“I know,” said Lamb. He lit his second cigarette with the stub of his first, which he then flicked, still burning, at the nearest pigeon. It failed to respond.
“And evidently, some years later, saw the light and felt the need to come clean. Or maybe he just wanted to impress Captain Dunn.”
“Effectively signing her death warrant.”
“We’ve all touched pitch, Lamb. Don’t pretend your hands are clean.”
He didn’t reply immediately. The pair sat watching the discarded stub of his cigarette blackening the already frazzled blades of grass it had landed among. Given time, given time, such a start could burn a city down.
Eventually he said, “So what now?”
“Documentary evidence of the project’s existence is more than a career embarrassment for Tearney. It’s an international incident waiting to happen. So it’ll be blanketed from a great height. Judd will encourage her to retire. That’ll leave a vacancy at the head of the service.”
“To be filled by . . . ?”
“I couldn’t possibly comment.”
“And in return,” Lamb said, “you’ll ease Judd’s passage into Number Ten. Which should be a doddle, what with your having access to all sorts of confidential material. Such as the PM’s vetting file.”
“He’ll be a safe pair of hands, I’m sure,” Taverner said. “We had a meeting yesterday, point of fact.” She brushed her palms the length of her thighs, stretching the linen as she did so. “He assured me that he holds the Service in high regard. That any ideas he had regarding reorganisation, he’s now shelved.”
“He’s a fucking psychopath,” Lamb said.
“All the more reason to have him inside the tent pissing out.”
“This is Peter Judd,” said Lamb. “I’d be more worried about him taking a dump. Besides which, you’re overlooking something. You don’t have the evidence. I do.”
Again, he tapped the folder that River Cartwright had given him.
“Because of course,” he said, “if this all went public—if it found its way to, say, the Guardian—well, that would be different, wouldn’t it? A public explosion instead of a controlled detonation. Tearney would still go, but Judd would be caught in the blast. And without a friendly minister to grease your wheels . . . What do you reckon, Diana? Think you’d still find yourself First Desk?”
Taverner said, “This is not the sort of juggernaut you want to walk in front of, Jackson.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Don’t forget, I have my team to consider.”
“Really? That’ll be a first.”
“They have a natural respect for me.”
“That’s not respect. It’s Stockholm syndrome.”
“How do you think they’d feel if I said we’d just let it go, all those folk trying to kill them? They have a right to know what was at stake.” He scrunched his nose up and sniffed noisily. “Maybe take a vote on it.”
“. . . You have got to be kidding.”
Lamb turned heavy eyes on her, his expression momentarily obscured by the cloud of smoke he exhaled. Then he said, “Of course I’m fucking kidding. Getting shot at’s a day at the races as far as they’re concerned.”
“Jesus, Lamb . . . ”
“And I wouldn’t let them vote on their favourite breakfast cereal.” He extended the folder to her, but didn’t relinquish it when she took hold of it. “But I’m serious about Judd. You’ve got a real tiger by the tail there.”
“I can handle him.”
“Sure?”
“I said I can handle him.”
He sneered at that, but let go of the folder anyway. Diana all but snatched it from his grip.
Lamb stood, and this time the pigeons took fright: with one thought between them they clambered clumsily into the air, where they wheeled about in confusion for a while, and were forgotten about.
Taverner said, “Seriously, Catherine Standish. She’s okay?”
“Apparently she quit.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“It evens out,” Lamb said. “I thought I sacked a pair yesterday. But it looks like they’ve changed their minds.”
He walked away down the path, a bulky silhouette against the silvery white heat of the day.
Diana Taverner watched until he’d disappeared from view, a trick he achieved surprisingly quickly for a man his size. Then she undid the folder’s ribbon, pulling it loose so that it ran through her fingers for a long silky moment, and opened its cover. The topsheet was blank, save for a V-for-Virgil scrawled in marker pen, and a catalogue number stamped in red ink. She removed it.
Underneath lay a copy of the Angling Times, and nothing more.
“Oh, Jackson,” she said. “You stupid, stupid man.”
She looked for the pigeons, which were gone, looked up at the sky, which was still there, then looked in her bag for her phone.
Peter Judd answered on the first ring.
“That worst-case outcome we discussed?” Diana said. “It just happened.”
The weather is breaking on Aldersgate Street. It is breaking in other places too, keen to wash the smells of hot tar from London’s roads, but it is over Aldersgate Street that it appears angriest, and here the violet hour has given way to early darkness. Thunder rumbles, so near it might be just over the page. As yet there is no rain, but residents in the Barbican towers hover by their windows, hoping for dramatic skyscapes, while on the pavements pedestrians—still dressed for that morning’s dry heat—hurry towards shelter, wherever it might be found. In the alley that leads to Slough House’s back door a freak wind stirs hot dust, and beneath the sound of clouds crashing together (which, as every child knows, is the true cause of thunder) might be heard that of a door scraping open; a door which jams in all weathers, even weather so close to breaking as this . . . But if someone has entered Slough House, there would be noises on the staircase, which there are not. And only a ghost, surely, could climb Slough House’s notoriously squeaky stairs without the slightest whisper.
If a ghost it is, it’s a peculiarly inquisitive one, and pauses at the first landing to test the air. Here, as always, the doors hang open, and while the rooms are empty, even a spectre would have no trouble spotting which was Roderick Ho’s room; which Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander’s. The latter is tainted with conflicting emotions tonight, as if the recent male occupant has been reflecting that for all his combat experience, he basically had his nuts pulled from the fire twice yesterday, both times by people he regards as lightweight. So much for taking control . . . And as for the female, there’s a suggestion that her recent physical exertions, satisfying as they were, are perhaps no long-term substitute for intimacy—and as a short-term measure, postpone, rather than obliterate, the need for any other kind of high. But there is a tangible sense of relief here too, that yesterday’s sackings appear to have been reversed; or, at any rate, were not referred to during the lengthy post-mortem of last night’s events. A strange quirk, perhaps, to be relieved by the prospect of remaining among the slow horses, but as every ghost knows, there are few more complicated creatures than the living.
In the former office, meanwhile, a particularly perceptive shade might catch a trace of a fragment of conversation; the words A bus? Okay, that’s old school—words spoken by Marcus and lapped up by Roderick Ho; words Ho repeated silently to himself over and over, until they gave way to another mantra, equally silent: So, babes, fancy a drink?, this too practised over and over, mimed to a window in lieu of a mirror, and mimed long after their intended recipient had appeared on the street below, leaving Slough House, and Roddy Ho, equally unthought-of behind her.