‘I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell one.’
‘Yeah, but sit down.’ She didn’t move. ‘I’m serious. You’re gonna hear this. But you’ll sit down for it.’
‘Your gaff, your rules, eh?’ But she sat on the chair at last, still holding the sheet of paper.
Lamb nodded in its direction. ‘Nineteen years ago, that was declassified, just like the coding shows. Signed off on by Charles Partner, because he was First Desk then. And nobody can declassify except First Desk.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘But it wasn’t his idea. It was part of an operation called Shopping List. Because there was a traitor in the Service at the time. Oh, not a great big one like Partner himself – we already know about him. But a low level one whose name doesn’t matter, a man who had heavy debts, and thought one way of settling them would be to sell some secrets.’
He raised his glass to his lips, swallowed.
‘Unfortunately for Mr Nobody, he’d barely got as far as hanging his shingle out before he was rumbled. No payday for him. But some bright spark decided this might be just the hook to hang his brolly on. And so was born Operation Shopping List. You see, Mr Nobody had already dipped his toe in murky waters, and there were a few interested parties who knew he was for sale. And what they wanted to know was, what were his goodies like?’
‘So we provided him with some,’ Lady Di said.
‘Oh, yes. He was given a load of worn-out secrets, all jazzed up to look shiny and new. Nothing like feeding the opposition a bowl of dog shit dressed up as caviar. But before said dog shit could be offered as bait, it had to be declassified, else Operation Shopping List itself would have been an act of treason. You can’t go offering classified material for sale, even as part of a sting. Even when that material’s of no strategic value.’
‘Like the Watering Hole paper,’ she said.
‘Yep. A worthless little strategy dreamed up by some ex-colonial, back when topis were the rage. Sounded good in summary, though. How to destabilise a nation state. Leave out the bit about it being fifty years behind the times, and you’d have a lot of Dr Evils salivating over that one.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Mr Nobody topped himself, that’s what happened. Overcome by shame or, I dunno, tied the knot too tight for his Friday night jerk-off. So Operation Shopping List never got past the initial stage. Which was to distribute the list of goodies around the interested parties.’
‘Which is how come the SSD knew of its existence.’
‘Oh yes. It was out there. It was just withdrawn from the shelf before the shop opened. But lo and behold, two decades later, the SSD decides it might be just the thing to get their grubby hands on, on account of the huge embarrassment it would cause us if they wound it up and set it loose right here in the green and pleasant. What looked like a random series of attacks suddenly has the Service’s fingerprints all over it, from a document now dated to look less than two decades old. And here we are.’
‘Here we are,’ she agreed. ‘But I’m still waiting to find out how this makes my dreams come true.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘That would be the identity of the bright spark who set the whole thing in motion.’
Di Taverner closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, they were full of murky light. ‘Claude Whelan,’ she said.
‘The one and only.’
She nodded at the glass in his hand. ‘Spare me one of those?’
‘I’m a generous-hearted soul, as you know,’ he said. ‘But buy your own fucking drinks.’
‘… Who else knows about this?’
‘So far? You, me and Molly Doran. I imagine you’d like to be the one to tell Claude.’
‘What, that his cunning little plan of two decades ago just bit us all on the arse? Yes, I think I’ll enjoy that conversation.’
‘Oh, good. We’re all gonna be happy, then.’
‘And here comes the bill. What do you want, Jackson?’
‘What I always want, Diana. I want to be left alone.’
‘Suits me.’
‘Me and mine. So you can slap Ho’s wrists hard as you like, but send him home when you’re done. I’ve not finished with him. As for the other two—’
‘There’s a strong chance they were involved in Gimball’s death.’
‘Yeah, boohoo. No, I think what’ll turn out to have happened is, Gimball went for a smoke and leaned against some scaffolding on which some muppet left a tin of paint.’ He made a spiralling motion with his free hand. ‘Gravity strikes again.’
‘… Are you serious?’
Lamb shrugged. ‘Everyone keeps telling me smoking’s bad for your health. They can’t all be wrong. And if they are, well, Zafar Jaffrey’s bagman was also on the scene. And if you can’t fit up a black ex-con for Gimball’s death, what’s the country coming to?’ He adopted a pious expression. ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’
‘Maybe we’ll go with the accident,’ said Taverner. ‘And that’s it? You want your crew back in place?’
‘Molly Doran too. She tells me you’re turfing her out.’ He shook his head. ‘Not gonna happen.’
Taverner recrossed her legs. ‘A suspicious mind might wonder why you want Molly kept on a leash. Don’t want anyone else crawling round her little kingdom, eh? Who knows what they might unearth down there. Not like you’re short of secrets.’
‘With what I’ve just given you, First Desk is yours for the taking. Claude’ll never survive being known as the architect of Abbotsfield. Not to mention all those penguins. And unlike other recent fuck-ups, this can be pinned on him alone, rather than systemic failure, leaving your path free and clear.’ He stubbed his cigarette out as nastily as possible. ‘So you’ll do as I say and smile while doing it. Just like any other professional.’
‘What about Flyte?’
‘What about her? She’s not one of mine.’
‘You have a code all your own, don’t you, Jackson?’ She stood. ‘Okay, then. You get what you want. And here and now, I’ll even smile. But I don’t like being dictated to. Never have. You might want to bear that in mind.’
‘Where you’re concerned, I bear everything in mind.’
Lamb reached for another cigarette as she turned to go, but the action triggered something inside him, and his face purpled. He slumped back in his chair as the coughing took hold, one arm folded across his chest while with the other he grabbed the desk, knocking his drink to the floor. His eyes watered in pain or alarm, and the effort it cost him to pull in air would have felled a good-sized tree. He looked, thought Diana Taverner, like a semi-aquatic mammal, struggling to give birth. Sounded like one too. Watching him, true to her word, she smiled. Then left his office, closing the door behind her.
Across the landing, she knocked once on Catherine Standish’s door, and let herself in without waiting for a response. Catherine, at her desk, hair neatly brushed, had a stack of papers in her hand; she was tapping them on the desk’s surface, aligning their edges. When she saw Taverner she stopped.
‘Is he okay?’
‘Don’t get me started.’ Taverner leaned against the office door. ‘Tell me, Catherine,’ she said. ‘Something I’ve always wondered. Did Lamb ever tell you how Charles Partner really died?’
When dusk at last comes it comes from the corners, where it’s been waiting all day, and seeps through Slough House the way ink seeps through water; first casting tendrils, then becoming smoky black cloud, and at last being everywhere, the way it always wants to be. Its older brother night has broader footfall, louder voice, but dusk is the family sneak, a hoarder of secrets. In each of the offices it prowls by the walls, licking the skirting boards, testing the pipes, and out on the landings it fondles doorknobs, slips through keyholes, and is content. It leans hard against the front door – which never opens, never closes – and pushes softly on the back, which jams in all weathers; it presses down on every stair at once, making none of them creak, and peers through both sides of each window. In locked drawers it hunts for its infant siblings, and with every one it finds it grows a little darker. Dusk is a temporary creature, and always has been. The faster it feeds, the sooner it yields to the night.