishing past few days she looked alert and fresh. There were rumours she had a room on one of the upper floors where she enjoyed blood transfusions, or perhaps sacrificed virgins, always supposing any made it past security. Her chestnut brown hair, naturally curly, was worn short of late. Whelan wondered whether the colour used help. Lady Di would see grey hairs as a sign of impending weakness.