Taverner, as promised, was on the staircase, a feature which fell on the kerb-flash side of the line, being wide enough to dance down, and boasting, on this particular landing, a narrow window which must have been eight foot tall. Dusty sunlight slanted through it, catching Lady Diana’s hair and roasting a chestnut tinge onto its curls, momentarily distracting River. His mind had blanked. What was he supposed to call her? “Ma’am,” his mouth supplied. A glimpse of her wristwatch, as she glanced at it, reminded him: thirty-six minutes.
She said, “You’re not supposed to be here, you do remember that?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you look a mess.”
“It’s hot out,” he said. “Ma’am.”
It was cooler in here, though; air-con and marbled floors.
“. . . Well?”
They had history, River and Diana Taverner. Not the kind of history people usually meant when they said history, but not far off: treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back—more like a marriage than a love affair. And most of it at a remove, so their actual face-to-face encounters hadn’t been frequent. Here and now, on this landing, his shirt clinging to his back, River was remembering how distracting her presence could be. It wasn’t just her physical attractions; it was the way she visibly weighed up every situation she was in, calibrating the moment to maximise her own advantage.
He said, “It’s about James. James Webb.”
“Ah.”
“I’ve been . . . visiting him.”
Spider had been Taverner’s protégé once, though he’d split what he’d have no doubt called his loyalties fairly evenly between her and Dame Ingrid. At the precise moment he’d been shot by a Russian hood it was hard to tell whose side he was on, though as he’d been mostly on his own back ever since, it probably didn’t matter in the long run.
She said, “You were still friendly? I didn’t realise.”
“We trained together.”
“Not what I asked.”
River said, “We weren’t that friendly in the end, no, but we were close at one time. And he’s got nobody else. No family, I mean.”
He had no idea whether Spider had family or not, but he was busking here. And banking on Taverner not knowing Spider’s family situation either.
“I didn’t realise,” she said. “So . . . what’s his current condition? Any change?”
“Not really.”
Just for an instant, he saw something in her eyes that might have been unfeigned concern. And then he mentally kicked himself—why wouldn’t there have been? She’d worked with him. And here was River, using his former friend’s condition to bluff his way back into the very place Spider had had him exiled from . . . It occurred to him that Spider might have seen the funny side of this. That this small act of treachery was more tribute than revenge.
Thoughts for later.
Thirty-five minutes.
He said, “None at all, in fact. And no real chance of any occurring.”
Taverner glanced away. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the reports,” she said vaguely.
“Then you’ll know. It’s a vegetative state, his brain activity’s almost entirely dormant. A flicker here and there, but . . . And his organs, they’re not functioning on their own. Take him off the machines, and he’ll die in the time it takes a heart to stop beating.”
“You obviously have a point to make.”
“We talked about it once, the two of us. On one of those endurance courses, up on the Black Mountains?”
She gave a brief nod.
“Long story short—” River said.
“Good idea.”
“—if he ever wound up plugged into a wall-socket, if that was all that was keeping him alive, he’d want to be switched off. That’s what he told me.”
“Then that information will be on his personal file.”
“I doubt he ever got round to making an official declaration. He was, what, twenty-four at the time? It wasn’t something he was planning for. But it was something he’d given thought to.”
“If he’d given it a little more thought, he might have noticed planning doesn’t come into it.” Thirty-four minutes. “What exactly are you asking me to do?”
“I just wanted to speak to someone about it. How long is he going to be lying there before a decision is made?”
She said, “You’re talking about letting him die.”
“I’m not sure what the alternative is.”
But a Lamb-like crack came to mind: They could re-skill him. Use him as a speed bump.
She said, “Look, I don’t have time for this right now. Are you sure there’s no family? Weren’t there cousins?”
“Don’t think so.”
“But anyway—it’s hardly a decision we can make standing on a bloody staircase.” She fixed him with a glare, but let it soften. “But I’ll look into it. You’re right. If there’s nobody else to take decisions, the Park will have to do it. Though I’d have thought the medical staff . . . ”
“They’re probably terrified of liability.”
“God. They’re not the only ones.” She looked at her watch again. “Is that it?”
“. . . Yes.”
“You’re not going to explain why you should be back on the hub? Why Slough House is a waste of your talents?”
“Not right now.”
“Good.” She paused. “You’ll be informed. About Webb, I mean. James. Whatever’s decided.”
“Thank you.”
“But don’t do this again. Turn up unannounced. Or you’ll end up downstairs.”
This time there was no softening in her expression.
Thirty-two minutes.
“Off you toddle.”
“Thank you.”
River walked back down the stairs, sure she was watching him every step of the way. But when he reached the bottom and looked back up, she’d gone.
Thirty-one minutes.
Now came the tricky bit.
The man from the bridge was elsewhere now; in Postman’s Park, whose neat little garden was a popular lunch spot for local workers, mostly because of its shelter, the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. The tiles on its walls were dedicated to those who’d given their lives in the attempt, sometimes futile, to rescue others, and recalled Leigh Pitt, who “saved a drowning boy from the canal . . . but sadly was unable to save himself,” and Mary Rogers, who “self-sacrificed by giving up her lifebelt and voluntarily going down in the sinking ship.” Thomas Griffin was fatally scalded in a boiler explosion at a Battersea sugar refinery, returning to search for his mate, while George Elliott and Robert Underhill “successively went down a well to rescue comrades and were poisoned by gas” . . . Sylvester Monteith—“Sly” to those who knew him, or simply suspected his true nature—was drinking iced tea from a polystyrene cup, and wondering why self-sacrifice was deemed so honourable. Every age calls forth its heroes, he supposed. For his own part, he’d come to manhood in the eighties, and his response to any of these emergencies would have been one of pragmatic withdrawal. Later, he would have been among the first to deplore the inadequacy of the equipment at fault, and to enquire about the possibility of furnishing much-improved replacements, at a price that could only be deemed reasonable from the point of view of all future miners, sugar-refinery workers, ship-goers, and foolhardy passers-by. All would be safer, some would get richer, and the world would turn. So it goes.
Meanwhile, to ensure that the world was in fact still turning, Monteith checked his watch. It was some twenty minutes since he’d dispatched River Cartwright on a mission which was as much an act of self-sacrifice as any of those memorialised on the walls of Postman’s Park. That was one of the things they didn’t tell you when you signed up for duty, Monteith thought. That there was a huge divide between those who lit the cannon, and those who flung themselves in front of it. Lighting the cannon was the path to a long, happy life. The one he’d lit for Cartwright was unlikely to prove fatal, but it would make exile at Slough House seem like an extended vacation.