It didn’t seem much to ask. Not after Black Mac had wasted their time. But Lech was having none of it, and Shirley watched grumpily as the wallet joined the rest of the treasure trove in his pocket.
‘Another drink?’ she suggested.
‘I’m going home,’ said Lech.
‘Might be best to avoid Old Street.’
He didn’t appear any more grateful for that than he had for Shirley saving his neck in the toilet. But she was used to going unappreciated, and stayed for another drink anyway.
8
AT THE MEETINGS SHE attended less often than she should – My name is Catherine, and I’m an alcoholic – they suggested that you let go; not fret over things you couldn’t control. This was for the avoidance of guilt. One of the side effects of addiction, or recovering therefrom, was that you felt you had let the world down, as if you’d nodded off at a critical moment and allowed things to slide. And given the parlous state of that world, and the moral bankrupts governing it, it would be hard not to let the guilt become overwhelming. She knew all this. It was a series of small steps heading in the wrong direction: best to stick to the twelve recommended at those meetings. Make amends to those we have harmed, for instance.
Kay White was on her mind.
It was a peculiarity of Slough House that its occupants tended to know where everyone was. If some organisations had Chinese walls, to prevent confidential information spreading, Slough House’s walls were Swiss, inasmuch as they were full of holes; both literally – occupants had been known to punch the plaster – and in the sense that there was always leakage. The anguish of the floorboards and the creaking of the stairs told you who was where: it was an aural panopticon, wired for sound. And yet, it was easy to forget about each other. The separate miseries that slow horses came wrapped in, and the ongoing drudgery that was their daily grind, meant that much of the time they were on their own. Some more so than others. Kay White, for example. Nobody had liked her. She never shut up, for a start. So it felt no huge surprise when she’d betrayed them, and no huge loss when she’d been sacked. And what it felt like now she was dead, thought Catherine, was just more of the same: the woman had left no mark here, nothing to grieve over, and where there was no grief there was often guilt.
To assuage which, Catherine Standish was making mental amends. The working day was done but she remained at her desk, hands clasped on her lap, eyes closed. It might have looked like prayer, but was simply the summoning of memory: she was trying to find a moment she’d shared with Kay White, something that stood out against the background noise. But there was nothing of substance. Most moments spent with Kay had been an attempt to block her out. When she’d departed, along with – the name escaped her – it had been a relief. And that wasn’t a matter of blame, Catherine told herself. It was just life, which was full of passing strangers, even if some of them hung around for years.
… Struan Loy. That was the name. Loy had been here at the same time as Kay, and Lamb had kicked the pair of them out together.
And Struan Loy too had joined that chorus invisible; those who’d drifted from the margins of memory. In Catherine’s life, most such had been fellow drunks, who’d done their best to blur her recollection by being little more than blurs themselves, smeary with alcohol. But there were slow horses among them, which was why that prick of guilt was needling her. That prick of shame. She should go home, really. But before that – before running the gauntlet of London’s bars and pubs, its off-licences and supermarkets, its corner shops with their furtive shelves of booze, all calling her name as she passed – before any of that, she’d have a quick trawl through the usual search engines, and see if she could find out what Struan Loy was up to these days.
Maybe that would soothe her conscience, for a while.
Peter Judd said, ‘We live in new times, with new conditions, and new alignments are coming into being. This is a natural, and indeed ah ah ah a necessary, progression. For progression it is. And those who fail to appreciate that will suffer the usual fate of those unable to adapt to new circumstances.’
‘You mean political defeat.’
‘I mean political extinction.’
‘Give me a break,’ said Diana.
It would have been a nice moment if Channel Go had indeed gone to a break then, but it chundered on regardless.
‘And you believe,’ the interviewer went on, ‘that Desmond Flint is one of those ushering in these new conditions we’re disc—’
Diana killed transmission.
Judd’s TV appearances hadn’t diminished in number since he’d left office, a career turn some commenters had described as his fall from grace. But grace wasn’t something he’d ever aspired to, and its absence hadn’t hindered him. Besides, the notion that he was a spent force only held weight if you heeded the current wisdom, and wisdom was no longer an asset when making political predictions. The paths to power of current world leaders – paths including conspiracy to assault, knee-jerk racism, indeterminate fecundity and cheating at golf – were so askew from the traditional routes that only an idiot would have dared forecast future developments. It wasn’t unfitting, then, that Judd’s popularity as a political pundit continued. Judd might not have been an idiot himself, but his core supporters were a different story.
She was in her office, its glass wall frosted for privacy. On the hub, the night crew was settling into business, prepared to respond to the routine emergencies of national security. One of these, she considered, was even now unfolding: Judd had gone ahead with what he’d hinted at, and was throwing his weight behind the Yellow Vest movement. There were those who’d regard this as tantamount to pitching in with the Nazi party. But then, Nazis had a lot of support these days. That old thing about learning from the past didn’t always mean studying monstrous historical movements to ensure they never happened again. It could indicate an intention to perfect their trajectories, in the hope that they’d triumph next time.
Along with Judd’s hint had come veiled threats.
When you disappoint rich and powerful men, they let their displeasure be known.
And when you’d painted yourself into a corner, it was best to let the paint dry before leaving the room.
Earlier that afternoon, she’d had a meeting with the Ops team, one of whose ongoing low-level engagements was infiltration of the Yellow Vest movement: nothing too significant; a couple of youngsters distributing leaflets, stacking chairs and generally making themselves useful. An eyes-on approach, with the potential to upgrade to dicks-out if the situation demanded. But Diana had announced that she was pulling the plug.
Others around the table had exchanged puzzled looks.
‘Is that wise? All signs suggest that the movement’s gaining ground, not withering away.’
‘And we have a tightrope to walk,’ Diana said. ‘Our remit is security, and that doesn’t include an overzealous policing of dissenting voices.’
‘But—’
‘I wasn’t inviting discussion. I was stating strategy.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I’m pretty certain I do. I’m pretty certain this is me, doing just that.’
The mood had brightened when she’d gone on to outline the new funding, but the instruction had left her feeling treacherous, and she’d been glad when the meeting was over. A necessary move, though. It would give her a little breathing space while she decided what to do about Judd, about Cantor too. That a decision would be reached, a solution found, was a given. She’d wandered into the briar patch, true, but she hadn’t lasted this long at the Park without learning to trust her abilities. Even unelected, Judd remained a big beast in the political jungle. But Diana had done her growing up on Spook Street, where big beasts numbered among the daily kill.