Actually, bunch of morons. He worked with a bunch of morons. Couldn’t make a pun with a dictionary and a Scrabble board.
Like Louisa Guy, like Min Harper, Ho was at home this evening, though his home was his own, and a house not a flat. It was an odd house, though that was none of his doing: it had been odd when he’d bought it. Its oddness lay in its upstairs conservatory; a glass-roofed, tiled-floor mezzanine. The estate agent had made much of this feature, pointing out the array of plants that created a micro-climate there; natural and green and eco-whatever peppering her spiel. Ho had nodded like he cared, calculating how many electronics he could fit into here once this eco-shit was off the premises. Quite a lot had been his estimate. This turned out to be the precise exact amount.
So now he sat surrounded by quite a lot of electronics, some quietly awaiting his touch; others humming pleasantly in response to pre-set commands; and one blasting out death metal at a volume that threatened to make the genre literal.
He was too old for this music, and he knew it. He was too old for this volume, and knew that too. But it was his music, his house, and the neighbours were students. If he didn’t make his own noise, he’d have to listen to theirs.
Currently, he was virtually crawling through Home Office personnel files. Not looking for anything in particular. Just looking because he could.
Ho’s parents had left Hong Kong ten years before handover, and Ho—who obsessed about what-ifs; who’d devoured you-make-the-decisions books as a teenager, when not playing Dungeons and Dragons relentlessly, unsleepingly—often wondered how he’d have turned out if they’d stayed. Odds on he’d have been a webhead in a more commercial area, software design or SFX, or lackeying for some vast faceless corporation whose tendrils touched every corner of the known world. Odds on he’d be pulling down more money than he was now. But he wouldn’t have these opportunities.
The previous evening he’d been on a date with a woman he’d met on the tube that morning. They hadn’t spoken. First dates were like that.
She’d been mousy blonde, and wore a regulation City outfit—charcoal jacket and skirt, white blouse—but what attracted Ho was her building pass, which dangled on a chain round her neck. Strap-hanging eight inches away, he had no trouble reading her name; ten minutes after reaching Slough House, he’d established her address and marital status (single); her credit history (pretty good); her medical records (usual female stuff); and was wandering through her e-mails. Work. Spam. A bit of flirting with a colleague, which was going nowhere. Plus, she was looking to buy a second-hand car, and had responded to an ad in her local free press. The owner hadn’t replied.
So Ho gave him a call, and established that he’d already sold the car but hadn’t bothered informing the unlucky enquirers. That was fine Ho assured him before calling the woman himself, to see if she was still interested in a six-year-old Saab. She was, so they arranged to meet that evening in a wine bar. Ho, established in a corner before she turned up, had watched her grow visibly more frustrated over the following hour; had even thought of approaching her; sitting her down and explaining that you couldn’t be too careful—that you could not. Be. Too. Careful. A security pass on a chain round her neck? Why not sport a badge reading Rape My Life? Financial details, favourite websites, numbers dialled, calls received. All it took was a name, and one other bite: place of work did fine. Tax codes, criminal records, loyalty cards, travel passes. It wasn’t simply that these things could be found, along with everything else. It was that they could be changed. So you leave home one morning, security pass like a cowbell round your neck, and by the time you reach work your life’s not your own any more.
Roderick Ho was here to tell this woman that.
But hadn’t, of course. He’d watched until she’d given up and left in a storm of silent fury, and then finished his alcohol-free lager, and walked home satisfied that he’d had her in the palm of his hand.
His secret.
One among many.
So now he sat in front of his screen, not hearing the music blasting through his room; not even blinking. A Home Office flunkey might as well be standing by his monitor, ushering him in; leading him to the filing cabinets. Offering him a key. Would sir like an alcohol-free lager while he prowled? Why, yes. Sir would.
Ho plucked the can from the holder screwed to his desk.
Thank you, flunkey.
He contemplated swapping the birth dates of some of the higher-ranking apparatchiks, which would mess up a pension plan or two, but was distracted by a link to an external site, which led him to another, and then another. It was surprising how quickly time passed: next time he looked up it was midnight, and he was miles from the Home Office; was navigating his way round a small-time plastics factory with deep-cover links to the MoD. More secrets. This was the playground he’d been born to run around in: didn’t matter where his parents ended up. This was his element, and he’d dig in it until time healed over; like a miser sifting heaps of dust, in search of the nugget of gold.
And all of it was practice, nothing more. None of his trawling had brought him anywhere near uncovering the mystery that really tormented him.
Roderick Ho knew exactly what sins had brought his colleagues to Slough House; the precise nature of the gaffes and blunders that had condemned them to the twilight of the second-rate. He had calibrated their wrongdoings to the minutest detail, knew the dates and places where they’d fallen, and understood the consequences of their screw-ups better than they did themselves, because he’d read the arse-covering e-mails their superiors had subsequently penned. He knew exactly whose hand had given the thumbs-down in every instance. He could quote chapter and verse, chapter and verse.
For every sin but two.
One was Sid Baker’s, and he was starting to have his suspicions about that.
As for the other, it remained as elusive as that hidden nugget.
Ho raised the can once more, but it was empty. Without looking behind, he tossed it over his shoulder; had forgotten about it by the time it hit the wall.
Kept his eyes glued to his screen.
Every sin but two.
The days when he’d been a creature of instinct were in Jackson Lamb’s past. They belonged to a slimmer, smoother version of himself. But previous lives never really disappear. The skins we slough, we hang in ward-robes: emergency wear, just in case.
Approaching his house, he became aware of a figure lurking in the shadow of the adjoining lane.
A shortlist of suspects wouldn’t have been hard to draw up. Lamb had made enemies over the years. Lamb, to be frank, had made enemies over the days—it never took him long. So he rolled his Standard into a baton as he neared the junction; rotated it hand to hand, as if conducting music in his head. He must have looked oblivious to the world. He must have looked an easy target.
He must have looked a lot less friendly two seconds later.
His arms knew the movement. Like falling off a bike.
‘Jesus mister—’
And then the voice was cut off by the Standard: a brief taste of the thrills you could expect if you poked a sleeping beast with too short a stick.
A light went on nearby. It wasn’t a neighbourhood where anyone was likely to step outside to question events, but it wasn’t unusual for residents to want a closer look.
In the brief yellow glow before a curtain was drawn, Lamb saw he’d netted a kid; just another teenage hustler. His face so dappled with acne, someone might have carved him with a knife.