“I think you’re forgetting who’s top banana round here.”
“No. I’m just reminding you that you are.”
She was expecting one of his leers, or perhaps a raspberry, or even a fart—there’d been indications in the past that he could deliver these at will, unless he was just unusually lucky with his timing. But instead Lamb put his foot heavily on the floor, and leaned back in his chair so far it audibly strained. In place of his usual repertoire of grimaces, his face seemed blank, lineless almost; a passive mask behind which she could sense his thoughts rolling around themselves.
At last he said, “I’ll make a call,” with all the enthusiasm of one preparing to tote a barge, or lift a bale.
Louisa nodded, remaining where she was.
“It’s a phone call, not a shag. I don’t need someone watching to make sure I’m doing it right.”
That wasn’t an image Louisa wanted in her head. She left him to it, but didn’t close the door on her way out.
“What were you planning on doing with the file?” Duffy said. “And who were you planning on selling it to?”
“I wasn’t going to sell it.”
“Course not. Going to keep it for a little bedtime reading, right?” Duffy stood and pushed the chair, which fell flat on the floor. “Rub one out while rummaging through the PM’s little secrets.”
“Does he really have secrets worth rubbing one out to?”
Duffy paused in front of the mirror, pretending it was a mirror. He ran a hand through his cropped hair, maybe checking for bald patches. Or perhaps making secret hand signals to whoever was on the other side.
He said, “What’s really funny is you finding this funny.”
“I’m not.”
“Because this is one joke’s going to have to last you an awful long time. Couple of years down the road, you might have trouble squeezing any more chuckles from it.” He took a step towards River, who was leaning against the wall, and stood directly in front of him. River could smell the fabric conditioner he’d used on his tracksuit. Duffy had put it on fresh from the wash.
He said, “They have Catherine Standish.”
“Standish.”
“There was a photograph. Came to my phone from hers. It was taken this morning, last night. They wanted the file.”
“Standish,” Duffy said again. “She’s another of your special needs crew, right?”
“Can I be there when you say that to Lamb?”
“You don’t get to be anywhere without somebody’s say-so, Cartwright. Your whole future’s one long yes-sir, no-sir.”
That sounded horribly plausible. And River was scared, because Duffy was good at this, but he was scareder, somehow, of letting it show.
Not letting it show was all he had left right now.
“They’ve got Catherine Standish, and somebody needs to go find her. The picture’s on my phone. Whoever’s behind that mirror needs to take a look at it now.”
“This isn’t about your amateur porn collection, Cartwright. It’s about your attempt to steal the PM’s vetting file. Did you really think you’d get away with that?”
“The guy I spoke to was early fifties, five nine. Grey suit, yellow tie, black shoes. Dark hair going silver at the temples. English, white, upper-class accent—”
Duffy slammed his left hand against the wall, an inch from River’s ear. “And he’s your buyer, right? He’s the man instructed you to break into the Park.”
“I didn’t break in.”
“Well you weren’t fucking invited. Where’d this happen?”
“Over by Barbican.”
“And this toff what, dropped in on Slough House?”
“I told you, he sent—”
Duffy slammed his other hand against the wall, and leaned forward so his forehead was almost touching River’s. “You want to know why I’m having trouble believing this fairy story, Cartwright?”
“Look at my phone.”
“It’s because if any of it even remotely happened, you know where you’d be now? Back at your desk, doing your job. Having reported all these . . . unusual events to your boss, who’d have passed them up the line exactly the way it says in the protocols. Because if you’d done anything different, Cartwright, you’d have knowingly endangered the life of your fellow . . . What is it they call you over there?”
River could smell Duffy’s breath. Could feel the heat of the sweat forming on his brow.
“Can’t hear you.”
“You know what they call us.”
And then he was doubling over in pain, that familiar terrible pain men learn early and never forget. In a minute or two, it would get worse. But for the moment the impact of Duffy’s knee into his testicles wiped out all thought of his future.
Duffy stepped away, and River fell to the floor.
Diana Taverner answered on the third ring and said, “What do you want?”
“No, really,” said Lamb. “The pleasure’s all mine.”
He’d called her mobile, though he knew she’d be at her desk—she had that level of devotion to duty at least partly fired by fear that someone would move into her office if she left it for long.
“Been meaning to call you, actually,” she said. “Finance are querying your latest expense sheet. How come you clock up so much in travel costs when you barely leave your room?”
“How come Finance are passing their queries on to you?”
“Because her high-and-mighty Dameness has decreed that all and any manner of crap be redirected my way.” A pause followed, just long enough for her to be lighting a cigarette if that weren’t a shootable offence at the Park. “She wants to underline how indispensable I am, which means she thinks she’s found a way of dispensing with me.”
Because he wasn’t at the Park, and because nobody got shot at Slough House without his permission, Lamb lit a cigarette. “You sound quite relaxed about it.”
“She’ll have to get up earlier than she thinks she has,” Taverner said, which would have sounded cryptic from anyone else, but was reasonably lucid for her. “So. These expense sheets.”
“Don’t push me, Diana. I have hostages, remember?”
“They’re not your hostages, Jackson. They’re your staff.”
“You say potato,” said Lamb. “Anyway, I don’t have as many as I used to. A birdy tells me you’ve got one of mine in your lock-up.”
“That would be River Cartwright.”
“Yes, but don’t blame me. I think his mother was a hippy.”
“Smoke a lot of dope while he was in the womb, did she? That might explain today’s dipshit behaviour. And I thought he was one of your cleverer boys.”
“Mind like a razor,” Lamb agreed. “Disposable. Anyway, when you’ve finished ticking him off, pack him back this way, would you? I’ve thought of three different ways of making his life hell, and I’m itching to put them into practice.”
That he was itching was beyond doubt. His pencil being out of reach he’d grabbed a plastic ruler, and was sawing away at the gaps between the toes on his right foot, a task made easier now the fabric of his sock had given way.
“Yeah, right.” Taverner gave her throaty chuckle, famous for making the old boys on the Oversight Committee stand to attention. “You might need to practise your latest . . . wheezes on someone else.”