“No reason. Can you trace Catherine’s phone?”
“No.”
“I thought you could do that. GPS. Whatever.”
“I can, but only if it’s on. And it’s not on.”
“You already tried? Was that your idea?”
He shrugged.
Marcus was standing behind her now; Shirley too. Marcus said, “You didn’t find her, then.”
Shirley said, “We didn’t find Cartwright either.”
“I can tell,” Louisa said. “Here, you missed a bit.”
She touched her upper lip, and Shirley rubbed her own, obliterating a smudge of ice cream. She scowled at Marcus. “You could have said.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Ho was watching all this as if it were taking place behind bars. Louisa said to him, “How about River’s phone?”
He shrugged again, sulkily this time. “I’d need his number.”
Louisa read it out to him off her own.
Ho said, “Have you got everyone’s number in there?”
“No.”
Shirley nudged Marcus.
Ho’s fingers started salsa-ing across his keyboard.
Louisa walked to the window. Same view as from hers, but lower down. She thought: when I joined the Service, this was not what I was expecting. The same view every day, with minor variations.
For a while last year that had seemed less important, but like everything else, this had turned out a false reprieve. Life’s cruellest trick was letting the light in, just enough so you knew where everything was, then shutting it off without warning. She’d been bumping into the furniture ever since.
Back in her flat, replastered into a section of wall behind her fridge, was a fingernail-sized uncut diamond, booty from a heist she’d helped derail. She had no idea how much it was worth, but couldn’t see that it mattered much.
Min, you stupid bastard, why did you have to die?
And then she shut that thought off because there was nowhere it could lead her that would do anyone any good.
Ho finished tapping. “Cartwright’s blocked,” he said.
“What do you mean, blocked?”
“His phone’s on, but he’s somewhere that’s scrambling the signal.”
“Like somewhere with thick walls?”
Marcus said, “No, like somewhere with the ability to fuck with GPS.”
“Golly,” said Shirley, who’d been Comms in her pre-Slough House life. “Wonder where that might be?”
The room he’d been locked in was underground; its only window one-way, and that from the other side. From where River stood it was a mirror. About a metre square, it threw back at him the room’s blankness and his own oddly calm exterior. Inside his chest his heart thumped like a little drummer boy: all beat and no tune.
The minutes he’d been counting down were long gone, and their deadline history. These men have poor impulse control . . . Soon they’ll be loosening their belts. He watched his reflected hands curl into fists. He’d made more than one poor choice this morning. Principally, he should have stayed on the bridge and dropped the man off it. Whatever happened to Catherine would have happened anyway, but at least he’d have wiped the smirk off that chancer’s face.
And why didn’t I do that? he asked himself.
He’d have sat, but there was nowhere to sit. The room was bare; a cube, near enough. There was no handle on the door. There was no visible light fitting either, though the ceiling emitted a steady bluish glow, which lent his reflection an alien cast. Alien, except he belonged here. It was where he’d willed himself, as much as if he’d offered his wrists to Lady Di half an hour ago. Lock me up, he should have said. I’m here to steal, and I don’t have a prayer.
There were protocols, and even a slow horse knew them. Slow horses, after all, underwent the same training as any other kind. Threats to fellow officers, actual physical danger, required immediate, official response: the line of command in River’s case ran upstairs through Slough House and onto the desk of Jackson Lamb. Who, for all his faults—and that wasn’t a short list—would walk through fire for a joe in peril; or make someone walk through fire. By ignoring that, River had stepped across the chalk line, and by bluffing his way into the Park, he’d made things worse twice over.
So they took you in, they trained you up, they prepared you for a life you’d be expected to risk when the occasion demanded, and then they locked you in an office with a view of a bus stop, and made you pour your energy, your commitment, your desire to serve into a sinkhole of never-ending drudgery. Of course he’d gone off reservation. He’d been ripe for it, and whoever had fingered him for this morning’s fun and games had known it from the beginning.
Had they also known he’d screw up?
River leaned against a wall, hands on his head, fingers laced, and wondered what his grandfather was going to say. The Old Bastard had steered the Service through the Cold War without ever actually taking the helm—the real power, he’d told River more than once, lay in having one hand on the elbow of whoever was in charge. If not for the O.B. he’d have been out on the pavement after the King’s Cross fiasco. But not even his grandfather could protect him this time.
The door opened without warning, and Nick Duffy came in carrying a plastic bucket seat.
Duffy was in charge of the Service’s internal police; the Dogs as they were called. The position was more akin to enforcer than executive, and the Dogs were kept on a pretty long leash, so Duffy’s role basically meant he could bite whoever he liked, and not expect more than a tap on the nose. The way he slammed the chair down, and the angry squeak its legs made scraping along the floor, suggested he was in a biting mood. The grim smile he summoned for River confirmed it. Other than the chair he’d brought nothing into the room with him, but when he straddled it backwards, the hands he gripped it with were calloused at the knuckles.
But it was the fact that he was wearing a tracksuit that gave River most cause for concern.
Tracksuits were what you wore when things might get messy.
As mornings go, Dame Ingrid’s hadn’t been a bad one. Pulling Diana Taverner’s tail was always a useful exercise, and sounding her out afterwards had nicely muddied the waters. It was always a good idea to make a predator think you’re more vulnerable than you are. When Peter Judd made his inevitable move to stamp his newfound authority onto the Service, Dame Ingrid would at least know where on the battlefield Taverner would be. She’d be right behind Ingrid, looking for her weak spot.
It used to be simpler. There was the Service, and there were the nation’s enemies. These changed identity every so often, depending on who’d been elected, deposed or assassinated, but by and large the boundaries were clear: you spied on your foes, kept tabs on the neutrals, and every so often got a chance to fuck up your friends in a plausibly deniable way. A bit like school, but with fewer rules. Nowadays, though, in between monitoring the nation’s phone calls and scanning the latest whistle-blower’s Twitter feed, geopolitics barely got a look-in. If asked to list the greatest threats to the nation’s security, Ingrid Tearney would start with ministers and colleagues. Working out precisely where Ansar al-Islam came seemed little more than academic.
But you worked with what you had. Dame Ingrid was a great believer in occupying the here and now: if the Great Game had deteriorated to the status of the Latest App, so be it. So long as there was a podium for the winner, she knew where she wanted to end up.
On her desk was the usual collection of documents for signing: the minutes of the morning’s meeting; various reports from various departments. A memo on top, suggesting she ring Security, had appeared while she’d been out of the room. Security meant internal, so whatever had just happened, it probably wasn’t a threat to the nation. She rang downstairs anyway; was put through to the Kennel—the inevitable in-house name for the Dogs’ office—and given a twenty-second summary of an off-site agent’s incursion into the Park.