Lamb ignored him. ‘Did he notice?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Sidonie said.
‘Sure?’
‘Pretty sure.’
Lamb raised his voice. ‘Catherine.’
She appeared in the doorway like a creepy butler.
‘Flash-box.’
She disappeared.
River said, ‘Let me guess. Feminine wiles?’
‘Are you calling me a honey trap?’
‘If the cliché fits.’
Catherine Standish returned with a flash-box she placed on Lamb’s desk next to his clock. She waited, but Lamb said nothing. ‘You’re welcome,’ she told him, and left.
Once she’d gone, Lamb said: ‘Tell him.’
‘His key-fob’s a memory stick,’ Sid said.
‘A flash drive,’ River said.
‘That’s right.’
‘And he keeps his back-up files on it?’
‘Seems a reasonable conclusion. Given that he carries it everywhere.’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? If it’s attached to your keys.’
‘There’s certainly something on it. A couple of mega-bytes’ worth.’
‘Maybe he’s writing a novel,’ River said.
‘Maybe he is. You didn’t find a draft in his rubbish, did you?’
He was going to lose this conversation if he wasn’t careful. ‘So you picked his pocket?’
‘He’s a man of habit. Same café, every morning. Same latte. And he piles his pocket contents on the table before he sits.’ Sidonie produced a barrette from her pocket. River thought that was what it was called. A barrette. ‘I swapped his stick for a dummy while his attention was elsewhere.’
Which meant she’d had a dummy with her, which meant she’d had Hobden under surveillance. How else would she have had an identical memory stick?
‘And then I copied its contents on to the laptop.’
She slotted the barrette behind her left ear, making a science-fiction shape of her hair. There was no way she could know what it looked like, River thought. Which made it all the stranger that the shape appeared intentional.
‘And then I swapped it back.’
‘While his attention was elsewhere.’
‘That’s right,’ Sid said, smiling brightly.
Lamb was bored now. He picked up the flash-box. The size of an A4 box-file, it was self-locking, and any attempt to open it without its series key would produce a smallish bonfire. He reached for the laptop. ‘Was he still there when you left?’
‘No. I waited him out.’
‘Good.’ Lamb fitted the computer into the box. ‘Stick?’
‘There’s nothing on it.’
‘Did I ask?’
Sidonie produced the stick, a twin to the one on Hobden’s key-ring. Lamb dropped it into the flash-box, then snapped the lid shut.
‘Abracadabra,’ he said.
Neither quite knew what to say to that.
‘And now I have a call to make,’ he said. ‘If the pair of you wouldn’t mind, you know.’ He waggled a hand in the direction of the door. ‘Fucking off.’
From the landing, River could see Catherine at her desk in the adjoining office; absorbed in paperwork with the absolute concentration of someone who knows they’re being observed.
Sid said something over her shoulder, but he didn’t catch what.
In his office, Lamb made his phone call. ‘You owe me. Yes, it’s done. All his files, or everything on his stick, anyway. No, the rubbish was clean. As it were. Yeah, okay. This morning. I’ll send Baker.’ He yawned, scratched at the back of his neck, then examined his fingernails. ‘Oh, and another thing? Next time you want errands running, use your own boys. Not like Regent’s Park is running out of bodies.’
After he hung up, he leant back and closed his eyes. It looked for all the world like he was taking a nap.
Downstairs, River and Sid surveyed the scattered rubbish. River had the uncomfortable feeling that this joke wasn’t funny any more, and even if it had been, he was as much its butt as Sid. It wasn’t like the smell had kept to her side of the room. But any possible apology died in the face of what had just happened. For a couple of minutes last night, standing under an overhang in the pouring rain, he’d convinced himself he was doing something important; that he was on the first rung of a ladder back into the light. Even if that feeling had survived the downpour, and the rummaging through the rubbish this morning, it wouldn’t have survived this. He didn’t want to look at Sid. Didn’t want to know the shape of the smile on her lips when she spoke. But did want to know what she’d been up to.
‘How long have you been playing Hobden?’ he said.
‘I haven’t been playing him.’
‘You’ve been doing breakfast.’
‘Just often enough to clock his habits.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Are you going to clear this mess up?’
River said, ‘When’d you ever hear of a joe being sent out solo? Domestic, I mean. Middle of London.’
This amused her. ‘So now I’m a joe?’
‘And how come Lamb’s running an op off his own bat?’
‘You’d have to ask him. I’m going for coffee.’
‘You’ve already had coffee.’
‘Okay then. I’m going somewhere else until you’ve got rid of all this crap.’
‘I haven’t written it up yet.’
‘Then I’ll be gone a while. The gloves suit you, by the way.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’
Unhooking her bag from her chair, she left.
River kicked a tin can which might have been put there for that purpose. It bounced off the wall, leaving a bright red contact wound, and dropped to the floor.
Peeling off his rubber gloves, he added them to the sack. When he opened the window a cold blast of London air filtered through, adding traffic fumes to the mix. Then a familiar thumping on the ceiling set the lampshade wobbling.
He picked up the phone, tapped out Lamb’s extension. A moment later, he heard it ring upstairs. It felt like he had an offstage role in someone else’s drama.
‘Where’s Sid?’ Lamb asked.
‘Gone for coffee.’
‘When will she be back?’
There was an office code, of course. You didn’t dob a colleague in.
He said, ‘Quite a while were her exact words. I think.’
Lamb paused. Then said, ‘Get up here.’
River was listening to the dial tone before he could ask why. He took a breath, counted to five, then headed back upstairs.
Lamb said, ‘All cleaned up?’
‘More or less.’
‘Good. Here.’ He tapped the flash-box in front of him with a fat finger. ‘Deliver this.’
‘Deliver it?’
‘Is there an echo in here?’
‘Deliver it where?’
‘Is there an echo in here?’ Lamb repeated, then laughed: he’d made a joke. ‘Where do you think? Regent’s Park.’
Regent’s Park was the light at the top of the ladder. It was where River would be now, if he hadn’t crashed King’s Cross.
He said, ‘So this Hobden thing, it’s Regent’s Park?’
‘Of course it bloody is. We don’t run ops from Slough House. Thought you’d worked out that much.’
‘So how come Sid got the real job? And I’m left collecting the rubbish?’
‘Tell you what,’ said Lamb. ‘You have a good long think about that, and see if you can come up with the answer all by yourself.’
‘And why would the Park want us anyway? They’ve no shortage of talent, surely.’
‘I hope that’s not a sexist remark, Cartwright.’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’
Lamb looked at him blankly, and River had the sense he was thinking deep thoughts, or else wanted River to think he was thinking deep thoughts. But when he answered, it was only to shrug.