She said suddenly, “How is he?”
Without needing to ask, he knew she’d changed the subject.
“Lamb? Same as ever,” he said.
She laughed. It wasn’t an especially happy sound. “I doubt that,” she said.
“Believe me,” River said. “There’s been no improvement.”
Twenty minutes now, if that. And he didn’t just have to trace the file and photograph its contents, he had to get somewhere he could transmit them, which meant leaving the Park. Anywhere inside these walls, trying to send an attachment out would be sounding a fire alarm.
The couple in the car would have been checked out by now. His own failure to reappear would have been noted. He doubted they’d put the building into lockdown—he was only a slow horse; could easily have got lost—but they’d send people looking, and soon. He had to make a move. But Molly Doran was talking.
“Jackson Lamb’s lived so long under the bridge he’s half-troll himself now. But you should have met him a lifetime ago.”
“Yeah,” said River. “I bet he was a heartbreaker.”
She laughed. “He was never an oil painting, don’t worry about that. But he had something. You’re too young and pretty to understand. But a girl could lose her heart to him. Or other parts of her body.”
“About this file.”
“For which you don’t have a chitty.”
“Even when he was young, and girls were losing their hearts to him,” River said, “did you ever know him to fill out a form?”
“That’s smooth. I like that.” Without warning, Molly rolled forwards, so her chair was back in the aisle. “You get that from your grandfather, I expect.”
“The thing is,” River said. He leaned forward, bending so his mouth was near her ear. “I’m not entirely supposed to be here.”
“You amaze me.”
“But since I had an appointment with Lady Di anyway, and knowing Jackson needed to see this file . . . ”
“You thought you’d kill two birds with one stone.”
“Precisely.”
“Maybe you’ve picked up a bit of him to go with your grandpa,” Molly said. “Jackson was never one for going round the houses. Not when he could drive a battering ram through them.”
“I told you he was the same as ever.”
“What was the file you wanted?”
He repeated the number. He’d always had a good memory for numbers; he had, too, a good memory for the man on the bridge. He hoped they’d meet again.
“That’s curious,” Molly Doran said.
“How so?”
“Slough House is all closed cases and blind alleys, isn’t it? Nothing live, nothing contagious. That’s what I’ve always heard.”
“We crunch numbers,” River admitted. “And chase tails. If anything interesting popped up, we’d probably hand it over to the Park.”
“Probably?”
“It hasn’t happened yet.”
Fifteen minutes. Or fourteen. Or twelve. He’d studied Molly Doran’s face as he gave her the number, but not by the slightest eye movement had she indicated in which direction the file might be found. And without some kind of clue, he could wander round here for hours without coming close. The last kind of system a Molly Doran would have would be one where the numbers explained where they were.
“Then what’s happening now?” she asked. “Because this file’s most definitely live. What with its subject being the Prime Minister and all.”
Her tone hadn’t changed.
Someone walked down the corridor, their heels loud as boots on cobbles. When they paused, River felt his heart do the same. Something hummed and something murmured, and that was the lift door opening. The boots found their way inside, and the hum and murmur repeated themselves in reverse.
All this while, her eyes were breaking him down like Lego.
“Can I tell you the truth?” he said.
“I really don’t know,” Molly said. “But it might be interesting finding out.”
“Jackson’s in one of his . . . playful moods.”
“He has those,” she agreed.
“Right.”
“About as often as I go jogging.”
“There’s a bet involved.”
“That sounds more plausible.”
“He bet me I couldn’t find out the PM’s schoolboy nickname.”
“And Wikipedia isn’t helping?”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? I expect he’s got someone wiping it.”
“So a quick glance would be all you need.”
“That’s right.”
“And maybe I should turn round while you’re doing that. A quick three-pointer.”
“. . . If you like.”
“Well, if I wasn’t watching, I wouldn’t be involved, would I? So that would save me being your accomplice while you break the Official Secrets Act. And I really can’t be doing with a five-year stretch in Holloway. Prison food plays havoc with the digestion, so I’ve read.”
River didn’t have to turn to know they had company. As he felt his arms gripped from behind, and the plastic restraints clip into place, he was conscious mostly of Molly Doran’s gaze, which was partly pitying, partly curious, as if his behaviour was beyond anything she could readily understand. And this from a woman familiar with Jackson Lamb, he thought. I must really be in trouble.
She didn’t speak again as he was taken, moderately politely, from the room.
When Catherine heard the padlock being shifted, she sat up on the bed, feet on the floor. Wasn’t this how prisoners responded to a rattle on their chain?
She’d thought it would be Bailey again—the young man who’d taken her photo—but it was the second soldier; the one whose presence at the Angel had driven her back onto the streets. Like Sean Donovan, he had the lifetime soldier’s way of entering a room: taking it all in in one sweeping glance. Nothing could have changed since the last time he’d been in here, but that was no reason for taking chances. This done, his gaze rested on Catherine.
She waited.
“Sorry about this,” he began.
But he didn’t look sorry.
Time was, walking up Slough House’s stairs made every day midwinter for Louisa. Now, she carried her own weather with her. Stepping through the yard, pushing open the door that always stuck, didn’t affect her. It was a mood she was already part of, wherever she happened to be.
On the first landing she stopped at Ho’s office. Ho was at his desk, four flat screens angled in front of him as if he were catching a tan. He was nodding in time to something, which the well-padded earphones dwarfing his head suggested might be music, but could as easily be the binary rhythms of whatever code was conjuring the images swarming on his screens. More than once she’d come into this room and he hadn’t even noticed, though he’d configured his workstation for a view of the door: when he was in the zone, if the webheads still said that, it was like he’d relocated to the moon. Because while Roderick Ho was a dick, that was only the most obvious thing about him, not the most important. Most important was, he knew his way round the cybersphere. This was arguably the only thing keeping him alive. If he weren’t occasionally useful, Marcus or Shirley would have battered him into a porridge by now.
But today he wasn’t on the moon because he was watching her as she stepped into his office. He even pulled his earphones off. That put him in Jane Austen territory, etiquette-wise: Louisa had known him to hold a palm up, as if warding off traffic, if he suspected somebody was about to speak when he was doing something more interesting, like popping a cola can, or preparing to exhale.
He said, “Hello.”
. . . That was weird.
“You feeling all right?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why?”