‘And why do they want me to deliver it?’
‘They don’t,’ Lamb said. ‘They want Sid. But Sid’s not here. So I’m sending you.’
River picked up the flash-box, and its contents slid from one end to the other. ‘Who do I deliver it to?’
Lamb said, ‘Name’s Webb. Isn’t he an old mate of yours?’
And River’s stomach slid sideways too.
Flash-box under one arm, he cut through the estate to the row of shops beyond: supermarket, newsagent’s, stationer’s, barber’s, Italian restaurant. Fifteen minutes later, he was at Moorgate. From there he caught a tube part way, then walked across the park. The rain had stopped at last, but large puddles swamped the footpaths. The sky was still grey, and the air smelled of grass. Joggers loped past, trackies plastered to their legs.
He didn’t like it that Lamb had sent him on this errand. Liked even less knowing that Lamb knew that, and knew he knew it too.
In the weeks after King’s Cross, River grew accustomed to a scraped-out feeling, as if that desperate dash along the platform—his last-second, doomed attempt to put things right—had left permanent scars. Somewhere in his stomach it was always four in the morning, he’d drunk too much, and his lover had left. There’d been an inquiry—you didn’t crash King’s Cross without people noticing—the upshot of which was, River had made sixteen basic errors inside eight minutes. It was bullshit. It was Health and Safety. It was like when a fire breaks out in the office, and afterwards everyone’s ordered to unplug the kettle when it’s not in use, even though it wasn’t the kettle started the fire in the first place. You couldn’t count a plugged-in kettle as an error. Everyone did it. Almost no one ever died.
We’ve run the numbers, he’d been told.
Running the numbers happened a lot at Regent’s Park. Pixellating, too; River had heard that lately—we’ve pixellated this, meaning we’ve run it through some software. We’ve got screenshots. It sounded too techie to catch on as a Service word. He couldn’t see the O.B. being impressed.
All of this was background static; his mind throwing up a curtain, because he didn’t want to hear the numbers.
But the numbers, it turned out, were inescapable. He heard them whispered in corridors his last morning. One hundred and twenty people killed or maimed; £30m worth of damage. A further £2.5 billion in lost tourist revenue.
It didn’t matter that none of these numbers were real, that they had simply been conjured up by those who took special pleasure in concocting worst-case scenarios. What mattered was that they’d been committed to paper and passed round committees. That they’d ended up on Taverner’s desk. Which was not a desk you wanted your mistakes to end up on if you had hopes of them being forgotten.
But no, you’ve got a grandfather, Lamb had told him. Congratufuckinglations. You’ve still got a job.
Much as River hated to admit it, that had been true. If not for the O.B., even Slough House would have been out of reach.
But the downside is, it’s not one you’re going to enjoy. Now or ever.
A career of shuffling paper. Of transcribing snatched mobile phone conversations. Of combing through page after page on long-ago operations, looking for parallels with the here and now …
Half of the future is buried in the past. That was the prevailing Service culture. Hence the obsessive sifting of twice-ploughed ground, attempting to understand history before it came round again. The modern realities of men, women, children, wandering into city centres with explosives strapped to their chests had shattered lives but not moulds. Or that was the operating wisdom, to the dismay of many.
Taverner, for instance. He’d heard Taverner was desperate to alter the rules of the game; not so much change the pieces on the board as throw the board away and design a new one. But Taverner was Second Desk, not First, and even if she’d been in charge, there were Boards to answer to these days. No Service Head had been given free rein since Charles Partner: the first to die in office and the last to run the show. But then, Partner had been a Cold War warrior from his fur-lined collar to his fingerless gloves, and the Cold War had been simpler. Back then, it had been easier to pretend it was a matter of us and them.
All before River’s time, of course. Such fragments, he’d gleaned from the O.B. His grandfather was the soul of discretion, or so he liked to think; imagining that a lifetime’s sealed lips had left him close with a secret. This belief persevered despite the evident truth that he liked nothing better than Service gossip. Maybe this was what age did, thought River. Confirmed you in your image of yourself even while it unpicked the reality, leaving you the tattered remnant of the person you’d once been.
His hand hurt. He hoped it didn’t look too obvious. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He was minutes from Regent’s Park, and it wouldn’t look good if he was late.
In the lobby, a middle-aged woman with the face of a traffic warden made him wait ten minutes before issuing his visitor’s pass. The laptop, snug in its padded envelope, was passed through an X-ray machine, which left River wondering if its contents had been wiped. If he’d been Sid, would he have been kept waiting? Or had James Webb left instructions that River be kept hanging about until the obvious was hammered home: that a visitor’s pass was the best he’d ever get?
Where Spider was concerned, River easily got paranoid.
That ordeal over, he was allowed through the large wooden doors, where there was another desk, this one manned by a balding red-cheeked type who’d pass for an Oxford porter but was doubtless an ex-cop. He motioned River to a bench. Sore hand in pocket, River sat. He put the envelope next to him. There was a clock on the facing wall. It was depressing to watch the second-hand crawl round, but difficult not to.
Behind the desk, a staircase curved upwards. It wasn’t quite large enough to choreograph a dance sequence on, but it wasn’t far off. For one inexplicable moment, River had a vision of Sid coming down those stairs, heels clacking off the marble so loudly, everyone in earshot would stop and look.
When he blinked, the image vanished. The footsteps echoed for a moment, but they were made by other people.
He’d thought, first time he’d come into this building, that it resembled a gentlemen’s club. Now it occurred to him that the truth might be the other way round: that gentlemen’s clubs were like the Service, the way the Service used to be. Back when what it did was known as the Great Game.
At length another ex-cop showed up.
‘That’s for Webb?’
One proprietorial hand on the envelope, River nodded.
‘I’ll make sure he gets it.’
‘I’m supposed to give it to him myself.’
There was never going to be any doubt about this. He had a visitor’s pass and everything.
To give him credit, his new friend didn’t fight it. ‘This way, then.’
River said, ‘That’s okay. I know my way round,’ but only to get a rise.
He didn’t get one.
River was led, not up the stairs, but through a set of doors to the left of the desk, and into a corridor he’d not been in before. The padded envelope felt like a present he was bringing Spider, though that was an unlikely scenario.
White tee under a blue shirt. That’s what you said.
No, I said blue tee under—
Fuck you, Spider.
‘What was that?’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ River assured him.
At the end of the corridor, a set of fire doors opened on to a stairwell. Through a window, River saw a car turning down the ramp into the underground car park. He followed his guide up a flight of stairs, then another. On each landing a camera blinked, but he resisted the temptation to wave.