Sid was in the back seat, Jim next to her. Jane driving. Jane seemed calm and deliberate, her every move in tune with the car’s progress. Jim, seat belt in place, was half turned towards Sid, his expression one of benign insincerity. It would be better all round, his face suggested, if we could get this done without wasting more breath: on words, on smiles, on life. But he’d be prepared, if necessary, to lend an ear to any plea Sid might care to make, provided Sid didn’t expect him to act on it.
Sid’s sojourn in the study seemed like ancient history; like a walk in an orchard on a summer’s day.
And that lump of concrete, she belatedly realised, had been a fragment of the Berlin Wall. Hence its presence in the O.B.’s study. Much of his life had been dedicated to bringing that wall down, or that was how it appeared in retrospect. Perhaps it had simply been dedicated to fighting those who’d put it up, the wall itself being no more than a marker of which side he’d been on. Given a different birthplace, he might have been equally happy resisting the values of the West. Either way, at the end of the long road travelled, that chunk had come to rest on his bookshelf, symbolic of a temporary victory. Because history was cyclical, of course, and more walls would be built, and there’d always be those who hoped it would be better on one side than the other, and die attempting to find out. And in the longer run those walls would fall too, along with the despots who’d built them, crushed by the bricks they’d stacked so high. Walls couldn’t last. All the same, Sid wished she’d slipped that concrete lump into her pocket while she’d had the chance. There’d be something equally cyclical about using it to smash Jim’s face in.
Though its weight in her pocket would have alerted him, of course. They were assuming Sid was weak, and unlikely to defend herself, but Jim would have noticed if she’d tried to smuggle a brick out in her jacket.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked at last.
‘We’ve told you,’ said Jim. ‘To the hospital.’
‘No, really. Where are you taking me?’
He said, ‘Trust me. It amounts to the same thing in the end.’
Jane dipped the headlights to allow an oncoming car to pass undazzled, and cranked them up again once the lane ahead was clear. Sid caught a glimpse of a lone tree in a field, its limbs a crazy tangle of malice, and then it was gone.
And the end, whatever it might be, drew nearer.
From across the water drifted the sound of an old man mumbling in song, the same words, same cadence, as if he were caught in a loop of prayer. It stirred a memory in Diana that she couldn’t pin down as she walked the towpath towards Islington, where the canal disappeared into a tunnel. It had rained, only briefly, but enough to disturb hidden odours that sweetened the evening air. Houseboats lined the path, some of them floating plinths for what, in the shadows, seemed Heath Robinson contraptions designed to prepare their vessels for flight, but which would disassemble in ordinary daylight into bicycles and watering cans, recycling bins, seedling trays. From houses on the other side the occasional noises of family life filtered out: voices and snatches of music. But, a solitary runner apart, the towpath was empty. Diana was heading for the farthest bench, the one just this side of the tunnel. On it waited Jackson Lamb.
From this approach he looked like an exhausted tramp, and for a moment she wondered if he were the source of that mumbled prayer. His shoes were scuffed lumps, the hems of his trousers frayed, and his overcoat might have been stitched from the tattered sail of a pirate ship. And she had little doubt that the odour of cigarettes and Scotch would grow apparent the nearer she came, interrupting the softer smells the rain had released; little doubt, too, that for all his repose he knew damn well she was approaching, had been aware of her since she set foot on the towpath. And for half a second she had a troubling glimpse of another Lamb inside the shell of this one; one who had posed for the image in front of her, and whose carefully composed decrepitude was a sculptor’s trick.
Best to take the offensive. Best not to be anywhere near him, in fact, but he’d sent a damaged telegram in the form of a trainee spook, and she’d had little choice but to heed his summons.
‘You fractured my agent’s arm,’ she said, taking a place on the bench as far from him as possible.
He opened his eyes. ‘I warned you not to fuck with my joes.’
‘A twenty-three-year-old woman, for God’s sake!’
‘Yeah, I’d have done the same to a forty-year-old man. This is what a feminist looks like.’ He studied her. ‘Moving on. “I might have made a mistake.” Your words. And guess what? My death count’s rising faster than the PM’s dick at a convent school prize day. So. Want to explain the nature of your mistake? Or should I take a stab at it myself?’
He shifted as he spoke, and for an uncomfortable moment, she wondered if he were reaching for a blade.
But no. Not Jackson Lamb’s style.
She said, ‘Making mistakes is something every First Desk does, it goes with the territory. But whatever’s going on with your old crew, that’s landed out of nowhere. Nothing to do with current operations. So best thing all round would be if you just leave things to me, to the Park.’ She felt her eyelid tremble, and hoped he didn’t notice. ‘I gather you’ve gone dark. That’s sensible. Stay that way until I give the all-clear, and the rest of your team will be fine.’
‘That’s a relief. Do I get a kiss night night now?’
‘You need to trust me on this, Jackson.’
‘Funny thing. When I hear the words “trust me”, I get the feeling someone’s pissing in my shoe. So like we were saying, you made a mistake. This have anything to do with that club on Wigmore Street? Run by Maggie Lessiter?’
Diana said, ‘She tries to keep that quiet.’
‘Yeah, and I tried to keep this quiet.’ He farted, a three-note trumpet solo, then eased his buttock back onto the bench. ‘But somehow word got round.’
‘God. Don’t you ever consider impersonating a human being?’
‘Never met one worth pretending to be.’ He put a cigarette in his mouth, but didn’t light it. Possibly for fear of igniting the atmosphere. ‘Public schoolboy hang-out, isn’t it? Spotted dick for pudding, and matron rapping knuckles with a wooden spoon. Drawing lots to see who gets to be prime minister.’
‘So I enjoy the occasional lunch off the premises,’ Diana said. ‘What’s your point?’
‘My point is, you’ve taken a dip in the money pit. Because nobody pulls off a hit on a foreign holiday, especially not a Russian one, without serious brass in their pocket. And everyone knows there’s no spare cash for Service jollies, what with You-Know-What costing the earth. So when you greenlit that Kazan op, you did it with a suitcase full of used banknotes. And where better to find one of those than Lessiter’s club?’
‘This is pure fantasy.’
‘Nothing pure about it. You’ve been there all right. Ho ran your Uber records.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, seriously. You’re supposed to be Head Spook. You’re about as under the radar as a Goodyear blimp. But anyway, yeah, I wanted to know where you were when you starting using Slough House as a dartboard. And who you might have been hanging out with.’
Diana looked away, towards the deeper darkness of the tunnel the canal headed into, or out of. Like most things, it was a matter of perspective. She said, ‘You’re confusing separate issues. What happened to White and Loy had nothing to do with any of this.’